It has been FOREVER!

     So really it has been since March that I last posted!  I just couldn't seem to catch with my life when March rolled around.  There was too much testing, evaluations, DESE portfolios had to be done,  goals needed to be complete, both my boys were playing baseball and doing everything else in life! So here I am in the blogging world attempting to start out with a BANG! 
     Over the summer I was able to meet with my teammates where we created units of study for math and ELA for the whole month of September, which made the beginning of the year really feel a little easier.  My district started school on the 20th of August and the students started on the 21st,  YES that's right in Massachusetts we started in August.  We are the only district in the area that started this early.  We also have gone extended hours with our students as well.  We will be going to school from 7:30-3:30 and let me tell you that it definitely is taking some time to get use to the longer hours. 
     OK enough ranting!  I am still teaching kindergarten this year.  The kindergarteners do not have to stay the extended hours, however we will be offering tutoring after school for students that could benefit from it.  I am working on getting parental permission for my students pictures to be on my blog.  So for right now I will am uploading the before pictures of classroom and will take more photos this week to show the after picture of my classroom setup. 

Here are the cute treats I gave out to the students on the first day of school!  You have to love pinterest!

Jami and I (year 2) on our 1st day of school waiting for the kiddies to arrive!

    

Since Dr. Seuss' birthday is on March 2nd we did an author study on him.  We began the week going over the Let's Find Out Scholastic March issue.  We also watched a video all about him which was also linked with scholastic.  The students learned Dr. Seuss' birthday, where he learned about his animals he chose to write about and that he loved to write children's books with many silly rhyming words.  Each day we read at least one book from Dr. Seuss.  On Friday we celebrated Read Across America with a guest reader, Mr. Juan Rodriguez, a principal at one of our high schools.  He read Knuffle Bunny Too and he also read My Colors My.  The students loved these books.  I now would like to purchase Knuffle Bunny Too, I think I might be able to use it as a mentor text for speech bubbles besides it being a super cute story that my students could totally make connections with.  We also read Green Eggs and Ham, so we made green eggs and ham and tasted them too.  Please tell me what you did to celebrate Dr. Seuss' birthday?

Before vacation began we started learning about Non fiction in readers workshop!  Here are some of the anchor charts that I used with my students to help them remember traits of non fiction.    I found this anchor chart on The Picnic Pals.  She has a great blog it's definitely worth taking a look at!

When teaching about non fiction we also went deeper into schema so here is chart that I created however I combine two anchor charts that can be found on  Spotlight on Kindergarten and

 Simply the Classroom  to make one.

100th day continued...

Ok so not sure what happened with my first post but hopefully it will post in the near future!

After putting on our 100th day shirts and then receiving our awards we went into the classroom and created our 100th day hats and necklaces.  We also had some parent volunteers who were wonderful in the classroom.

Side note:  I pre-made several hats prior to this morning for the students who move a little slower than others (I learned that from last year) and I want to say that this worked out very well.  Those students only had to focus on stamping 10 stamps on each strip and folding the strips into back and forth.  I need to make sure that I remember that for next year.  I adapted this idea from http://helpinglittlehands.blogspot.com/2011/02/survivors.html.  Check out her website.

 Here are some finished photos of our hats.

When we finished our hats we then moved on to creating our necklace with 100 fruit loops and after every ten they had to put on numbers by 10's through 100.  I have always made these necklaces however last year on pinterest I saw that one teacher added the piece of adding the numbers, something so simple but I would have never thought of it, here is where I found that idea:

http://firstgradeschoolbox.blogspot.com/search/label/100th%20Day%20of%20School.  The number hearts were precut for the students and placed in paper clips so that wouldn't be an issue also we used ribbon for the string and not yarn because it doesn't work with fruit loops.  Also the ribbon was taped down to the table so the fruit loops couldn't fall off and all the students that needed assistance sat at one table so that parent volunteers and teachers could help them out.  This was a success!   

When we completed this activity we went to the rug and read 

Kindergarten Counts to 100 http://www.amazon.com/Kindergarten-Count-100-Jacqueline-Rogers/dp/0439607418 

I like using this story because it ends with taking 100 steps, this where we count to 100 again and then we take a 100 step walk through the building students predict where we will land and then we take a photo,  we landed half way through the cafeteria.

After this we came back and generated 100 words we can read and write. Then we did another read aloud Miss Bindergarten Celebrates 100th day of Kindergarten  .  Next we ran for 100 seconds and boy my students couldn't hang. LOL!  Next we did 10 sets of 10 different exercises (toe touches, jump ropes, jumping jack, tuck jumps, truck circles, side steps, left leg kick, right leg kick, squats, and sit-ups)  My babies were too funny they said I am too tired to work now.  LOL

Moving pictures are so hard to take! LOL!

After lunch we wrote our names in 100 squares and then we made a trail mix with 10 different snacks (which I didn't get pictures of )!  All of the trail mix items were donated by the parents in my classroom.  I have amazing parents that are very generous and I just wanted to say thank you to all my parents.  

I want to give a shout out to one of the best dads that donated his time on this special day!  Thank you W.

   The End!