Home Stretch

I cannot believe we only have 30 odd days left of school.  The children have grown exponentially physically and academically.  I would ask families that we all hold on tight during this last push to prepare for first grade.  It is so important to continue to nurture and encourage independence in our young learners, they have come so far!  Remembering to follow our classroom procedures when we feel so grown is a challenge but essential to maintaining a classroom environment that is conducive to learning.  Have your learner tell you the five procedures of class.  If they forgot, it is okay.  Here they are for practice:

  

I feel that these procedures really are lifelong skills that are applicable in a variety of situations.  

I cannot take credit for them, they are based on whole brain teaching.

I am so grateful to my families and the children they have entrusted to me.  It has been a beautiful journey.  The best is yet to come.

Warmly,

Mrs. C.

History Comes Alive

Plato said:  "Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each."
malomee and I streamlined what we were given as a template (thanks, Amy) for the Living Museum and shared it with our families.  The day of the Living Museum was exciting!  The children were able to say at least one thing about their famous American.  malomee and I were thrilled.

Our school 'museum'

Sacajewea and Mommy

Us with George Washington!



Amelia Earhart and Ben Franklin


Neil Armstrong and Mommy

Benjamin Franklin and Mommy

Wilma Rudolph and Mommy

Where would an astronaut be without his mommy?

Living Museum Slide Show

Flip Cams and Pancakes

As I delve deeper into the craft of teaching, I summoned all my moxie and ditched the Reading series teacher edition (for this week). It is important for me to mention that based on my data from assessments, my kiddos are meeting expectations in phonics and phonemic awareness, which does not mean I abandoned the reading foundation skills for my skillet.  Rest assured stakeholders, those skills were taught this week in conjunction with listening, speaking and writing standards during Reading block. We also read informational text in Social Studies (inside Reading block) on Benjamin Franklin and wrote about this famous American using details from our ladder graphic organizer. 

Armed with, literature from our Media Center (thanks, girls!) and lots of courage, I set out to build a lesson that would address many standards at once.  The children were able to retell the stories we read and compare and contrast adventures of story characters and events.  They also identified with the author and illustrator of a text when they created accordion books and sequenced events of the wordless text, Pancakes for Breakfast.  The lesson started gaining momentum and I got so excited I wanted to record our progress.  Unbeknownst to malomee, she comes up to me and shows me a flip cam she borrowed from our Media Center (gotta love those girls) to record her children reading. AHH!!  True to her giving nature, malomee suggested I use the flip cam in my lesson (malomee to the rescue!!).  My hope is the children will be able to access throughout their learning the skills taught embedded in the sticky sweetness of the syrup and pancakes.

With love,
Mrs. C.

Books?  Check.  Graphic organizer?  Check.  Griddle?  Check.  Children ready to learn? Check, check, check!

Pancakes, Pancakes movie

Edible Landforms

For the last two weeks, we have been studying landforms.  I saw on this website (thank you!) that inspired me to use edible landforms as an extension to our standard based learning (who says it has to be boring???).  After using a simple evaluation, the children consistently got pond correct, so I had them create their own pond after viewing this image:

We had so much fun yesterday, we kept going with graham cracker landforms today.  We used chocolate frosting for land, dyed blue frosting for the ocean, chocolate chips for rocks (coastline) dyed green coconut for grass and colored snocaps for mountains (thanks, proteacher!)

I am truly learning, laughing and loving Kindergarten.

Fondly,

Mrs. C.

Happy 100th Day!

Oh my goodness!  My first 100th day....I look at blogs and see the wonderful activities seasoned teachers do with their children and I am so inspired!  I have to be perfectly honest, I was grateful to survive it and have had my camera on hand.

I wish I could say I had the kids sort the mix or do something academic with this.  I had purely selfish reasons to mix mini marshmallows, cherrios, plain m & m's, and butterscotch chips.  I wanted to eat it!

This is what it looks like to try to do 100 jumping jacks.  Poor kids, they made it to 47 and said, "No more, Mrs. Caronna!"

The Living Museum

Malomee and I are so very excited about this project that is a brain child of a team mate of ours (shout out to Amy)!  In conjunction with our Social Studies standards, the children are learning how to use and create a timeline.  They are also listening to stories about people in the past who have shown character ideals such as honesty, courage and responsibility.  An extension of this learning is the Living Museum project where the learner gets to select a famous American and construct a timeline with their American’s birthdate and major accomplishments.  The children then get to present their posters dress as their famous American.  Malomee and I chose the following Americans:

So excited!  Cannot wait to see how the children will take to this project.  I will be sure to have my camera that day!


Fondly,
Mrs. C.