What We've Been Up To In Kindergarten

I know, I know... I said I was going to start posting more, and so naturally I stopped posting for over a month. And really I have no excuse at all, because (in case you aren't from the south and/or you live under a very large rock) I have had a total of 7 days off from student teaching this semester due to some unnaturally cold winter weather. The first round of weather struck everyone as a surprise, meaning that everyone rushed to the nearest interstate and tried to get home as quickly as possible, which resulted in lots of accidents all at once, roads blocked off for days, and people walking home and abandoning their cars.

By some miracle (if you can call it that), I ended up being sick with bronchitis the first day that all of the snow decided to fall in Alabama, so instead of being 40 minutes away in Hoover, which would have resulted in me having to stay overnight at the school or attempt to drive home and having to sleep in my car, I was 10 minutes away at the doctor's office. But that still meant being stuck for two and a half hours looking at that Red Diamond truck and literally not moving an inch. I finally resolved to driving on the shoulder and slowly weaving through a mile of parked trucks in order to make it the last mile and a half home because I was running out of gas, and I was not about to walk a mile and a half in the snow while being miserably sick with bronchitis. I have to say, my little Fiat fared pretty well in all of the snow!

Over the next four days, I didn't leave my house once, except to take Khaleesi outside so she could enjoy her first snow ever! Little did we know that in just about a week and a half she would get to enjoy it all over again.

But now the snow is all melted, and I have a little over two months left in my student teaching semester. Since I got almost two weeks off, I feel like I haven't really done much. In about another week I will have to shift to full-time teaching in the classroom, despite the fact there hasn't been much build-up to it, but I'm excited to start, and I'm ready for it. So, here are some of the few things that I have been able to do this semester so far.

We started a fairy tale unit when I first arrived, so I was able to contribute to that. The end of the unit assessment was their creation of their own fairy tales, including a good character, a bad character, something the protagonist wanted, a problem posed by the villain, and something magical to help them reach their "happily ever after". So, in each of the fairy tales we read, we discussed some of those main elements of their fairy tales. Since all of the snow has limited us so much, their fairy tales aren't quite finished yet, but we did do some other things. We read some different fairy tales, including Cinderella, and their writing extension was to finish the sentence, "If I had a fairy godmother, I would..." Their responses were fabulous!

 

After reading Cinderella, we discussed how many of the fairy tales we know and love here where we live are much different in other cultures around the world. We talked about how there is a different version of Cinderella told in every culture around the world, and we read The Rough-Face Girl by Rafe Martin. Afterward, we filled in a Venn diagram together to point out some of the differences and similarities between the two stories.

 

 When we read Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, we created a character web to describe the good character and the bad character, which helped to kick-start their thinking for when they were creating their own good characters and bad characters.

For math, I helped finish up the shapes unit by talking about 3D shapes and comparing them to 2D shapes. We started by relating some of the shapes to some things we saw in school by going on a 3D shapes hunt around the school. We also created a poster to help us remember some of the characteristics of 3D shapes, such as how many faces and corners they had, we tested to see which shapes could roll and slide down a ramp, and we also tested to see which ones could stack on top of other shapes.

 

Valentine's Day was a pretty crazy day because we had been out for three days, and it was on a Friday, and there was so much already planned for that day that we really didn't get to do very much. The math activity I had planned will probably be done on Tuesday because it really fits in with the unit they're starting next, but we were able to do about 10 minutes of math before lunch as a class by doing a vote on what kind of chocolate was everyone's favorite. We talked about which one the most number of friends liked, and which one the least number of friends liked, and about how we could tell that just by looking at the graph.

I was also pleasantly surprised at the amount of treats I got from students that day! I spent all day feeling like a walking, talking piñata. 

I have also been working with a small group to give them some additional support in high-frequency/sight words, reading strategies, and letter/sound identification. I haven't been able to do a ton with them in the past couple of weeks, but I have been able to play a few games with them and do some work with word families and CVC words. 

 

I can't remember if I mentioned this in a previous post, but I was hired by the school I'm student teaching in to be the "permanent sub" for the kindergarten and first grade extended day classroom, which means I am at the school every day from 7:00 am until 6:00 pm. It's rough, but I'm loving the experience and the children are so sweet. They needed a little bit of structure in the classroom because for several weeks they had a different sub every day, so I decided to implement Rick Morris' clip chart for promoting positive behavior. Many of the teachers at the school use it, and I have found it to be pretty effective. They are able to not only move down for making bad choices, but also to move up for making good choices and improving their behavior throughout the day. I decided to make mine be a superhero chart, obviously. :)

That's really about all I've been up to lately! Not much on the wedding front since I've been so busy with school, but I do have an appointment with the fabulous Madeline Beavers to discuss wedding hair next Saturday, and my appointment for cake tasting is during spring break, and my mouth is watering just thinking about it!

I do have a few recipes to share, so be on the look out for that! That was one benefit from being at home for so long. Cabin fever leads to baking! 

Happy teaching!

Andrea