WhErE hAvE wE bEeN?!?!?!??!!

First of all, let me start by saying that I am terribly sorry about not keeping our blog as updated as I would like. The problem with a to do list is if you keep adding more to it, you can never accomplish everything and it can be quite overwhelming at times. So we will start fresh. Thank you to all the wonderful parents today that so kindly asked, adding no pressure whatsoever, if there would be pictures from the current 2011-2012 school year. I am truly blessed! Here is some information as to what we have been working on and learning the past few weeks:

• Classroom routines, procedures and rules.



• Chester Racoon from the Kissing Hand played a little trick on us and led us on a scavenger hunt throughout the building.



• We have been working on how to correctly hold a pencil/crayon/marker. (Just ask your child. There is a great little song for them to sing to you!)



• Writing our name.



• Learning about our lesson maps. (More on this amazing learning to come!)



• We have met 4 alphafriends and many "heart" words.



• Learned how to take care of our FROG folders.



• Played apple math games and are now playing Bat/Pumpkin math games counting up to 12.



• Found out patterns are fun!



• Practiced how our calendar works and the days of the week.



• Learned poems about a penny, a nickle and a dime and what each coin looks like and it's value.



• Met new friends and how to treat our "classroom family".


• Went on two successful field trips to the best pumpkin patch ever, Linder Farms!

Plus so much more! You can't imagine all we have done in the short amount of time we have been together. Thank you so much for having such amazing kids! The year is off to a terrific start and this teacher just couldn't be happier! Take a peek at some of a few pics from our first 17 days.

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A sPeCiAl SnEaK pEeK!!!

I am so very glad that you will be coming to school ready to work and learn with me! I just can't wait! I hope you are as excited as I am!!
Here are some upcoming important dates for you to remember.

What: Kindergarten Sneak Peek

When: A Group: August 23, 2011

B Group: August 24, 2011

Time: 8:10-9:30 am (Both sessions.)

Who: All kindergarten super stars and their parents.

What to Bring: Please bring your supplies with you to make the first day of school a little bit easier!

I can't wait to meet you! See you soon.

A Wedding? In Kindergarten...............

ChRiStMaS wIsHeS.....

Ever wonder what a Kindergarten Kid would like for Christmas? Well, I did! So I took a minute to ask! Enjoy! Hopefully Santa is watching.......

Callie Cat, Christmas, Candy and Cake!

Bet you couldn't guess what letter/alphafriend we are meeting this week?!?!?! The letter C and Callie Cat is the perfect alphafriend to help us with that!!! Even though Callie is an amazing cat that can cook (Sure wish she could teach me!), the best part about learning the letter C is that our favorite holiday begins with it, CHRISTMAS!! Oh Boy!!!
In Kindergarten, this is the best time of year!
It is so much fun to watch the kids get excited about the holidays! We even have a Christmas tree in our reading center for us to sit by and read! There are even some lights up and we will start Christmas projects to help our room look more festive! Come in sometime and see! Maybe we can talk you into staying a while and helping us out! We would love to have you!!! We will even write letters to Santa himself! Wahoo! Christmas is just the best!

In the meantime, have fun looking for all the words that begin with the letter C. Be careful, as we have been learning.....it is a tricky letter. It can sometimes be confused with the letter K!

M is for Mouse (Mimi Mouse that is!)

We have met another alphafriend! Mimi Mouse!

Mimi Mouse, Mimi Mouse,
Minds her Manners in the house.
When she sips her Milk
She never Makes a Mess!
Mud pies never stain her dress!

We not only learned the letter M and the sound the letter makes, we got to shove Marshmallows in our Mouths and see if we could sing the song. If that wasn't crazy enough, we had some good old fashion fun playing in the Mud!

Maybe Mrs. Ryan has lost her Marbles!!!

We were not as good as Mimi though. There were a few of us that might have stained our "dress"!

Thanks Moms and Dads for being such great sports! We had a great time!!!

A HuGe SHOUT oUt.......

Our week has been full of meeting our new alphafriend, learning classroom routines/workshop time and how to be at school, learning our first "Heart" word AND we even had the extra special treat of working with 5th graders AND playing with snakes!

Yes, I said snakes but 1st things first, the 5th graders!

