Leaping Frogs and Sight Words Galore!

Today was a crazy day! But another fun day!

Today, when the kids were with me at centers, they had the chance to play a really fun game called "Leaping Frogs!" This game had bean bags and lilly pads and little bouncing trampolines for the bean bags to fly off of - pheww... crazy day as you can imagine -- but oh so fun!

Leaping Frog! is a great game. My CT took the lilly pads and remade some extras so that they were laminated pieces of green construction paper with the student's sight words on them.

This game could really be adapted for many different uses (reading, math, science, anthing really!)! Create away!!

The kids take the bean bag and GENTLY toss the bean bag to the trampoline and the bean bag then lands on one of the lilly pads which has their sight words written out on them. The child reads the sight word and then colors the lilly pad green on their worksheet with the corresponding word on it. This process repeats for about 7 or 8 mins.

When the time is up, they flip over their worksheets and do the same thing on the other side except they write out the sight word with a pencil on their blank lilly pads instead of coloring in the lilly pad.

As you can imagine -- the kids LOVE this game. They did not even want to go to snack (their next station) they would have played the game all day!! Also, we played this game in the hallway, which was a good excuse to make sure they stayed in line (noise wise) while playing this fun, but potentially LOUD AND EXCITING leap frog game!

A leapingly lovely day in kindergarten today!
Keep Creating!
Love,
Ms. Jaclyn

GO RED SOX!

Alrighty, you caught me! Die hard Red Sox fan here (and any Boston Based team, really...)!! So when the Red Sox are in the World Series, you had better believe these teachers will incorporate the Sox in anyway to their lessons! Today was no exception! With game six going on tonight, and a chance for the Red Sox to clinch the series, there was high demand for Sox themed lessons! And that is just what today brought to Kindergarten! Each teacher donned some sox apparel in support of our team and my center was devoted 100% to sox themed learning!

There was a little game that one of the teachers at my school had come up with that was a board game (shown below) and the kids LOVED playing it! The game helped them with subitizing their numbers and the dice which is such an important skill to have! After a little while of playing it though, they got a little antsy and so we moved to the next activity coloring in the Red Sox logo and writing "Go Red Sox" on the sock. They loved this, and they got to practice their letters. It was great all around!

This is just a rough sketch of the game board and the general idea (again, I totally forgot to take a picture of it but I decided to recreate it because it was just ingenious. LOVED THIS!

The pieces were also adorable - they were laminated pics of some of the better players and their names written underneath all attached to those colorful stander-upper things that game boards come with (I hope you know what I mean or else I just sound utterly ridiculous!)

This was a great day to be in Kindergarten!

Happy almost Halloween! 

Keep Creating!

Love,

Ms. Jaclyn

P.S. YAY! THE SOX WIN, THE SOX WIN!!!! 2013 WORLD SERIES CHAMPS!! 

WAHOOO!!!!!! :) :)

The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything!

Today was HILARIOUS.

I got to class, we did the recess thing, the morning meeting thing, all the usuals. THEN it was time for read aloud. I was asked by my CT to read aloud the book for today and of course, I agreed to. I sat down by the carpet and then she brought me the book for today. As soon as I saw the cover I got SO STINKING EXCITED!!! The book she brought me, I had read as a girl and it was ONE OF MY FAVORITES! As my mom had been a kindergarten teacher when I was younger, I was very familiar with a lot of the stories she read to her classes and this was one of them!! It was, The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything by: Linda Williams. I WAS SO HAPPY! So I started reading the book and the kids were enthralled! They, as I had, LOVED IT!

The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams 

and Illustrated by Megan Lloyd

This book went over really well with the kids. They loved it! Honestly, If you have never heard of or read this book, you NEED to find it and love it. It is fantastic and there are so many classroom activities associated with it! Just google it and you will find TONS AND TONS of fun things to do in class that is related to this book and you can always come up with so many more - the possibilities with this puppy are endless! 

