October Fun in Kindergarten

I really cannot believe that October has come and is almost gone.  Time is flying by so fast.  Sometimes too fast.  Our month has been so busy and we've learned lots in kindergarten.  I am proud of my students and of how hard that they have worked.  It's amazing to see the growth that they have made.  We've had such beautiful weather here.  The fall colors have been so pretty.  We've also had lots of really pretty sunsets.

I took advantage of our fall weather one day and took my kids outside for a Fall Color Walk.  We brought our iPads and paint chips with us.  We walked around and matched the colors of the leaves we found to the colors on our paint chips.  The kids had so much fun!  They took tons of pics of the leaves with their iPads.

Our routines have been established inside our classroom.  We LOVE writing time when we get to sit in our Scoop Rockers.  When I originally got them I thought that I was going to be using only a few.  Because I was trying to match the colors with my room, I ended up with rockers that I was going to return.  One day we tried to see if they would all fit on the rug.  They did.  My kids behavior was perfect and they were all on task.  These rockers allowed them to move yet stay in one spot without bothering others.  I kept them and am so glad that I did.  When my kids are writing, I put this star light on that I got from the Dollar Store.  My kids know that when the light is on they are NOT allowed to talk to me unless they are sick or hurt or see someone else being hurt.  It works like a charm.  This allows me to conference with kids.  I am also playing piano music from The O'Neill Brothers in my room at this time.  When the piano music is on, my kids know that they may not talk to one another.  This time is work time.

When the kids arrive at school in the morning, they complete a Bubble Gum sight word sheet.  They are getting really good at completing these too.  On the front side they practice writing the word and they write the word in a sentence.  They then count the letters in the word, words in the sentence and they write the first and last word in the sentence.  On the bottom of the front side they find the sight words in a word find.  On the back side of the sheet, they color all of the word that they find.  They write the number of times the found the word and they make tally marks for the number of times they found the words.  It's working really well.  I also give them a wrist band to wear for the day.  It has the sight word of the day on it.  Whenever they need to write that word, they can look at their wrist band.

In our classroom we use lots of CDs and DVDs which have a music and movement component to them.  The kids are active while they are are singing songs that are based on sight words and skills.  It's amazing how well they remember how to say and spell words after listening to these songs.

In mid-October we had our Read-A-Thon at school.  Each classroom picked a theme with books that kids could read that fit the theme.  Kids spent 20 minutes in 3 different classrooms in the morning and 3 different classrooms in the afternoon.  In all they spent 120 minutes reading.  They raised money for our school for this day.

My theme was camping.  Because we rotated with other kindergarten classes, many of  the kids were not able to read books.  I found books on YouTube that were "camping books".  Using SafeShare TV,  I created QR codes for the books.  My kids just scanned the books with an iPad when they came into my room and they listened to their stories.  Half of the group had iPads and the other half read books in my tent.  We then switched.  I go all out for this to make it fun for the kids.  This year I created mini campfires for my kids to read by.  I took little flicker candle lights and glued rocks around them.  They LOVED it.

My kids have gotten the swing of centers down.  They are able to work independently which means I am able to start testing and working with small groups.

We have been pretty busy with our iPads and have been learning about different things that we can do with them.  I have an iPad center that kids can go to during our Guided Reading time.  Kids will do different things during that time.  This day kids were learning about the sight word "to".  They looked around the room for the word and snapped a picture of it.

We have been working on rhyming words.  Kids will separate words into their correct containers.

One of our math centers is putting numbers in order from 1-100.  I took gem rocks from The Dollar Tree and mod podged numbers on them.  The kids had to put them in order.

 In this center kids got a pocket with a sight word in it.  They had to take out the plastic letter tiles and spell the word.  They then had to go around the room and find the word.  They made a tally every time they found it.

One of our fine motor centers is using tweezers to put pom-pom balls into pumpkin shapes.

Finally, we have been doing tons of work with my green screen using the Green Screen by Do Ink app.  I love it.  The kids love it and the videos that we are producing are so fun!

The first video that we created was an alphabet one.  The kids each got a letter of the alphabet.  They decorated the letter.  They then stood in front of the green screen and said their letter, the sound it made and they showed 2 objects that started with that letter.  We are so lucky to have DLCs that help us.  I am thankful for them and for their help.

The next video we made was on how to be a friend and what to do if we see someone being bullied.  Videos will come soon....

We hope that you have a great week!!