Mrs. Dobson's 5th grade class had an assignment to create a letter book and they were kind enough to come down to our room and share them with us! The alphabet books turned out fabulous and getting the chance to work with brothers, sisters or the "BIG" kids made our afternoon perfect! The best part was finding out that not only did they get to show us their books, they also are going to give them to us to keep in our room! Thank you Mr. Dobson and 5th Graders! You are all amazing and we LOVED having you!!! Hopefully you will get to come and work with us again!!

Now on to those snakes! In our newsletter, I asked you (the parents) to send in old ties that dads might not miss for a project. Well we didn't receive enough for each student but we did have one family donate 25 snakes for our classroom. Thank you Mrs. H!! You are the bestest ever!! Anyways, we didn't have enough for us to make the snakes but my mom so graciously made the 25 ties into "classroom" set of snakes for us to dance and sing with ! Thanks Mom!! We are so appreciative and LOVED playing with them! I couldn't think of a better way to make the /s/ sound with than with an actual little snake that we could hold! Fun, fun times in Kindergarten!

The kids met our very first alphafriend this week!! The best part of learning to read is meeting our alphafriends throughout the year and the songs that go along with them! As silly as these songs are, the kids LOVE them!!! These catchy little tunes tend to get stuck in your head and will never leave and that is the goal! If you can remember Sammy, you can remember the sound that the letter S makes!! Let's get ready to read Kindergarten! Yipee!!! For all of you parents that would like to sing along....

Sammy Seal will sail the sea
When summer is the season.
Sammy Seal will sail the sea
And never need a reason!
Sammy Seal will sail the sea
In very sunny weather.
Sammy Seal salutes a seagull
As they sail together!!!

...and Kindergarten begins!!!

....we have been having fun in Kindergarten our first 2 weeks together! Hopefully you all feel the same way too! Take a minute and enjoy some of the pictures of some of the things we did!

Welcome to Kindergarten!

It was great seeing those of you that came to our Kindergarten Sneak Peek! Thank you for coming! Hopefully, it was a chance for you and your child to see our classroom, meet some friends and/or get some of your questions answered!

I know I enjoyed meeting each and everyone of you! This year is going to be awesome! Thank you for the opportunity to work with your child! I am quite honored and will do whatever I can to help this be one of the best school experiences your child will have!!!

See you on Monday/Tuesday!!! I can't wait!!!

Please check back here often for photos of our school day and other special Kindergarten memories!

AnD wE aLl LiVeD hApPiLy EvEr AfTer......

Our last final days of school, we had the first ever "Kindergarten Fairy Tale Ball". Can I just say, that it was nothing short of magical? I have never had so much fun and cannot think of a better way to end our year together!
After learning to read, we dived right in and started putting our skills to the test! We started reading the Three Little Pigs. We learned about sequencing, story retelling, characters and setting. After that, we went crazy with as many Fairy Tales as we could, Jack In The Beanstalk, Cinderella, The Little Red Hen, The Three Little Bears and many more.
Not only was sharing old-time favorites with my students fun, seeing them reading and actually becoming independent, creative and owning their own work was amazing for me as a teacher! The whole month was perfect! So to top it all off, we (Kindergarten Teachers) decided the best way to celebrate was to have a ball.
The whole day was centered around Fairy Tales. We played games like "Snow White and the Poisoned Apple" and "Sleeping Beauty and the Musical Mats". We had Fairy Tale Centers: (A HUGE shout out to the parents that came in and helped! You are amazing and worth more than gold!) 1)We wished on a star. 2) A Magical Mystery Drawing. 3) Created Fine China! 4) We made wands!
We also had lunch in our classroom on our Fairy Tale Placemats that we created with us! (Can I say that your children did an awesome job? I do hope you will treasure them as I did!!!) Then we taught the other Kindergarten classes a Little Pig song and they taught us one of theirs. (Thanks Mr. "A"! Your song was perfect!!!
Then the day was topped off by an actual dance, yes, I said dance or "Ball". Here are a few of our pictures from our "magical" day! And yes, I can say that I think we will live happily ever after.
The End

Luck'O The Irish To Ya...... or us!!