After I read this book, my CT brought out a huge duffle bag she had and went through it - sure enough, there was a hat, some shoes, a shirt, some gloves, some pants, and a pumpkin head all in the bag! WE WERE GOING TO ACT OUT THE STORY! I was thrilled! and there were just enough people that I even got to be the little old lady in one of the actings of it! :) I have pictures but unfortunately can't post them cause some of the students are in them (and I look absolutely ridiculous - but hey, that's what kindergarten is all about, as long as it is not posted online for all the world to see!) ha-ha. But anyway, we acted out the story and the kids fell even more in love with the book than they had been before hand! It was great! This is one activity that we did not do in class, but I found it online and thought it was a cute reinforcer for the students and their reading comprehension!

A reading comprehension matching worksheet to go with

The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything

After the reenactment of the story, we went to centers and I took care of teaching them how to write some more of their sight words on more of that tough to handle lined papers. But sure enough, those smarty pants got the hang of it quickly and were writing machines in no time! 

Another Wonderful Wednesday in Kindergarten!

Keep Creating!

Love,

Ms. Jaclyn

Welcome to the GREATEST CLASS ON EARTH!

Another Wonderful Wednesday in Kindergarten!

Today was yet another fun day! We did recess (the kids are getting very good at jump rope! I'm running out of jumping songs to sing so share if you have some good ones?? ha-ha) and morning meeting as usual. The special helper for the day shared his favorite book. We did the regular routine! It was great. Today I wasn't assigned to help out with a craft, but rather I helped out with the writing books they generally work in because one of the classroom helpers was out for the morning kindergarten session. I helped the students write out some of their sight words! It is interesting for me to see this, because I was not aware at how quickly their lexicon of words grew! They were just at like four words a few weeks ago and now they are already up to ten or so! It is truly amazing what kindergarteners can accomplish!

While they were working in their booklets, I noticed some of them having a hard time getting the placement of the letters correct according to the set up of the lines. They have the typical two solid lines and the dotted line in the middle set up, but they were not understanding where the letters would go and how they would be set up. I grabbed a mini white board and showed them the placement of the letters and where they should go according to the lines. They seemed to understand it and they got the hang of it by the end of my center! I was really happy that I could help them out.

These are the type of lines they were working with. 

The students had a hard time understanding that the dotted line was a middle line, not the bottom line.

They got it down though, after some practice :)

I took some time after they were at my center to walk around the halls and look at some bulletin boards and take some pictures of the set ups. These teachers are SO darn creative! The circus themed one was from my kindergarten and all of the kids have a big red clown nose on in their pictures!! I can not wait until I have my own boards to create! I have folders on folders on my computer desk top of some of my favorites! I will share them with you - some of these I have stumbled upon in the schools I work at and some of these I took from Pinterest!

 One of the boards that I found in the hallway at the Kindergarten!

"Welcome to the Greatest Class on Earth?"

Each kid has a big red clown nose! - HOW CUTE!?!

 A great Pinterest find - cute for listing class birthdays!

I would maybe add some flowers to make it more colorful and put the students' names on the petals not the leaves? So cute though!

I mean come on!? THIS is precious.

Minions, duh... 'nuff said!

Another great day in Kindergarten!

Keep Creating!

Love,

Ms. Jaclyn 

Teachers LOVE Apples!

Today in class was so much fun! (I'm starting to think that I am made to be here!! I am LOVING kindergarten!) Today was all apple themed. Once the kids came inside from recess, we had morning meeting and went over some fun fall time songs. I need to remember to get a list of all of my cooperating teacher's songs - she has a TON of them on those big laminated papers on the easel in her class. But, we sang the songs, went over the date and how many days we have been in school. Then it was the special helpers moment to share her favorite book with the class! It rhymed with, "All about Trees." And, yes you smarty pants, it was an "All About ME!" book that this student's parents had made for her! It was so cute!

When we went into stations, I was in charge of the stained glass apple table! We worked and worked and put together beautiful stained glass apples for the windows. The kids loved putting together these apples. And they came out absolutely adorable! They could choose between red, yellow, and green for the inside of the apple so some of the apples came out a little different than this because they were a different color, or for the more free spirits, multicolored! ;)

(I was so sad because I forgot to take a picture of these apples, but I found this one online that looks just like the ones we made! There was an almost crisis with packing for busses that I totally forgot to snap a pic!)

