Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Long Ago Day

In Social Studies we have been learning about what it was like long ago. So on Monday, we had Long Ago Day at school!  Several students came to school dressed in their long ago day outfits as we spent the day pretending that we are children who lived, worked, and played long ago in America.
In small groups we made corn bread, pilgrim hats, bonnets, and collars.
We visited a website about what it was like long ago and discussed similarities and differences from long ago and today! Watch our Smilebox to hear some funny comments, see some pictures, and read more details about our Long Ago Day!


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Friday, November 19, 2010

Pajama Day Palooza!

Since we were learning about the letter Pp, we decided have a Pajama, Pop, Pizza, and Popcorn Party! We definitely had to earn this party through good behavior and by showing our Husky Pride! Today, we all showed up in our best pajamas and we had a grand time. We started the day by reading
"If you give a Pig a Party." We used our fantastic four friends to help us make predicitons, questions, and clarifications while we read. At the end of the story we summarized all the main ideas!
In the afternoon we had a mystery reader come read to all the kindergarten classrooms! It was the real Fancy Nancy! She was dressed in a big red tutu, a sparkling shirt, shiny shoes, and silk gloves! She was Fancy from head to toe! She even read her Favorite Story about her Posh Puppies - as she explained Posh is a fancy word for fancy! 
She was so kind to even stay after and help our class make fancy pizzas along with Anthony's mom, Tanya! We covered our pizzas with mozzarella cheese, creamy red marina sauce, and perfectly round pepperonis! Then Fancy Nancy and Tanya took them to a secret Fancy Oven and baked them perfectly for our whole class to enjoy!
For kid time we got to watch Scooby Doo's Pirates Ahoy! While watching it we enjoyed some Pop and our Personal Pizzas! We ended the day by performing for our classroom helpers. We put on our turkey hats and performed our favorite end of the day song, Turkey Time! They loved it and we put the video below in hopes that you'll enjoy it too! 
Whew...good thing we are in our pajamas! That was an exhausting day, time to curl up on the couch!

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Daily 5

The Daily 5 is a structured language arts program that helps students develop the daily habits of reading, writing, and working with peers that will lead to a lifetime of independent literacy. The 5 elements that students participate in every day are: Read to Self, Read with Someone (buddy reading), Listen to Reading, Word Work and Work on Writing. In our kindergarten classroom, we have Read to Self, Word Work and Work on Writing on a daily basis and Listen to Reading and Read to Someone a few times a week. 
Being a novice to Daily 5, I am amazed by the progression in writing and reading this year already!! They truly are reading to self -- they each have a book bag with books at their level. During this time they can read the pictures or read the words. For writing they are labeling pictures through sounding out words and some are writing one t0 three sentences daily! That is quite an accomplishment - especially for being so early in the year! The last one that is fun to watch is word work - they use wikki sticks, molding clay, stamps, and magnets to create star words, their names, color words, or read the room and spell words. Here are a few snapshot I took of them during our Daily 5 Time
Read to Self
 Word Work (using stamps)
 Word Work (modeling clay)
Work on Writing
 Read with Someone (3rd Grade C.A.T Friends)