strike

Today we wrapped up our week before spring break by field tripping over to one of the local bowling alleys. The kiddos did a great job, especially considering that three of the lanes didn't have numbers. I stepped in for one of my kiddos that was absent today, bowling with her preassigned group and I am proud to say that I won. I was in a lane that had bumpers. I was also beaten by a kinder in the next lane over. So I don't really have much to brag about other than reaching the triple digits (barely). My kiddos are awesome though and kicked some bowling behind.

After bowling we rolled on over to Big Cheese Pizza (think low end Chuckie Cheese) and had our fill of pizza. Or at least, we tried to get the kiddos to eat, but they were so excited about the arcade that they ate a slice and said, "I'm ready to play now!" This means that the mister and I have dinner taken care of, which is nice since we'll be spending the evening packing up to hit to road for a week. 

When we returned to school we had a small going away party for Mrs. S. Today was her last day as our assistant and we wanted to thank her for all that she does for us. So, juice and animal crackers it was. Followed by a little bit of The Land Before Time and some time in the play kitchen. 

All in all it was a fantastic way to spend the day before break. I don't think we would have gotten much learning done one way or the other, so at least we had an agenda. Plus, the kiddos talked about numbers all day - whether subtracting, counting how many pins they had left, figuring out how many quarters were needed to play arcade games, and counting tickets. 

the stylistic bowling of kindergarten, my amazing 112 score, pizza, and air hockey

bummer

Well, it is looking as if our summer off from grad school will be no more. Our beloved professors are both moving on in their lives - one is retiring, the other is moving north to be closer to family. As a satellite campus for WNMU, this means that we are unsure of what classes will be available to us in person in the coming year. As a result, it looks like the mister and I are going to jump on the opportunity to take one of our three remaining classes this summer while it is being offered online. It isn't ideal, but it will get things done. That means next school year we'll be looking at two remaining classes - how we'll earn those credits is to be determined. Hopefully they won't only be available online, but if they are, at least we tripled up this year so that we don't have so many classes to worry about in the future. The good news is that the University has stated that we will be able to finish our degrees. Thank goodness for that.

the things they say

"Mrs. Hall, I don't want to be a human any more. I'm a cat."

Just another Friday in Kindergarten. My kinders are pretty awesome. They frequently refer to themselves as humans. Not people. Humans. And I love it, every single time.

reality

Just before Valentine's Day I welcomed a new student to my classroom. While it may have caused a disruption to the class, we were working together to teach the rules and expectations that are the norm in my classroom. Then, he was gone for a week. I was told to wait. There was no notification from the family, so the standard is to wait for ten days before the district withdraws a student as a result of absences.

Then he came back. Once again, there was a disruption in my classroom. We started from scratch, working together to teach the rules and expectations for the classroom. Then, today he was withdrawn from our school because of the district requirement for official notes (such as a doctor's note or a printed obituary) to excuse absences. Our principal would not excuse absences without a note and the family was upset, so they took him out of our school altogether.

Unfortunately this is the reality for some children. They lack the consistency that is needed to learn the rules and expectations that come with being a part of a community. They jump from place to place, not on their own accord, and not necessarily because of family choices. We live in a world where children become the victims of policies that adults and politicians make. While there are rules in place to protect both children and adults, sometimes people fall through the cracks because of them.

Once again, I find myself in a position where I do not know what will come for this child and it breaks my heart. He is a very intelligent boy and has a lot of potential, I can only hope for the best and that the wind starts to blow in his favor so that he doesn't need to fight against so many obstacles at such a young age.

the things they say

This week we began studying measurement and comparisons in math class. Yesterday we did longer and shorter, today we focused on taller and shorter. I introduced the topic and the vocabulary words. I showed the students an example of measuring height to compare and then I had some students participate in a comparison activity. After that, they were set free to explore the classroom and find things that were taller and shorter than them.

After 4 minutes I called them back to the group. We sat down and each student had the chance to share about something that they had found. The students went around saying, "the door is taller than me," and, "the bookshelf is shorter than me," and, "Mrs. S's table is shorter than me." That's when I got my winner.

Me: What did you find?

Student: Ummm... the green tub.

Me: What can you tell us about the green tub?

Student: [blank stare]

Me: The green tub is sh.....

Student: The green tub is sh...maller?

I had to keep myself from bursting out laughing. I love my kinders. While it may not be a real word, I think it deserves acknowledgement for being an accurate descriptor. 

