Colds, Construction, and End of Year Gifts

Teacher tip: Make sure to take Non-Drowsy cold medicine before a day of teaching.  Anything else, will most definitely make it very difficult to teach 19 kindergartners!

Why is it that every time the weather begins to get nicer, colds tend to become more prevalent?  My entire class, myself included, should probably be quarantined- coughing, sneezing, you name it, my class has it.  Currently, I am personally keeping Airborne in business.

Okay-now on to happier notes!

We have been super busy in my classroom.  Between our Alphabet Countdown to Summer, guest speakers, walking field trips, assessments, and more assessments there is not much time for anything else. But, we're hanging in there!

Last week our Reading series had us reading Old MacDonald had a Woodshop.  (I so enjoy books that have a well known tune!)  In addition, we read many other fiction and nonfiction books about construction and tools needed to build "stuff."  Our mini construction unit got carried over into math.  The kiddos were challenged not only with demonstrating subtraction in this way, but to design their pictures only using rectangles, circles, and triangles.  They did such a nice job, and they turned out so cute!  I will have to add more later, but my computer is being stubborn with some of the images.!

I do not know a single teacher who is not a fan of the Dollar Tree.  If it wasn't for that store, my classroom would definitely not look the way it does!  As an end of the year gift this year, I found adorable water bottles at the Dollar Tree- filled them with sidewalk chalk and Smarties, and now I am good to go!  Hopefully these water bottles will last through the summer and I will see some of them come back with their new first grader!

Thanks for checking in- I believe it is time for me to sleep this cold away!

Earth Day Shenanigans!

Take a close look...

Does anything seem out of place?

Our Earth Day celebration took a fun and exciting turn when the red tail hawk, brought by one of our presenters, decided she wanted to be free!  She was gorgeous.  I think I could have stayed all day just watching her sit up there on her make-shift perch!

I absolutely love our Earth Day celebrations.  The kids have a full day of learning from presenters, they have some time to give back by cleaning up trash around our school, and we sometimes get some "downtime" to do a fun activity in our classroom!

In writing, the kiddos have been working hard on opinion and persuasive pieces that would make the world a better place.  They did a nice job writing about recycling, not littering, and why we shouldn't cut down trees.  During a portion of this unit we explored how to recycle school supplies.  A colleague of mine introduced us to Crazy Crayons out of Minnesota.  They take old, broken crayons and re-melt them into fun shapes.  Seeing the fun shapes and crazy colors really got the kiddos excited.  So, we decided to re-purpose some of our old crayons on Earth Day!  Take a look:

Step 1: Fill silicon molds with broken crayons

Step 2: Put in oven and watch the transformation.  Solid-to liquid

Step 3:  Cooled to a solid again and so incredibly cool!

Now this is what teaching is about! The excitement from the kids over the transformation was so fun!  They each got to bring home their own crayon- it was all they could talk about (and show to whoever would look and listen) as we were walking out to the buses that day.  What an impact!

In addition to recycling our old crayons, the students made promises to the earth.  They took this so seriously!  I just love how this display brightened up our hallway!

One month to go!  Happy Monday!