Last week, something started happening in Kindergarten! There were chairs turned over and on tables, coloring on the tables, toys left out and taken everywhere and to be quite honest a HUGE MESS. Math games were strung throughout the room and there was even glue on our "must dos", not to mention rainbow drawings and shamrocks drawn in odd places!
Can you believe it? Rumor has it that some crazy leprechauns came into our school and tried to learn but have not been taught how to behave and/or take care of our things. We did try to leave them a letter (making sure to be specific) telling them that we don't mind them coming but there are rules in our room and they are going to have to make sure and follow them. We didn't like cleaning up after them (Just like Mrs. Ryan keeps telling us about her having to pick up after us!!)
Of course, those tricky leprechauns left all kinds of "clues" for us to analyze and help us learn about the actual holiday (St. Patrick's Day) but not really enough figure it all out and how to make it stop. The best plan that we could come up with was to build traps! So, that is exactly what we did! Take a peek at some of the traps we built! Every student had great stories on how they would lure the leprechaun in and what would have to take place in order to catch them! Take a look and see traps, a glimpse of the messes and some very interesting clues!!!

Introducing Mr. Logan

I would like to introduce you to our new exciting helper! His name is Mr. Logan Thomas (We like to call him Mr. Logan) and he is a Sophomore from Kuna High School. We are definitely lucky to have him and his enthusiasm and willingness to help out!!! The kids LOVE him already and in a matter of just a few days, I have become quite dependant on him and his help! We are blessed with this wonderful opportunity solely because he chose to volunteer! Mr. Logan finished a Health class early and so he asked if he could come and spend his free period with us! Of course the answer was quickly yes!!! Aren't we lucky?!??! On "b" days, (Sorry, I am of no help here! It is a High School thing!!!It is a crazy schedule like our M-W and T-Th thing. He will be coming every other day.) Logan will join us to help work with small groups, play math games, do testing and whatever else we can think of!
Here are a few things that we have learned about Mr. Logan and thought you would like to know:
**Birthday: August 26, 1994
**Favorite Sport: Baseball
**Favorite Team: LA Dodgers
**Favorite Player: Dustin Pedroia (Red Sox)
**How Long Playing Baseball: 11 years!
**Favorite Baseball Position: Pitcher
**Favorite Subject: Math and PE (In fact, he LOVES PE so much he is currently taking 3 different PE classes! WOW!!!!)
**Career Choice: Become an MLB baseball player (That was an easy one!)
**Dream College: Texas (What!??!?!? No worries, we will sway him to the blue and orange side. However, who could frown upon those Longhorns! Even with their current championship loss!)
**Reasons for Coming to our Classroom: "I enjoy working with kids and thought this would be a good experience!"
**Favorite Teacher: Mrs. Jenkins in 3rd Grade
Welcome Mr. Logan! I am so very excited to have the opportunity to work with you! As are the kids! Thank you for being a positive influence on our Kindergartners and helping them be successful this year! Your help is not unnoticed and/or unappreciated!

HAPPY NEW YEAR and WELCOME BACK!!!!

Welcome Back!!! Did you have a great break? Did you enjoy your time with your family and friends? I sure did! It actually went by rather quickly but I have to admit right after our New Year festivities....my thoughts returned to our classroom and missing my Kindergartners!!!! It sounds like Santa was VERY kind to many of you from DS's, puppies, new clothes and toys! WOW!!!

We spent some time on Monday/Tuesday talking about the New Year (2010) and learning a HUGE word, resolution. We brainstormed what could be some of their resolutions and I thought it would be fun to share them with you. (No worries, we practiced and the REAL cute ones are only in my teacher's journal!!!)

Happy New Year!!!
(Just a quick little poke...Boise State sure did an amazing job this year and ending the season with winning a BCS bowl game! Oh yea! Great Job Boise State!! We, (Well, most of us!) were cheering loudly for you!!! 14-0...WHAT A SEASON! Go Broncos!!!!

A tRiP oN tHe PoLaR eXpReSs!!!!!

What an amazing time!!! The trip on the Polar Express was a perfect way to end our week of learning the letter Pp. It was a fun filled day with a train ride (for pretend!), cocoa and marshmallows (Yummy juice for "D" who is allergic to milk!), The Polar Express story, great practice sewing and learning to tie-(keep helping us so we can tie our own shoes!) on a candy cane, then a train ride back to school! Then, guess what?!!?!??! When we were getting our FISH folders and coats and backpacks, we received a package from the Santa Claus!!! Mr. Silzly and Mrs. Biery brought it to us right when it arrived to school! Inside, there were bells that were still cold just like the North Pole! The best part was that everyone single one of us could hear the bells-meaning we believe!!!!
I know I enjoyed the day and LOVED seeing my students faces and their excitement! Once again, I am in awe watching my students learn and enjoy life! What truly wonderful days. I love my job!!! Your children are perfect and so much fun! I hope you enjoy a few of the pictures of our day(s)!

Special Guests!!!

