Hey Diddle Diddle-toontastic

Each week we take a nursery rhyme read and learn it.  Nursery rhymes are amazing learning tools.  We learn  vocabulary, rhyming, phonics skills, sight words, and so much more.  At the end of the week, we put the nursery rhyme in our poetry journal and illustrate it.  At the end of the year, there will be about 20 nursery rhymes in each poetry journal for the students to keep. 


I discovered an ipad app called Toontastic.  Yesterday, we took the nursery rhyme Hey Diddle, Diddle and created a cartoon for it.  The kids had so much fun creating it!   Here is a link to watch what we have done so far.  We had so much fun doing it, they asked if we could do every one! 

Here is a link to view it on Toontube.  Enjoy!
    <iframe src="http://toontube.launchpadtoys.com/embed/199669" style="border:0px #FFFFFF none;"
        name="ToontasticiFrame" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" marginheight="0px" marginwidth="0px" height="363px" width="396px">
      </iframe>

What's Happening This Week?

We have so many things going on this week!!  Today we met with our 7th grade buddies to read with one another. On Wednesday we will get to see the dress rehearsal for the GA producation of Beauty and Beast, Jr.  Thursday all the kindergarten teachers will be out for a math workshop.  We will also be going to mass that morning.  On Friday, we will have a pep rally for the GA Heavenly Hog Jog on Saturday morning.  I hope you all can make it on Saturday.   (The class that has the highest participation rate gets a prize.)  It is a very fun day.  I will be out there doing my race walking!  Of course in between all this, we will be doing a lot of learning as well.   


Here are some photos of the girls reading to one another.  The boys went up to the Jr. High hallway.  The kindergartners read their books from their read to self book bags and the 7th graders choose picture books to bring and read.

Literacy Stations/ Word work

Every literacy rich classroom has literacy centers for the students to complete.  Many times it is the children's favorite part of the day-except of course recess.  What are they?  literacy stations or centers as they are sometimes called,  are hands-on activities that reinforce concepts taught in the classroom.  It provides the students the opportunity to work independently, with others and problem solve.  Every month we change stations.   Different stations we take part in are write the room, phonics, big books, library, computer, phonemic awareness activities, puzzles and of course much more.  Here are some photos of the students engaged in different stations.

 

 

There is so much meaningful learning going on during this important part of the day.  

What's Happening This Week?

This week will be lots of fun as we celebrate and do an author study of Dr. Seuss.  Today we learned a little bit of information about him and made some Cat in the Hats.  We will be reading many of his books over the next several days. 

In Math this week, we will continue to discover solid shapes.  In Religion, we will start to learn about the Stations of the cross.  We will start new literacy stations today as well.  In Language Arts, we will learn the short sound of the letter Ee and begin decoding and blending short Ee words.  Keep reading together at home!  It would be a great time to go to the library and check out some Dr. Seuss books, or even better reread the ones you have at home.  I always tell the kindergarteners that good readers read the same books as many times as they want, and we always learn something new each time we read it!

Please remember to sign the report card envelope, keep the information inside at home and return the empty envelope.  Thanks so much!  Have a great week.

Everybody Counts

Thanks so much to Mrs. Clark and Mrs. Rettig for coming in for our "Everybody Counts" program. 

It is such a nice program to help the kindergarteners learn about people who have disabilities.  The children were then given stations to help them empathize with those who do have disabilities.  The three areas they learned about were blindness, deafness and limb loss.  Here are some photos of the children. 

What's Happening This Week?

Unfortunately, with the 2 hour delay, we had to cancel our visit from the Zoo on Friday, but we will make it up soon!  Friday was the last day of the 2nd trimester.  I can't believe it is the final trimester.  It always goes by so fast.  I am so proud of all the academic and social progress I have seen in all the students!

This week in Language Arts, we will be starting a new theme, new popcorn words, new letter sounds and new word families.  Our new popcorn words are look and come.  In Writer's Workshop, we will continue to focus on writing complete sentences and developing stories. In Math, we will be starting solid shapes.  Our thematic Unit will be All about Health.  In Religion, we will be discussing making good choices. 

We're going on a bear hunt!

We had so much fun today reading the story:  We're Going on a Bear Hunt! We talked about concept words such as over, above, through and  made bear paper bag puppets.  We then retold the story with our puppets and acted out those concept words.  Here is a video of a very small part of it.

 

 

The most fun, however, was when we found the bear and had to run!!!