Right Hands Please

Everyday we say...

"This is my right hand, I raise it up high. This is my left hand, I reach to the sky. Right hand, left hand, they're hard to tell apart. But the right hand is the hand that goes over my heart." Then we go right into the Pledge of Allegiance.

In order to teach the right hand, I put a RED rubberband on each child's right wrist and I tell them, "Red is right." You just have to make sure no one takes it off to play with it or put it back on the wrong hand. A few children kept wearing it days after...

The Muncher!

At our most recent staff development day, "The Muncher" was introduced. I loved it! It is a trash can disguised as a monster. I use it in small group. As the kids correctly identify a flashcard, they give The Muncher a high five and then feed the flashcard to him.

Occasionally, I'll give The Muncher a nudge to make him jump at the children. Very exciting!

He has very sharp teeth, which gobble up letters, high-frequency words, and numbers!

Math Manipulatives

One of the best tips for using math manipulatives in the kindergarten classroom I received in undergrad, is always give your kids time to play with them BEFORE you attempt to teach. It alleviates distraction. They even started making letters out of the cubes (note: the "I" above)!

Offices

Here are the offices we use for testing. There are two rules for when our offices are up...

1. No talking.

2. No looking in anyone else's office.

Help Wanted

This has been the most succesful way in bringing in help. At the beginning of the year, I send home an interest form for parents who are willing to help. Then, I assign a (willing) parent on Tuesdays and Fridays for both classes. I've tried other ways of soliciting help, but this is great since parents can plan for their day in the room and the teacher knows when she has help coming.

I'm very lucky to have such great mommy-helpers!

Spelling Word: The

Today we went "crazy" with our spelling word, "the," and wrote over it in glue then embellished it with Cheerios. The kiddies thought it was great!

The Writing Light

This idea was stolen from our district's kindergarten chat room. Another teacher shared her idea for writing instruction and I turned it into a PowerPoint slide.

As children write, I remind them to...

1. Go and start using a capital letter! (Green Light)

2. Slow down and use a space. (Yellow Light)

3. Stop and put your punctuation! (Red Light)

We used crayons to check our writing.

Happy Valentine's Day!

We decorated 2 cookies. One to eat for snack and the other to take home.

Each child was given a heart and they were asked to decorate it with their families with items special to their family. Then we shared with each other. This is my example.

Every child brought valentines for the whole class and we spent 30 minutes reading the names and searching for the proper mailbox. Great for decoding!

We sorted candy hearts!

In Art Center, we made "I Love You" streamers for our valentines.

As a center, there were hearts with high-frequency words printed that the children had to put together.

They transcribed in journal center.

Parent donations -- for our fun-filled day!

Oh, and we had about six parent-helpers for the AM AND the PM classes each. Needless to say, it went pretty well!

100th day!

Here is how we count our days in school. We do the same ol' add a straw routine.

The picture will not rotate, but it's supposed to be the number "100" using twinkies and donuts. The kids enjoyed playing with their food.

We made chains using 100 strips of paper, then draped them in our room.

We also add a (real) dog bone to the bag. There are ten bags and eventually they have ten bones in each. After the 100th day, I take out 20. We start counting down and taking away bones, until there are none and school is out.

More from Teeth Week

I just found this picture of our graphs we made during Dental Hygiene Week. The kids added a tooth if they had brushed their teeth that morning.

Alphabetical Order

These are shoelaces and plastic letters. The children demonstrate ABC order in a small group by stringing the letters.