I don't know about you ... but I have an absolute love/hate relationship with my bulletin boards.  I absolutely LOOVE thinking of things for the kids to create for our boards... but I DO NOT love the fact that it can take me hours to take them down and put them up.  A huge part probably has to do with the fact that I'm vertically challenged and have to use a step ladder to put anything up!

Even though it is time consuming, I love to change my bulletin boards at least once a month because both the students and their families take great pride in seeing the children's work up.  Plus, I am a huge advocate for creating a warm, friendly, positive learning environment and this is one way to achieve that!

One of the best things I've ever done was to plan out what I will have up on at least one bulletin board for every month before school even starts.  Having a "rough draft" ready to go in August always helps me organize and plan my lessons better.  PLUS it is a huge time saver and I'm not scrambling to think of what cute things to put up.

I do my best to have a bulletin board/wall space for every subject (student writer's wall, math wall, art and writing/social studies/science connection).  I think it is one of the best ways to show what the class is learning!

This month I will be putting up one of my all time favorite bulletin boards.

I really love this one because I'm able to touch upon so many standards and it's so stinkin' cute!  The kids are able to practice fine motor skills by threading yarn through the holes of the stockings.  I take pictures of the kids wearing cute hats/headbands and glue them on so that it becomes a great keepsake.  We also do some great interactive writing in small groups (I'll have to do another post about how I do small group interactive writing...but I digress) and ask Santa questions about what we have always wondered about him (kids are so used to telling Santa what they want that I wanted to emphasize the importance of getting to know Santa vs. just asking for material things from him).  Those writings are what I put on my bulletin board.  We also do individual letters and I "mail" those out in time for the kids to all get a response from Santa.

Here is another bulletin board I love to put up.

With everything going on in the world right now, I think this is an important topic to discuss even more so.  I love to read Todd Parr's "The Peace Book" as well as "What Does Peace Feel Like?" by Vladimir Radunsky.  In "What Does Peace Feel Like?" children from all over the world use their five sense to describe what they think would look, feel, smell, taste, and sound like.  It is always amazing what the children come up with.  I let them try to phonetically write what they want to say and then type it out correctly for the bulletin board.  How adorable and profound is it for a child to say "Peace is cats and dogs laying in a bed?!"  This is why I love teaching kindergarten and first grade!

Because I also talk about various holidays, I also like to put art work that reflects the different cultures we discuss at this time.  I like to read "The Legend of the Poinsettia" by Tomie Depaola and do this fun painting craft with my kids.  I can't remember who I got this idea from...it was way before pinterest but I do remember seeing it on someone's blog over 10 years ago!  I plan to do it again this year and I promise I will have better, updated photos to come!

Well...that pretty much sums up what I have planned for bulletin boards this month.  If I get to do something new...which is quite possible I'll be sure to blog about it soon!  Hope you all have a great Thanksgiving!

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Cherry

I absolutely love this time of year in Kindergarten.  I know it can seem crazy fitting in holiday performances, making parent gifts, doing fun crafts and of course sticking to your academic curriculum....but I just looooove it!

The kids have been in school a couple of months and the class is getting in a groove and it is just the perfect time to reinforce the concept of being "one family" that accepts and celebrates all of our diversity, cultures, and traditions.

Since Hanukkah is starting on December 6 this year, I thought I would blog about what I like to do in my class to introduce Hanukkah and how I do it in a way that still meets common core!

When we get back from Thanksgiving Break, here are the things that I will be doing in class.

1) Years ago, I stumbled upon an amazing book that reviews colors, numbers, counting and Hanukkah.  It is called "Sammy Spider's First Hanukkah."  You can find it on Amazon here.  I will be using this book as a Math Read Aloud to tie it into counting and cardinality and then doing a craftivity.  You can find the craftivity here at my tpt store.  I love doing the craft on 12 X 18 black construction paper.  The one below is on 9 X 12 for those of you who don't have access to 12 X 18 paper.  I just love how the colors pop against black!

I know this is a bad photo!  It's from over 10 years ago!  I'll definitely update with a better photo when we do this next week!

2)  I also love to teach the kids how to play the dreidel game which I'm sure many of you do as well.  This year, I decided to buy dreidels instead of making them.  The paper and pencil ones never spin very well and I found an awesome deal on amazon here.   I know 100 dreidels may seem like a lot but I thought it would be fun to have enough for the whole class to play during a lesson, as well as set it up as centers, and then have some left over to give as gifts.  When we play the game, we will be using a variety of things such as m & m's, plastic gold coins, marbles, gems, etc to play.  I know they aren't made of wood and are plastic but they spin really well, are colorful and bright, and are a great price!

3) And of course....I always love finding an excuse to eat!  We will be doing a taste test to decide which Hanukkah food we like the most.  I'll have the kids try latkes (from trader joe's) with sour cream, with apple sauce, and plain and see which one they like the best.  As soon as I finish making the survey sheet for this activity I will post it here as a freebie!

4) Some great read alouds that I always enjoy reading for Hanukkah are listed below:

Well I hope you all enjoy the rest of this Thanksgiving break!  Be sure to come back and check my blog to see if I can really do what I have planned which is to celebrate holiday traditions in the United States (Kwanzaa and Christmas), Mexico (Las Posadas), Sweden (Santa Lucia), and the Philippines (the country that celebrates Christmas the longest!).  I know...I'm crazy!  But like I said...I just love this time of year!!!!

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Cherry

Hey all!

