It has been a great last few weeks! The sun was really shining last week, and temperatures are finally staying in the upper 60's and low 70's. I am so glad that the temperature is finally warm enough for us to comfortably play outside at recess! This week it has been really rainy in East Tennessee, but hopefully, it will wash some of the pollen out of the air. Some of my kiddos have had some AWFUL allergies.
I wanted to start this post with a fun activity that we did this last week. In honor of the letter "U" the kinders wrote about their underwear. It was a giggly assignment (five-year-olds think underwear is HILARIOUS). While it was a really funny assignment, I was in awe of how much their writing has improved since Christmas. I remember how we read the story, Merry Christmas, Splat!, and then I had the students copy one sentence off of the board, and then I had them finish a sentence stem. I probably had 3 students in tears because they said that they couldn't write that much. With this assignment, I had kids writing 4-5 sentences with ease. I can't believe how much they have improved over the last several months!
Anyway, back to the underwear writing! Jill Caldwell (one of the best teachers at SES, and a great kindergarten teacher) gave us this funny assignment! It was so much fun to watch the students enjoy writing, and they were so excited to share their work with the rest of the class. These kids are so creative and funny! Here is one example:
Yes, this underwear writing says, "My underwear gives me the power to fart out rainbows." I am telling you that some of these kids have some incredible imaginations. This assignment was so fun! If you ever get the chance, please do an assignment like this for your own entertainment.
I wanted to share a way that I review sight words before I quiz them each Friday. My kids love to play the game, SPLAT! It is a great way to review sight words, and the kids ask to play it all the time. When I was explaining to the kids that we were going to play games at our Valentine's Day party, they all excitedly asked if we were going to play SPLAT! Kids LOVE this game.
On the activeboard, I have a slide that has nine sight words on it. The kids are put into two teams (I always have a yellow team and a red team). Then one person from each team comes and stands in front of the board (I have a line that they have to stay behind). Each child has a fly-swatter. When each child is standing and ready, I call out a sight word that is on the board. The kids have to swat the correct word. The child that swats the word first earns a point for their team. The players then rotate through each team. I usually go three complete rounds. Here are some pictures of my kiddos playing (sorry some of them were so blurry...they move really fast).
In order to win the game, the students have to have quick recall of their sight words. I find that those who can recall their sight words quickly tend to be more successful readers.
This week, I fulfilled my first cartoon character order. Thanks, Ms. Bowman, for your order! Don't forget to order your cartoon character here!
We only have 27 days left of school!
