Apple Day!



Apple Beverage Table



During the month of September, my kindergarten class is learning all about apples (in addition to our district adopted curriculum, of course). Each week we do various activities such as apple tasting (5 senses), apple graphs (math), the parts of an apple (science), apple writing, and apple art. We discuss apples so much around here in kindergarten that by the end, we have apples coming out of our ears! Not really, but you get what I'm saying, right? We believe in building community at VanderMolen so we love to get the parents involved as often as we can. We know that parents have busy lives with working and what not, so us Kinder teachers pick one day a month to invite the parents to celebrate all that we've learned for the month...this month being apples!

Tasting all kinds of apple goodies!

 

Teddy Bear Picnic



What is Teddy Bear Picnic, might you ask? Well, in the land of VanderMolen Kinder, we have our annual Teddy Bear Picnic with our students and their parents at the end of the month of August. The month of August is all about bears (reality) and teddy bears (fantasy). We do various bear activities such as real bears vs. pretend bears, we read the story of Corduroy & make our very own Corduroy, we use gummy bears to make a bar graph, Brown Bear activities, etc. etc. It is oodles of fun! 

About half-way through the month of August, we send home a letter to the parents to ask for donations of gummy bears, teddy grahams, m & m's, water, juice, all the things we need to make our Teddy Bear theme & Picnic a success. Included in the letter is an invitation for parents & grandparents, to join us for a picnic. On this day, the students can bring their favorite teddy bear & the parents bring lunch for their child & themselves. The kids get super excited for their parents to have lunch with them! It is a great way to build community with our families here at VanderMolen.

Following the picnic, we bring all the kiddos (the PM kinders in my case) into one classroom to watch the Corduroy movie. Prior to starting the movie, we tell the students we are going to put our teddy bears down for a nap, they have had a long day already. The kids walk them over to a middle room (our work room) and put them down for a nap on a blanket we have in the work room. While the students are watching the movie, we have parents sneak the teddy bears out the next classroom's door so the students cannot see us removing their bears from their "nap." When the movie finishes, we send a student over to "wake" the bears up from their nap. Lo and behold, they discover the bears are gone!! However, the bears have left a clue! This then leads us on a bear hunt around the school. We usually get the librarian, the cafeteria ladies, the secretary, and the principal involved (we leave clues in those specific areas and they read the clues to our kiddos). The last clue leads us back to the Kindergarten playground, where the bears love to be most of all! The parents scattered the teddy bears all over the playground, on the jungle gym, swings, garden area, etc. The kids then run onto the playground and try to find their bear. It is great to see the kids faces as we are hunting for their bears & when they finally find them. I got some great footage of the hunt that I plan on using in my end of the year slide show.   

Teddy Bears down for a nap

Following the bear hunt, all the kinder teachers on track teach an activity to one group of kids in their classroom (the students rotate to the classrooms, every 30 minutes). For example, I taught an art lesson, where the students made a teddy bear using brown paper plates as the belly, and I had my wonderful room mom prep the rest of the bear body. The other teachers taught a reading activity, math activity, and writing activity. The day was a success, but very very very exhausting! A lot of work went into planning & prepping this culminating day, but it was well worth it! The kids came to school on Monday saying how much they loved Teddy Bear Picnic Day & wished we could do it again :)





At the start of Teddy Bear Picnic Day!



At the end of Teddy Bear Picnic Day...zzzzzzz











Rosy Cheeks

This is my very first post on my Kindergarten blog! I have been meaning to share photos, ideas, how my year is going thus far, but, I have been so busy that I have not posted anything. It has been so long since I created my blog, that I even forgot my user name and password. Pretty funny, huh?! It has been quite an ordeal, but alas, I have recovered my information & was able to log on! So here I am :)
My class this year is amazing! I have been blessed with 18 kiddos & I am hoping that the number stays that low this year (fingers crossed)! I had 31 kinders last year, and wow, what a challenge that was having that many 5 year olds in one classroom! Anywho, I was sharing a story about one of my kiddos with my husband yesterday, and he encouraged me to share it on my blog I launched in June when I was off-track. So here I am, sharing, thanks to my wonderful husband!
I have an adorable student named Sara. She is smart, outgoing, and knows majority of the Kindergarten standards already. With that being said, it has pushed me to challenge Sara by having her create her own narratives, pushing her to higher expectations, and having her be a peer teacher to my other kiddos in my class that need some extra help & support. It is working out beautifully. Ok, back to my story about what happened in class yesterday...during the month of August, we are studying bears, bears, and more bears! So yesterday, I used Discovery Education to show my class a video version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I asked them to pay attention to what happens in the beginning of the story, the middle of the story, and the end of the story. They thoroughly enjoyed it and even pointed out the similarities and differences from the book we read a week ago to the movie. Once we discussed the beginning, middle, and end, I modeled an activity they would be doing on their own at their seat (a flip book that had beginning, middle, and end written on it). I modeled that they are to illustrate what happened at the beginning, middle, and end of the story. We have a class joke that I, Mrs. Garcia, always color rosy cheeks on the characters I draw (people & animals, hence the joke). So as usual, I colored rosy cheeks on Goldilocks, grandma, and the bears, which was followed by many giggles. After modeling, I then dismissed my students to their seats to create their own illustrations. As my students were working, I was assessing students on name writing at my guided reading table (grades are due in a couple of weeks...yikes!). Sara finished and came over to my table for me to check her book. I noticed that her left cheek below her eye, had a long red mark on it going down to her mouth. It looked like a bad scratch. I asked her what happened because it wasn't there when she arrived at school. She said another student did it with a red crayon. But immediately, he denied it and logically stated, that she sits too far away from him & couldn't even reach her...made sense to me. I could tell by the look on Sarah's face, that she seemed a little embarrassed. I then noticed when she turned that the red line was also on her right cheek below her eye going to her mouth. All of a sudden it dawned on me! The aha moment came! I asked Sarah if she did it to herself with a red crayon...she confessed and she said she did it because she wanted to give herself rosy cheeks! I immediately started to laugh and so did she. It was so cute and I was more surprised than anything. I told her to go wash her face in the bathroom & that I would have to let her mom know because the mark was still there even after she washed her face. I told mom after school and mom laughed as well...the lesson of this story: I better be careful what details I decided to add to my characters when I am drawing for my kiddos :)

With Love,