Last week, we were given a very special treat! A few of my former students, now First Graders, came and read to us a play!! It was a silly play about Santa in a parade with just his underwear on and they did an amazing job!!! We laughed like crazy through the whole thing!! I was so proud of how well they are reading and the Kindergartners were mesmerized by the "big" kids and what they were going to be doing when they move on. (Sniff, sniff!)
Thanks BIG First Graders/Mrs. Brookes! Thank you for thinking of us and coming in to read to us! You made our day! You are nothing short of amazing!!! We can't wait to be just like you!!!

Pajama Day in Kindergarten!

Just a reminder that tomorrow and Thursday is pajama day in Kindergarten! It is sooo cold, so you will need to make sure that your child has nice warm ones on. They can bring slippers to change into when we are at school.

Our morning will stay the same but we will get on the Polar Express (It is okay. It is just a pretend train but still LOTS of fun!!) to leave for the North Pole around 12:00!!! Yipee!! Oh what fun.......

Oh yea, no worries! We will be back to school around 2:35 so you can pick us up!!!!

OuR cHrIsTmAs WiShEs!!!

Christmas in Kindergarten is the best time of year! It is an amazing time of excitement and full of wonder and wishes! We hope you will enjoy reading our Christmas wishes for this year!!!

Hopefully you have heard by now that we had our annual Kindergarten Feast last week before the break! Well, not "just" a feast. A feast with little Pilgrims and Native Americans and LOTS of food! What could be better in a 5 year old's life than to end a unit on the First Thanksgiving with friends,food and fun centerst!!
Thanks to all the wonderful parent support and all of the items that were donated to make our feast a success! We spent the first part of the day practicing our letters, the sounds each letter makes and reading together. Then we kicked off the celebration by combining our classes for the big Feast. We played the part of the Pilgrims this year and I must say that we were the best Pilgrims ever!
After our bellies were full with WAY to much food, we spent the afternoon doing "special" centers like making a sweet little turkey made out of our own little hands, (Enjoy them! They will only stay that small for a little while!) we made bracelets with beads to help us remember the first Thanksgiving story, (Just ask us, we would be more than glad to share!) we played some addition turkey bingo,(Shhh, we know it is First grade math but noone knows! Oh and Yes, Mrs. Ryan is so proud of us!) and we even made a turkey out of an apple to take home for a centerpiece. We were busy!!! A great way to end the week and get ready for our own family feasts at home!

I hope you enjoyed your time with your child over the Thanksgiving Break! I sure enjoy my time with your child!! Once again, I am thankful for all of you! You and your child make my job look easy and are such a special part of my life! Thank you!! Happy Thanksgiving!!!

a PeEk At LaSt WeEk...

 

In case you were wondering what we were working on last week, here is a little "peek" from some of our activities. We worked hard on the letter Hh and the alphafriend Hattie Horse. To finish the week, Mrs. Ryan always puts something in the sound box to have us guess what might be in it. (We are also learning to ask questions and what the difference is between a question and a story! But we just like it because if we guess what is in the box, we get to keep it!) Of course it started with the /h/ sound! It was a bunch of Horns for us to blow while we sang our new song! (Parents, I do hope you know that I apologized and smiled as I sent them home for you to listen to! No need to say thanks!! :-))
We also talked about Veterans Day and made flag windsocks to fly and show how much we appreciate the men and women that protect and work for our country! It is an honor to be an American and we wanted to take some time out to think about all of our Moms, Dads, Aunts, Uncles and others that help us! So if you are one of them, please accept our very best, "Thank you"!!!
However, the best part of last week was that we started to read! Really read! We know know our very first vowel and we are blending sounds with it to make words! Please help us practice at home! Practice makes us better and we are VERY excited about our new skill! We should know the letters a,b,h,m,n,r,s and t! This means that we can actually read words like hat, cat, man, ham, and tab! Aren't we amazing? We think so!!!
(A MUST share from your teacher: During our workshop time, the kids work on their Must Do's, Next Do's and then may go to choices. Choices are usually "housekeeping", play table, puzzles, etc. My highlight thus far was when four students got together and decided to play "teacher" and did blending, letter sounds and letter identification together at the carpet in a pretend "meeting". What a wonderful moment for me as a teacher! I am so very blessed! They will never know how much that inspired me as I watched them practice! So, "C", "R", "R" and "K", thanks for making my day!! I have these moments every day and sometimes I just want to share! Your kids are amazing!