White Rabbit's Color Book

We had some fun on Friday mixing primary colors. I read White Rabbit's Color Book. I stopped at the last page and we made predictions about what color rabbit would be if he jumped in the yellow, blue, and red paint. I wrote down all of the predictions and reread the book while my students mixed and painted the colors. They were all very surprised that he turned brown! It was a great way to end our first week all together.

Sucessful Staggered Start!

I LOVE that our school is allowed to have a staggered start. I really think it helps with the transition into kindergarten. I love being able to get to know my students and be able to just observe and listen. This week we started school on Tuesday and had 4 days of staggered start. All of the kids will be back on Monday and we will start our journey together. I need to take photos of our room! Until then....

Orientation

It was so wonderful to meet my new students  at Orientation tonight! 

Author Spotlight

My family and I had a wonderful quick trip to New York to see my Grandmother! Now that we are back in Florida my husband and I are eager to get our classrooms together. I spent all day on Sunday unpacking boxes of new curriculum. Andy (my husband) is working in his room today so I am home enjoying the last day of summer.

 

I put these Author Spotlight posters together after seeing the idea.... on the internet. I am terrible at keeping track of ideas I get from blogs or Pinterest.

 

I am going to feature an author each month or so and compile their books on top of our classroom library. Students can review the poster, read the books, and complete the "monitoring" form (is your district "doing" Marzano too?) during literacy centers.

 

 

Mrs. Lewis gets ready for kindergarten

Here are the before pictures!! I am taking a quick trip to wish my Grandmother a happy 91st birthday in New York... Then I'll be back to post the after photos!  

World's BEST Pencil Sharpener

 

Pencils.

Necessary in kindergarten but such a headache for me.

 

I inherited a mechanical sharpener bolted to the counter that merely chewed pencils until it left only a gnarly stub. I banned the use of that device and created a sharpened pencil tub. Students were to leave a broken pencil and get a nice fresh sharp pencil in return. It worked.. kind of. I have a hate/hate relationship to the electric sharpener. It is so loud and never really works.. how does it only sharpen one side??? I NEVER let kids use it.. because I couldn't stand the noise.

 

I made PENICLS a class  job. The idea was a student would come in before the bell to sharpen pencils. I would plug in the sharpener by the back door (as far away from my desk as possible) and put them to work... Well, the sharpener gets too hot after about 4 pencils so.. I never had enough sharpened pencils. Thankfully, I usually have a little group of pencil hoarders that will have 6 or more pencils in their desk. I have said, "who has a pencil for ....." more then once.

 

I often sent bags of broken pencils and that cheap pencil sharpener home for parents to deal with. I always felt bad doing it.. knowing that it would take hours.

 

Over the summer I learned about Classroom Friendly Supplies on one of the various kindergarten blogs I read. Even at $24.99 and FREE shipping I didn't order. I couldn't spend money on a new pencil sharpener when I had one in my classroom that worked... kind of.. that I had already spent $45.00! The bloggers loved it.. I saw it on Pinterest and I even visited the website.

 

Last month I went to sharpen a pencil and nothing happened. Electric sharpener officially dead.

Excited.

 

I went to the website  and ordered. It came REALLY fast.

THIS IS THE BEST SHARPENER EVER!!

I can sharpen a NEW pencil in less then 30 seconds. I counted 20 rotations and I got a perfect sharp tip. I taught my class how to use it.. it has gotten a lot of use the last two weeks and it is holding up just fine. It sharpens perfectly every time. The best part.. it is SUPER quiet! I sharpened pencils while I was on the phone!

I am NOT getting paid or a free sharpener to write this. I just love it that much!

It comes in red, blue, black, and green :)

 

 

We had a very busy 100th Day of School! -- I know that my door is just "lovely" - HA! That was the best I could do at 4:05 the afternoon before! The kids LOVED it!

 

 

 

 

 

I assigned a 100 days of school poster project. I love how they are all different!

 

 

 

I love this poem. I found it on  Pinterest (of course.. which is now tragically blocked at work!)

 

Here is my lesson menu- we didn't have time to do everything. We are going to do some of these activities this week.

 

 

 

The Hat

Just sharing our door- we read books from the same author during Literacy week and compared the texts. Here is our craft from The Hat. I love Hedgie! This idea was totally copied from The Chalk Talk blog-

Happy Birthday Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Last week we spent two days learning about the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It is so refreshing to me that my students think the segregation laws were absolutely absurd. They looked at me in disbelief when I told them that black people couldn't eat at the same restaurants as white people. They give me hope for the future.

 

This is probably too late for most- but this is what I taught last week. link here

 

 

Author Visit

We were SO lucky this week!! Nick Bruel the author of Bad Kitty came to our school. He read us Bad Kitty and Poor Puppy. He also talked about how he writes his books and took questions from the kids. He was AMAZING!! I know this experience will stay with  my students forever. They were so impressed to meet a REAL author/illustrator!