All About The Weather

Hope you guys had a great weekend. I had the busiest weekend celebrating my mom’s birthday. We had dinner at PacificTable in Fort Worth on Friday night, a brunch at our house on Saturday morning and then went to Boina Braza in Grapevine for dinner. Whew!! Can you say busy, busy, busy…but such a wonderful thing spending time with family and friends. I loved every moment of it. Plus, I got to celebrate my favorite person in the whole wide world, my beautiful mamacita...and really, how cute is that cake?!?

Now let’s get to the reason we’re here…THE WEATHER!!! I usually don’t do much for weather, but this year I wanted to try something different and really try to dive into weather since it’s in our curriculum frameworks for two weeks. I really loved teaching this thematic unit and the kids loved it too! We have been learning how the weather changes day to day & over the seasons and about reporting the weather using scientific tools to investigate the natural world. We always start any new unit with a thinking map or a schema chart. For this unit, I went with a simple bubble map.

We watched a segment from the local news station and discussed how a meteorologist predicts the weather for the week, then we made an anchor chart that I got from A Cupcake for the Teacher describing what meteorologists do. How about all that wonderful new vocabulary?!? They love saying this word over and over and OVER again lol. They really had to practice it. They kept coming up to me and asking if they were saying it right haha.

Then we made this really cute Meteorologist craftivity that we found at Mrs. Lee’s Kinder Kids and paired it with the sentence starter “If I were a meteorologist…” that we got from First Grade Parade.
  

We also had the kids record the weather in their journals for 5 days. We did several nature walks to discuss the weather and see if we noticed any changes in the seasons. I was really praying for some changes in the weather lol, but no luck. We had really beautiful, sunny weather all week in February lol. It did rain over the weekend and was really cloudy on Monday.

We also made the weather craftivity Cindy shared last week. Ours is slightly different, but not much. Also, we made some wind socks. I forgot to take pictures of ours and then sent them home. These wind socks were provided by my lovely co-worker, Ms. Barajas.

 

We read Little Cloud by Eric Carle, made different things from cotton balls, then we glued this sentence under it "Once I looked up in the sky, I thought I saw a ___ but it was just a cloud." 

 

We finished up our unit with a couple of science experiments Clouds and Rain and Tornado in a Jar. The clouds and rain experiment was so cool and led to a really wonderful discussion about the density in clouds and how much water they need to make rain. We had some issues with the Tornado in a Jar experiment. I think my measurements were off and it just never formed into a tornado. This one definitely needs a re-do!!

  

Thanks for reading our blog!!
Sandra

President's Day and birthdays!

Wow what a week!  Friday was the end of our 4th cycle and it was an exhausting one.  Testing kindergarteners for report cards is not for the faint of heart LOL!  We are so glad that this week is over.   Our kids are doing great!  Sandra and I created a report card test that we use throughout the whole year.   This year we finally came up with a good tracking sheet.  We plan to post it to our TpT as soon as we make some final corrections to it!

This past Monday was President’s Day of course, although we weren’t lucky enough to have a day off we did have lots of fun learning about our presidents.  We didn’t get many pictures (due to this crazy week) but here are a couple of activities that we did get to finish.  

The first one is a text-to-self writing activity about what they would do if they were president.  I got the little tricorn hat idea from a picture I saw on google.  One of my little ones said he would help me if he was president. :) 

The second is a TLC cutting activity of Barack Obama that we make every year.  This year I had to make a modification to mine.  I realized that I didn’t have enough brown paper to make the regular sized ones so I decided to make President Obama on a smaller scale.  My little niece Addy modeled one of them for me.    

 

We’ve also been learning about the weather in science.  We made this cute craftivity that we found on Pinterest from Mrs. Lee’s Kindergarten and modified it a little.  I love how they came out and the kids had so much fun making them too. Kindergarteners think glitter is awesome!  The English example is the original and the Spanish example is the one that I recreated!

