Good Stuff Snowmen

We read the story "Snowballs" by Lois Ehlert this week.  In this story, some kids fill a sack with "good stuff" and they wait for a day when the snow would be just right for making snowballs.  When that day arrived, they made a snow dad, a snow mom, a cool snow boy, a little snow sister, a snow cat and a snow dog.  They used the good stuff in the bag to decorate all of their snow creatures!

We decided to do this ourselves, only we made a snow creature out of torn paper and decorated them with our own bag of good stuff that we brought from home.  It was kind of a mess, but we came up with some beautiful creations!  Enjoy our "good stuff" snowmen!

   

   

   

   

   

   

Golden Tray Award and a Guest Reader

It was a big day in Kindergarten Plus.  Mrs. Hansen from the kitchen stopped by to pay us a visit.  The reason for her visit was to award our class the "Golden Tray Award".  This is given to the class that consistently stacks their lunch trays neatly after eating lunch each day.  We were just a little excited...

She also brought us each a coupon for a free chocolate or white milk at McDonald's because we are the only class that always drinks all of our milk.  Every day.  :-)   These coupons will be in our Friday Folders tomorrow.

This afternoon we had our first Guest Reader.  It was Mrs. Colleen Frank, Liam's mom.  She read us the story "The Day the Crayons Quit" by Drew Daywalt.  It was a great story and reminded us to use all of our crayons when we are coloring.  Thanks for coming, Mrs. Frank!

Tomorrow I will post photos of our spectacular "Good Stuff Snowman" project.  Be sure to check out the blog for this.

Loop Snowmen

We completed another cute winter project for our classroom…a loop snowman.  We cut out two loops and a circle, attached them together, added details, and hung them in our classroom.  They are adorable and remind us of the fun things we can do outside in the winter!

Stay warm!

Writing Workshop

It is amazing to see how far these Kindergartners have come as writers!  We are concentrating on telling our stories before we start writing them.  Today we spent time with a writing partner, just talking and telling our partners our story.  It was really cool because our partners could ask us questions that would help us to tell more details about our story.

After spending time telling our stories, we went to work writing.  Wow.  We wrote stories about playing football with mom, going to Washington, D.C., going to the park in the summer with friends, and many other things.

When we write, we are focusing on beginning our sentences with upper case letters, stretching out words so we can write the sounds we hear, leaving spaces between our words and using proper punctuation.  I can't wait to see what we accomplish next!

A Marvelous Monday!

We had a great day in Kindergarten Plus today.  We went to the computer lab to work on Math in Education City.  We really enjoy going to the computer lab.

   

We are learning about writing lists in Writing Workshop.  It is different than writing a sentence, which is what we are used to doing.  We practiced it today and Mrs. Kurt thought we did a really good job!

   

In Reading Workshop, we worked more on building our reading stamina.  Today we all read for five minutes.  In Math, we are working on counting by twos, fives and tens.  We are also learning about odd and even numbers.

We had outdoor recess today.  It is so nice to get outside and get some fresh air.  Be sure to send winter clothes, including snow pants and boots, so we can all go out and enjoy our recess!

Snowmen Everywhere!

Another exciting day in Kindergarten Plus!

In Reading Workshop today, we learned an important new word.  The word is stamina...

As you can see, stamina means doing anything for a long period of time with out getting tired or giving up.  We learned that we need stamina for most things in life…running, playing, writing…even reading! We are working on our stamina for Reading Workshop.  We will need this stamina for independent reading while Mrs. Kurt teaches our Guided Reading small groups.  Today, we all had to read for 4 minutes.  Not as easy as it sounds.  No worries, though.  Mrs. Kurt says we will soon build up our stamina in reading and will be able to do it much longer.

In continuing our winter theme, we completed a couple more snowman projects today.  This morning we made a colorful background for a snowman, which we finished and hung out in the hallway.

   

   

This afternoon, our third grade buddies from Ms. Elsen's class visited.  They helped us make our sock snowman project.  Remember the supplies you sent in before the holidays?  Well, here is what we made with them!

   

  

   

   

We love when our third grade buddies come to our room!  Thanks, Ms. Elsen's class!!!

And look at how cute these turned out.  We will not be bringing them home for awhile…right now they are decorating the school office.  We will bring them home in a couple of weeks.  If you happen to be at school, be sure to check them out.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!  It felt so good to be back at school with the kids today and it feels really good to be blogging again!  I hope you all had a wonderful, relaxing holiday season and here is to lots of exciting new things in Kindergarten Plus in 2014!!

We started out the day reading the story "Squirrel's New Years Resolution".  It is a story about Squirrel who has heard about making a new years resolution but she is not sure what it is.  We learned from this story that a resolution is a promise one makes to themself to get better at something or to be more helpful.  Without even knowing it, Squirrel had already been helping others lots so she made that her new years resolution.

Our theme for this week (and next) is Winter.  Good timing!  Remember the cool painting project we started on pajama day?  Finally we got to add the details.  They turned out really cute.

   

   

As you might have guessed, it was an inside recess day due to the windchill.  However, we still get to do something pretty cool.  On inside days, our recess clerk, Miss Brigett, sets up stations and take us in to the gym for recess.  There are lots of different activities and we rotate  through the stations so everyone gets a turn to do each activity.  FUN!  Of course, we LOVE going to the gym!

   

    

   

It was a great day with great kids.  Can't wait until tomorrow!