Playing Spring Catch Up...

Well, Spring Break is coming to a close....and as much as I'd like to say it was a "break," it was more 

of a time to catch up on life!

Cleaning the house, cooking for the husband (which I don't do often), spending a short time with family, exercising, sleeping, getting a puppy, finally using those Disney tickets we got for Christmas, reading, lesson planning, and on and on....whew! 

I have to say as much as I've enjoyed the catch up time, what I've enjoyed most has been those little pockets of time that I've had to read...yep...read! 

I finally finished these two gems...

        

And am about to finish this one...

Yep. I'm a nerd. I have a weird obsession with books about life/stress/health. All in all, finally finishing these helped me realize that my day to day life is not one of balance. Habit 7, Sharpen the Saw, is not one that I have mastered or think I will ever master, but it is one I have been convicted to work on! These two top books suggested by my pastor have really helped me gain perspective on creating balance physically, emotionally and spiritually. 

After the break is over I plan to jump into these two books! 

  

Thanks to my brilliant mother for suggesting these! These were her words when I asked for educational book suggestions, "Everyone who is on the "cutting edge" of education is reading these two!" 

Haha. Love her and I cant wait to jump in. 

I also came across a few AMAZING youtube clips of Eric Thomas...The Hiphop Preacher. Have you heard of him? Wow! I spent a whole morning watching every one that I could, but there was one that really stood out to me both personally and career wise. Check it out below! 

At the beginning of his speech he says that our values need to match our dreams. This really struck me as an current educator. While he used a marriage analogy, I thought about my classroom and my team! We have these grand goals and dreams for our students, but often our day to day lessons/activities/values do not match our educational dreams. We know that students need hands on, engaging, exciting lessons with depth and TIME to complete....yet we find ourselves bogged down by what we "think" we need to teach and cram in to one short day! Yikes. For whatever reason, our educational values have gone out the window and we are teaching in ways we wouldn't normally teach because we feel like we have to....

Maybe its the high stakes testing, the pay for performance, and/or the high pressure observations, but this really encouraged me to try and slow down, and do what's best for children. 

That should always be the basis of our values....

Personally, I LOVED when he spoke about being OBSESSED with improvement. While I find myself overly obsessed with work sometimes, this showed be that I need to be obsessed with balance and other areas of my life: family, health, exercise, my relationship with Jesus. Yep. This was powerful. 

All in all, this Spring Break was a fantastic time to reflect and get back on track! Feeling thankful. :) 

Penguins, Penguins, Penguins!

Since returning from Christmas break, my team and I have gone crazy for winter books...especially books about Penguins! Maybe it's the fact that we live in South Florida that makes us latch onto "colder" books! :)))

Anyways, we began the study with teaching our little ones what the word schema meant! We brainstormed their penguin schema and then added it to the chart. We then throughout the past 2 weeks have been using non-fiction and fiction books alike to add to our New Learnings section! It's so fun to see how excited they have been.

We then began the process of writing our Penguin Non-Fiction books! Before the writing of each page, we taught a mini-lesson that corresponded. Now I hear the students finding table of contents everywhere! Haha.

First came the Table of Contents....

Second, What They Look Like....

Third, Where They Live.....

Fourth, What They Eat...

And Last Interesting Facts.....

We copied our Penguin, Penguin poem that we have been reciting for the last two weeks in our best handwriting! :) No floating letters please~

We are not quite finished for we still have to add our diagram and front cover, as well as conduct our blubber glove science experiment! So...more to come next week!

In the mean time, my intern brought in this cute guy with fake snow! It was SOOOO cool. It literally felt cold and the kiddos LOVED touching it! It was a great way to bring everything together. :)

Happy Learning~
Mrs. Hunter

The 100th Day!

This past Thursday we celebrated the 100th Day of School and WOW did we have fun!

The students walked into to a streamer decorated door (totally forgot to snap a picture) and the fun began!

