Happy Holidays Everyone!!

Hope you all enjoy your time with your families over break!  I will miss all of the little people, but I know this is a very special time in their lives and it needs to be shared with family.  I would like to thank all of you for the wonderful goodies and presents your children gave me for Christmas!  It was very thoughtful of you!  Also, to all who donated their time or items for a party yesterday a huge thanks!  I think all of the little people had a great time!  Pinning the nose on Rudolph was a fun adventure along with playing Christmas Bingo!  The cookies were delicious and the juice hit the spot!  Thank you! Thank you!

Below you will find our last two newsletters.  I felt a little weird posting one last week after the tragedy in Connecticut. I just want you all to know I love your children and will do my best to always protect them!   

Hope you all enjoyed your very special reindeer!  And, again, Happy Holidays!! 

Teachers Supporting Teachers

Teachers Supporting Teachers 

{fundraising campaign for the teachers and children of Sandy Hook} 

Little Miss Glamour Goes to Kindergarten is sponsoring a fund raiser for the students and teachers of Sandy Hook.  I'm linking up by donating 100% of my earnings on TPT from now till January 14th.  Please help support this effort!  Clear out your wishlists or give a TPT gift certificate to a teacher for the holidays or "just because"!  Thanks!

Flat Gingy!!

First of all, let me say "thanks" to Christie over at "First Grade Fever" for the super fun craftivity!  They turned out so stinkin' cute!  We even ended up with one one-legged GB Man.  The little people had instructions to stack all of their body parts so they wouldn't lose one.  And of course, one of the little angels lost a leg and I didn't have any extras!  Yikes!  So, new invention a one-legged GB Man.  He really is adorable!

We read many different Gingerbread Man stories, but I think my favorite one with a little of twist was "The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School" by Laura Murray. In this story after a class leaves for recess, their just-baked Gingerbread Man is left behind. But he's a smart cookie and heads out to find them.  During his hunt for his class he meets the gym teacher, the art teacher, the nurse and the even the principal.  I wish I had found this before school started this year.  It would have been a wonderful lead into meeting all of the people in our building.

Our gingerbread activities were so much fun!  Some of our activities included:  a "My Gingerbread Man 'is' 'can' 'has' Map", "Describe Me" map, a "Part to Whole Map", "Label Me Gingerbread Man" and a Venn Diagram comparing the Gingerbread Man and the Gingerbread Girl stories.  And for math we studied pictures of gingerbread houses and cookies for Math Talk, as well as, doing story problems on the Smartboard for our problem solving activities. 

Christmas Tea!!

Today was our Christmas Tea!  The boys and girls looked so sweet and they were precious visiting with Santa Claus, eating their cookies and singing Christmas carols.  This is a very special time for our little ones and this tradition at our school came just at the right time! 
My pictures didn't turn out as well as I would have liked, but they do give you a little bit of an idea how close we all have become this year!

Enjoy!

Silence for Sandy Hook Elementary

Today, Teachers Pay Teachers has announced that 10% of sales will be going to Sandy Hook Elementary School. 

Donations will also be accepted.  Send to:

Sandy Hook School Support Fund

c/o Newtown Savings Bank

39 Main St.

Newtown, CT 06470 

Or you and your students can send kind words to:

Sandy Hook Elementary

12 Dickenson Drive

Newtown, CT 06482

Inferring with No, David!!

Whew!  Writing about our inferences is hard work!  The little people are super at looking at pictures from the "No, David" books and making inferences.  We look at the evidence or clues in the pictures combine it with their background knowledge to make a decision about what they think is happening in the picture.  Below you will find a couple of example of a writing activity we did to go along with one of the pictures from "David Goes to School."  It was lots of fun and a little challenging for kindergarteners.  But, they were amazing thinkers!!

Here is the picture we used for this writing activity.

Here are our inferences!

 Our pictures of David along with our inferences!

 

 A couple of close ups!

   

What is David Doing?  David is doing paint.

My inference... I inference David is painting.

A clue that helped me make my inference...  David will get paint on the girl,

 because he has paint on his hand.

 What is David Doing?  He is getting paint on the girl.

My inference... He is going to get paint on the girl.

A clue that helped me make my inference...He has paint on his hand.

Whoo!  Whoo!  Owls!!

