We love Pete the Cat!

Last week we met Pete the Cat.  Pete is a groovy blue cat who goes with the flow!  In fact, the moral of Pete's story is: " No matter what you step in, keep walking along and singing your song.  Because it's all good!"

I found this activity on Pinterest.  They turned out so cute!

I found these adorable books after hearing about them on all the great primary teacher blogs this summer.  After finding them at Barnes and Noble, my daughters and I haven't put them down.  In fact, I had to strike a deal with the girls to bring the books to school to share with my Kindergarten kids.  We read the books, looked at Pete's website and did some activities.  The students wanted me to read the stories over and over. If you get a chance, read Pete's books.  There are some good lessons for all of us in these outstanding books.

Our Classroom

It is hard to believe we have had 6 days of school already.  The students are still working on following procedures and routines.  We do a lot of modeling so the children know what things look like, sound like, and feel like.  We also talk about what not to do.  

Here is a chart we did today about American Symbols for Patriot Day (September 11th).  This activity came from Deanna Jump's America Unit on TpT.

Last week we had a visit from Miss Williams and she talked about Bucket Filling and Bucket Dipping with the students.  We also made a chart of what behaviors are Bucket Filling and Bucket Dipping.

Here is our Common Core Standards "We can" chart.  We list those common core standards that are being taught today at school.  I was able to purchase these on TpT from Mrs. Jump.  She also has First Grade common core available.

Here is our "I can" can.  I usually list those behaviors I would like to see from the students.

Here is our calendar area.

If your students have mentioned The Phonics Dance, here is a picture of the cards that we use as a visual for the students.  The children really like The Phonics Dance.  I hope it is helping the students all learn letters and sounds.

This is Reading Island.  I tried to make a comfortable place to read a book at school.

Here is a picture of our book boxes.  We will use these more when we are ready to start our Daily 5 stations.  

Here is our "Popcorn" Word Wall where we look for those Kindergarten words that always seem to "pop" up in books when we read.

We did a graph last week that recorded how we get home from school (Thanks Mrs. Jump, again).

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom!  Look who's in Mrs. Shriver's Room!  We made name trees and counted how many letter were in our names.

Here is an example of excellent Kindergarten work.  This kind of work really fills my bucket!

Here are some books by Mrs. Jump that we read for our American Symbols Unit.

Here is a close up of our book boxes.

Here is what is included in our book boxes at this time.  We have our poetry notebook, writing journal and some reading books to use when we read to self during Daily 5.

I hope you enjoyed seeing some pictures of our classroom.  I hope to try and post some pictures weekly of some awesome Kindergarten work.

Back to School

It's back to school time and we just finished our first week of Kindergarten.  Thanks to all the parents who were able to get their students to school to complete our state assessments on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  It was nice to get to know the students one-on-one before everyone came on Thursday.  During the first two days, we worked a lot on routines and classroom rules.  In order for us to learn and get the most out of our Kindergarten experience, we need to remember what to do while in Kindergarten.  Some things we have worked on are:  raising hands to speak instead of calling out, hands to ourselves, walking in the classroom and using quiet voices.  We have also worked hard on learning those routines of what to do when we enter and leave the classroom.

I hope that the families were able to see a couple of items your student has brought home in their folder.  The "All About Me" books turned out very cute.  I hope you enjoyed them with your child.  We also played a number game called "BOOM!" that the kids loved!  It is my hope that during our second week, we can begin learning our routines for The Daily Five reading management system.  Please see our website for more information about the Daily Five.

On Friday, I sent home information about our KRAL assessment and your child's score.  If your child was not able to complete the assessment before Kindergarten began, I will send home this information as soon as I am able to complete these assessments with your child.  If you have any questions, please let me know.  We will also be able to discuss it some more at conference time in October.

Thank you for a great first week and working with your children.  The quicker they pick up the classroom rules and procedures, the easier it will be to create a wonderful learning environment.