Send Ms. Taylor to Uganda!

Click here and 'like' my comment at the bottom. If my comment has the most 'likes' by March 11th, I get to go on a free mission trip to Uganda with a ministry that I love and support. Thank you SO MUCH for your help! Tell a friend! :-)

Thank you, Dr. Seuss!

Dr. Seuss week is my FAVORITE WEEK of Kindergarten! It falls about the time when the children are starting to take great leaps in their learning and all their hard work of learning how to read and write is finally paying off! It is my greatest joy to shower them with Dr. Seuss books and listen to them read. They are READERS! Dr. Seuss books also lend themselves to so many life lessons: Bartholomew and the Oobleck (the power of an apology/being grateful for what you have), The Lorax (taking care of our environment/not being greedy), and Horton Hears a Who (equal rights/ having a voice) are just a few of my favorites. Not only do the books lend themselves to great discussion, but they are also incredible resources for teaching rhyming words. And hey, I never pass up a good excuse to eat during class! I made green eggs and ham for the kiddos on Friday, and to their (and my) surprise, many of them actually liked it! And let's not forget about our science experiment with Oobleck. We made the green gunk that fell from the sky in Dr. Seuss's book and discovered that it was both a solid AND a liquid, depending on how much force was applied to it!

The kiddos requested that I send their mommies and daddies the recipes for the Oobleck and the Green Eggs & Ham. Of course they didn't believe me when I said "Your mommy already knows how to make the green eggs, dear. Trust me." So, I promised I'd put both recipes on the blog.

Oobleck:
Mix 1 cup water with 1 drop of green food coloring.
Mix in 1 1/2 - 2 cups of corn starch, depending on how solid you prefer your Oobleck. You'll have to play around with it to get the perfect amount.
Notice that if you grab or squeeeze the Oobleck, it acts as a solid, but if you pour the Oobleck, it acts as a liquid.

Green Eggs:
Pour 1 cup of liquid eggs into skillet over medium high heat.
Add one drop of green food coloring.
Scramble.
Add cheddar cheese, salt, and pepper.

Ham:
Buy sandwich ham from grocery store, open package, and serve :-)

100th Day Par-Tay!

The 100th Day of Kindergarten may be my absolute favorite day of the entire school year. For this special day, we get to put aside "normal" and partake in the awesomeness that is ONE HUNDRED! To kick off this special day, the K teachers made a "100 Days Smarter" banner for the kindergarten hallway. We knew we were asking for hyperactivity, but it was worth it to see the excitement on the little kinders' faces that morning!

100th Day Activities:

Hop 100 Times (chart adjectives that describe how we felt afterward)

Take 100 Steps (predict where we will end up)

100 Chart Secret Message

100th Day Trail Mix (10 pieces of 10 items)

100-piece Fruit Loop Necklace

Color 100 Gum balls

Read 100 Books

Write 100 Words

Compare 100 Items bags (Heaviest? Lightest? Most Full? Most empty?)

Photos provided for your entertainment...

 

Zero the Hero doing what she does best: Adding Value (By giving hugs)

I hope you enjoyed viewing our memories as much as we enjoyed making them!

Until next time,

Ms. Taylor

December Came and Went...

Readers,
      Sorry to keep you waiting! I have uploaded many photos to fill you in on classroom happenings in December. If I make this post extra media-filled, could you find it in your heart to forgive me?!


One of my favorite themes is The Gingerbread Man. We hunt for the gingerbread man around Christmas time to learn map skills, and it's such a blast! At the end of the unit, we use the maps we made of our classroom to hunt for the gingerbread man who has left a star on the map where he is hiding in the classroom. So fun! Watch below.  (I had to trim it down to fit the file on here, so you're catching them at about 4 minutes deep in their hunt.)

The gingerbread man was holding a clue that told the kids where to find the cookies he left them! 

(Video below)

More Christmas....

Props to my mom for providing the cutest Christmas craft, ever! She bought and painted these miniature gourds for us to decorate like little snowmen. They turned out so cute! It would have been impossible for me to do these with 22 kids- I'm so grateful for parent volunteers during Christmas!

Here's a few snapshots of our Christmas Party...

Who doesn't like a good ol' Pajama Day? We enjoyed some yummy hot chocolate and popcorn while we watched The Polar Express- Complete with movie theatre seating and VIP!



I hope you enjoyed the December update!

Ms. Taylor

Our Thanksgiving Feast

Check out our Thanksgiving Cooking Stations!

Thanksgiving Blessings Trail Mix

Our room mom did a fabulous job leading the "Thanksgiving Blessings Trail Mix" station!