I’d like to end this blog by wishing both Sandra's mom and my mom a very happy birthday.  Their birthdays are one day apart as a matter of fact.  We LOVE our Mommas!!!

-Cindy

Valentine's Day!!!

Valentine’s Day is one of those holidays that I could live without, seeing as I don’t have a valentine, BUT I don’t let my students suffer because I’m only the lonely haha. So it’s business as usual with cards, crafts and writing all about Valentine’s Day.

For the last few years we have made our students' valentine’s boxes after requesting cereal boxes from home however, this year we finally got smart and asked the parents to decorate a cereal box and send it school. I don’t know why we haven’t done this years ago. It saved so much time and stress. It’s so much easier for parents to make 1 box than for us to make 20. The parents were so creative.
  
 

The card my class made for our families this year is this Happy Valentine’s Day card with their handprint and then their picture under the hand. I think they came out adorable if I do say so myself haha.

 Cindy’s class made this cute little Froggy holding a heart with the students' hand prints. It says, “If you take my hand today you will hold my heart forever”. I really love it.

 

Her class also made these picture frames by Q-Tip dotting watercolor paper. She added their picture holding a heart that says I love you. They turned out really cute.

I always give my students non candy valentines that I found for free on TpT called Non-Food Valentines. This year I waited till the last minute and was at Walmart at midnight trying to put together their gift. Instead of getting the valentine party organized I was at the movies watching Deadpool haha. When I got to Walmart I couldn’t find the star sunglasses I wanted so I ended up doing yo-yo’s.

 

For writing we did a circle map of who we love, inferred who Froggy would give his valentine to, compared Froggy to Frogilina and wrote valentine cards to our loved ones.

This week it's all about the Presidents I hope I remember to take pictures. Happy blogging!!

Laters, Sandra

100th Day Shenanigans!!

I can’t believe we are almost halfway through the month of February!! This school year is just flying by. The 100^th day of school was 2 Thursday's ago at our school and we had the most wonderful time celebrating. I love the 100^th day of school but usually it feels really stressful and like I can’t get to everything I want to do with my kiddos. This year we were much more organized and everything ran so smoothly.

 

We decided to do an entire week of 100^th day activities instead of just the one day. This way we were able to do all the activities we wanted to do without feeling overwhelmed. We also created a 100th day center checkoff list that made things so much easier. We got this idea from Pinterest.

We began the week by starting a list of 100 words we know. We wrote about 25 words a day and were able to complete the list by Thursday. For writing that day we wrote about what we would buy with $100. Most kindergarteners have no concept of money so many of my kiddos wanted to buy their mom a house or a car (which is just the sweetest thing) with their $100.  So we looked up things that could cost $100 so they could get some ideas.

On Tuesday we rolled a die and colored a 100 chart to see how many rolls it took to get to 100. Then they wrote what they would look like if they were 100 years old and what they would do at that age. Then they made a craftivity from Deanna Jump’s 100 Day unit. They always turn out really cute, but of course I forgot to take a picture of it. Total brain fart!!

 

On Wednesday my assistant hid 100 numbered kisses around the room and the kiddos had to find them one at a time and color the number on a hundreds chart. Then they were able to keep the kisses they found. 

 

We also started our hundreds day hat today. They get 10 strips and put 10 stickers on it to make 100 and then we turn it into a hat. These are always fun to make but can be time consuming so making them a day early was genius. Then for writing we wrote a “How To” paper on how to make a 100 day hat (trying to tie it all together).

   

Finally it’s Thursday and the 100^th Day has arrived. We already had our hats ready to go so they just put them on as soon as they came in. Many students came dressed as 100 year olds which was just precious. They also received a 100 day cookie snack.

 

We made our Fruit Loop necklaces, 100^th day certificates, and wrote about what we wish we had 100 of. Then we did our 100^th day centers!! Which included building a structure with 100 cups, building a structure with 100 Legos, writing numbers 1-100, roll and color a hundred’s chart, paint 100 dots and making a 100 day snack to name a few.

             

What a wonderful stress-free 100^th Day!!