Happy President's Day!

We have been talking about leaders, our country, and our flag. We have discussed the responsibilities, hard work, and dedication that it takes to be a true leader. On this President’s Day, for our work on writing, we had to write what we would do if we ever became president of the United States. One of my students suggested I send this to President Obama because we learned that he reads ten letters a day, and we thought maybe he would want to read our ideas! Since I am not one to break a promise, we created a short SmileBox to brighten his your day and let him know what a bright future we have!

Happy Heart Video

What a wonderful day we had on Friday and I have so many parents to thank for that! The entire day was filled with love, candy, valentines, and excitement!  The last hour of the day we held our class Valentine Party. We ended up having eight wonderful parents altogether which helped tremendously!
We started our party by opening up our Valentine's and investigating to see all the yummy treats we had inside and handwritten Valentines inside.

We then set up five interactive stations:

Station One was a Sweet Heart Graphing station. In math we are working on interpreting and creating bar graphs. Trevor’s mom, Michelle, was very helpful during this station, opening boxes, helping sort, and create graphs. They students loved working at this station and enjoyed the tasty treat once they were all complete!
Station Two was an Ice Cream Station! Not just plain Ice Cream, but we created an Ice Cream Sundae station where each student got to create their own personalized sundaes, adding whichever toppings they enjoyed. There were a lot of messy, yet smiling faces at this station! Thank you Angie for making sure everyone was full and having fun!
Station Three was a Memory Match Station. The students had to stay focused during this game and try to match up words and pictures during this game. Ariel’s mother, Kristi, was very helpful during this game and kept all the students smiling! They loved getting the valentine pencils for all their hard work!
Station Four was a painted heart station! This station had three very hands-on volunteers –Gabe Essay, Kelly, and Dustin. They were working hard painting hands, painting fingertips, washing hands, and helping with glitter. They did a great job helping the kids create cute and creative hearts!
Station Five was Heart Bingo Station. The students love playing Bingo! We frequently play it with our site words, letters, and beginning sounds. This is a great way to practice Capital Letters, Lowercase Letters, and Star Words at home! Emylee’s mom, Shana helped call out letter sounds and letter names, while EmmaLee’s mother, Holly, helped pour juice for the students.  They loved picking out of the prize box during this game and hunting for letters and letter sounds.
 Since I had so many parents I had the opportunity to video, while Miss Mahoney took pictures for us! Hope you enjoy the video and hope there weren't too many terrible tummy aches when they got home!
Happy Valentine's Day!

Special Thanks for attending the Party and Lending a Helping Hand:
Shana Anderson

Michelle Bybee
Gabe Essay
Holly Carlson
Kelly Hamerski
Angela Raforth
Kristi Ring
Dustin Runkle

Happy Valentine's Day

Make your own greeting card

How Full is Your Bucket?

Well we are finally to that time of year where we need a little something to help us remember our job while we are at school. I am 100% for positive reinforcement in my classroom, so rather than taking things away. I am always looking for fun and exciting elements to add to reinforce those positive behaviors. So we have become bucket fillers! 

Let me explain. We all carry an invisible bucket that contains our feelings. When our bucket is full, we feel great. When our bucket is empty, we feel sad. A bucket filler is someone who says or does nice things for other people. By doing this, they are filling other people's buckets and filling their own bucket at the same time.

On the other hand, a bucket dipper says or does things to cause other people to feel bad. A bucket dipper empties their bucket when they say and do mean things.

In our classroom, each student has a bucket on our Bucket Filler bulletin board. Everyone is encouraged to fill each other's buckets by putting in a warm fuzzy anytime someone says kind words or compliments to each other. At the end of the week, we empty the buckets and look at the nice things our friends left for us when they filled our buckets.

We are very excited to watch our buckets fill up with happiness! 

Us with our Buckets full of Happiness!

Wonderful Writing

Okay...I am not trying to brag. But our writing has incredibly improved! Not only do we work on our writing for 15 minutes everyday, but today I had 5 students choose to "Work on Writing" as their kid time choice! They have a love and a knack for writing that is so fun to watch and observe their growth! This week their writing project was to create an Animal ABC Book. They were all given a letter and they had to think of an animal that began with that letter and something to describe that letter. Look at our results! 

Ready, Set, Tie!

There are many goals that we strive to reach by the end of the year. Some of these goals are academic based such as knowing our letter names and sounds, skip counting, reading books, creating number stories, etc. Other goals that we have are more developmental. There is always one goal in kindergarten that you won't find in our curriculum or learn from everyday school rules - shoe tying! It is vital to help them move away from the Velcro and onto the laced up Nike's. So I decided we needed a plan, more so a program to help my rangers reach their goal.

On Monday we began our Shoe Tying Club. We talked about it all last week and covered all the rules. This eliminates a lot of questions and confusion BEFORE the club actually opens.

Here's the Rules:

1. You must tie your shoes at least three different times on three different days.

2. You must only show me you can tie your shoes first thing when you come in the morning, after recess, or during kid time– any other time will not count.

3. You will get a check for each time you can successfully tie your shoes, on your own, with no help or guidance from me.

4. After three checks, you’re in the club!

What do you Get?!

1. A fancy card, prominently

displayed in the classroom, announcing to the world that you can tie your shoes!

2. Your choice of fancy, fun, fantastic shoelaces !

3. You will become Mrs. Rehder's assistant and be able to help others learn to tie their shoes.

Needless to say I have never seen such determination from my kiddos. They come in practice their skills - showing me their improvement from the night before. They spend their brain break quietly practicing. They even spend their kid time helping each other and reciting rhymes. It's fascinating. And it's working~

Now...how to quit those knots from occurring...

 Well earned Sponge Bob, Hello Kitty, and Spiderman Shoelaces

Magic Stick

There is something so fabulous about kindergarten, well there are a lot of fabulous things about kindergarten. But one of my favorite things, is their imagination. It makes my job a whole lot easier knowing that they won't second guess when I tell them that I have "Wendy the Weather Lady" watching us through they SMART Board everyday to tell us all about the weather. Their bodies straighten, their mouths close, and their ears perk up. You can ask, and they will tell you, she expects them to give their very best day in and day out. Just the mention of her name is like magic. 

Which brings me to my next point. I created a magic stick. I told them the it marks anyone's hand that is showing their husky pride - by being respectful, being responsible, being safe, and trying their best. The color and scent of the stick changes every day. This keeps them intrigued and they truly believe that the stick is magic. I too think it is. I mean if I can get a tube of scented chapstick to quiet 21 kindergarten, it must be some form of magic.

Ah yes...imagination is a blissful thing.