back at it

Having a three day weekend was such a blessing. I had time to do a little bit of grad school work, to begin making Christmas gifts, and to run a lot. In essence, I had me time. Sometimes as a teacher it is so easy to get wrapped up in the little ones that surround you day in and day out that you put your own needs on the back burner. I was able to rejuvenate and jump right back into the swing of things this morning.

We had a great Tuesday. We talked about the plot in stories, about verbs, about citizenship, and the numbers eighteen and nineteen. The kinders picked up on some of the things, others (such as plot) will take a fair amount of review. Whatever the case, we're back into the swing of things. We have a week and a half to keep on swinging until we're off for a whole week to celebrate Thanksgiving. We'll need to see how quickly we get back into the swing of things after that!

One highlight for today was having one of my little learners write her first name all by herself three times unassisted! We have been working so hard and it seems like this little break was what her brain needed to make things click. Wahoo! Success! This same little learner was also a rock star in small group around the world today. She is finally getting her numbers (1 - 10) down (with the exception of 9). Progress!

friday

It's Friday. More importantly, it's a Friday before a long weekend. The kiddos were acting as if they were ready. So we did what all kindergarteners should do. We played blocks and kitchen and made the most out of the final 20 minutes of our school day.

just another day

Not a whole lot of excitement in Room 1 Kindergarten today. We're in a groove and gliding to the end of the week - which is tomorrow! And then we have a three day weekend. Thank goodness for that. And thank goodness for the Veterans that we will be celebrating on that day.

Today we continued our practice in comparing and contrasting in language arts. We reviewed our numbers 11 - 17 by playing a fun dice rolling game and filling in ten frames. We practiced writing our numbers and did some thank you cards for a donorschoose.org book project that was funded this summer. (I thought that we were all ready for this - there are some great pictures, but we tried writing without lines. I hope you enjoy them funders!)

All in all it was a good day. Now I'm happily at home and settling in to do some Christmas crafting since the mister has a family involvement night at school and won't be home until late, late, late.

venn diagrams and counting beads

Today pretty much consisted of more kindergarten awesomeness. In language arts we are learning how to compare and contrast. My kinders compared two of their classmates and came up with a fantastic Venn Diagram. My favorite similarity is that both of the students were wearing their shoes on the correct feet.

I recommend zooming on on the "same" category.

In math I have some that are still struggling with their numbers one to ten. Today in their intervention group they practiced number identification and counting. They had to name the number at the top of each pipe cleaner and then string that many beads on to it. They did pretty well for it being the first attempt, but we will need to keep on keeping on and really stress these numbers (still, after 13 weeks). That's just what we do in Room 1 Kindergarten.

My nifty bead charts (sometimes Pinterest has such fantastic ideas)

assembly

Today our school sponsored an African Dance and Drumming assembly in the afternoon. There was a troupe of four brothers from Senegal that were energetic, entertaining, and engaging. They danced, teachers danced, and students danced. We all had a great time. (And yes, I was one of the teachers pulled to dance.)

Dancing Duel

Getting the teachers to jump (I'm the one in teal).

After the assembly came to a close, I seized the opportunity to answer my students questions about Senegal and Africa. Then they did a journal writing entry about what they saw. At the end of the day the conversation turned to a more serious note when one of my students told me that she liked the dancing but she didn't like the Africans. When I asked her why she told be because they were black. I asked why it mattered and she wasn't sure. I asked her if she would like me if I was purple and she said of course. I said good, because I would still be the same person. Our skin color doesn't matter, it is who we are and how we act that matters. We were on our way out for parent pick up at that point and her mom got her right away, so we couldn't talk for long. Hopefully a seed of equality was planted though.

early release

Today we had a half day. Since it's hard to have any meaningful instruction on half days, kindergarten decided to use the day to do unit benchmark tests for both language arts and math. I am happy to report that my kinders did a pretty awesome job. Of the thirteen students that came to school today (another reason to avoid meaningful instruction - poor attendance) ten scored proficient on both the math and language arts assessments. I can now alter my strategic intervention groups to provide more intensive support to those students still needing to master skills from our first quarter (plus a couple of weeks) of instruction.

I wish that the day had remained pretty awesome. However, our professional development was teaching other teachers how to use the online resources for our content area materials. I played on my computer. Oh well, at least we were out early.

To end on a positive note though, we played some sight words around the world this morning while we were waiting for busses to arrive. The kinders were super excited and cheering one another on. Every student won at least one word. They're rock stars!

And, as an added bonus, I had a great "things they say" this morning:

" Mrs. Hall, do you know what I did yesterday? We had dirt in our house. And I dug in it. And I found a T-Rex bone. Then I found another one. Then we found two skulls. Then my dad said that we had to burry them again after he fixed the pipes."

I'm not exactly sure what was happening, but this kiddo was super excited about his story. He shared it as soon as he walked into the classroom. Then he told all of his friends during breakfast. Then he shared again during our morning sharing time. Either he's going to be an amazing author or story teller one day, or there just happen to be dinosaur bones in the foundation of his house.

everything but the kitchen sink and then some

What a busy couple of days! On Friday we were go, go, go in Room 1 Kindergarten. We had our weekly review sessions followed by our end of week assessments in reading and in math. I was observed by my principal for our lovely new state evaluation system for teachers. We had a rushed special at the computer lab and then wrapped up the day with a parade to celebrate the close of Red Ribbon Week (a week against bullying and drugs).

After school was over I squeezed in the finishing touches on prep work for the coming week as well as a little bit of grad school work, and then I was thrown back in the trenches. My school had our annual Fall Festival Friday night and I was on the face painting crew. With my iPad on hand I was able to look up whatever designs the kiddos wanted and then tried to carry them out with the horrible face paints that the school provided. Grease paints may wash off easily, but it's really hard to get any color to show up when they are dollar store grease paints. Oh well, everyone walked away happy with their transformer, vampire, zombie, and kitty cat faces. In the end it was a fantastic evening - even if I didn't get to leave my table until 15 minutes after Fall Fest ended. I was able to whisper a quick hello to the mister when he stopped by, but didn't have a break to say much more as I had a little one that just kept asking me to paint different colors on her face. She had no clue what was going on, other than the fact that people were getting their faces painted and she wanted in on the action.

Yesterday the mister and I took some time to soak up the sun and get a good hike in before our trails start to be covered by ice. He took me on some new trails and then we wrapped up the miles by coming back on an old standard. We saw tons of animal tracks and while we were hopeful to see some mountain lion tracks (there is a warning sign up that mountain lions have been seen on the trails this year), all that we got to see were those of giant rez dogs that were chasing after deer and some jack rabbit prints. The afternoon consisted of some grad school work before going out to try a new (and delicious) restaurant. When we got home we watched some Dr. Who (a new favorite for me) and I finished up a birthday present for one of my adorable nieces.

Today I've been back at the grind. I started out by getting a good workout in, but then had to go about my usual cleaning routine. After that, it was all grad school. However, I won't complain because I am now done with one of the three courses that I was taking this semester. With any luck I'll be done with the other two before Thanksgiving!

Hope you had a restful weekend and are ready for the week to come!