The Last Week of Kindergarten 2013

This is the second quilt that I made with the kids this year.  One of our teaching assistants got married in October and she is expecting a baby in August.  She won't be coming back after she has the baby and we will miss her.  We have three days of school left and we are having a baby shower for her tomorrow morning.  

The kids all got to color a rectangle with fabric markers.  I used their pictures as the outside border of one of the sides of the baby quilt.  The teachers signed a rectangle, too!

We have been having lots of fun these last few days.  Today the classes all rotated and we read a book about ocean creatures and then made an art project from the book.  We made jellyfish, seahorses, octopi, Rainbow fish, and sharks!  Very fun!

My kids actually fot to go to art today, too.  When they came back in, I told them to put their smocks into their backpacks and they were so excited about it!  Woohoo!  We get to take our smocks home!!

Then we made some cute pictures based on the book, In the Tall, Tall Grass.  The kids used bingo markers, glitter, and some tissue paper to make their creations.  Love them!

 A few more random pictures as I look around the room before we take it all down and send it home:

 And as I cleaned out my filing cabinet, I found this gift we made 13 years ago for our parent volunteers. The little ruler is a magnet, just like the gifts we make now (want to see them?  here is a link.)

The next three days are early dismissal days.  There is still so much to do!!  I will really miss this class but I am ready for summer!

End of the Year in Kindergarten

We have five more days to go!

We don't do a graduation ceremony in Kindergarten.  Our county prefers that only high school has a graduation ceremony.  It keeps it special for the seniors.

So we have an ice cream social near the end of the year with our parents.  We sing songs, perform a little play, and show a slideshow.  Then everybody eats ice cream.

This year, our program was yesterday (phew!).  It is a fun day but we are always happy when it is over.  It is a lot of pressure.  You never know what they will do!  And at our school, it feels like the paparazzi are there!  I saw some parents recording with their ipads! I did feel a little sad that they didn't get to just watch.  Eventually we will have one person film, I guess, and share it with everyone. 

We got to practice by showing our friends in the other classes our shows.  It was fun and kind of funny to see how all of us are a little different in how we teach and sing!

Our slideshow this year was done with the tech teacher, Mrs. Scott.  She used Pixie to have them photograph themselves, fill in a template of their favorite part of Kindergarten (recess and PE were big hits but a few kids said math or reading group!).  The kids illustrated their sentence.  When she sent me the files as jpegs (photos) I put them into powerpoint and had each child read theirs as I recorded it.

Our play was Pete the Cat.  The kids recited all of the book with props and instruments.  Perfect and easy!  They did a great job!

We sang seven songs (some of them are really short). 
 Two songs we did with the ipod: One Small Voice (with sign language) by Jack Hartmann and Drive My Car by Laurie Berkner. 

 Then I played the guitar as they sang four songs: Out in the Garden (sung to the tune of Down at the Station), The Rainbow Connection, The RolyPoly Caterpillar (sung to the Eensy Weensy Spider), and What a Beautiful World (with sign language). 

The last song was The Kindergarten Class (sung to the Addam's Family).  I had the kids all fold their arms and snap like the Addam's Family.  All the parents laughed.  The kids of course had no idea  :)

I gave my room mother/team mother a little quilt to thank her for everything she did for us this year.  She was absolutely amazing!  I try to make a quilt with the kids every year.  This year I was out for some surgery and the families surprised me with a quilt made from the kids' t-shirts.  It is really cute but I forgot to take a picture of it.  It was behind us as we were singing so I know it was photographed about 200 times yesterday!  oh well.  If you want more info on the one we made, you can read about it on my other blog.

Here is the front:

And the back:

The kids all added their fingerprints and then made little bugs or flowers out of them.

Here's a toast to five more days!  Summer here we come!

Fun in the Sun Day!

Oh boy!

I am jealous of those of you who are already on vacation.  We have 13 more days to go!  Many of the days are special days (Field Day is Friday, the library is coming on Monday, the preschoolers visit on Tuesday, we go up and visit first grade on Thursday and we have our end of the year program on Friday.)

Tomorrow is our Fun in the Sun Day.  Does your school do this?  Each grade takes one day and plans all kinds of outdoor activities.  When I taught first grade, we did Camp Day, complete with t-shirts and letters from home.  When I taught second grade, the kids were able to choose from all kinds of activities from singing to nail painting.  I know third grade makes tie dye t-shirts with their kids.


Well, in Kindergarten, we have five teachers so we have five different activities.  My kids will go from teacher to teacher while I stay in one place and have all the classes come to me.









Here is the kids' schedule for tomorrow:


9:30-10:00 Playing in the water tables

10:00-10:30  Sidewalk chalk

Recess/lunch/calendar

12:00-12:30 Parachute games

12:30-1:00 Bubbles on the playground

1:00-1:30 Shaving Cream and Cornstarch playdough!  Woo hoo!



Here is the link to Early Learning/Mom Trusted.  Go check out the pictures of the playdough.  I tried it today and it is really soft.

Enjoy the last few days of May!

Fish and Turtles in the Kindergarten Pond!

I have a love/hate relationship with this time of year!

I love this time of year!  The kids have so many skills, they know the rules and routines, they can work independently for a little longer, and we sing with my guitar.  

The weather has not been very cooperative, though.  We have had some really lovely Spring days but we have also had lots of cold and rainy days (indoor recess!).

I do not enjoy the stress of all the meetings.I am going to five IEP meetings for incoming preschoolers on Friday, we are meeting during planning today with our Reading Support Teacher, we meet on Thursday during planning as a team, we meet for artic as a team and I will have another (unscheduled as of yet) meeting to artic with first grade and preschool, I am leading a staff development next week.....  The meetings feel endless!

I am trying to squeeze in some running records and a wee bit of teaching!  This month we are learning about the pond.  Here are some cute watercolor fish we made.  Scroll down and see some super easy turtles.  I didn't provide any patterns-the kids did all of the cutting by themselves.

We have 26 more days to go!

Easy turtles!

The kids added dots using bingo dotters.

May you have less meetings than I do!

Hang in there!

Art Extravaganza!

Our Art Teachers rock!  They planned a wonderful day of art for each grade level.  I saw many different wonderful art projects all done in one day!

Our kids' favorite project was presented by two great high school art students.  They read A House for Hermit Crab by Eric Carle to the kids, then showed them how to create a sponge dude!  So cute!  All the kids had a great time creating features and clothes for their little sponge guys!  Some of them are super dudes!  One friend at my table made Sponge Bob's Dad.  Hehe!  Lots of fun!

Sponge Bob's Dad

Listening to the story

Sharing their creations

High School art students presented the art project and story.

Love how they all turned out!

If you are planning a beach theme for the end of May or beginning of June, these would be easy to make! My kids loved them!

Linking up to the Kindergarten Works