Bugles: Shaped like a cornucopia or Horn of Plenty, a symbol of our nation's abundance.

Pretzels: Arms folded in prayer, a freedom sought by those who founded our country.

Candy corn: Sacrifices of the Pilgrims' first winter. Food was so scarce that settlers survived on just a few kernels of corn a day.

Nuts or seeds: Promise of a a future harvest, one we will reap only if seeds are planted and tended with diligence.

Dried fruits: Harvest gifts of our bountiful land.

M&Ms: Memories of those who came before us to guide us to a blessed future.

Homemade Butter 

This energetic station was making homemade butter out of whipping cream! 

Ingredients: Whipping cream

Directions: Pour whipping cream into small plastic container and shake, shake, shake! The cream will start to solidify into a butter ball. Salt to taste and serve with popcorn.

Cranberry Relish 

These little cooks-in-the-making are blending up some homemade cranberry relish for their family's Thanksgiving Dinner.

Ingredients: Cranberries, mandarin oranges, and sugar

S'measies

We made "S'measies" at my station (easy s'mores). It is no coincidence that I had the yummiest station, ha ha!

Ingredients: Graham crackers (chocolate or honey), marshmallow fluff, and chocolate frosting

1st 9 Weeks Snapshots!

Wondering what we've been up to these past 9 weeks?

Well, we do a lot of reading in Kindergarten. Did you think we were too young for that?

We are learning how to spell using a variety of tools- Pencil and paper are so last season!!

Recognizing and spelling our own names is important, but we're stepping it up a notch.

Everybody needs a day at the farm. We're practically farmers now!

We found lots of ways to utilize our pumpkins: counting, sorting, ordering, comparing, describing, floating, cooking, graphing......

Ms. Taylor says eating is "exploring our 5 senses"-- we'll take it!

Card games, 10-frames....what is this, 2nd grade??

This 9 weeks has gone by fast. We've learned a lot and had a blast! There's more to come with these next 9, we're gettin' smart and feelin' fine!

Reading Briefcases

Kindergarten reading homework will be in the form of a "Reading Briefcase" that will start coming home this Friday, October 5th! This is oral homework that your child will do with an adult or capable older sibling on your own schedule. Nothing needs to be turned in to me. I recommend that you practice from the reading briefcase at least 3 times a week. Find what works for you and your child, and make sure you return the briefcase on Fridays so I can swap out the old items with new ones. I would suggest keeping the briefcase in the backpack when you are not using it.

Homework Included:

• Homework Sheet (A new homework sheet will be placed in the briefcase each week that includes that weeks new skills and a review of old skills. This is not written homework and will require an adult to participate. It only takes a couple of minutes, I promise!)
• Alphabet Chart (Your child knows how to recite the alphabet chart and you will catch on pretty quickly. Say the letter, sound, and picture in order.)
• Text (A new text will be added each week in the form of a book or paper that your child has already learned in class. Check your child for accuracy and work on fluency by re-reading.)
• Letter Naming Fluency (letter automaticity is important! Make a game out of it and "speed drill" your child twice to see if they can beat their own time!)

Tools Included:

• Phonics Progression & HFW List (The high frequency word list and phonics progression are included so that you can see what order we will be learning our letters and sight words in case you would like to introduce them at home before they learn them at school-- this is not homework :-)
• Alphabet Tracing (not required but a resource for you to see how we learn the proper letter formation at school. You can have your child trace the letters with his/her finger/markers/crayons/pencil at home if you choose. If I think your child needs extra practice, I will send home tracing homework in the blue folder. Otherwise, this is just an option for you if you choose to use it.)
• Reading Log (record each time your child has read the text 3 times. For instance, if you listen to your child read the new text once on Monday and twice on Tuesday, you can fill out the reading log for that text since you have read it 3 times. One text can be used multiple times on the reading log as long as you read it 3 times before recording. Repetition is KEY! Completed reading logs will receive a Recognition Notice.)

Learning to Read...

I am so excited to announce that we will be beginning our phonics progression this week! Beginning with the letter M, we will begin explicit lessons teaching letters and their sounds. We will also start learning how to divide sentences into words, words into syllables, and syllables into sounds.We will learn how to identify the first and last sound in a word, words that rhyme, and words that begin with the same sound. Here is a guide that will help to explain the skills and concepts being taught so that you can practice them at home.

