100th Day

I'm 100 Years Old Dress Up

100 Mask

100 Fruit Loop necklace - I'm 100 days smarter tag and count out 100 fruit loops!

100 Writing Book
     - If I had $100
     - What will I look like at 100 yrs old
     - I can write my numbers to 100  - 100 
       number chart

100 Exercises - The students use the exercise cards and do 10 excercises 10 times. If the card says jumping jacks, they do 10 jumping jacks.


100 Steps -  Where will you end up? (map skills)  The students got a map of the school. (The school I am this year is quite confusing with lots of different corridors to go down.) When we exit our room, there are 3 different corridors to go down. We vote and choose which one to go down and continue making our choices till we reach 100 steps. Everytime we come to a corridor, the students use their crayon to draw on their map what we just did. My students LOVED this!

My 100 Snack- We had 10 different food items to go into the trail mix on 10 plates. The students had to count out 10 of each item to put in their trail mix baggie! YUM!

Jump for 100 seconds!

President's Day

1 Day:
Introduction about our country and our beginning story. How and why we fought for our freedom. Brief introduction to our nation's symbols. I read a book that has beautiful pictures of America. We listen to America the Beautiful and watch a clip on YouTube.

1-2 Days:
FLAG: Meanings and purpose
The students use prepared construction paper to create the USA flag.
The story about how the Star Spangled Banner song was written.
We listen to the Star Spangled Banner.

The next day, the students learn about the Pledge of Allegiance in simple terms.
We fill in the blanks for the "easier" words.

How to: Make a Graham Cracker Flag
Students write how to make a flag with a graham cracker. (I guide this one)
I used this as a shared writing activity with my small groups. They helped spell words and they spelled words on their own. 
(This was an idea from a co-worker)



1 Day:
Eagle

2 Days:
Statue of Liberty: Story of her as our gift from France.

Happy 125th birthday, Statue of Liberty

Mold Statue of Liberty. 
Students were given some fantastic playdough (that will dry well), but you can use molding clay. Using pictures of the Statue of Liberty, the students were to mold their own statue. Then they learn about the coloring of the Statue from the science experiment - to finish they paint their Statue of Liberty!

What happened to the color of the Statue of Liberty
Penny/Statue of Liberty Science Experiment
Paint students' Statue of Liberty a light shade of green

Liberty Bell:
The Liberty Bell Video

Presidents:
Abraham Lincoln: 
Biography of Abe book (for younger kids)
Abraham Portrait & sentence blanks (info about Abe) - Shared Reading and writing
His hair was created with torn up brown construction pieces.
(I'll get a picture next time!)


George Washington:
Video Biography
George Portrait & sentence blanks (info about George) - Shared Reading and writing
His hair was done with a mix of glue and paint to give some 3D feel to it. (need more glue next time)

Class Letter from Teacher

I do love this idea. I write my Kinder students a letter on the white board. I then ask students t raise their hands if they can help read a word. The kids take turns reading 1 word found in the story, I underline the words they say. I usually call on my lower readers to get those sight words first in the letter.  (Depends on dynamics of my letter.)  We look back over the words they couldn't figure out. We sound out the ones that can be and the ones they can't, I tell them or we use context clues to guss. We practice reading those tough words once or twice. As a class, we read the letter twice.

I love that I can do lots of positive reinforcing with this activity and practice fluency and sounding out.

On the days I should have written a letter, but forgot, I make it a shared writing. They are to help "remind me" how to format the letter. They tell me how to start the letter (Dear _____,) and end (Love, )

Student Compliment Notes

I ask a student to go into another K class and help that teacher with something.  The other teacher also sends a student into my class to help me with something. During this time (which we do the first 15 minutes of class), we (the class) writes a Compliment Note together.

I use my doc camera to display the writing page. The students raise their hands and give a compliment (says something nice) about that person. The class is asked to help me spell words by using our word wall. If the sight word is not up there, then I direct them in how to spell something out. They tell me what they think and I write it.

Example:   sweet was originally spelled s-w-e-t; However, after teaching them the long /e/ and the /ee/, my students now spell s-w-e-e-t without any help from me.

Example: I allowed my students to spell cute like:  c-o-o-t because we had learned of the /oo/ sounds. After writing it so often, I have showed them the proper way and added it to our word wall. This way they could start spelling it correctly using the word wall!

My students have caught on to the fact that leaving the room means they get written about, so I hold the letters till Friday and by that time they had forgotten about their letter. When it is time to do our shared reading, I ask the student the letter is about to stand up and we (as a class) read the letter to that student. They get to take the letter home and read it all by themselves.

Friday is a great time to point out the punctuation, capitals, and spaces between words. I have really grown to love this activity. I will be starting this WAY earlier next year. I won't do this every day, but 2-3 times a week.

 Our 2nd letter will be even more detailed!  I will ask student writers to write the sentences and do their best spelling (asking the class for help when they want).  I think this will be FANTASTIC practice.

Calendar Challenge

In our Kindergarten, the kids should learn the days of the week. Doing calendar every day will help this. After regular calendar, we sing the Days of the Week song. About half way through the year, we add to that song and sing the months of the year song. Something I should have started early is our Calendar Challenge. My students look forward to it. Probably because I give them my "questioning" look and I say: "Are you ready for your calendar challenge?" (Of course, I add in a couple eye brow raises.)

Calendar Challenge: I ask them to point to where we find the month, show me 1 day on the calendar, and show me a full week on the calendar. I will also ask how many days are in a week. Plus, I ask the student to point to today and then slide their finger up to find what day of the week it is. We look at the word and try to figure it out based on the first few letters.  Now that my Kinder Kids are getting these concepts, I will be adding to our challenge questions such as what day is before or after. I will also ask how many Mondays we've had in the month. Find the first day of the month, what day did the month start on.

I definitely ask the same basic questions to all my students, but those that can handle more or need of a challenge rather than a review are given one according to how I feel they will still feel successful.