Kindness Counts in Kindergarten

I have been taking pictures left and right but haven't had the energy or time to blog about anything we have been doing. I have finally found some energy so here it goes! In September we had an Open House for the parents, only 5 parents out of 22 parents showed up. I was very disappointed that not many parents came to this night. I think it is because the students get dismissed so early and they would've had to come back two hours later. Next year I am going to suggest that we go back to having it right at dismissal time that way most parents that do pick up will stay.

Here are the items that were displayed for the parents. It included the cute note of them being their child's teacher, a pamphlet of all the common core standards that should be mastered by the end of kindergarten. I also included a rubric of the writing stages and some helpful little charts with numbers, color words, and shapes. The parents also received a list of the pre-primer and primer words to keep at home. Although I didn't have many parents it did give me an opportunity to have intimate conversations with the parents that did show and I was able to give them helpful hints of how to help their child at home!

Here are the open house invitation that students created and brought home the day before!

So we have been working really hard in writing.
I use the anchor chart from first grade garden and
I rate the students are on their drawings 4 being a wow.
I will post a picture of the chart I made soon. However this
particular child had a great illustration. When
I went to conference with her I could
instantly tell that who the people in the picture
were. It was the little girl and me and Jami. This
little girl had a us down to the color clothes we were
wearing and even our glasses.

Here is a picture of us on that day! She was so excited to share her
picture with all of us!

littlemissglamourgoestokindergarten.blogspot.com

Over the past week we have been learning about all about what good writers do starting with telling their story, and then illustrating with details all about their story. We then started talking about labels and you can see in the background the anchor chart that I use in order to teach labels. Now in the past I have let the children label all parts of me, however while starting to label myself, I thought why not label different parts of the children. Oh you would have thought that this was the best thing ever! They absolutely loved it and I have to say that they generated more important things than I would have thought. They came up with body parts but also so accessories that people were wearing and names of children. This lesson ended up being so much more meaningful for them. They began to take over the lesson. I LOVED EVERY MINUTE! I am loving writing at this current time. Notice that I used kindergarten spelling because at this point that is what I am expecting them to be able to do. When the lesson was complete students went back to their seats and took out a drawing that they had already finished and began labeling their pictures. I have never gotten so many labels written on papers the first time around. I can't wait to see what we do in the end. Do any of you use certain lessons that you absolutely love?