Wow, It's Been A Long Time!

Everything has been going by in such a blur the past few months that I haven't had time to keep my head straight, much less blog! Sorry to leave you all with no new reading! The Knight Owls have been doing a lot of learning, and boy, do I mean a lot! Most recently, we read the entire chapter book of "Mr. Popper's Penguins" and then got to watch the recent movies for a comparison/contrast activity. With the reading of that book, we have also been reading a lot of non-fiction text about faraway places like Ireland, Mexico, Spain, and the Amazon Rainforest. In a few weeks, we should have a story of our own about the rainforest to publish here for you all to see!

We also had a visit from some Easter chicks last week...check these cuties out:

We had an awards assembly...

And so much more! There's no way I can get it all in tonight, but I will try to be better about getting posts on here to keep everyone updated for the rest of the year. There will definitely be a lot going on in the next 8 weeks. Yep, that's all that is left! Unbelievable! Future posts will include: 100th Day of School, Rainforest Story, more Easter chick pics, updated 100 Club, reading and math interactive activities, and scientific studies (a few weeks away). Keep checking back!

Black Bear Jewel

Thanks to one of my kinder's mom, I have this awesome link to show the class. We watched it today for a while, and everyone was so excited about it! It is Black Bear Jewel, a soon-to-be first time Momma Bear, in her den on a live webcam. It is amazing! I promised the kids that I would post the link so that they could watch her at home this weekend. She is expected to give birth any day. Enjoy! 

The class worked together to write a story about her. I wish I had snagged a photo of the story that they wrote. We all shared the pen, and it was a masterpiece! It went like this...

A black bear is in her den. Her name is Jewel. She will have babies. She is sleeping and she snores.

http://www.bear.org/livecams/jewel-den-cam.php

It's Christmas Time!

Thank you so much to all of the students and parents that sent gifts, goodies, and books for our book exchange yesterday! The kids all loved their books and were so proud to take them home and get started reading. Merry Christmas y'all!!!

Love their faces!

Christmas Break is A Week Away!

The kinders are so excited! I don't think they really KNOW what is going on, or why they feel the way they do...but I can tell that they are super pumped about something. Christmas is in the air! There is a feeling of anticipation everywhere. I know that I am certainly excited about two weeks at home!

We have been up to a lot of Christmas type things this month, such as learning to draw snowmen and Christmas connect the dots. The classes all gathered up to watch the 1st grade students present a program about Christmas Eve that was very cute. On Tuesday, we will be taking a trip to the movie theater to watch a Christmas movie on the big screen! Talk about exciting! We also decorated a little tree to make our classroom have a bit of Christmas cheer. The kiddos made their own ornaments to hang on it for our decorations. They turned out so cute...I hope they survive until I can send them home to your trees!

A Big Fat Turkey!

To teach our kinders about Thanksgiving, we put on a program each year that tells the story of how the Pilgrims came to America. The students begin practicing lines and scripts immediately after Halloween. It is a LOT of work! This year, I had more Indians than Pilgrims, so I had to do a little costume creating. I also made myself a new costume. It all looked a bit like this...

This is what all the Indian costumes looked like before.
Now they are the Indian boy costumes.

Supplies...yes, those are chocolate drops with vanilla creme...necessity.

The basic shape. The fabric was this great fuzzy stuff...no clue what it was called!

Finished!!! They were so cute!

A few of the wild Indian Boys!

And the adorable Indian maidens!

I had plenty of Pilgrim costumes for the boys and the girls. They don't change much anyways, so I couldn't spruce them up any. My cute lil' Pilgrim kids looked like this...

Finally, there was a Turkey Hunt in our play. The Big Fat Turkey was one of my sweeties! Wouldn't you love to catch this Turkey?

The kinderbabies did such a fantastic job! We performed twice, once for the school as a dress rehearsal and again for the parents in the evening. They all did great on their lines, songs, and motions. It might have been the best year for our Thanksgiving play yet!

It's Never Too Late...

to say, "Thank You." Today was our belated Veteran's Day program at school. I am not completely sure why it was done today instead of Friday, but it was so, and it was very touching. I love hearing children tell Veterans thank you. It is so important to teach our students about respect of person, property, and country. The kinders are always in such awe when the soldiers come in. What a blessing it is to have such great role models for them to look up to, and for these soldiers to take time out of their lives to attend an elementary school program in the middle of the morning. We have several students in our school that have parents in the military, many of whom spent extensive time away from their babies so that they might serve and protect our country. Check out one of my favorite days from last year here, and a heroic homecoming here.

PJ Day at School?!?!

To encourage good behavior all of the time in our students, our principal began an incentive 'program' called the 50 A's. Each classroom has a chart with 50 boxes on it. Mine looks like this...

Whenever a class travels from one place to another on campus, the chart goes with them. If someone in the class is caught being extra good or doing something wonderful, or if the entire class is just on their best behavior during the time that they are away from the teacher, another teacher might give them an A on the chart. When it is full, the class gets to do something to celebrate. Typically, in kindergarten, when the first chart is 'all fulled up' (in the words of the kiddos), the class has a pajama party! Other parties have been a dance party, board game party, Disney party, beach party, a fiesta...you get the idea. So Friday was our day to have our pajama party. It went a little something like this...

A movie they'd never seen!

And popcorn, since we have worked hard on the sound Pp makes!!!