Long Ago and Today

Every year Mrs. Williams from our Historical Village comes in to teach us about long ago and today. The kids love it because they can touch and play with all of the "stuff" that she brings in.

She reviews everything then has them do a new and old sort.

Here are some pictures of our lesson about long ago and today.

We used this to wash clothes. 

This is how your mom may have dressed long ago. 

A wooden nail.

A doll made from fabirc scraps. 

This is a cheese box. 

This is a wooden bowl.  Many things were made from wood. 

An old iron. 

A phone that you had to dial. 

Let's sort old and newer items. 

Inclusion Week

The story Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer is perfect for inclusion week.  We discuss how Rudolph was left out because he looked different and how he felt about that.  We talked about playing games and how we should include everyone. Then we made a Rudolph craft to display for the month of December in the hallway with the words Everyone Is Included.  The faces on their Rudolph's are so adorable,-not as plain as my sample.  We also read the story The Littlest Elf.  In the story the other elves were nice to the little elf, but he was too small to do the jobs the other elves did.  In the end the little elf made friends with a little reindeer and they came up with a special job of helping others on their own.  That was another good story for inclusion week.

Backpack Friend For Merry Christmas big Hungry Bear©

Our Thanksgiving mini feast was canceled this year, our school was off due to a power failure.  I know the kiddos were disappointed.  I was able to reschedule our guest speaker from the historical village to come on Dec. 9th.  She has been coming to my classroom for 13 years to teach about long ago and today.  She dresses the part and brings items for the kids to touch (which they always love).  I will post pictures of that later.  When we go back on Monday we will begin December centers and holidays around the world.  I will share pictures of those later too.  We will also be doing many assessments becausse the end of our first semester is right before winter break.  Luckily my daughter is still here for an extended Thanksgiving holiday and is coming in Monday to help check letters, sounds and sight words.

Monday and Tuesday is the TPT Sitewide SALE if you have items on your wish list.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Kindergarten-Couture
Don't forget to use the promo code at checkout.

Here is a picture and a link to my new backpack friend for December.

Some other December products you may be interested in:

Christmas Add or Subtract -FREEBIE

Roll and Color/Cover Shapes for Dec and January

Roll and Color/Roll and Cover Christmas Theme

Read, Write, Count, Stamp, -Santa

I Spy Tiny Sight Words -Christmas Theme

SMARTBoard Holiday Counting

Hanukkah Write The Room 

Libester Award

Thank you to Michaela from K's Classroom Kreations for the Libester Award Nomination.  This nomination is for bloggers with less than 200 followers to get to know and connect with other new bloggers.  To do this you must answer 11 questions that help everyone get to know you better. Then, find 11 other new bloggers to nominate.  
  Now to answer the 11 questions....

1. Why and how long ago did you start blogging?
I have been learning a lot of new things related to technology and wanted to give blogging a try as well. I learned how to use a SMART board about a year and a half ago, started my TPT store in February and recently learned how to create some SMARTboard lessons.  I started my blog mid Oct. of this year and I have a whole lot to learn about blogging.  

2. What one word sums up the heart of your blog and why?
Sharing ideas.  I get a lot of ideas from reading blogs and I can share ideas with others as well. 

3. Is there something you learned late in your blog journey you wished you knew before?   I am very new to blogging so I am afraid I don't have any advice.  I don't know how to do bloghops and giveaways and I am not that far ahead of the ballgame right now.  It seems to take me so long to do anything, because I am learning as I go, but I will get there. 

4. What is your favorite past time other than blogging?
I love to go shopping!  

6. What category of blog posts do you enjoy the most?  
Primary education and what others are doing in the classroom.  I like to see pictures of what primary classrooms are doing and descriptions of how it worked. 

7. Where does your blog inspiration come from? What I am doing in my classroom at the time. I just wish I had more time during the day in class to do everything that I want to do.  I teach half day kg 2 1/2 hours a day with specials taking up some of the time.  

8. Which post that you've written are you most proud of?  I have only posted 7 times.  I am proud of them all, because I have learned how to do something new while doing them, including this one.  (ie:  grabbing a button)

9. Is there any post you have been planning to do, but have postponing it for a while now?   Not yet.  I am sure there are some holiday post to come soon.  

10. What is your favorite aspect of blogging? Sharing ideas with others.   I hope people reading can get some ideas when they read my blog. 