 

 

 

 

 

for the love of seuss

In preparation for Dr. Seuss's birthday, I led my first ever author study. We began on Monday by looking at the a timeline of Dr. Seuss's life on seussville.com. This fantastic website has everything Seuss that you could possibly want to share with a classroom full of kinders. They loved the animations and we followed it up by reading Dr. Seuss's first children's book, Dr. Seuss's ABC.

Throughout the remainder of the week we continued to learn about the many components of Dr. Seuss's creations. We learned about the characters, about settings, and most importantly, about rhymes and word families. This author study doubled as my introduction to word families. Perhaps this is a little later than some kinder teachers' introduction of word families, but I think the foundations that have been laid led to a quick mastery and a topic that will now be a part of our weekly word work. 

Yesterday we wrapped up the week by reading Bartholomew and the Oobleck. If you haven't read this Seuss classic, you really should. It is a lot of fun and you can extend the reading by making oobleck! Yesterday we had an entertaining reading, full of silly voices and then we did "science" and made our own oobleck. It was amazing how many of my kiddos kept saying, "my mom will get so mad at my mess." I assured them that science was supposed to be messy, and that their moms would not get mad because I was the one cleaning up the mess, not them.

When I look back at the week, I think there was a tie between Bartholomew and the Oobleck  and Wacky Wednesday for the book of choice. The kiddos loved looking through Wacky Wednesday for all of the silly pictures that didn't make sense. Unfortunately, I only had one copy of the book so the kiddos were crawling over one another to see the pages. Next year I'll get a couple of copies from the library and have them work in small groups.

All in all, I think our Dr. Seuss study was a success. Happy Birthday to you (tomorrow) Dr. Seuss! And, thank you for sharing your imagination with so many generations and inspiring young readers. My class was asking all week if they could look at Dr. Seuss books whenever they had free time. Reading success!

Our March bulletin board, a small selection of Dr. Seuss stories, word family hats, and oobleck!

beyond crazy

Wow. Last week was C-R-A-Z-Y. 

Most three day weeks are a little crazy. They start out well for me because I have a long weekend. I enjoyed some nice runs and a short hike with my mister. I knocked out a lot of work that had been piling up, and I relaxed some. It was nice.

On Tuesday, I was able to get 14 out of 18 parents through the parent teacher conference process. In the meantime, Mrs. S and I managed to tear all of the pages out of student workbooks and get them organized by week for the remainder of the school year. I hate tearing and sorting the pages, so this was amazing. I usually do it all by myself, now I don't need to worry about it again until next year. Oh yeah. Awesome.

Then the kinders came back on Wednesday. We started out exceptionally well. Then an announcement was made, "Attention teachers and staff. We might have an assembly at 9:00. We'll let you know." Then the health assistant came into the classroom, "The nurse is at our school today, she needs to do a hand washing presentation with the students." When 9:00 rolled around we were called to the auditorium. For a laser light show. It is science, sure, but on a short week? Apparently our old principal scheduled it before she left and didn't tell anyone. So, we lost an hour of instruction on an already short week. Then we were called to the nurse's office for the hand washing presentation. Needless to say, kindergarten cancelled our morning recess so that we could get a little bit of learning in. The rest of the day went pretty well, thankfully.

We squeezed a whole lot of learning into Thursday to make up for lost time, and in order to be ready for Friday assessments. The kiddos did a great job, they loved our story of the week, they picked up on the basics of base ten relatively well, and we had computer lab. My students love computer lab. It was a success. Unfortunately, I also had to come up with sub plans for Friday because this lucky teacher was called for jury duty. 

What an end to the week. Not only was I called, I was selected. So while my kinders were working away on their assessments, I was listening to a new attorney defend what was possibly his first case. It was somewhat interesting, but the lawyers unfortunately used what us jurors came to call turtle talk. They spoke more slowly than I do with my kinders. Now, that's saying something. All in all, we spent 12 hours in the courtroom. At 8:15 we decided that the defense had presented enough information to make us reasonably doubt the guilt of his client and wham-o, said lawyer won what was possibly his first trial. (I will say that a positive result of the experience was that I was able to crochet during every break we were given and finished half of a case to organize my crochet hooks!)

The court was nice enough to bring us dinner while we were in deliberations. At that point we were all okay with a burger and fries. However, a couple of hours later either the stomach flu that has been going around school caught up with me or the burger just didn't sit right. Either way, I spent the night on the bathroom floor. Super awesome end to a super awesome week.

Now we have arrived at Monday. Sweet, sweet Monday. A day of new beginnings and fresh starts. Some kiddos did end up in the office, but I'm positive that this week can't be any crazier than last. Here's hoping!