Currently in October

Im hooking up with Farley for October's Currently. 

LISTENING: I love hearing my pug snore! When I don't hear her,  it worries me that something is wrong. 

LOVING: Amazon Prime - that was until I saw my credit card charges (ALL WERE FROM AMAZON PRIME)!

THINKING: The school website has been a thorn in my side. I like making it, but it's hard when you spend all day teaching and then continue working from home (life of a teacher)

WANTING: An automatic stapler (Amazon Prime here I come again)...seriously, it must be a time saver!

NEEDING: I want my kinder team to be different color fairies or Where's Waldo so all 7 of us can go to the yard in the morning and scatter and confuse the kinder kids! muh-haa haa haa! 

BOO-TIFUL: All the rich fall colors are appearing on trees. They're pretty, until it falls off and I have to rake it up..drats! 

September Currently

Im linking up with Farley from Oh Boy Fourth Grade for Currently: September!

LISTENING

 Criminal Minds is out on Netflix, but I can only watch it while the sun is out (It's creepy to watch it at night). 

LOVING

 My new banners - I figured, if I made a board for Science and Social Studies, then I had to do those subjects too on a daily weekly basis. 

THINKING

 How much calories is in a grande pumpkin spiced latte...I've been drinking it everyday!

WANTING

Pumpkin spiced latte...yummy (see above).

NEEDING

A gift card, because Im broke (see  above).

GOALS:

1. Blog more (I need to be consistent)!

2. I decided to get off my caboose and work on my TPT page (after all, I need to support my coffee addiction).

3. I have so many Groupons to workout (pilates, yoga, cycling, cardiobarre...). After all the pumpkin spiced lattes, I think I should start using them.

Talk Moves in Kindergarten

One of the biggest focus in education right now (at least in my school district) is academic discussions. Having kids build upon their conversations with each other versus teacher to students discussions. Along comes Talk Moves that provide a guideline for students and teachers to keep the conversation going. It consist of: add-on, re-voice, restate, reasoning, wait time, and say more. It's not a 'new' thing, but it does give clear guidelines and reminders for teachers and students to use while having academic discussions and it makes us aware of what we are saying. I recreated the posters so it's student friendly with pictures to represent each Talk Move. I teach kindergarten and by the end of the year students are able to hold academic discussions with each other and use the posters to help them. You can have them here or click on the picture below.  It's been a long time, since I blogged, so if anyone is still reading my little blog, the first 3 people who comments with their email, I will send you the Talk Moves Posters. :)

 

Kindergarten Culmination - Frozen Song

So it's the time of year where the little kinders are ready to sing for their families. At the last minute (today at recess), my kinder group decided to change one of our songs to Let It Go from the movie Frozen. (if you can't beat them, join them). So while the teachers were trying to learn the song with the kids (who already knew it), we changed some of the lyrics so it would be more appropriate for our celebration. The lyrics in red was what was changed. Click on the picture below to download the kindergarten version of Let It Go.

This version is sang by Idina Menzel and written by  Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez.

Below is the instrumental version.

Here is the Disney Sing-A-Long version

Gingerbread Exchange

My class is having a ball participating in a Gingerbread Exchange with other kindergarten classes around the US (and Guam and Australia)! Each student created a gingerbread boy/girl (one kid made a pirate) along with a letter to be mailed to a student in another state. They then receive one from them. When we get the letter we map it on our display (so far we have 12/25 gingerbread kids). The students are learning where some states are (albeit I must make it relate to them: i.e. Florida has Disneyworld, New York is where the penguins from Madagascar the movie is, Idaho is where Mr. Potato Head is from in Toy Story, and their favorite is Texas...where Sandy the Squirrel from Spongebob is from). They don't understand how far their mail has traveled, but they are simply thrilled to receive letters! This is my first year participating and I plan on making it a permanent tradition. If you've never done this, I highly recommend it for next year!

Target's Spooky Snack Sort and Graph FREEBIE

Target currently has these on sale for $6.00, each box contains 48 snacks. So what did I do? I called my kinder partner asking her if she wanted to join me in some Halloween Math Fun..of course she said yes! (Then I texted my other 6 kinder teachers to ask if they wanted to join in on the fun..so off to Target to buy 3 more boxes)! I quickly threw these 2 worksheets together. You can get them here or click on the picture below. If you download, I would appreciate feedback/comments or if you can follow my blog..it's nice knowing Im not 'typing' to myself.

What's Brewing in Science? The Science of Halloween

My school decided to have a Halloween Alcove contest. Each teacher or team was to create anything they wanted around the theme of Halloween using project-based learning techniques. My room partner and I chose Halloween Science and the kids had a BLAST! We made slimy glow worms and atomic slime! We investigated the properties of dry ice and created apple soda with dry ice. (Winning class gets a  pizza party and the teacher gets $30 to any place I want..opps, I mean the winning teacher wants. :) I'll post ideas from the other classes too, my school has amazing creative (competitive teachers)!

Panoramic View of Alcove:

There are 5 cauldrons, each labeled with the 5 sense and the 'bubbles' are adjective the students came up with. The 6th cauldron was for fun Halloween words. 

Count Dracula

"Scientist use the 5 sense: sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing. Count all the Halloween vocabulary words we know! 1, 2, 3, 4, ah, ah, ah! 5, 6, 7, ah, ah ah! Underneath him are dead science theories: Earth was once flat, Pluto as a planet...

Haunted House with pictures of our science adventures. The small buttons are Talk Points. When pushed, you would hear the students talk about what they observed (think Staples' "That was easy" kind of a button). 

Hook: A question that gets students excited about they they will learn about. Gets them to discuss ideas.  Guided Questions: What we refer back to as we conduct out science investigations.