Spiders, Veteran's Day, and Kindness

We started off with a graph on how we felt about spiders.  What Would You Say If You Saw A Spider?  Well, to my surprise, most of my littles said they would say, "Cool."  All I can think is EEEEEK! It's a creepy crawly.

After we graphed, we analyzed the data.  I have yet to take a picture, because I do not have them hanging in the hallway yet.  We are going to make paper plate spiders, but with the way our week was last week, we didn't get to finish.

We have been reading many non fiction spider books, and boy do my kids like learning about spiders!

I do centers in the afternoon, because we just do not have time in the morning.  Some of my kiddos are full day while some of them are half day.  There are certain things I MUST get done in the morning, so centers is something my kiddos look forward to in the afternoon.  This week our centers were all spider themed.

Mixed Up Spiders

The kids get a half sheet with spiders holding equations.  They solve the problems and glue them to the web that has the correct sum.

Spider's Tiny Words

Using a magnifying glass, students find all the sight words that are teeny tiny on the spider.  All the words are numbered, and they write the word on the recording sheet next to the correct number.

Spider Write the Room

I hung spiders all around the room and each have a different pattern.  The kids search the room with their clipboard and write them all down.  They LOVE this center and I enjoy trying to find different places to put them.  

Spider Words

Each colorful spider has a picture of a CVC word.  The kids color the spider, and then write the sounds they hear in the words.

Sounding out CVC words with me.  A game I created and instead of using cubes as the markers, we used colored spider rings.  My kinders could not WAIT to be in my group.  I love that it is the simple things in life that makes them so happy.

I LOVED Cara Carroll's Web Of Rhymes, and created my own from a "web" I created last year for our graph.  I used the pictures I found here and here.  Thanks Google for making it so easy! :)

Since we played this rhyming game, my kiddos have been asking to play it again and again. I'm sure we will play it this coming week, because who am I to argue kids who want to practice learning!

We also did a ten frame "game" in the ten frame I taped to the floor.  One child rolls the dice, then that many kids get in the ten frame.  We have them sit down and see how many more kids were needed to make a combination of ten.  We recorded our results on a page, but I cannot remember where I found it. When I find it, I will link it.

I created this ten frame one day while the kids were having free choice.  "Miss Jameson, is that a race car track?" haha no kiddos it is not, but they were excited once it was done being taped.

We have been working on various word families, and this past week we were working on the "-an" family.  What better way then to write on our desks!  My kiddos were so excited and bamboozled when I said, "Write the word _____ on your desk."  After we wrote many "-an" words we switched markers and practiced writing sight words.

I have been working with four other teachers at my school to put together a Veteran's Day Assembly, that turned out amazing.  We had the color guard present the colors, and many family members of our students who have served or are serving in our military were present.  We had a very touching slideshow including the kids in our K-8 school with signs etc saying, "Thank You," in so many various ways.  The kids also sang a very sweet song found here. (This is not our song or our kiddos, but where we found the song).  We then had a light continental breakfast for our heroes.  I am so proud at how the kids behaved with our honored guests and think they got the meaning of why we have a day off tomorrow.  My heart swelled with pride for them and with thanks for all our Veteran's and those serving to keep us free.

I found these shoes to FINALLY be on sale.  I had been eying them for months at Target and was excited when they went on sale.  They were perfect for our assembly, and will get so much more wear from this patriotic girl.

In addition to our Veteran's Day Assembly, we had an assembly on Thursday (the day before) to kick off our Kind Kids program at our school.  You can learn about it here, and we have participated in it for many years.  It is a powerful thing, kindness, and I'm glad we make such an effort with our kids to be kind and recognize kindness in others.  You can learn all about Ben's Bells here, which started the whole kindness program.  I actually found a Ben's Bell a few years ago...the day I was pink slipped.  It reminded me that everything would be ok, and the right thing would come along.  It sure did, and now my bell hangs in my classroom.

(feel free to ignore all the other stuff on the wall. :)  It thankfully isn't that cluttered anymore.)

Last year, we decorated our doors in school to be drug free and something with voting.  Last year our door looked like arms reaching out for hugs and said, "We Vote to Give Hugs, Not Do Drugs." [hopefully I can find a picture of this*update... FOUND! yay!*]. 

This year our door is focused on kindness.  I just have one last touch the kids and I need to add.  I am going to have the kids write a kind act on a hook to have sticking out of our fishies' mouths.

Went to a beautiful wedding this weekend for a couple friends and one more day off this weekend, life is good!

A Little Behind

I have gotten a little behind on blogging.  It started with catching whatever many of my littles had. Thankfully, I am feeling SO much better.  We had a busy week that week, with Halloween and the excitement of kinders that goes with it.  Halloween was a whirlwind, but so much fun!  I had some mom helpers come in and help run centers.  We had some game centers, then our snack, then some crafty centers.  Next year I will shorten the game times, and extend the craft times to make it feel less chaotic for me.  Here is some of what we did.

Ghostly Bowling - We had water bottles that looked like ghosts and used a jack-o-latern playground ball to bowl.  One of my teammates let us borrow her set and the kids had a ball!

We played another game suggested by my teammate called "Witch's Brew."  You have confetti pieces (or you can cut out Halloween like shapes and give each kid a straw and bowl.  The pieces are all over the table.  The kids suck each piece up and get it in their bowl, to make their brew.  When time is up, they count how many pieces they got.

We played a version of "Clear the Board" using M & M's.  Who doesn't like chocolate before 9 a.m.? Original idea found here.  There are a whole bunch of other math games found here too.  I use quite a few of them in my classroom.

The next game we played was from a different teammate.  I called the game Candy Scoop.  Each player gets a spoon and two bowls.  One bowl has candy corn in it and the other bowl is empty.  The kids scoop as much candy from one bowl to the other in the amount of time you give them.  Then they count how many pieces they got. You can play multiple rounds and change the rules; i.e. using the other hand.

We measured different sizes of bats with candy corn using Jessica Boldridge's Bat Measurement Activity.  You can find it here for free.

Our fun snack, I have now done two years in a row.  It was inspired by an idea I saw on Pinterest that used pudding.  The link no longer exists :/.  I choose to do jello, because I love how bright and vivid the green is.

 
For our craft centers we had the Cauldron Kitchen (we made a few tasty treats), we had a painting center, a Frankenstein craft, candy corn craft and mummy craft. 

The kids painted stripes on a half sheet of paper, and a mom helper painted and stamped their feet for a handprint calendar we do for the families for Christmas.  When the kids were done painting they did some Halloween puzzles I found at Target in the dollar section a year or two ago.

In the recipe center kids made these sweet treats:

Snack idea from here, and here.

Frankenstein Craft similar to this one.

Candy Corn Craft similar this one.

Mummy craft similar to this one.

The crafts were all inspired by the links above.  Some of ours look the same some, are altered a bit.  Either way the kids had a blast.  I had the kids decorate a paper with their names and witch's legs to use to put all their crafts as we did them.  Here is what our floor looked like in the midst of it.

The day after Halloween my kids were pretty mellow and had a fabulous day of listening. It made for a very happy teacher who was worn out from being sick and all the excitement through the week.  I had the kids write about what they did for Halloween.  Here are some examples of their writing.

Early in the week, we finished up our bat study by labeling a bit bat and writing facts we have learned.  The kids were in groups of 3 and I was so proud of them.  One of my kiddos said something about this being really fun!

The kids just eat up all the facts about bats, and everything really.  Next stop... spiders!