11. Which recipe, project, or idea on my blog would you be most likely to try yourself? 
I want to learn how to participate in blog hops someday.  

Now, here are my nominees: 

Welcome To The Computer Lab
Tickled Pink In Primary

Sweet Room 16

A Day In First Grade

First Grade Stampede

Classroom Capers
Primary World
Winging It In Fourth
Ladybug's Lounge
Mrs. Dailey's Classroom
Enchanted Kindergarten
+ 1 more  Lessons With Coffee

To those who have been nominated, here are the "official" rules for accepting:
1. In your post, link back to the blogger who nominated you as a thank you and "shout out."
2. Answer the 11 questions given to you (the ones I answered above).
3. Nominate 11 blogs of your choice that each have less than 200 followers. Provide them with 11 questions to answer or have them answer the questions above.
4. Let your nominees know that they've been nominated and provide them with a link to your post so that they can accept.
5. Send your nominator a link to your post so that s/he can learn more about you as well!         (You can just put your post link in the comments below!)

I decided to add one more component to my nomination.  I figured out how to grab a button by watching you tube and I will also add their buttons to my sidebar so it will make it easier for others to find them in the future.  
If you don't already know how to grab a button.  You will need to copy the script under the persons button that you want to grab.  Go into your page layout and click on, add a gaget.  Go down to HTML Java and paste it.  Then click save.  (You may want to add a title first like More Blogs To Follow) You can then drag the gaget to where you want it to be located on your page and save again.  I hope this helps you to be able to grab buttons. 

November 16th

Look at what I found today at Pat Catans.  It is a craft store along the lines of Michaels.
These will go perfect with my read, write, count and stamp centers in December.
Much cheaper than buying stickers.
It may be a different holiday picture, but the fun part for them will be choosing which one to use.

I See Santa -Read, Write, Count, and Stamp

I See Bells -Read, Write, Count and Stamp.  

Check out this web site that someone found in our building last week.  

http://uniteforliteracy.com/  It has short stories that can be read to the students in many languages!

October Centers

Here are some centers that we did last week.

Alphabet Candy land cards.  Students choose a card, say the letter, then say the sound.

If other players agree, they can move to the color on the card. 

Alphabet Candy land Cards

This is a recording sheet from Thanksgiving Count the Room.

Roll and Color Addition Game -freebie

I See Pumpkins -A read, write, count and stamp book.
We used stickers in place of stamps. 

Yuck Soup

Today we read Yuck Soup by Joy Cowley(c) and made our own Yum, Yuck Soup.  I found the idea last year on Simply Kinder's TPT store. I had to order the book on Amazon and I saved it for this year. I retyped the parent letter to suit my needs.  I wanted everyone to bring in about 1 cup of an item for our soup in a zipper baggie.  I sent out the letter last week with my newsletter so that they had plenty of time to prepare.  We also read Stone Soup the week before. 
We gathered in a circle on the carpet and I had the student pages ready to go with their names written with a highlighter to save time.  We read Joy Cowley's story and discussed the story and pictures.  
We talked about how we could not eat Yuck Soup, but our Yuck Soup would be Yum, Yuck Soup.  

As students were called they had to say what they were adding to the bowl and we would repeat what they said and say "Cereal, Yum yuck soup." and I would write what they brought on their paper.  

I also had a class graph that I marked and X on for each person.   We monitored our graph as we added ingredients. 

I had the kiddos save their baggies.  When the soup was made I called them over and gave them a baggie full of our soup and their paper to take back to their seat to work on as they ate some snack.  
When I felt time was up.  We turned in our papers and zipped our baggies to take home the rest of our soup.  This was a fun activity.  I will read our class book tomorrow and send it home with the students. 

Pumpkin Day

Thursday we had "Pumpkin Day" in our class.  I had 5 parents come in to help.  Each parent had 4 - 5 children in their group.  We began by reviewing what is in the Pumpkin Day book.  I told parents they could skip pages and come back  so that some people could be weighing pumpkins, while others were at the sink/bucket seeing if their pumpkin would sink or float, being sure to do the prediction pages before the find out page.   Each student received My Pumpkin Day book.

Then the parents guided them through the booklet.  Pumpkin Day takes about 1:15 minutes to complete in small groups.  If a group finished they were to go back and color pages or they could do pattern blocks.  Here are a few pages from the book.

Here are a few pictures of some of the activities going on. 

Pumpkin Day was a lot of fun!