Word Work Wednesday Part 2 Valentine's Day

Word Work Wednesday Part 2

Valentine's Day Writing

We read this book

In the book it talks about all of the reasons why Mouse likes his friends. We used that as a springboard discussion to play the warm fuzzy game. Each kid drew a name stick from the jar and wrote a nice thing about the person on the stick. Everyone closed their eyes and one at a time a child stuck the post it on the friend they wrote about.  This was fun and went along with our kindness character trait. 

Then we read this book.

After we read the book we did an interactive writing activity.  We made a bubble map titled "If you give a mouse a Valentine"

The kids all wrote what they thought the mouse would want if they gave him a Valentine. 

They used their ideas from the bubble map to write their sentences.  When they were finished writing, they cut out hearts to display their work on.

We also practiced our cutting.

Here is our board to display their creative writing projects!

 

Fun Friday! Winter Crafts

Torn paper snowmen

Today is fun Friday!  This week I decided to post some of our winter crafts and art projects.  I didn't post these before and they are so cute I didn't want them to get forgotten in my dusty picture files ;)

Our art display line

Our hand print tree and snowmen glyphs from (Deanna Jump)

snowmen glyphs

The kids do the entire project by themselves.  I don't do any prep work.  I love doing art projects this way because they all turn out completely different and they are working on cutting, spacing, gluing and creativity skills.

syllable snowmen (Kai-son) 2 syllables equals two parts to the snowman

Penguins with hand print feet

March of the penguins.  The kids chose a emperor penguin or a macaroni penguin.  They wrote the name or beginning sound of the name on the belly of the penguin.

Rainbow, rice, red "R"

We do a sensory art for every letter. 

soft fluffy penguins

 

Macaroni penguin

This penguin was created during "free art", the child went to the art center and created this penguin completely on her own.  This is creative learning at it's best!!! 

I hope you all had a great week and have a fun filled super bowl Sunday!!  I will post some more fun science activities tomorrow for "Science Saturday"!! 

100th day of school!!!! Thrilling Thematic Thursday!

100 days of school!!  This year has been flying by, I cannot believe it!  Today was our 100th day of school it was wild, crazy, a little bit dangerous but fun!  We were lucky to have an amazing parent helper stay for our special day.  We started out our day making our 100 day crowns.  Then we headed to circle time to count our chart and to see what number we ended up on.

Our helper of the day counts the numbers everyday and we count with him.  When we get to a "10" we do something different everyday.  Today we jumped and clapped every time! :)

We sang our 100 days of school songs and we read an interactive poem together.  For Math the first thing we did was dance to this song.

I asked the kids if they had 100 dollars what would they buy.  Everybody had a chance to draw on the chart what they would buy.

We even got to see a REAL 100 dollar bill!!

Each Child shared the poster they made at home for a family project with 10 groups of 10

Great family projects!!

Every child brought in 100 of some type of snack.  We counted and graphed everyone's snacks then put them all into one big bowl to make "gorp"

Everyone helped make "gorp"

We had a cooperative project where the thinking math question was "how many friends will I need to count 100 fingers?"  We had quite a few sick kids today so we had exactly 10 friends to count fingers on.  They were excited to see that it equaled exactly 100!!!

our 10 friends equaled 100 fingers!!!

Finally we had a special treat brought in by one of our students!!  This was my favorite 100th day memory ever!!!  This little boy brought in a cake with 100 candles to celebrate my team teachers' "100th birthday" haha !! 

Happy 100th birthday Mrs. Nicole!!

my brave parent helper!!  She almost caught on fire, that is dedication!!!  haha this is what 100 candles looks like! :)

Happy 100th day everyone!! 

Penguin Brainercise

Penguins, Penguins and more penguins!!  We had a blast today studying more about penguins.  As we finish up our unit on penguins we have been reviewing all of the knowledge that we have learned in fun useful ways. 

We started off our day with Penguin Brainercise.  I have been doing a ton of research on brain activities and have been using what I am learning at school.  One of the things I learned is how important pairing movement with music and basic facts is a huge brain exercises that produces positive results!!  That is how I came up with content based Brainercise. 

 Today we got out the tumbling mats, tunnel and balance beam.  We sang songs, listened to music, did tumbling exercises based on Penguin movements and our new penguin vocabulary!!  Talk about a Brain workout!!  It was awesome!! I am sorry the pictures didn't turn out so great.

First we "Huddled" like penguins then we sang our songs.

Next we "waddled" like penguins sideways on the balance beam, while we were still singing and listening to music!

After that, we "flew" through the water...still singing!!! ;)

Finally we "tobogganed" like penguins on our bellies on the mat!!! 

These activities were so much fun and the kids loved using their new vocabulary!  After we started our day with Brainercise, the kids were ready to learn and on task all day.

Fonts by Lettering Delights

Graphics by Thistle Girl Designs

HUGE BOB BOOKS GIVEAWAY!!! Do you want to raise an awesome reader???

Check out my newest giveaway on facebook.  This is for the blue set that was sold at Costco.  It includes the big version of Bob Books set one and two.  My son started reading these books when he was 3 and now reads chapter books very fluently!!  I highly recommend them.  Click to like my facebook page and follow my blog to win.HUGE BOB BOOKS giveaway!! Click here to enter!

 Here is my facebook page.  Be sure to check it out  to get more ideas for homeschooling, teaching and being a mama! KidzoneTeacher mama