Our First Week of Kindergarten!

Well, we officially had our first full week of Kindergarten.  I have had the best time getting to know your children this week.  I can already tell that we are going to have a GREAT year!  We had an action packed week full of yummy shaped snacks and fun with friends.  Thank you so much parents for actively participating in all of the activities we had going on this week.  I hope your children told you ALL about the fun we had each day!  This week went by so fast that I really slacked on my picture taking.  Please forgive me!  However, I do have some pictures of them playing on the playground and some group shots with new friends.  Early next week, I will be posting the pictures of our "Special Me" project.  They are ADORABLE! 

I LOVE my Class!

As always, we are doing some AMAZING things in Room 8 right now.  However, today's post is more of a post to share with you one of the MANY reasons why I love my job and my class.  Today we were playing a game on the SMART board.  It involved throwing a koosh ball at the board to get it to "stop" on a picture.  Once the picture appeared, three words popped up at the bottom of the screen.  The students then had to find the word that matched the picture.  During one of my student's turn, a picture of a duck popped up when she threw the koosh ball at the board.  She told us what the picture was and then added, "It looks like AFLAC!"  Talk about HILARIOUS!  I got the biggest kick out of that!  I agreed with her and began laughing outloud at her text to world connection that she had just made!  Some of my kids didn't know what she meant by that, so it launched us into a whole conversation about the commerical on TV (and many other commercials).  It was truly a priceless moment!  It is moments like this that I am reminded of the joys of being a kid and it makes me love my job (and my students) just a little bit more! 

Do you like green eggs and ham? WE DO!

Wednesday, March 2nd was Read Across America Day in honor of the late great Dr. Seuss! In order to celebrate his wonderful life's work and amazing contribution to children's literature, we had a special guest reader (Mrs. Rice) and made and tasted GREEN EGGS AND HAM! Each child got to crack an egg and help mix up the ingredients. We then used our senses to predict whether we thought we would like green eggs and ham. Surprisingly enough, almost every student in our class found out that they did indeed LIKE them!  It was quite the extraordinary experience cooking with 37 kindergarteners!  (We invited Mrs. Creel's Class to join us).  We even got a visit from the Cat in the Hat herself!  Check out our pics below!

Other Important Events:
It's Book Fair Week at Avondale. Our class will be visiting the Book Fair on Tuesday during our Library time (10:40-11:20). Please send money with your child on this day. We are still needing volunteers to help, so if you would like to come join in the fun please let me know or call the office.

Room 8 is GREAT!

We have had a BUSY week in Room 8 and it is only Wednesday!  Monday was our Valentine's Party.  We found out that the 50's were Nifty!  The kids had so much fun dressing up in 50's style clothing and eating their ice cream sundaes.  However, they were not so big on the idea of dancing!  We only danced about 2 minutes and I quickly realized that they were just not into it!  So, we just listened to 50's songs while we ate our ice cream!  I would have to say that my favorite part of the day was when one of my sweet girls came up to me and said, "Mrs. Weimer, are we in the 80's or the 50's?"  Too funny!  In the words of Bill Cosby, "Kids say the darndest things!". 

Today was another big day in our class.  We got our first visit from The SMART Table!  Please ask your child all about this!  The SMART table is like a portable SMART Board; however, it allows more than one student to interact with it at a time.  Up to 8 students can interact and manipulate the table at one time, allowing students to work cooperatively and problem solve.  Talk about a good time!  The students used the SMART table today to learn about ending sounds.  They worked together to sort pictures that ended with the same sound!  It was awesome!  The SMART table will be coming to our class every other Wednesday.  Have a look below at how much fun we had! 

Penguin Glyphs

So, last week we ended our Penguin Unit with what is a called a Penguin Glyph.  A penguin glyph is a fun way to combine art and math.  What we did was we made a penguin art project, but answered some specific questions to "dress" our penguin.  For example, I asked the students if they had ever seen a real penguin.  If their answer was, "yes", they added a purple hat to their penguin.  If their answer was, "no", they added an orange hat to their penguin.  Two more questions were asked as we completed our penguins.  Once the penguins were dry, we displayed them in the hallway and then made a graph to analyze our data.  The students did a GREAT job!  They "read" the penguins, in order to complete their own bar graph.  I hope you saw the bar graphs come home in their WOW notebooks.  Take a look at our penguins!  They are SUPER CUTE! 

Things to come next week:
***Be looking for our Valentine's Day party note in your child's WOW notebook.  I will get that sent home Monday or Tuesday.
***Visit this website with your child this week.  We will be using it in our class throughout the week to practice letters, sounds, and reading words.     http://www.pbskids.org/
  

Hip Hip Hooray, It's the 100th Day!

Well, today was our 100th Day of School Celebration and I think it went GREAT!  It was another "Wacky Wednesday" as we sometimes call them in our class.  I don't know why, but it always seems like the excitement happens on Wednesdays.  I hope your child came home telling you all about what we did today.  We first talked about Groundhog's Day and how excited we were that spring is on it's way (cross your fingers)!  We then made the number 100 out of donuts and oreo sticks!  The kids said it was, "Fantastic and delicious!" (We have been learning "fancy" words).  After our snack, we headed to the atrium to celebrate the 100th day with some of our friends from other classes! 

In the afternoon, we got a chance to visit 4 other classes and participate in a variety of 100th day activities!  I don't know about the kids, but I sure was tired by the end of the day!  Check out our pictures and see how we celebrated in style!!!