You are you.

Today for the letter Pp we wrote prayers. We started with Dear _____and talked about how God has different names. Then we wrote a descriptive word/praise. You are ______. We also finished the sentence Thank you for_______ and some children did the last sentence Please _____. Amen

The prayers are really sweet. The children actually came up with some good ideas for the 2nd part. God is awesome, cool, forgiving, nice, good. One child wrote You are you. That sums it up pretty well, doesn't it?

One child said they wanted to put the prayer paper by the nativity so they could read it every night. :)

I'll make sure they go home in the folders tomorrow.

"Best Day EVER!"

"Best day EVER!" One student proclaimed.
And others heartily (enthusiastically, noisily) agreed.
Why? You ask.
Because I got a big box in the mail.
And in the big box was a slightly-smaller-but-still-big box.
We read the word on top of the box that spelled MARKERS.
And the number on the side that said 200.
Of course we opened it right away.
Wow!
We are really excited to use these! Maybe tomorrow since today we were pretty busy with another art project. Also, I think it is great that they come with some extra lids. In case you were wondering why we got 200 new markers, I had entered a contest/drawing through Learning Magazine a while back. Whenever I see free contests etc., I try to enter - it just takes a little time, and you never know if you might win...

Okay, on to other news from this week. The reason we did not use our AWESOME new markers, was because we were trying out pendulum painting. This was something new to me (I found the idea on another teacher's blog this summer). Here is the set up from last night:
And this is what it looked like by the end of the day. The extra table cloth was turned into a walkway to the drying rack. (Hint: if you try this, do it outside if it's nice weather, or use disposable tablecloths underneath, not your nice splash mats that you have to clean after school!)
I have no pictures of children doing the project because my hands were getting rather black. Suffice it to say that everyone thought it was pretty cool. Some children let it swing one direction the whole time. Others tried a few different ways. Some came back to try again and then again :) I don't know how I survived without an art drying rack last year! Here are just 2 of the paintings which turned out really nice.
(We had available either large white paper, or smaller pink/purple - for the letter Pp, of course)
You can see that the paper got pretty wet from the paint below it on the mess mat, especially by the last few paintings. Also, the paint and water separate a bit as they dry; we'll see how they look tomorrow.

Earlier in the week we experimented with a larger pendulum. It was especially nice to have some new/exciting activities when we were cooped up inside all day due to all the rain.
And now you can say that your Kindergartener is participating in informal physics experiments!
Another rainy day treat was getting to play with the super fort.
"Look, Miss Vis! We made a cube! Come take a picture!"
I hope you have a BEST DAY EVER today or tomorrow. And then again after that. Experience life with the wonder and excitement of a child.

Christmas Fun (and some other things that start with Cc)

Sometimes it works out really well that our reading curriculum does the letters out of alphabetical order; we did the letter Cc this week, so we had lots of fun with Christmas activities this week, culminating with Friday afternoon's Christmas party with our 4th Grade Buddies.

Wednesday Ms. VP organized a field trip to see a Christmas teddy bear display. We saw bears that light up, bears that move, a bear nativity, big bears, little bears...
bears that sing
A Christmas tree with 500+ bears on it
Bears on a train
Also on Wednesday we had a guest come in who played part of the Hallelujah Chorus on the clarinet.
We learned that sometimes you can play music by reading notes on a page, and sometimes you can play be ear. Our guest played some familiar music so of course everyone wanted to sing along. Here's a little clip:

And now the party pictures:
Bowling! They decorated some bowling pins (cups) and we taped some lanes on the floor.

Drawing and coloring ornaments
Making snowflake or star ornaments
Yes, I am drawing on someone's face, because this party even featured face painting! (Want to try it at home? Soak colored pencils in water for at least 15 minutes, make sure they aren't too sharp, and be aware that some brands work better than others. We used Crayola.) We did give the disclaimer that neither teacher went to art school, and it was free, so no guarantees on the product.
A pink Christmas tree was requested, and I thought it was actually kind of fun.
This was probably my best work. :)
Here are some buddies showing off their snowmen.
Then all that was left to do was eat a candy cane, say goodbye, and leave for the weekend!

Merry almost Christmas!

Some centers and science

Above is the germ center. We were fake sneezing and getting 'germs' (water + food coloring) on our paper. This was supposed to be done hanging on a fence outside, but it was raining, so we went to plan B. I don't think I had enough food coloring in the water, so they dried pretty light, but we had fun, and we'll use the paper for another project. Below is a math graphing center from this morning. We graphed different shapes of snacks (and then ate some :)
We finished our science lesson that was supposed to be part of camping day last Friday. We learned that you need at least three things to make a shadow (a light source - we used flashlights, somewhere for the light to shine, and something to block the light)
Do you see the princess shadow? (Sorry for the poor quality photos, the room was pretty dark :)
We used our hands to make shadows too.

Christmas Concert, Camping

We had 'camping day' on Friday. In Kindergarten, camping day means reading in a tent with flashlights (thanks for lending us the flashlights, Mrs. DenBleyker!),
star gazing (reading words on stars that were in the 'sky'),
and using marshmallows to build shapes. (Yes, we also got to eat a marshmallow)
And here is a quick shot of almost the whole class at the Christmas concert. They look great and they performed wonderfully!
And the next few pictures give you an idea of what goes on in the back of the church while we are waiting for our turn to sing...
(Mr. H. helped a bit with this one)
Hope you enjoyed the concert. See you Monday!

Vv

Today a few exciting things happened.
First, we had someone come in with their violin. I'm not sure if the children were more impressed to hear that Mozart made up the tune of "Twinkle Twinkle" when he was three, or that the bow was made out of real horse hair.
Then in math we started with flat shapes like squares and rectangles, and then worked together to turn them into cubes and rectangular prisms.
Later in the day we voted for which VeggieTales video to watch.

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope you are all having a wonderful Thanksgiving break!
Here are a few pictures that show how we ended our week.
Since we did not have a new letter this week, we reviewed some special sounds, and worked on capital letters and punctuation in our morning message, as well as looking for our sight words.
We learned about light and heat sources. Glow bracelets are a light source (if you are somewhere really dark, like the janitor's closet) but not a heat source. They are also a source of excitement.
We walked down to Oak Street to tally the transportation that drove past
Our buddies came after lunch and we read our poetry books to them.
We closed the day in a big circle, with everyone giving thanks to God.

Have a blessed Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Feast! (and a few other pictures)

Here is one of our art projects from this week: a night time city skyline (Thank you, Deep Space Sparkle, for the idea). They look really cool all in a row, though one of my students commented that it's like a city with lots of moons.
During a Bible review lesson, one student drew this picture, titled the Moses store (the Moses story). The labels (desert, Canaan, and E for Egypt) made me smile.
Hard at work making hilarious horses: no normal-looking horses allowed!
Math game from this morning: we rolled dice and tallied the results. At the end we counted the tally marks by fives (as a class) and compared the results. 6 won with 29 rolls! I love how exciting a simple game like this can be for children, and next week when we start doing tally marks, it will already be a little familiar.
Our hot air balloons turned out really cute! The house at the bottom is where you get to write your address once you know it; we make a big deal out of it, so children are eager to practice. 5 children have signed the house so far.
And here are pictures from today's Thanksgiving feast with our buddies. Almost everybody dressed up.







The food remnants. Everything was quite tasty. Thank you so much!

Have a blessed weekend!