The class is going on a field trip tomorrow to the apple orchard that their school is near so that is why today was heavy on the apple theme! They love it though! I was bummed I am not going to be in class tomorrow for the field trip because I think that would be such a fun experience! The kids seem so excited!!

During read aloud, my cooperating teacher read to the students a book called, Picking Apples by Margaret McNamara. This was a really adorable book especially because my CT decided to insert all of her students names in for the characters who are really named in the book so that they felt like the book was written about them! And each time a teacher was mentioned, she used either her name, my name or another teacher that was in the room at the time. It was truly an experience just reading the book. She did such a great job with it! This is the cover of the book and I highly reccomend it for any class that might be going on an apple picking field trip any time soon!

Picking Apples by Margaret McNamara

Mrs. Connor's class is off on a field trip to pick apples! But one member of the class is not so sure he wants to add to the piles of this yummy fall fruit. Can Mrs. Connor and the rest of the kids convince Michael to join in the fun -- with an apple picked just for him?

 This would be where my CT would say "Ms. Jaclyn said." or "said *student name*.

It was really quite adorable and kept the kids thoroughly engaged!

Another amazing day in Kindergarten!

Keep Creating!

Love,

Ms. Jaclyn

P.S. While I was looking for the picture of the stained glass apple, I came across this "Kid's Activities Blog" that had a post titled: "6 Fall Apple Crafts for Kids." So I mean if you are looking to switch it up, here are some more helpful, fun activities! :) Happy Crafting! 

6 Fall Apple Crafts for Kids: Kid's Activities Blog 

And so the journey begins...

Well isn't this exciting. I am a newbie to this whole blogging thing, so bear with me while I test out my skills, or maybe more accurately, my lack of skills?? -- I'm sure we will find out which one is more accurate soon enough!

My hope for this blog is that I can post different ideas and stories and thoughts about my budding journey through the wonderful world of teaching. I am still in college so I know I have a long way to go, but I also know that the world of blogging poses some new, and exciting things to a teacher. As I am just starting out in the classroom, but every time I go into the classroom, I get more and more excited that this is the profession I am entering into!! I have a long way to go -- but I figured blogging it would help me out, and maybe help some other people too! So here goes!!

For one of my classes this semester, I have a field placement assignment for some observation hours and hands-on experience. I am in an ADORABLE kindergarten class and am having an amazing time. I have only been in the class for two three hour morning sessions, but I can already tell that Kindergarten is where I belong!

In the first two sessions that I have been to kindergarten, we have already done so much learning! For the first day, I was introduced to the kids and just helped out with odds and ends jobs around the room. I was assigned a center to lead with stamps and pictures. There was a worksheet that the kids were given and they had to stamp out the amount of syllables each picture was. So for instance if the picture was that of a crab, they would stamp the number "1" next to the crab. The kids loved stamping once they figured out how many syllables each word was. They were a little colorful when they were sent home, but I mean who isn't by the end of kindergarten!?

 The kids have been working hard on their sight words for awhile (they are up to 3 so far - "I" "am" "the" "little"), they have sung many different songs, had recess, even today there was a lock down drill (which the kids all got a smiley face sticker for their good behavior and quiet mouths :) ), but by far my favorite activity had to do with the topic for this past week --BUSSES!

During the "Bus Snack" activity, I had labeled a paper plate with everyone's name and put one graham cracker, one popsicle stick, four chex mix pieces, and two mini Oreos all on the plate. The popsicle stick was used to spread the yellow frosting (mixed up prior to this activity) all over the graham cracker,  after this was done, and ONLY AFTER ;), the kids could lick their frosting off of the stick. The frosting was then put away so there would not be any double-dip-age action. Then, the "windows" (chex) and the "wheels" (Oreos) were placed to make the bus!!! The only thing more fun than making these busses was EATING THEM!! :)

The Wheels On The Bus Go....IN MY TUMMY!

...All Day Long!

Great times in Kindergarten today!
Keep Creating!
Love,
Ms. Jaclyn