We made it!!!

I was really worried there for a little while... Friday seemed DAYS away.... Yesterday!!! Probably because I was at school for 13 hours (but who's counting????) which included a family thanksgiving feast at lunch, and a reenactment of the first thanksgiving which included 100 little pilgrim and Indians (22 of which were the cutest little Indians you have ever seen!!) AND we had a Family Math Night that evening that unfortunately drew less then stellar attendance - so by the time I got home that night after 8:00 I was one tired puppy!!! We did have a fantabulous time at our reenactment!! The kids had a great time and ate some very interesting foods that were present at the first Thanksgiving. :)




We made butter to bring to our feast. The kids shook and shook and were amazed when the liquid they started with, suddenly turned into a solid!!!!!

See I told you they were the cutest Indians!!!

This a the costume that we made. They were so excited to finally be able to wear them after all the hard work they did with them!!

On our way!!!

Yum!!!!

I hope you all have a very restful Thanksgiving!! God bless you if you still have to go for a couple days next week. I really don't think I could have made it one it two more days!!

We have been very busy down in the Polka Dot Patch this last week!!! I hope you can follow this post - it is gonna be a little of this and a little of that... so here we go!!
INSECTS
Our insect unit is up and running and we are learning so much about our insect friends!  There was a delay in the arrival of our ladybugs but much to my surprise they were waiting for me when we got back from recess on Friday afternoon!!  I didn't tell the kids, so they will be very surprised to see this when they come into class on Monday!!

The ladybug larvae are in there...I promise!! :)

One of the activities we did this week allowed the kids to see how insects see using their compound eyes.

My dear friend across the hall found these glasses at a store and was nice enough to let us borrow them.  They each got a chance to look at a friend.  :)

They then had to draw what they saw when they looked through the glasses.  Deanna Jump has a great response sheet for this in her Insect Unit.  With all the fun, I forgot to snap a picture of one of them.  We also did some fun Ladybug addition!  I was inspired by Julie over at Mrs. Lee's Kindergarten and created an activity similar to the types of  activities she uses with her babies!!  Thanks Julie!  I love the way that these keep the kids accountable for their own work and it requires them to DO their OWN work and not copy what their neighbor is doing!


For this activity they had to find the matching colored ladybugs, color the ladybug on their paper to match, count the dots on each, write the number sentence and solve.  I ran the ladybug off on different colors of construction paper, added dots and that's it.  It was so easy to prepare I will definitely be doing more of these! If you haven't already, go check out Mrs. Lee's Kindergarten - you will not regret it!!  Get your copy of the Ladybug addition HERE.
EGG HUNT
I have a confession to make...Easter SNUCK up on me!  So much so that I really didn't do much with the whole egg/bunny thing - I can't believe it!!  My co-teacher is a book fanatic and I think she has a book for every holiday there is so she was my saving grace this week for at least talking with my children about eggs/bunnies etc... :)  She brought some bunny puppets with her on Friday and the kids were so cute with them.
I forget how much they enjoy puppets - they got so quiet when the bunnies "talked" to her - especially when they were talking about the kids - how nice they were sitting etc...  My team did manage to put together our annual Egg Hunt and the kids had BIG fun collecting, and the sorting their eggs!!

Waiting patiently for our para to get back from hiding the eggs!!

And they're off!!

See - I told you it was gonna be a little random - but they are so cute it was worth the read!!  Right?? :)  I hope you all have a wonderful Easter!  Monday will be here all to quickly!! :)

St. Patrick's Day Fun!

I just didn't have the energy last night to post about all of our fun we had yesterday but it is Friday night.... I have my beverage of choice.... Coffee people!! :) and I can actually think about what actually did happen on Thursday!!

Here are the kids as they came into the room and found the foot prints. :)

We decided to write the leprechaun a letter to tell him how we felt about his actions throughout the week!

This is what we found when we came back from our bathroom break. :)

So of course we had to take him up on his offer!! :)

That sneaky leprechaun did end up coming back to our room to try and leave the school how he came in! Of course it was while we were away at specials and I walked in just as he was trying to sneak out the window!! We tussled just long enough for me to be covered in glitter!!

In all the fun I forgot to snap a picture of the mess he made. He did leave us all the green stuff he took during the week and some gold coins. :).

To end the day we completed an activity to add to our adorable Leprechaun Glyphs we made. Thanks Deanna Jump!! :) i recreated the share your gold activity to make it work for us. :)

The kids each rolled to see how many coins they would have to share. They then collected that many coins and got busy making them into coins and sharing them. Once they were finished my wonderful para added sone glitter! Everything is better with glitter!! :)

Phew... This is one of my favorite days with my Kinder's but also one that wears me out!! It is sooo worth being tired to hear and see their excitement for days after. :)

Here is the Share your Coins activity.  :)

Valentine's Day Fun!

 

I always forget but quickly remember how tired I am after Valentine's Day!!  Phew!  What a fun day we had, but I am wiped out!  I think the kids had a great time and our fun isn't even over yet!!  I did not send their Valentine's home today because we are going to to sort them and complete the Scrapbook Deanna Jump has in her Valentine's Unit!  Fun!!

Here are some of the things we did today!

The February Family Project is for them to decorate a box for the Valentine's Exchange.  This project is fantabulous  because I love seeing the creativity of each of the families!  They turned out adorable as always!!  Here are some more!

We did a Valentine Rotation this morning again while my co-teacher was with us.  One group sorted and graphed candy hearts, one group estimated and one group made Valentine's and passes out their Valentine cards.

After lunch we completed the "How many letters do you have on your conversation heart?" graph.  I found this idea on Chalk Talk: A Kindergarten Blog.

Tomorrow morning for morning work they are going to complete this page about our graph.  They are so much better at analyzing our data and recording it!!

You can find this <HERE> :)

And last but not least we ended our day with a little celebration!  Cupcakes, cookies and juice are a perfect way to end a wonderful day!! :)

Happy Vatentine's Day!!

 

Happy Ground Hog Day!!

We had big fun on Wednesday celebrating Groundhog Day!!  The kids learned a lot thanks to Kim Adsit!!  Here are just a few of the activities we completed.

I forgot to snap a picture of how cute they looked, but you can see in this picture that we also made groundhog headbands.  :)

We completed a Ground Hog Tree map together and then they had to write one fact in their lift the flap groundhog!