Charlie Watch

Guess what I found when I woke up this morning?  The large bud popped open over night!  I think it will continue to open throughout the day!  Now we are waiting on the other two buds!

Day 4

Charlie Watch Day 2 and 3

Over the weekend, Charlie has continued to grow.  He has not bloomed yet!  I will keep you updated!

Day 2

It looks like one of the buds has started to turn sideways and point to the right!

Day 3

The buds are beginning to show red lines!  I wonder if that means red flowers?

Stay tuned for more Charlie Watch!

Charlie Brown

In addition to our animals, our class also takes care of our orange tree, Ms. Lucy and our philodendron, Gingerbread.  Two weeks ago, we added a new friend to our classroom - Charlie Brown the amaryllis!  We got him when he was only a few inches tall and have been measuring him each day to see how big he was getting.  We were hoping that he would bloom before we left for break, and some of the kindergarteners were sad that they will not get to see him grow flowers. 

We came up with a plan, and I would now like to introduce "Charlie Watch!"  Each day, I will post a picture of what Charlie looks like so that the children can watch him grow and change just like in class!  Here is what he looked like on Friday after school... 

Day 1

Still no flowers, but the buds are beginning to show at the top!

Stay tuned to see when he blooms!



Last Day Before Break!

Just before we left for the holidays, the kindergarteners had one last day of learning and fun with friends!  One of the activities we did was paint snowmen using marshmallows!  It was art good enough to eat!

We also played a new game - Simon!  The very same Simon from the '80s!  This was a great way to practice sequencing and color identification.

We also enjoyed a game of Winter BINGO!

After lunch, we walked down to the office to sing Christmas carols.  We even brought our own instruments!  The kindergarteners were so good, we might take this show on the road!

We ended the day by watching the Polar Express.  It was the perfect wind down to a fun-filled day!  Thank you to Mr. Lenyoun, Ms. Willis and the Blue family for bringing in treats for us to enjoy!

Body Shapes

In math this week, we used our bodies to make basic shapes.  The kindergarteners were put into groups and asked to make either a square, rectangle, triangle or circle.  This helped us not only with recognizing our shapes, but also knowing how many sides and corners they have, as well as problem solving how to create the shapes with our bodies!

The circle was the hardest because, as the kindergarterns pointed out, our bodies do not bend enough.  We had to think outside the box on that one!



Mystery Reader

This week, our Mystery Reader was KB's mom, Ms. Brooks!  She read Dr. Seuess' book, Oh the Places You'll Go!  Thank you for reading to our village, Ms. Brooks!

Grinch Day is Here!

On Thursday, the kindergarteners and I celebrated Grinch Day!  It was an entire day of Grinch-themed lessons, activities and green shirts.  We had so much fun!  We began our day by joining Ms. Demsky's 1st graders for a read aloud of Dr. Seuess' How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

We then made our own Who-Pudding (one of the things the Grinch stole in the book)!

Some of us even made Grinch faces!

Next, we had our Grinchy centers!  One of our favorite centers was "The Words the Grinch Stole."  This is where the kindergarteners used a clipboard to walk around the room and find hidden words with the Grinch's picture next to them to help us focus on print and continue to enhance our handwriting.  They loved that one!  We also did a double-dice roll and record Grinch sheet to practice our addition of two numbers! 

For writing, we created our own Grinch, and completed the sentence, "To make the Grinch grin I would..."  Some of their answers included giving him candy, pizza, hugs and presents, while others said they would tickle him or take him to the zoo.  KB really thought about what would make the Grinch grin - helping him steal Christmas so that he didn't have to do it alone!  That is a real friend!

We also created patterns using different shapes and colors from the Grinch book.  We have been practicing using attributes like size, shape and color to make more difficult patterns.

One of our most fun centers was run by Ms. Brooks.  She helped us play pin the heart on the Grinch!

We also had some special visitors.  Ms. Ritter and her fourth graders surprised us by stopping by and caroling for us!  Karima was especially excited to see her big sister!  We loved singing along to our favorite holiday songs!

Not only did some of us see the Grinch hiding in the village area during lunch, but we also caught the Gingerbread Man!  He told us that if we let him "run, run as fast as he could," he would give us a present.  When we came back from recess, we found gingerbread cookies waiting for us to decorate, with green frosting to make the cookies look like the Grinch!

We ended the day watching the classic cartoon version of the Grinch.  As a last treat, we all enjoyed some candy canes.  But these were special candy canes...they had turned green because the Grinch had licked each one! 

What an incredible day!  You may be a "mean one, Mr. Grinch," but you helped us have a wonderful day of learning and laughing! 

Thank you to Ms. Brooks and Ms. Steele for helping us in the morning!