The Elf on the Shelf is Watching You

Look who showed up in our Kindergarten room on December 1st! It's Elfie! He is Santa's friendly helper elf who watches us at school all day and reports back to Santa every night. Each morning or afternoon, when the students come in the room, Elfie always finds a new place to observe us. Elfie was even kind enough to give us a book that tells the students all about him.

Just in case Santa is in need of some more elf helpers, we decided to fill out some Elf Job Applications! I got this idea from Cara Carroll of First Grade Parade. These are too cute!

Christmas came early for Mrs. Shriver! Our FABULOUS PTO here at Sycamore Creek purchased five volumes of Heidisongs sight word DVDs! Heidi is a Kindergarten teacher and reading specialist in California who created these DVDs to help Kindergarten students learn their sight words. She has a cute song and a dance for each word. I hope the kids will enjoy practicing their sight words in a new way. I can't wait to show them!



I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and we are all looking forward to a wonderful holiday season.

More November Fun!

Today, Mr. Felker from Pickerington Ponds Metropark visited with our Kindergarten students. He talked to us about animals that live in Ohio's woodlands. The students had so much fun learning about woodland animals from Mr. Felker and doing some animal crafts.

Here are some of the cute animal crafts we did:

We have also been busy doing some Thanksgiving work. Take a look!

Have a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving holiday! We all have so much to be thankful for!

Veteran's Day

Sorry this is a week or so late. Better late than never, right? Here are some wonderful things we did in observance of Veteran's Day. We talked about who veterans are and why we celebrate them.

The morning class was able to participate in a school-wide flag raising and presentation from Mr. Skip Parks or the Warrior Brotherhood. It is an organization that helps veterans find employment after they come back from being deployed overseas. We were also able to recognize veterans that are related to our students here at SCE.

The afternoon class was able to hear our own Mrs. Sandy Ingram, a duty aide and Kindergarten helper at our school, talk about her service in the Air Force. She was able to share pictures and answer questions from all of our afternoon kindergartners. Thanks Mrs. Ingram!

Here are some pictures to share with all of you:

Thanks to all the veterans and for your service!

Book-O-Ween

Sorry for the delay in classroom photos. The last part of October and early November have been so busy in Kindergarten. On Friday, Oct. 28 our school had the 1st annual Book-O-Ween! The students were able to dress up on this day as their favorite children's book character. Along with the costume, the students also brought the book to share. Here are some photos from that fantastic day:

The students had a wonderful day! Thanks to all the families who helped with this day and thanks to the Cat in the Hat, I mean Mr. Widman, for the opportunity to celebrate Children's books in this way!

Common Core Standards

Please use this as a resource for learning about the new Common Core Standards:

I hope this helps families and other teachers as they navigate the new standards. Thanks to Lil Country Kindergarten for this information.

Reading, Writing, and Bats!

We have been very busy in our Kindergarten classroom this October.  A big THANK YOU to all the parents who came in to school to visit with me during conferences.  

If your child has been coming home and talking about the Daily Five, here are some examples of Daily Five work in our classroom. 

Listen to Reading

Read to Someone

Read to Self

I am so impressed with the reading and learning going on in our room.  The students work together and help each other very well!  Lots and lots of Bucket Filling going on in here!

Like I shared at conferences, my favorite thing to do in Kindergarten is writing!  I absolutely love seeing the progression from beginning writing of drawing and labeling to more Kindergarten writing of simple sentences.  Below are some examples of the writing I see in our classroom:

I hope the children have been coming home and sharing what we have learned about bats.  Even Mrs. Shriver has learned a few new things!  We made a circle map about the things we learned.

Here is some new information about bats that we learned.  The kids seemed to understand this information better with a visual aid.  Did you know that one bat can eat 600 mosquitoes in one hour?!  I found these bat fact sheets on Pinterest.  I am not sure of the teacher to give credit to, but what a great tool for the kids.

What have we been up to?

The end of September into the beginning of October brings a busy time in our Kindergarten room.  Not only have we been doing some fantastic work, Mrs. Shriver has been doing some assessments to share with families at conference time.  Here are some examples of what we have been up to:

We read, "A My Name is Alice" and did our own version.  

Autumn brings apples and all things fall.  We spent a week talking about apples and one of our math activities was creating a class graph.  The morning had a 3-way tie!  I have never had that before!

We read the story, "The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything" by Linda Williams.  It is always a class favorite.  The students and I made scarecrows and we labeled the pictures together to get some "Kid Writing" practice.  They are so adorable.  

These are some of our Math Work Station boxes.  Each box has some specific activity in them for the small groups to work on.  

Here is a work board to let the kids know what station they are working on this day.  Everyday, they change.  I need to work on making it a bit more creative.  For now, it is working.

The students are doing such a great job moving through the Daily Five choices.  At this time, we have done Read to Self and Read to Someone.  I have to admit, this is one of my favorite times of the day because I just love hearing the students read!  I have been so impressed with their stamina building.  Next up is Listen to Reading.

Everyday, we begin our day with a rhyme or poem.  It is a nice way to come together and read something familiar.  Right now we are doing nursery rhymes and each of the students have a nursery rhyme booklet that is in their book boxes for Daily Five.  

I continue to be amazed at the students' ability to try new things and to stay on task.  That makes me one happy Kindergarten teacher.  Keep checking back and I will try to update this blog as much as I can.

Happy Fall!