Summer School In Full Swing!

Hey all my friends!  So Summer School is up and running!  I was worried because I only started out with one little student but since the first day I've gotten a few more! Our program is spread out over the summer so I get to work with the kiddies on Tuesdays and Thursdays for 2 hours in the morning. 

I made a schedule so that I could offer structure and routine to the boys and girls that I'm working with this summer.
9:00 Class Begins/Attendance
9:00-9:15  Independent Reading (with support)
9:15-9:30  Read Aloud & Mini Lesson
9:30-9:50  Writer's Workshop
9:50-10:05  Word Work/Sight Words/Phonics/Phonemic Awareness
10:05-10:20  Math Activities and Review
10:20-10:40  Guided Reading Groups 
10:40-10:55  Learning Center or Craftivity
10:55-11:00  Computer Games to review skills
11:00  Dismissal

 Here's a template if you want to copy it! 

Date: Time	Activity	Lessons & Notes
9:00	Attendance	Sts:
9:00-9:15	Independent Reading (with support)
9:15-9:30	Read Aloud & Mini Lesson
9:30-9:50	Writer’s Workshop
9:50-10:05	Word Work/Sight Words/Phonics/Phonemic Awareness
10:05-10:20	Math Activities & Review
10:20-10:40	Guided Reading Groups
10:40-10:55	Learning Center or Craftivity
10:55-11:00	Computer Skill Game
11:00	Dismissal

I decided to pick a theme for each week because I love teaching with themes and it gives the kiddies something to look forward to and helps them to make connections to their own experiences. 

Here are the themes that I've picked for June!

Week 1 - Summer Is Coming!

Week 2 - Fathers Rock!

Week 3 - At The Beach!

Week 4 - 4th of July!

Tuesday of Week 1 was a slow start with only one student so we went outside to our assigned garden box space and planted seeds along with onion sets and 3 little tomato plants that I grew at home!  I'm hoping to do some writing and math activities with the plants as they grow!

Thursday was a fun day!  We had a few more students and we reviewed rhyming and sight words. I did a mini lesson on, "Books That Fit," picking books that are just right for us.  We chose several leveled books and had time to read a few to check the fit!  We also set up our Writer's Workshop folders and started new stories about summer break!  Word Work was a Real Word/Nonsense Word Game.  We practiced counting to 100 by 10's and ones!  Each day I copy a leveled book for each child and I give him/her a response sheet for the leveled book.  Those go into a Ziploc baggie and they take home the book to practice and then complete the response sheet at home.  We finished up the day with a short computer game time! 

Here's the link to the great rhyming game we played! 

It's an awesome and free resource to practice rhyming with your kiddies!

The Washing Line Rhyme

I hope you're having a great start to your summer!
 Have fun playing this sweet little game!

Kimmie!

School's Out But Not Really...

I have to admit that the last few weeks have been so very crazy busy that I have slightly neglected this blog.  No more!  I've promised myself that I will do a better job of blogging this summer! 

I see that there are several Linky Parties that are coming up and I'm going to do that this week!  I don't want one more party to pass me by!  Watch for me in those upcoming Linky Parties!

Are you on Summer Break yet?  I thought that I might take a break, but it's really just a Summer Pause.  After a two day weekend, I volunteered today at the downtown Cincinnati Public Library!  That was pretty interesting!  I love, love, love to read so having a chance to dig through thousands of books is pretty fun!

Tomorrow I start teaching Summer School, hence the pause and not the full break!  I'm excited to work with some of our Kinders in a small group for a couple of hours!  I hope that we'll make lots of progress this summer!  If you have great ideas and suggestions for summer themes or activities, I would love to hear from you!

Wish me luck tomorrow!  I hope you're having a restful summer break even if it's just a pause like me! 
Take Care!
Kimmie

Here Chick Chick! Here Chick Chick!

Oh my goodness!  We've been so busy!  This spring we've been learning about life cycles and animals that lay eggs!  Chickens aren't the only ones that lay eggs but this past week chickens were the only ones in our classroom! 

 

They are so cute!  The kiddies just love observing them and talking about their behavior.  This breed has been really easy to care for and raise.  They have been in our class for 2 weeks. 

 

Friday we sent them to live in a real chicken coop!  One of our high school teachers has a farm with a well established coop!  He's going to give them a good home and hopefully gain some eggs, eventually!

 

 

 

Just a little beak to beak love!

 

Who is watching who here?

 



Hanging around in the room!  If you look closely, you can see the shells that are empty.  We also observed the shells to see what was inside after the chicks came out!

 



Here's a link to the hatchery where we purchased our eggs.  There's information about different breeds and information about caring for chicks. 

http://www.mthealthy.com/

 

This year we have had Araucana chickens but in years past we've also had other breeds.  We thought these chicks were fairly calm and pretty quiet.  Last year, our chickens peeped and peeped and peeped!  These chicks were not so vocal! 

If you have the opportunity, try having chicks in your room!  They're so much fun and a great science connection for the kiddies!