Understanding Reporting of

Kindergarten Performance Standards

Area Related to Standard	Explanation
Reading
Phonological awareness	Phonological awareness refers to the child’s ability to realize that sentences are made up of words and that they can separate and identify these words; that words are made up of syllables which they can hear, clap, and blend; and that syllables are made up of individual sounds which they can hear, rhyme, and blend.
Phonemic awareness	Phonemes are the smallest units of sound in language (i.e.- ch- says /ch/,). Phonemic awareness refers to a child’s ability to hear, identify, separate, and blend the beginning, middle and ending sounds in words (example- bag has 3 sounds- /b/- /a/- /g/).
Applies letter/sound relationships	This standard refers to the child’s ability to match all 26 letters to their sounds, plus read and write these sounds. It also refers to the child’s ability to match letters to their sounds to read new words. Lastly, it includes the child’s understanding that print is read from left to right and that when the end of the line is reached that the reader must return to the left side of the page (i.e. “return sweep”).
Identifies upper and lower case letters.	Ability to name upper and lower case letters.
Demonstrates listening comprehension	This standard refers to a child’s ability to think about and retell a story including a beginning, middle and end. It also includes a child’s ability to make reasonable predictions before reading and to respond to reading by asking questions, talking about what was read, and connecting what read to their own lives.
Applies vocabulary	This standard refers to a child’s ability to express their thoughts and ideas clearly, in sentences, using vocabulary words they have learned in class.
High frequency words	High frequency words are words that occur many times in print. These words are directly taught to students. This standard measures a child’s ability to recognize and read these words in lists as well as in texts (stories, poems, nonfiction books, etc.).

Managing the Kinders

In college, a professor once told us that Elementary Education is 10% content and 90% behavior management.  Ironically, we only receieved 1/2 a semester of Classroom Management with an Early Childhood Education degree. This blew my mind at the time, and still does, as I continue to face challenging classroom management issues each year and search for tried-and-true methods of preventing and responding to behavioral issues in the classroom. {Soap Box: 20-25 kindergarteners to one teacher (with NO AID) is absolutely ridiculous and should not even be legal.. but that's another story}. 

After my first two weeks with this new class, I knew I needed to make some changes in my teaching procedures/techniques. This year, I have many children who are VERY easily distracted and many children who talk waaaaaaaaay to much. So I did some research. I wandered across a technique called "Power Teaching," and I watched a mesmerizing video of power teaching in action. I decided to adopt a few of the techniques and try it with my kinders. Thank you, Power Teaching.......it worked! Well, so far. 

Two points of focus for this year's class was transition times and attention-grabbers. Power Teaching introduced me to a solution to both of those problems. We now march to the carpet and back to our seat as we chant the name of the place we are going. For example: If we are leaving the carpet, heading to our seats, we chant "Seat, seat seat........ seat, seat, seat......" as we tap our legs and march to our seat. Each student stops chanting, sits, and puts their head on their desk when they reach their seat. Voila! No one got distracted on the way and started drawing on the floor with permanent marker. I'd say that's a win. The attention-grabber I adopted was "Class? Yes!" When I say "class," they say "yes." However I say "class," they say "yes." For instance: If I say "classity-class" they say "yessity-yes." Cute, huh? Second, we use "hands and eyes." When I say "hands and eyes" they repeat me, clasp their hands in their lap and focus their eyes on me. This one is done repeatedly during carpet time, as I have a lot of drifters. 

I'm still looking for a solution to the "busy hands" issue, as I have a few kids who always need something in their hands. I would have no problem handing the child a stress ball and letting them have at it, except they seem to be unable to fidget and focus at the same time. Thus my google research begins again. If you've got any suggestions, please share! :-)

-Ms. Taylor

Helping from Home: Name Writing

As you work with your child at home on writing his/her name, remember these 5 tips:

1) Supervise your child. Make sure they are using the correct pencil grip and not practicing a bad habit; muscle memory takes many repetitions.

2) "No letter, ever ever ever, starts at the bottom" - our chant when we forget to start a letter from the top.

3) Use an uppercase letter only at the beginning of your name.

4) Use the primary lined paper and encourage your child to "use the lines" as they write.

5) Writing is a process. We want to teach the correct techniques, letter formation, and pencil grip, but we don't want to overwhelm the child. I suggest practicing name-writing for a couple minutes each night with a positive attitude and lots of encouragement. If your child is frustrated, skip a night!

Pencil Grip Song

(to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle)

Pencil led is facing me 

(lay pencil down flat on table with pencil led facing toward child and eraser facing away)

I pinch the tip and lift to see.

(Pinch the pencil toward the led end and lift it - led facing down, eraser facing up)

Is it tired? It might be.

(Look at pencil to see if it is tired...shrug shoulders)

So I lay it down to sleep.

