There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat

During the month of October we read the book There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat by Lucille Colandro. We read the book repeatedly, sequenced pictures from the story, played games about the book, and made our own copies of the the book that we got to read to a friend and color the pictures. Students loved the predictable nature of the book as well as it's humorous nature. Each time we read the book students noticed different details in the book's illustrations and prose. It was especially exciting for me when students began to notice the rhyming words within the text!



Grandparents Day and Dream Job Day

Friday, October 19th was grandparents day AND dream job day at Wilbur Elementary School! All the students enjoyed having grandparents come in the classroom and help with a special pumpkin activity. They enjoyed talking with grandparents, having them help them cut or glue, and they just enjoyed their presence. A special thanks to ALL the grandparent who came out to this special day and a shout out to Mrs. Murry-Williams for taking pictures throughout the morning. On this day our class was featured in the superintendent's weekly memo that went out to all staff members within the district!! Here are two pictures that were featured:

Fall Festival

This year the kindergarten team decided to have a fall festival on Friday, October 26th. This was also the week I was out sick! I apologize for forms and notifications not being sent home about the festival, it snuck up on me! However, students still enjoyed the festival and participated in all the activities such as pumpkin seed grab and count, sack races, pumpkin painting, monster me decorating, apple cider tasting and sensory tables filled with corn/hay/and leaves. Mrs. Bickelman and I were able to lead the students through every activity and I took pictures throughout the festival. It was great to see the students so excited about each and every activity, I posted all the pictures on our SmugMug site for you to view. 

 

October Family Projects

October's family project was to read the book Elmer by David McKee. Small paper copies of the book were sent home with a large elephant picture that students were to decorate, making their own 'Elmer'. This year students were very creative! There was a Hello Kitty, butterfly, rainbow, transformer, star, heart, and sparkle elephants. I wanted to thank all families for their help and creativeness with this month's project. I posted pictures of student's presentations on our photo website. For November the family project will be on Tom the Turkey. Students are to disguise the turkey so that he will not be eaten for Thanksgiving dinner. Projects were sent home November 1st and are due November 16th,  PDF files of the documents sent home for this project are posted on this website in the event that your student's copy is lost.

Johnny Appleseed's Birthday

For Johnny Appleseed's birthday we tasted three different kinds of apples: Golden Delicious, Red Delicious, and Granny Smith apples. After tasting all three kinds of apples we made a chart of which apples we liked the best. In our class it was a tie between Granny Smith apples and Red Delicious apples. We also learned about Johnny Appleseed's life, we made hats, and learned where apple's came from. All the kids enjoyed the activities especially the tasting of the apples!

 

 



10 Apples Up One Top

To go along with the activities we completed for Johnny Appleseed's birthday we read the book 10 Apples Up on Top by Dr. Seuss. Afterwards we made our own 10 apples on top picture, and we got to practice balancing 10 apples on top of our own heads!

Letter P Day

First I wanted to thank ALL the parents who helped make letter P day possible by coming in to volunteer, or sending in snacks/supplies. It was a huge help and the students really enjoyed everything. We made letter P pizzas, pig puppets, letter P paintings, a giant letter P collage, and letter P hats. 



September Family Projects

 

Students did a great job presenting their family projects this past week! I have posted a picture of each student as they presented their projects to our classroom picture gallery. Projects will be sent home during the third week of October. I loved learning about each child, thank you for all your help with this month's family project.



Pictures for each activity have been posted in our classroom picture gallery on SmugMug. If you need the password and username for the class gallery please e-mail me and I can send it to you again.

New and Noteworthy

New Project!!!

Guess what we are officially registered to celebrate OREO's 100th Birthday! We will be participatinge in this activity/celebration while at the same time meeting Language/Math/ & Science Standards!

 

Projects and activities will take place until October 17th.

 

To learn more about the project you can go to the O.R.E.O project's website.

