Winding Down and Getting All Wound Up!

         The last few weeks have been......interesting. State testing began a week and half ago and our schedules have been altered quite a bit. So we've been going with the flow and doing lots of spur of the moment activites (a few have been planned) particularly in the AM class which has been most impacted by the schedule change. 
        
We danced for indoor recess.....

We played "Guess, Guess" after reading a short story by the same name on starfall.com. The students spotted something in the room and wrote 4 clues about it in their journals. They read the clues to their classmates who then got a chance to guess the item. 

On Thursday we did a hallway hunt for words with r-controlled vowel sounds, and irregular vowel sounds, such as -oo and -ow.



On Friday we sorted the sight words using hula hoops. The students worked in pairs and had to isolate the vowel sound in each word (rather than just identify the vowel letter) and sort them accordingly. This means, they had to put the word "the" in the short 'u' hoop and the word "eight" in the long 'a' hoop. So, clearly this required some serious concentration and critical thinking. They did SO well with this.  Here's the PM class in action.

Let's see..... We also had cupcakes...

and dug up worms....

and got pretty silly in general. Hey, it's the end of the year.

 

          We have kept centers going, but this was the final week of them. The students played games they were familiar with.  And, instead of phonics worksheets during reading groups, we worked on our end-of-kindergarten journals. These are special keepsakes the students have worked very hard on; writing about their memories from center time, working on the Smartboard, making art projects, fun parties, and playing at recess. Each journal cover is in full color and has a sweet photo of your child on it. Here's my daughter, Harper's, so you can get an idea of what to expect.

    Precious, right?

 

        Next week will be wonky too. On Monday we will be wrapping up the special journals and will begin all the final testing for the report cards.  The main assessment will be the DRA - finding each child's reading level. This takes a loooooonnnng time. Students will be pulled out one at a time to read for me.  In the meantime, the students in the classroom will be making a craft to adorn our hallway with one last time. On it, they will be telling the upcoming kindergarteners what they can expect to love about our class.  They will also be watching a movie on Tuesday while the DRA tests are going on.  Wednesday is Field Day - pray for no rain! Thursday- more reading tests and some fun activities. And then Friday is our Celebration Program at 9:30 and 1:00.  If it rains on field day and it gets postponed to Friday, our program times will change to 8:00 and 11:15.

         There is so much to prepare for next week, and I can't wait for you to see all that your child has been working on.  I will see you on Friday!