We discussed what 100 year old people could and couldn't do! It was so funny! We made two Thinking Maps and then wrote two sentences...then of course made a cute project!~

  

 

The funniest and weirdest one was when one child said that 100 year old people couldn't cut fish...hmmm...I wasn't really sure how to respond, but I popped it up there anyways! Haha.

My sweet intern then read this cute book and the kiddos LOVED it!

We also made 100th Day Gum ball Machines compliments of my creative teammate Mrs. Denton! Totally stole her idea. ::)))))) The students were given a large white circle and they had to use their fingers to paint 100 gum balls. I had my little ones do 20 of each color! They had so much fun painting, but even more fun cleaning up! They all wanted a turn rolling up the dirty table clothes! It's the small things I suppose! :)

In the midst of all of this fun, one of my wonderful volunteers met with each child to make a 100th day snack! Each child chose 10 foods and then counted 10 of each. Very fun!

The final half of our day was spent counting to 100 by 1's 5's and 10's as well as creating 100th day head bands~ The students had to count by 10's to make it and they did a wonderful job!

As the students left for the day, Mrs. Meerman our intern passed out these cute treats. Indeed each child is 100 days smarter and I can't wait to see how smart they are at the end!~

Happy Learning!
Mrs. Hunter~

I'm Back....

I feel very embarrassed to say that it has been 5 months since I've blogged about life in and out of the classroom! The joys of learning a new grade level have kept me busy, busy, busy, but I'm
ready to start sharing the signification small moments that are keeping my passion for teaching aflame!

Without playing too much catch up, I'm going to jump into what's been happening in my sweet Kindergarten classroom! Ya'll, something inside these little ones has really clicked since we have been back from Christmas break and its so exciting. I feel like I'm with First Graders!!!!

With that being said, creating Reading Leaders has been a tremendous goal of mine this year...even in Kindergarten! I had incredible success with the Daily 5 concepts of Read to Self and Read to Someone in First, that surely these little Kinders could to it too....and they can! Now, it's taken wayyyyy more practice and modeling, but they are up to 17 minutes for Read to Self and about 15 for Read to Someone! Yep! That's at least 30 minutes a day of reading for these little ones! You can see our Read-to-Self Meter below...if they reach 20, a classroom hamster it is! Yikes!

This past week was Literacy Week and we had a grand ole' time! The first day we discussed the pros and cons of using an ipad to read vs. a real. live book! We chose a favorite book and mounted it to a chart paper ipad! The concept was IPAB---I Prefer a Book! And let me tell you, most of them do! We also reviewed how reading is a fantastic way to Sharpen the Saw. It's always my first choice when I need to relax!~

We also learned during Literacy Week that books can be about People and can give Information!
We looked at 2 nonfiction books about Neil Armstrong (I figured it would be beneficial to understand why their school has its name!) and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. They were in awe during the story or Dr. King! It was precious. We read, discussed and then wrote to explain!

 

And of course there was a cute project to correspond!

Finally, we've been kicking into high gear with AR tests in the classroom! While I don't necessarily love the fact that the questions are all text dependent (I wish there was a way to throw some higher level questions from Blooms Taxonomy in there), it does give my little ones a chance to read and practice showing what they know! My sweet volunteer and I's goal is to have every child take at least 1 test a week! My higher readers can of course take more, but I really wanted each child to have a chance to sit with my volunteer, receive one on one attention, and take their time when taking the test! :)))) I want quality...not quantity! So far so good!

Speaking of reading, I've been diving into this book lately that my mom passed down to me.

When I started teaching Kindergarten this year, I didn't quite understand the importance of this, but now, I've moved my schedule around in such a way so that the final 20-30 minutes of each day, children have a chance to choose their play! Yes, I have some on computer and I pull students work with them/remediate/enrich, but it's been a beautiful way to start the new year! They SO need that time to play, interact, speak to others, learn to cooperate, and use their imaginations!

Well, that's all for now! Off to blog about the 100th day of school~

Happy Learning~
Mrs. Hunter