 

October Class Information

 Today I sent an e-mail to all parents that have provided me with an e-mail address in this e-mail I included the October lunch calendar, newsletter, and calendar of events. If you did not recieve this e-mail please let me know so that we can fix this problem.

 

I will also be posting pictures of letter P day and of the class's celebration of Johnny Appleseed's birthday over the course of the week, so keep an eye out!

Student Behavior and Class Dojo

Over the past couple of weeks you may have heard your child talking about Class Dojo. When I first heard about it from another teacher I was curious about it. Since I first used it class last year I have found it to be a very valuable asset for students. It allows them to earn points for good behaviors they exibit in the classroom. In school I use it all the time for students giving them points for participation, effort on their work, helping others, being quiet on the carpet and walking quietly in the halls.

Recently I began sending report cards to parents from Class Dojo. These reports allow parents to see their child's behavior in class through out a week. There is also a feature that allso students to sign in and design their own monster or avatar. If you think your student would use this feature I can send home more information.

Please give me feedback on this new feature. I will continue to do student behavior charts in the back of each child's yellow folder until any issues with this feature are worked out. Thanks!

Homework, Newsletters, and Book Orders Oh my!

Hello everyone! I am excited to start off a new week of school here at Wilbur Elementary. The students have been great and we are starting to get into the curriculum. Tonight homework was sent home with students in a plastic homework bag similar to the one below.

Homework will be sent home every Monday and due the following Monday. Homework is optional but it is recommended to use it to help your child practice the skills he/she is learning in class. Today I also sent home our class newsletter and class calendar. You can also access a PDF version of both by clicking on the following link:

September Newsletter and Calendar

Book Orders! It is that time of year when book orders are sent home, all books are published by Scholastic. You can place your order by clicking on the Scholastic link below. Your books are then shipped to the school and I will send them home with your student.

 

 

One last thing, I will be sending home a bag with envelopes in it. These envelopes are for you to use for any money that you need to send to school for student lunches, field trips, fundraisers, or spirit wear. I am only sending home four envelopes to start but I can send home more if you request them. Please send me a note in your students yellow folder if you need more. If you want to make your own at home you can download the PDF file of the envelope labels.

 



 

 

I hope everyone has a great week and I will post again soon!



Second Week of School!

This week we learned about the letter M and the letter S. Students had a great time interacting with SMART board lessons, making Michael Mouse hats, learning the Tucker Sign for both letters, learning how to write each letter, and learning new letter sound songs. One of the students favorite songs was the Letter M song

We also recorded ourselves singing the letter M song. Students were so excited about learning the letter M song that I recorded them singing it during snack time one day. Take a quick listen, it is very cute! You will have to click on the link below and download the file in order to listen to it.

Letter M Song

I hope you enjoyed this post! Keep checking back for more posts each week.

First Week Back to School

Are you ready for the school year to start? I am!!

The 2012-1013 school year is about to begin and I am very excited to meet everyone on Monday morning! This year will be filled with fun, learning, exploration, celebrations of achievement and much much more! I have been working very hard over the past week to get the classroom ready and the theme this year is OWLS! I know that this year is going to be a hoot! Keep checking back for more information throughout the school year and for pictures of what we are doing in the classroom. Below are some pictures of the classroom, I plan to post more pictures in the next week.

Classroom Pictures

Here are two pictures of the hallway displays for our classroom. 

I put student work on display in each sheet protector.

Here is the door students will walk through when they come into the classroom.

This is the front of the classroom where our morning routine and most instruction takes place. Each student gets to sit in one square on the carpet and can interact with the SMART board during lessons.

This is our calendar that we will use to keep track of the date and we will use it for different math activities. 

Located next to the SMART board is our attendance chart. Each month students will have a different picture to put in the chart to show that they were at school that day.

Ms. Williamson's very messy desk!

Here are the lockers students will use to put their belongings. Above the lockers is our alphabet chart and sight words.

Here I will post on the bulletin board our new sight word for the week. The small wooden table will also be used as a writing center during reading center time.

