Kindergarten

This October I had an opportunity to teach Kindergarten. After teaching preschool for 21 years, I loved every minute of it! I still miss the sweet little faces of my 3 year olds and their hysterics! 

But I decided I needed a new challenge. I went for it! 

I was scared, but confident that my skills and experience could benefit my kindergarten students. I had new curriculum to learn, assessments, and standardized testing! 😳 But I jumped right in and my TPT account, Pinterest account and Amazon Account got the most use in my whole teaching career! But I was so excited to help these bright, energetic,kind little humans! 

There were lots of ups and downs! Lots of sickness, personal problems, and just some days were dark and I doubted myself a lot. But it’s almost the end of the year, happy to say my kids are making and exceeding benchmarks! They are reading, adding, problem solving, thinking critically, and learned to work together as a team! I helped them get there!  I have lots of ideas to enhance the Kindergarten curriculum. Look for more posts and some of my unconventional ideas to help my students love learning and building their confidence! ❤️

Social Emotional skills

https://www.donorschoose.org/project/we-are-amazing-teaching-acceptance/3456743/?utm_source=dc&utm_medium=directlink&utm_campaign=teacherhub&utm_term=teacher_4603258&rf=directlink-dc-2018-08-teacherhub-teacher_4603258&challengeid=20969115

Ladybug unit

Ants!

Our ant colony! 

Planning what our ant colony should have inside!

Looking outside to find live ant colonies! 

Ants have mandibles! Ants sure work hard! 

Ants carrying their food back to their nest! 

Transportation/ airport

 

Resources:

Prekinders.com, teacherpayteacher.com,havefunlearning.com

Tree unit of study

During the month of October we will be exploring trees, the parts of a tree, how does a tree grow? Why do leaves change color? What foods grows on trees? Who lives in tree? 

First week of school

I must say I have the cutest little people on the planet this year! A lot of three year olds this year (which I love) which means it might take a little longer to get down to basics to establishing classroom management! 

The first day for centers I had water colors for art, computers open, dramatic play, dry erase boards markers and letter dice for writing, colored school manipulatives for math and discovery boards for science, blocks open, library open! I kept centers same for a couple days switched to play dough, and rotated math manipulatives. We had a few criers the first few days but by day three everyone had smiles! At circle time I went over class schedule, introduced jobs, we sang Hickety pickety bumble bee and the bean bag dance! Then I introduced centers, how to ask for a turn, and showed them the timer when it would be time to clean-up! 

During centers I sat with students and got to know them asking them questions about their family, and what they like!

At story we read these books! 

We took a tour of the classroom going over all the different centers, then toured the school as well! We may do it all again next week! Repetition is key in pre-k!