Take opposite hand's pointer finger and tilt the eraser end back toward wrist, setting the pencil in correct pencil grip position)

Pencil steady, now I'm ready.

Watch me as I write neatly!

Click here to familiarize yourself with the Developmental Stages of Writing.
Click here for Fine Motor and Letter Writing practice ideas for home.
Click here to generate your own Handwriting Worksheets for FREE.
         (I recommend using your child's name and having them complete one practice page each night until the skill is mastered.)

Color Songs

Here are links to the color songs we have been singing during "Color Weeks." The kids LOVE them, and little do they know, they are actually LEARNING while they sing these catchy little tunes!

Blue Song

Red Song

Yellow Song

Purple Song

Brown Song

Black Song

Green Song

Pink Song

White Song

Orange Song

-Enjoy!

Week One
Wow! Five full days of Kindergarten on the very first week of school has worn me out, big time! We had a week full of singing, dancing, routine practicing, expectation learning, friend-making, laughing, exploring, and getting to know each other. Thank goodness for restful weekends and the large cup 'o' joe that is keeping me awake this beautiful Sunday evening as I reflect on week one. I love my job!

First Week Findings: 
-Jack Hartmann's "My Whole Body Can Move" is our new favorite jam.
-We like to "rap" the Days of the Week.
-Automatic toilets might flush before you finish. It's okay. Continue :-)
-Play-doh smells funny.
-Ms. Taylor is very picky about a neat & tidy classroom, so WE are learning to be neat and tidy.
-Hand-painting tickles!!!
-If you fake sleeping at rest time, Ms. Taylor will give you an AWESOME POSSUM award :-)

Parents:
Thank you SO MUCH for the support you have already shown. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to email me or send a note in your child's blue folder. Newsletters go home on Monday. Continue to initial your child's behavior calendar each night. I look forward to a great year with your precious child.

-Ms. Taylor

To My Upcoming Kindergarteners...

Dear Kindergartener (and parent),

I am SO excited to meet you! You are going to LOVE kindergarten. I think I have the best job in the world because I get to go to kindergarten every year! I will be your teacher this year, and we are going to have so much fun as we learn and grow together. I'm going to tell you and your parents about a few important days that are coming up. Write them down so that you don't miss them!

Wednesday, August 15th at 4:00 pm- MEET THE TEACHER

A day to meet me (yay!), see our classroom (wahoo!), and fill out some very important paper work (alright!) Please do not miss this day!

Monday, August 20th- FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL & KINDERGARTEN PICTURES

I am so excited about this day, and I hope you are too! You will be getting your beginning-of-the-year pictures made, so come with a smile!

Thursday, September 6th at 6:00 PM- PARENT ORIENTATION

(Parents only please!) This is a wonderful opportunity to learn about what your child will be up to this year. I will inform you of our classroom procedures, discipline policy, important dates, and all sorts of other useful information. Please come!

Enjoy the rest of your summer and I'll see you soon!

Ms. Taylor

Lately...

Followers, (both of you), I sincerely apologize for not updating you more often on the goings-on of Ms. Taylor's Busy Bees. Sometimes life just gets in the way :-).
I have compiled a few of the latest events to share in this post. I hope you enjoy!

Last week was Dr. Seuss Week!! We celebrated the incredible talent of the late children's author all week long. I was so proud of the superb work the Busy Bees did on their first ever book reports (pictured below.)

During Dr. Seuss Week, we were studying the states of matter (solids, liquids, and gases). After learning and experimenting with the three types, we set out to cook up a mixture that would baffle us at its ability to resemble both a solid AND a liquid. Oobleck!! Dr. Seuss writes of this insanely fun substance in his book Bartholomew and the Oobleck. We made it using corn starch, water, and green food coloring. The corn starch never quite mixes with the water. If you grab it firmly, it feels like a solid, but if you poke at it gently or turn it to pour, it acts as a liquid. I don't care how old you are, this experiment is always fun!!

On Thursday, I had one of those fabulous teacher moments where I realized just how far my precious students had come since August. I whipped out my camera and started taking pictures and video. They were reading Dr. Seuss books all on their own and were ENJOYING it!!! My heart smiles to see a child who enjoys reading.

Another huge event that took place recently was the Buzz Run. We ran our little hearts out to earn money for our school! This was such a fun event and we even got to enjoy a popsicle after all that hard work. Well worth it!

I hope you feel a little more caught up on our life as Busy Bees. I will say, I have tried to update many times, but the old 'blogger' format was not working with me very well! Now that I have the updated version, I will be updating more often :-)

Have a blessed week,

Ms. Taylor & The Busy Bees