I am so pleased to present our "owl family glyphs" to you!  They are adorable!  We spent time last week learning all about owls.  The boys and girls had some connections to bats and other creatures.  A connection is when learning about something reminds them of something else they already know about, have read about or have experienced.  Making connections was the first comprehension strategy we learned this year.  Now, we are focusing on inferring.  However, our schema comes in handy everyday.   

 We have been using the "No, David" books to strengthen and learn about inferring.  Inferring is using their "schema" or "background knowledge" along with clues or evidence to make inferences or draw a conclusion about something.  Today we did an activity where we asked "23 Questions" and used the answers to the questions to make an inference about what we thought was in the "Mystery Box".  We wrote 4 of the clues or pieces of evidence down on our "It's a Mystery" sheet and then we drew a picture of what we thought was in the box.  We guessed everything from a rainbow, to a spider.  It was really a "gingerbread man".  We are learning so many things in kindergarten!!  It's amazing!!

Here's just a small sample of our "No, David" pictures we've been studying for inferring!!

Thanksgiving Feast with the Little People!!

Hi, everyone!  Just thought I'd post a few pictures of our Thanksgiving Feast with our kindergarten neighbors.  We had so much fun!  First, we shook up the butter.  In case you've never done this before it's just "whipping cream" in a jar or a clear plastic container.  I chose to use a plastic container and good thing.  It went flying one time during the churning process, lol.  Each child shook to their hearts content and then passed the container to their neighbor.  After we shook our cream into butter we all grabbed our headdresses, bonnets, hats and placemats and went out into the hall to enjoy our "mini" feast.  We tried cranberry sauce, corn muffins, butter and pumpkin bread.  Delicious!  They were so good and precious!  Check out a few of our pictures below!

This first picture makes me a little sad!  Trevor's (the little guy shaking the butter) last day with us was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving!  He's such a neat little guy!  

We will all miss him a lot!

Aren't they precious?!!

 Three little Native Americans!

 Cody, Trevor and Andrew (best buds!)

 Smile for the camera!!

 A view of all of together!  50 little Pilgrims and Native Americans enjoying a little feast!

Latest Newsletter!!

This past week we read several great stories about the first Thanksgiving.  We've also been reading "Junie B., First Grader: Turkeys We Have Loved and Eaten (and Other Thankful Stuff)".   It's funny to hear the different things kindergarteners and first graders are thankful for.  Rainbow sprinkles, Nipsy Doodles,  cranberry sauce that slides out in the shape of the can, exploding biscuits and toilet paper were at the top of the list.  Too cute!!

Hope you all have a wonderful "Thanksgiving" holiday! 

We all have so many things to be thankful for!!

I am sorry this post is a little late!  I forgot after our Veterans Day post to upload our newsletter for the week of November 9th.  So, here you go!!

I'm Proud to Be an American

This week my kindergarteners spent time learning all about voting and Veterans Day. They are such  an amazing group of children!  We will be singing a song called "Thank You Soldiers" for the rest of our school on Monday in honor of Veterans Day.  They have practiced so hard and each day they ask if they can sing their special song.  We have talked about how brave our soldiers are and have been in the past and how they protect our country!  It is an honor to teach such compassionate children!
I am truly blessed to be in such a wonderful school with such special little people!!  Below are a few of the things we did to honor our veterans!

Wow!  What an exciting week this last week was.  We had Halloween, began practicing our Veterans Day song and finished up learning about bats!  Whew!  This week we will be voting for the next President of the United States and learning all about some very special people who have helped to protect our nation and many who continue to do so!  

Thank you to all of the veterans and those in the Armed Forces for your service and dedication to our country! 

Happy Halloween All!!

Thought I would share some of the pictures of all of my little spooks with you.  We had a wonderful day and the children we so well behaved and polite!  Thank you to everyone who sent an item to make our party so great!  The children had a fantastic time pumpkin bowling, tossing bean bags into pumpkins and guesstimating how many pieces of candy corn and chocolate marshmallows were in the jars.  Thank you again to everyone for making our party so special!  Now on with the show!!

Princesses Four!

Little Miss Kitties!

 Cute Pie Pirates!

Honey Bee and Mr. Oreo

Yikes!!

Dr. Will

 Spidermen!

 Witchie Poohs!

 Oh My!