I hope you have a great week!  

Shape Mural Follow Up!

So we've been working on our Shape Mural of the ocean for a couple of weeks in our Math Center.  I left it out so that the kiddies could work on it and then revisit it over a several days.  The results are in and it now looks like there are lots of sea creatures in out little ocean! 

Here's the before!

 

 

Here's the after!

 

I love all the work that they put into making this an ocean full of sea creatures!  The "worms" and "long swimmy fish" are so fun and really creative!  I think they really enjoyed adding lots of interesting shape creatures to the mural!

 

Hope you're having a great week!

Yesterday it was sunny and beautiful and in the 70's and today it has been snowing!

Can you believe it?

 

Enjoy the day!

Kimmie

Yay! It's A 3 Million Strong Sale!

Wow!  3 Million Strong!  That is really something to get excited about!  I'm jumping in to the sale too!  Today, February 28th you can save 28% on everything in my TpT store!  Just enter the Code TPT3 at checkout!  You can click on the link below to go right to my store and shop all you want!!

My TpT Store

 

Thanks so much!  I hope you find lots of fun things for your kiddies!

 

Kimmie!

Good Vibrations!

Isn't it fun and interesting to do Science experiments with Kinders?  I know!! I love it!!

We've been learning about sound in Room A-1 and today we did a very fun and easy experiment to help the kiddies "see" sound vibrations.

I got 2 metal pie tins and in the first one I put a thin layer of salt.  (You could use sugar or sand too.)
In the second pie tin, I put enough water to cover the bottom.  Then I used a tuning fork to show the kiddies how to "see" the vibrations!  We followed the Scientific Method starting with a question to try and figure out what we wanted to know.  Then we made a statement, our hypothesis, to state what we thought would happen.  Next we did the experiment and followed the procedures to use a tuning fork. Finally we discussed what happened and drew our conclusions.  Then we talked with our partners about what happened.

Here are some pictures of the tins! 

 Salt

  Water

 Using the tuning fork to see vibrations in salt.

Using the tuning fork to see vibrations in water.

 

Here's a little video clip of part of our experiment in action!

 Tomorrow we're going to "feel" the vibrations!  It should be another interesting and fun 1Science experiment! 

I hope you had a wonderful Monday!  Enjoy tomorrow!
Kimmie

February Fun - I Need To Catch Up!

February has been such a busy month for me, my family and my boys and girls!  So I must apologize for letting time go by since my last post.  Hopefully, things will settle down a little bit in the upcoming weeks!  Birthdays, holidays, teacher evaluations, after-school classesil, a field trip to see a show at the Children's Theatre and extra Spinning classes have left me a little tired and have kept me away from the computer!  It's time for me to reevaluate my time and rewrite my personal schedule! 

Here are some of the things I've been up to this month!

Groundhog Day!

I love Groundhog Day!  It's a great time to learn about weather, shadows and the legend that surrounds Groundhog Day!  It's fun to talk about Punxsutawney Phil and Buckeye Chuck!  The kids got a big kick out of calling groundhogs, "whistle pigs and woodchucks." Here's a picture of a little craft that we did to show that Phil saw his shadow this year and we could expect another six weeks of winter!

 

100th Day of School and Valentine's Day!

 The 100th Day of School was during Valentine's Week this year because we have had several snow days that kept moving it back!  It was a great day and we did some simple and fun activities to celebrate!  We did:

100 jumps

100 seconds of Silent Reading

100 Steps to the Gym

100 Bears Hidden in Room A-1

100 Counting by 1's and 10's

100 Pieces of Things to Make GORP

100 Day Hats

100 Dot to Dot Pictures

100 Day Poem

100 Day Stories

 

Valentine's Day Celebration!

 

It's always wonderful to get a beautiful handmade valentine from the kids in my class.  This sweet heart brought tears to my eyes!  I'm keeping it forever!

 

Sounds in Science!

We've been learning about sound this month and here are some of the instruments that my kiddies created to play in class.  We've done some great experiments to explore sound and sound vibrations.  The kiddies came up with their own ideas about what instruments they wanted to make and they did an awesome job!

Look at these beauties!

 

Shape Mural!

We're learning about 2-D and 3-D shapes this month as well! 

My class decided to create an ocean mural using flat shapes to create and design the scene.  It's a work in progress and each day they add to it.  I'll post the finished mural this week but this is the mural after the first day.  The kiddies use shapes to make boats, fish, sea creatures, clouds, a sun and other creative additions to the mural.  They also decided that they could use markers to add to the shapes so that it would be easier to show what they were trying to make with the shapes.  I'm always interested to see what they come up with and how they decide what they want to create!

 

 



Thanks for taking the time to check out what's been going on in Room A-1 in the last few weeks!

I think I'm all caught up and ready to get back on my posting schedule!

 

Have a GREAT week! 

It's Dental Health Week in Room A-1!

We'll be working on lots of Tooth-a-licious Activities this week!

 

Kimmie