Kacsko's Kiddos: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

A lot of times when I'm deciding on a title for my post, song titles and movie titles come to mind. I just couldn't resist this one. It was right on! Kindergarten is an exciting and a little bit of a scary place to be, especially for students who didnt attend preschool or go to daycare prior to coming. So we've been adjusting to the new year with lots of games and some getting-to-know-you activities that have helped to get us settled in. On the first day, we read the story "The Kissing Hand," by Audrey Penn. It is about a little raccoon who is anxious about his first day of school but finds security in his mother's kiss.

After that, the students thought and drew a picture about how they felt.

For the first three days of school, we "practiced" center time in small groups of four or five. The students rotated around the tables, each one featuring a different activity. I selected games that we would be doing sometime during the next three weeks of centers so they could get familiar with them. We talked about how to take turns, share, and play fairly.

We learned more about sharing and taking turns when we read "Have You Filled a Bucket Today?" by Carol McCloud. The book teaches that everyone has an invisible bucket that holds their good thoughts and good feelings about themselves. When we are kind to others, we fill up their buckets. When others are kind to us, our buckets are filled. And when we are mean, we dip into others' buckets. Yes, it's pretty corny for us grown-ups but it is a great illustration for the kiddos. We made our first anchor chart on what actions fill up buckets and what actions dip into buckets. I would pull a sentence strip out of a bucket and read the behavior, then the students had to decide where it belonged on the chart.

As we began this week, we continued the theme of treating others kindly and acknowledged how, though we are all unique, we need to work as a team. The book, "The Crayon Box that Talked" by Shane Derolf, helped to reinforce that idea. That led us seamlessly into talking about our favorite colors and we made our first graph.

Not surprisingly, our favorite color was red. I'm sure that had nothing to do with the fact that it was red week and we'd been wearing it,

singing about it,

writing about it,

and reading about it all week!

Whether they chose red as their favorite color or not, they all got to tell about their favorite color in their journals this week. We worked on ordering the words "I like red." as a whole class. I would mix the word cards around and they had to put them back in order again. Once I felt they were ready, they got to order the words to make a sentence about their favorite color all by themselves. And then they used that crayon to make a picture.

The students got to do REAL centers this week. That means they go to their reading group once each day (Monday-Thursday), This week we read a few books and did our phonics worsksheets on letters Aa and Bb.

We also practiced forming lowercase 'a' and 'b'. I focus on the lowercase more since those are the letters they write more often. As I discussed in the orientation, I also emphasize the letters' sounds over their names. So if you notice your child calling them by their sounds - that's a good thing. It will make them more efficient writers and readers.

Here is a video of a way that you can practice letter formation at home.

If you are on a mobile device you may not be able to see this video. Basically, I demonstrate the proper way to write the letter with a dry erase marker, then they erase it with their finger using the same form. After erasing it 2-3 times, I let them write it themselves a few times.

By the way, I made a little chant to go along with a great picture cue that you can find in many forms on the internet for writing lowercase b.

A bat and a ball

and ve-ry tall

I make my 'b'

with a bat, THEN a ball.

I knew they needed more than the picture cue or what's to stop them from making the ball first, ya know? So having them saying this rhyme, forces them to make the bat first. I have never seen the accuracy that I saw this week when they were writing their bs! We will be using that one from now on!

Along with a reading group, the students also go to two independent centers each day (Monday-Thursday). This week, they matched the letter cookies to the cookie pan.

They rolled the dice and put cookies on their plates in the Math Games center.

They played on an awesomely funny (and free) app called "Endless Alphabet" on the iPad.

They used shapes to build numbers in the number work center.

They read books under the big leaf in the "Read to a Buddy" center.

They built with foam blocks.

Put puzzles together.

And practiced writing the letters of the week in the writing center.

After centers is when we have whole group math time. During this time we do our calendar and play math games on the SmartBoard, like this one from pbskids.org

I also use the SmartBoard to demonstrate how to do the math worksheet. We do it together at the carpet, then they go to their tables and work alone.

After this week, it has actually gotten much quieter, but we are only going to get closer as the year moves on. I am so glad to be their teacher. There is a world of fun and learning in store for us! Enjoy your weekend and remember to wear BLUE on Monday. I'll leave you with a few miscellaneous but adorable pics from our first eight days in kindergarten.