And then there’s this.

Apparently one can get quite involved at circle time.

I neither SAW or FELT this going on…………I have no idea who did it…to me…..

At the end of the day dismissal

At the end of the day, parents gather outside the gate to the kindergarten playground to pick up their kids.  It’s too congested at the gate, so when the bell rings, the gate is unlocked and they come to our rooms or in the case of two of our classes without outside doors, to the hall doors and we release them to the parent or older sibling.  Normally the teacher next door opens her door, takes about three steps and unlocks the gate.  But for the last two weeks and for the next week, her class has been on break.  I have to leave my class in the room, walk down, unlock the gate and then walk back.

At first they were pretty good about sitting there on the floor with their backpacks and waiting for me to get back.  But lately, they have started sneaking over to the door and peeking out.  They think it’s great fun (they are SO scared of me).  The other day I walked out, then quickly turned around and waited by the door, then jumped out and scared them.  The timing was just right, a whole bunch of them were almost to the door and I caught them in mid stride.  All the parents thought that was hilarious.

My annual shoelace post.

 

 

It seems like AT LEAST once a year one of my kids does this…….  This year I must have over achievers, this was in the first two weeks…….

I have two of these board books that teach how to tie your laces.  The directions are right there, in pictures, step by step.  AND THEY DON’T HAVE YOU ENDING UP ANYTHING LIKE THIS.  But this is a pretty good indicator of how well they all follow directions this year………

I was doing something

And this one little girl says, “Teacher, you’re crazy.”

And I said, “Well, maybe just a little bit.”

And she shook her head and replied, “No, you are a whole BUNCH of crazy……”

Gotta love ‘um.

Using a SmartBoard in the Primary Grades

I am really excited about having this.  Although they really didn’t think it all through very well.  I’m not sure where the money came from for these, but they bought about a dozen or so of them for our school.  They didn’t buy them to install on the wall, so they came on legs, no laptops to go with them, and  the project wasn’t a good fit for my room.  It would probably work in a smaller room, but in order to have the projection fit on the SmartBoard, I would have to cut the distance between the screen and to projector in half and that would put my projector right in the middle of my 30 kids.  My personal projector works at this distance just fine.  I had to get an extra 15 feet of USB cable to make it reach from the SmartBoard to the laptop.  I ran the wires along the top of the bulletin board and the white board on the wall to the side there.

I needed to find a way to  really have the projector rock solid stable.  Getting jiggled just a little can unsync the projector from the board.  So I moved these two filing cabinets out into the room and put a table between the cabinets and the wall.  That way the wires can come out to the projector and laptop from the wall without being in a traffic area.

With my sound system (and Ipod dock) attached to the laptop, and the laptop connected to the internet on the wall to the left, I can play DVDs, access the internet, and do other Smartboard activities all from one setup.  Today was our first day (it took a couple of hours on Labor Day to get everything set up).  We were doing the letter Mm in our Trophies Reading Series, so I used the FrogStreet Press DVD to introduce the letter Mm.  The DVD also demonstrates how to write the letters too.  I then pulled up a print program that I use to print practice writing for them that can be printed out.  We then practiced writing the letters right on the SmartBoard.  We also did the same thing in the afternoon with the numbers 4 and 5.  I’m the only kindergarten teacher that they gave a SmartBoard to, and I think I got it because I used to be a Tech Specialist and they figured I’d actually use it.  I am really excited about the possibilities.  There’s still a couple of glitches to iron out.  For example, I can access the teacher resources on the Smart website from home on my laptop, but the school firewall seems to block access when connected at school.  Something to have my resident tech work on I guess, I no longer have those “rights” now that I’m a classroom teacher.

A couple of weeks ago….

This is “Reading the Room”.  It was good for the first few times they did it, then it got to be too much “fun”, you know, walking around in groups, talking more than reading.  So I changed it up, and gave them clipboards and told them to “Write the Room”.  They could only write words they could actually read, and I would spot check them on the words they wrote.  It became a nice assessment on what they could actually read.

A couple of weeks ago, this one kid came up to me after “Writing the Room” for awhile and said, “Can I just read a book?  I’m EXHAUSTED (insert appropriate drama) from writing the room.”

And I said, “Why of course you can, honey.”   See, I’m not sure they all get it that the end goal of all these other things we do is for them to be able to READ BOOKS.

I’m playing more music in class

A while back, I had some allergy symptoms that caused some congestion in the back of my throat, that caused me to lose my voice.  I didn’t have any other symptoms, and it’s such a pain to get a sub.  However, it is impossible to teach kindergarten with no voice.  So I went to the PE teacher and asked him if he had one of those megaphones, he did, but it was wired onto his ball cart.  But the school stored this in his office.  It’s a Transactive Mobile.  It has a built in battery so that it can be used without an external power supply, it has a mike, and it was great while I had no voice.  Whisper into the mike, have the volume up, and problem solved.  It’s wheeled, and has an extendable handle, kind of like a piece of luggage.  Oh and it has an Ipod dock.

And I have an Ipod.  The thing is, it was a pain to hook the Ipod up to the speakers all the time.   BUT this thing is great.  I went out and bought myself one.

What is it about Kindergarten kids……….????

 AT LEAST ONCE every year.    

You might not know it from some of the things i say, but I do love my kids……….

And this one?  Normally can’t keep her shoes tied to save her life.

Wonderful Worms………

In our reading series, we are doing a unit on insects and such and today we read this book.  On the way to school this morning I stopped by a fishing supply store and bought some night crawlers.  After we read the story and talked about the book for a bit, I had them go to their tables and I put a paper plate on each table then got the worms out of the fridge and put a couple on each plate.  I’ve done this before, so some of what followed was predictable.

First there were the “eww!! and  icks”  and other noises of disgust, followed quickly by curiosity.   Well, for the most part.  The most “Macho” Hispanic boy was away from his table crying, almost in hysterics, and the most opposite of macho girl, asking matter-of-factly if she could hold one……(turns out SHE has a pet snake, “it doesn’t bite”)  I had laid the ground rules that they could touch, but they were NOT to hurt the worms, they were living creatures too.  What followed was some of the most absorbed, focused investigation that I have seen out of this crew.  Most  at least touched, and some held the worms.  One girl kept saying she wanted to hold one, but every time I would approach her hands with the worm, she would shrink away.  Just couldn’t quite get over the idea of touching that worm.

That was in the morning, later, just before going home, I let them see and touch the worms again, this time, many more actually held the worms.  It was really fun to watch.  City kids don’t get much “Nature”.  I really wanted to be a fly on the wall of that conversation when they went home, “Well, what did you do in school today?”  “Played with worms.”

A Twenty…….

We have a weekly school wide writing prompt.  All classes are supposed to participate.  Naturally the product generated in Kindergarten will be somewhat different than that generated in 5th grade (one would hope).  For my kindergarten kids to do it, most of the basic prompt is copied directly from either the board, or a handout.  Each week, one sample is submitted from each class and posted on the walls in the school.  I would have selected this one, but this kid has been selected a couple of times recently, once just last week.  Last week the writing prompt was “If I were President, I would……..”  This same kid in one draft wrote.  “If I were President, I would lower taxes.”  His second sentence was, “If I were President, I would give more money to the schools.”   I wish I knew who he was listening to, and I wonder if they know he is listening that well……….

Anyway, this one just cracked me up, from the picture right down to the way he said his best present was “a twenty”.  Not $20.00, or twenty dollars, but “a twenty”.