End of the Year

At the end of the year we make graduation kids and the students write about what they are proud of themselves for learning this year. I think it's important that the students take pride in what they have accomplished. They learn so much in Kindergarten! Here is the link of what they look like.

http://finallyinfirst.blogspot.com/2012/05/ant-and-graduation-art.html


We also make memory books where the students write about their favorite color, best friend, favorite school lunch, favorite book, field trip, etc. You can add as many things that you want to the book. At the end of the book, the students can get their classmates autographs.

Plants

In the spring we do a unit on plants. We talk about the steps of how to plant a flower. Then we do an acitivity where we name the different parts of a plant and what each flower part's job is. For example, the stem moves water from the roots to the leaves. We also plant seeds in our classroom and place them in the window so they can get plenty of sunlight and we water them each day. The students love to see their seeds grow into flowers! When Mother's Day comes they take their flowers home to their mom. Here is a link to the activity we made on the parts of a flower.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Parts-of-a-Plant-Project-960477

Group work ideas

Here are a couple of ideas to use during group work. I am going to try doing these next year. These activities can help with sight words and/ or spelling.

The first activity is placing sand in a crayon box where the students can practice writing their words in the sand. I think the students would enjoy doing this. However, it could be messy! Here is the link for this activity. This site has a variety of ideas to use with practicing sight words if you do not want to try this one.


http://kindergarteniscrazy.blogspot.com/2013/03/sight-word-literacy-center-activities.html


The next activity is also for practicing sight words. For this you will need to provide students with letter beads and pipe cleaners. The students can spell their words by placing the beads on the pipe cleaners. You can write the sight words on a jumbo craft stick for them to use when spelling the words. Here is the link for this activity.

http://www.miss-kindergarten.com/2014/05/sight-word-dice.html

March

Every month I like to do a craft that we can display in the windows of our room. For the month of March we painted shamrocks. The only materials you will need are green contruction paper, white paper, various colors of paint, and paintbrushes. We made the shamrock out of green construction paper and made another white copy to glue on top of the green contruction paper. Then the students used all the spring colors to paint their shamrock. We just made dots, but you could have them paint them however they wanted. They added a spiral to the bottom, but we did not do this part. Here is a link for the shamrock.

http://www.teachwithme.com/blogs/getting-to-the-core/item/311-more-fun-with-shamrocks

February activites

Here are some fun activities we did for the month of February.

For the parents we made cards which said "From the bottom of my heart to the tips of my toes I love you! Then we painted the kids feet with red paint and  put them inside the heart. This blog also has many other ideas for making crafts using the students handprints.

http://funhandprintartblog.com/

Here is a fun game to use for your Valentine party. You divide students up into two groups. Each group has two large hearts (big enough for them to step on). The first person on each team puts the hearts down on the floor to step on. They must only step on a heart they cannot step on the floor. They try to get across the room before the other team does. 

http://mrsschmelzer.blogspot.com/2011/02/happy-valentines-day.html?m=1

Here is another game to use for your Valentine party. Using the Sweethearts candies, students will have 1 minute to stack their candy as high as they can. The student who stacks their candy the highest without it falling over wins.  After playing, as a bonus students can eat the candy hearts!

Moving mindset

How could you adapt or change one of your current class policies to reflect a moving mindset? Is this a change you are willing to make? Why or why not?

I feel like we are always making adaptations in our classrooms. One adaptation I can make is having my students take more of an active role in what they are learning. By letting my students make their own choices on what they want to work on. This year I have started letting my students choose how they want to use their computer time in group rotations. They can listen to a story, type out sight words,play a variety of alphabet games, etc. By allowing them to make the choice, they are more excited about that time of the day. Although this is just a baby step into the moving mindset, I feel like there will be many more changes to come to improve the students' education.