This is the back of the classroom where the dramatic play center is located. It is also where math materials are stored.

This is another picture of the back of our classroom but from a different angle. One door allows us to access the playground and the other door leads to the bathroom for our class. There is also an art easel that students can use for different painting activities.

In our classroom we have a sink and a water fountain that students can use at certain times throughout the day. Our Learning Focused learning map for math is also located here. Under each owl on the tree are our current vocabulary words.

This is our computer center and where I post our math vocabulary for the whole year.

This is another view of the front of the classroom. Our birthday chart is located above the cabinets. On the cabinets are our color words, chart of blends, and other resources students can refer to.

Here is our reading and math center chart. Each basket matches a picture on the chart.

This is yet another view of the front of the classroom, it is where student's cubbies are located, where students put their folders, parent notes, and behavior logs.

The following photo is of the playground outside where students will be playing during recess. As a safety precaution students will need sneakers in order to play outside.



Thank you very much for stopping by to visit our class website! I am looking forward to having an awesome year!

Back to School

It has been a busy summer and I am shocked to see that it is almost over! This school year I am excited for all the new classroom changes as well as some new spirit days! This year our classroom theme is Owls and I have been busily changing the classroom around and decorating.

I have also updated our class calendar to include ALL the events I know of for this academic school year this includes spirit days, when family projects are due, days off, winter/spring break, picture day, open house, parent walk through night, etc. I will continue to add more dates as I become aware of them.

In new, news our cafeteria this year is going green and if you go to the Nutrition Services website then you can sign up to receive cafeteria menus by e-mail. I will also be doing something similar for our class newsletters, calendars, and other monthly handouts. I will explain more about this at our Open House night. Until then I will continue to post about the upcoming school year, post pictures of the classroom as I continue to get it ready and update the website. Continue to have a great summer!

Skippy Jon Jones

I found out today that Skippy Jon Jones is at Kohls department store!!! I got so excited that I had to tell everyone about it! Also head over to the class Facebook page to see Skippy's newest adventures. He will be heading to Washington DC over the next week too! Maybe he will go all the way to the White House!!! Comment to this post about what you are doing over the summer!

I also just got back from a conference in Florida that showed me some awesome ways to incorporate technology in the classroom and it gave me some great recommendations for good, educational apps for the ipad! I will be posting a list of all those apps over the next couple weeks. Have a great summer!

Thank you!

It is very sad to see the school year come to an end. Tomorrow will be the last day of school, and the last day each student will be a kindergartner. I am sad to see them go but am very proud of each and every student. Each child has come so far, learned so much and has made great achievements. I will post pictures of Skippy's adventures over the summer on the class Facebook page so that the kids have something to look forward to. I hope everyone enjoys their summer and thank you for all your help and involvement throughout the school year!

Change in special schedule for the week

Quick Note:

This week the art teachers will be out for a conference during our normal special time on Thursday. Because of this we will now have an additional day of Gym on Thursday so please make sure your students bring in or wear sneakers to school that day. Our special schedule is as follows (for this week only):

 Monday: Gym
Tuesday: Gym
Wednesday: Music
Thursday: Gym
Friday: Library

They Arrived!!

After releasing the Butterflies last week the students were sad to let them go. So I got a Ladybug Land for them from Insect Lore. What is great about the Ladybug land is that students can watch the whole life cycle of a ladybug! They can see the eggs turn into the Larva, the Larva turn into the pupa, and the pupa turn into the ladybugs!



Well today the ladybug land kit arrived at school!

The larva were sent inside a test tube with some food that looked like sand. We had to follow the instructions and put the contents of the test tube into the ladybug terrarium.

Here is a picture of what our larva look like on Day 1!

We have 8 ladybug larva so far, we named them Phineas, Ferb, Juju-Bee, Lizzy, Hailey, Yoda, Jose, and Olivia. We are so excited to see our ladybugs grow!