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. 

Currently In October

I'm linking up with Farley from Oh' Boy 4th Grade to bring you my Currently....October!

Tomorrow Breakfast in the Classroom is starting at my school. The kindergarten students (all 28 of them - yup, got another new one today), will be eating breakfast in the classroom. I will prepare by wearing jeans and tennis shoes and bringing lots of paper towels for spilled milk.  This is what the once cleared hallway now looks like (scared to smell the hallway tomorrow): That first big trash container is right in front of my room.  Instagram Party Task #8 is completed #ABCsofTeaching #hallway

*SIGH* Not a happy post....

The district Im in decided to reorganize ALL the students according to their EL Level (English Language) due to some law suit(which I don't know much about - but has a profound affect for ALL the students in my district). I get how it may help students who are in the upper grades learning Science or English and needs to be leveled, but it just seems like another form of tracking. My classroom is filled with lovely students who knows the routine, who knows me, who knows what to do during centers, and most of all who knows each other. Then after 2 WHOLE MONTHS of school....I must say goodbye to a few of my favorite students (they make me laugh and smile). I rather keep my full class of 26, then lose my EO (English only) students. My other students speak English too, but their parents wrote that they speak another language at home and so had to take a test in Kindergarten to determine their English proficiency level (which by the way, is hard for ANY child-regardless of language) in Kinder. It just feels discriminatory. I like a mix level classes where other students serve as models for each other or the simple diversity in a classroom.

On another note: three years ago, I was bumped to Kindergarten from fifth grade, so that was a major adjustment. The 2nd year I was in kindergarten, I changed schools and came in October (2 months later), and had 1 day to set up my classroom. Then a few weeks later I moved into another classroom with my students (I had no time to set that class up). I thought my 3rd year in Kindergarten would be a normal one. I WAS WRONG! This is my 3rd year in Kindergarten and I started out with 30 students (eventually another classroom opened up and I lost 4 student), ending up with a nice 26 students. I truly like them and love being their teacher, now Im losing students and will probably end up with other students that I don't know in my class. I feel awful for the ones leaving. I know they're resilient, but I selfishly wanted to be their teacher.

 On a happy note (sort of): Ill be posting pictures of my classroom and will be participating in a Teacher Instagram Party hosted by Miss Kindergarten. Come join me!

Currently in September

This is the first time Im participating in Currently, so here it goes!

Despite having 30 kinders (and let's face it, they can drive my nutty), they are a group of great kids.