Happy Saturday! I spent this beautiful Saturday in class! I am working towards my masters degree so I had a class today. I have some great ideas that I am going to try out next week! Yay for being a better teacher!
So, what a week we had! Don’t ya hate when you plan out this amazing week…and then people interrupt your plans. Like they don’t understand how hard you worked to create those amazing plans and prepare the materials…and don’t even talk about how excited you are to teach those amazing ideas?! Well…we had DEA testing…there goes one morning. We went to the state fair one day. Two morning’s gone. So, we didn’t accomplish everything but we had a pretty great week in the kindergarten smorgasboard!
This week was all about letter P and the /p/ sound! We kicked off our week with our /p/ sound circle map. Once again, my amazing drawing skills are on display!
This week our writing focus was on labeling. We took turns using our sounds to label our classroom. Then we worked on labeling pictures for more independent practice! I love this activity because I love that the ‘staches get to take ownership in our classroom. It’s their handwriting that labels our classroom now!
We worked on rhyming words this week. I am always so amazed at how well my ‘staches do at recognizing rhyming words. I found this adorable thumbs up and thumbs down activity at Kindergarten Smiles! Caitlin is AMAZING! She is pretty much Greg-tacular! I would read two words and if they rhymed, they gave me a thumbs up. If they didn’t rhyme, it was a thumbs down!
This week kicked off our sight word instruction. This year we are trying a new sight word strategy that our coaches shared with us. I must say, I am very impressed with how well it seems to work. The premise is that they end up with over 60 exposures to each word by the end of the week. We read the words, write the words, spell the words. On Thursday we color our words in a grid. On Friday we graphed our words. I will be blogging about this more in depth after a few weeks of working with it, but seriously, this is a must do!
We learned all about American symbols this week as our way of remembering September 11th. I read the book The Man Who Walked Between The Towers and we made lots of patriotic art! I think my favorite is the red, white and blue guitar since we do live in Music City USA! I especially love that the ‘staches started playing their guitars!!!
We ventured out of the security of our jagged classroom walls and hit the pavement to the state fair! How convenient that it is located just across the street?! We had a BLAST! The highlight: PIG RACES! The pig race lady was something that just cannot be described. She loved her job as the pig race lady! And my friend “fire frill” sure did get way overstimulated cheering on her favorite pigs in the pig races! We petted goats and horses and mules and llamas. We got to see bees making honey. We drank chocolate milk. And “fire drill” communicated to every chicken in the chicken barn. People, she literally carried on a clucking conversation with every chicken. It was simply priceless. I just love that little girl’s enthusiasm for all things. It’s simply contagious!
Of course, no week is complete without some Foodie Friday Fun! And what better for P week than PIZZA! We used pre-sliced bagels and loaded them up with sauce, cheese and pepperonis! We baked them in toaster oven and let me tell you, those pizzas were GOOD! And I should know, I am a pizza expert. Of course, making pizza in class makes you awesome. It’s a fact. One of my ‘staches informed me of such. And I quote: “Mr. Greg you is awesome!”
And what week is ever complete without a silly hat?!
Here piggy piggy piggy!! People, it even has a tail in the back!
And since my friend Kourtney at Payton’s Precious Kindergarteners coined the term “hat-a-holic” to describe me, I am going to embrace it. Check out our fishy reading hats!!!!
Don’t forget to enter my Greg-tacular Birthday giveaway! The current prize is a $25 gift card to Oriental Trading!! I KNOW, right?! If you want to see my post about my Oriental Trading goodies (video of my opening the box is included…who doesn’t want to see that?!) click on the picture! Be sure to enter the give away while you’re there!
And if you haven’t already done so, you really should purchase this amazing kindergarten bundle from Educents! But hurry! The deal expires 8 hours!!!!
