America

We are wrapping up our America Unit in class and I am so proud of how great the students have done! This has been one of my favorite units this year!  We used many activities from my America unit!

Every morning we learned about a different American symbol. We first made a KWL together as a class then I transferred the information to our class tree-map.  

The students would use the information to write in their 'America the Beautiful' writing notebooks for the week. They came our adorable!

We also made some cute bald eagles ..and we've been watching the Decorah Eagles online everyday (I am obsessed) Our class named the mom eagle Liberty and the dad eagle Bell :)

 We focused on George Washington and Abraham Lincoln during this unit. We measured out a life size Lincoln (the children LOVE doing this! They stand next to him all the time!) and did a directed drawing of George Washington.

 We also measured out the Statue of Liberty's foot and the children drew gorgeous pictures...

Today the students painted a map of the United States (from my unit) and we did a super fun science project (from Deanna Jump's unit) to show how penny's can turn green just like the Statue of Liberty did!

 

Now we are moving on to our Suess-tastic Unit :)

Oh where, oh where have I been?

I feel like I have totally abandoned my blog! For one, I was away for the long weekend and two, I AM EXHAUSTED!! I have been so tired these past two days, I am not sure the last time I have felt like this! But anyways.... :)

I went to Austin and had a wonderful time! We spent the whole weekend eating! They have so many delicious restaurants and food trucks! My favorite was the cupcake truck of course!

Hello..deliciousness!

Luckily, I ran some of that food off in the marathon. The race was great, but I have never ran up so many hills in my life.  Everything is flat here in Florida!

 Me on the right :)

This week in class we started learning about America.  We have been doing some super cute activities that I will post about this week.  For now I will share with you this cute little activity that my kids did. I don't give them any patterns and they end up coming out so different and so cute!

 "I would ride in a private jet"

 "I would help people that don't have homes."

 "I would make everyone go to school for 7 days" WHAT?!!?  ;)

 "I would paint the white house pink."

Careers

The past two weeks we have been learning all about careers.  I love hearing the children discuss what they want to be when they grow up...we have lots of future football players, fashion designers, and of course a lot of the girls want to be teachers :) :)  Every day we focused on a new career.  We started the morning off by making a KWL.  I leave the KWL on my white board because we use it a couple times throughout the week..

On the 'K' side, I write down everything that the children say. If something turns out to be a misconception then we usually circle it or 'x' it out.  I tell them that it is okay because we can also write down things that 'we think we know'

After we fill out the K and W, I read a non-fiction story to the class.  I usually stop half way through the story and have the kids turn to their carpet buddy and discuss.  They are supposed to ask their buddy three questions- What have you learned so far? What do you think will happen next? and Are you confused about anything? I will have a couple people share what they discussed-we can add any new questions to the 'W' and any new info to the 'L' and then we move on.

Each morning the children made a project to go with the career we discussed:

Mail Carriers (they had to write a letter to anyone at school and deliver it) This one was a favorite!!

 Artist:

 Dentist:

 Doctor:

 They also had to write about their careers everyday:

Such a fun unit to do with the kids..we could have gone on for weeks with all the careers the students wanted to discuss :)

You can find my unit by clicking on the image below

It's Valentines Day tomorrow!! Have a LOVELY one! (can't wait to show you what I got from my Valentine's Blogger Exchange!!)

100th day! Hooray!!

We celebrated our 100th day of school yesterday and it was fabulous thanks to you all!! I used so many great ideas that I found on your blogs! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!

 We all dressed like we were 100 years old...some of the students went all out! It was hysterical!! I wish I could share the pictures!

In the morning our class rotated around with 3 of the other K classes.  Each class had a different 100th day activity:

1. 100th day snack (students got 10 of each 10 items..yum!)

2. 100 exercises and 100 stretches

3. 100 licks of a lollipop- they made predictions on whether they thought 100 licks would be enough to finish, then they tested it out!

4. Roll-to-100 Race- students had a partner and a 100 chart. They rolled the dice and colored in that amount of squares. First one to finish, won!

In the afternoon I used an idea I found on Mrs. Lee's Kindergarten blog.  The boys worked on the pizza and the girls worked on the gumball machine.  I LOVE projects where I get to see them working together!

Here is the final project:

 Then, we made the wonderful 100th day portraits that I found on Mr's Jumps blog. The students worked so well on these and they came out adorable!!!

Thanks again for sharing all of your wonderful ideas! I know my students appreciate it too :)

Groundhog Day!

I know it is totally too late to use these ideas, but I figured I would share them anyways :) You can always 'pin' them for next year!! 

Yesterday we graphed the students predictions on whether or not they thought that Phil would see his shadow.  We were at an exact split..with half saying yes and half saying no. This morning we watched a video of Phil on ABC News online, it was great! The students were so excited to see Phil!

Then, we worked on some cute little projects. The first one we did with our book buddies and it was a little idea that I found on pinterest (that I think was originally pinned from The First Grade Parade). Students decorated and wrote about what they would have in their burrow:

"In our burrow we like to throw parties and dance all the time" SO CUTE!

If you want the patterns for the project, download them HERE

Then, my Kinder students worked on this cute little project...and they were absolutely obsessed with it! (It's so funny when that happens..some classes could care less about something and others absolutely love it!)

 The grass is stapled on the edges of the paper (not glued down), so the groundhog can pop up and down.  My students were walking around and pretending like the groundhog kept getting scared of its shadow..they would make little noises and hide the groundhog under the grass. It was so funny.  They even wanted to bring this project with them to the playground so they could REALLY make him see his shadow. 

Next, our class is moving on to our career unit! :)