Where does the weekend go?  It seems impossible to fit it all in!  I'm trying really hard to find a balance with everything that is important to me and somehow...it just never seems like I can get that balance right?!  I saw some people posting on instagram about how Ron Clark says something about if you try to juggle 3 plates and they fall...well then they fall...and you just gotta move on.  That pretty much sums up how I'm always feeling lol

Anyway, I haven't done a great job with keeping up with my posts but I wanted to give a little thank you to all of you who do come and check out what I'm up to.   It isn't much but in case you'd like it...here are some freebies for a couple things I made up this week for my class.  I just haven't had enough time to create for tpt lately...or to even blog about all the crazy things I'm doing in class but here are a few things I've managed to make.  Hope you all like it!

Have a great week everyone!  Here's to hoping Monday isn't so "Manic" and that we are all able to balance things a bit better in our lives this week!

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Cherry

Every year I dread teaching in the 90 to 100 degree weather that August, September, and October usually bring to Southern California!  This year..I thought...I might as well take advantage of the heat and teach my kinders about solar energy!

Since NGSS is rolling out in my district this year, I've been thinking of ways to incorporate them into what I'm already teaching and BAM!  It hit me!  I can incorporate NGSS K-PS3-1 (make observations to determine the effect of sunlight on the Earth's surface) into my Colors unit.  You see...I thought I'd introduce the concept of solar energy by teaching the kids how light absorption and heat absorption work with colors.

Here's what I did to introduce the idea of solar energy:

1) We watched a youtube video about light absorption and reflection.  I only showed the part about the lights and gummy bears.
2)  Then, I discussed how light reflects off of white and how it gets absorbed by black.  I used the terms reflects/bounces and absorbed/sucked into to make it easier for my kinders to get.  I also made sure to illustrate what happens with drawings.  I also linked it to why you feel more hot when you where dark colored vs. light colored clothing.
3) Last, I had the kids test out the information we just learned.  We predicted what would happen if we put a chocolate chip on a white piece of paper and what would happen if we put it on a black piece of paper.  Of course...I didn't have time to make a cook graph to chart our predictions or to make a paper for us to record our predictions...but I will def do this next year!  After we discussed what we thought and why, I had them work in partners.  One partner had a white square paper.  The second partner had a black square paper.  We went outside and tested out our predictions.  It was awesome to see the kids get so excited when the chocolate chip melted faster on the black paper vs the white paper.
4) And of course....we recorded what happened!

I love how my students really understood the concept of how light reflects and gets absorbed by doing something as simple as melting chocolate on paper!  

And of course...what better way to learn how people use this to help them create solar energy than to make solar ovens!  The kids were able to apply what they learned to make some awesome solar ovens!

I loved how I was able to incorporate NGSS and STEM with this activity.  What made it even more fun was having our 4th/5th grade buddies help the kids design their solar ovens.  The students all had a blast and couldn't believe how much solar heat the ovens were able to trap and create!  And of course...who wouldn't love getting to eat a S'MORE at school!

Here's how we were able to do these at school:

1) I sent out a sign up sheet through bloomz to get graham crackers, marshmallows, mini chocolate hershey candy bars, plastic wrap, and foil.  And of course parent volunteers.  Keep in mind though...I only had one parent come so this is totally do-able without the parent help.  I would just precut the openings to the boxes so that you don't have to run around cutting boxes during the activity.

2) Instead of using pizza boxes, I just collected old shoe boxes and my many amazon boxes and had the kids make one solar oven for every 4 students (two kinders and two 4th/5th grade students).  That way, I only needed about 12 boxes for my 24 students.  I wanted to provide a variety of boxes for the kids so that they could really think about how they wanted to design their ovens.  It wouldn't really be a STEM lesson if I told them exactly how to make the solar ovens now would it?

4)  Before I sent the kids out to build, I showed them pictures of various solar ovens so that they could see they come in all shapes and sizes.  I also reviewed the concepts that would help them with their designs.  (Things like black gets hotter than white, foil reflects heat, the plastic wrap can help trap in the heat, etc.)

5) I laid out the materials in one area so that the kids could come up and get what they needed as they were designing the ovens.

6) I saved the food items for last and made sure to have an adult pass out what they needed.  I wanted to make sure all the kids had enough supplies and we all know how tempting it is to sneak in an extra chocolate here and there :)

7) The kids set the ovens outside on benches (to avoid ants) and we let them stay out there for 3 hours.  The kinders checked on them once every hour and were amazed how quickly the chocolate melted!

8) While we waited for our buddies to come and eat s'mores, I had the kids draw a picture of their solar oven design and what they observed happening in their ovens.  Then, they could either draw or write (using their phonetic spelling) what they learned about solar energy.

9) Right before lunch, the 4th/5th graders came back and we all ate our s'mores!  

10) Lastly, I let the older kids take the solar ovens home and they were soooooo excited!  I never thought I'd see so many older kids excited to take home chocolate covered boxes with wrinkled foil and saran wrap!

One of the many solar ovens the kids designed!  I let the kids decide if they wanted their chocolate on top or under the marshmallows.  It was interesting to see what they did!

Even though I got a lot of different answers like "The sun creates heat, we can cook food with the sun, we can trap heat, etc." almost all the kids wrote the sentence we did together.  But I'm not complaining!  I'm just so happy the kids enjoyed the lesson and got to do some hands on learning!

Next up....designing something that will reduce how hot it gets when we are outside! NGSS K-PS3-2!!!  Now that we know what happens when we trap/absorb the heat and we know how to do that...I think it will be easier to figure out how to design something that will reduce/reflect the heat.  I can't believe I'm saying this but I'm kinda glad it will be 90-100 degrees next week!  

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Cherry

I don't know why I'm not used to how quickly August rolls around...you would think after a decade of summers doing this I'd be used to it by now!

I don't know about you but I know it's time to get back to work when I start stalking Target and waiting for the sterilite pencil boxes to go on sale for $0.50.  I'm getting a little nervous and have told myself I'll give it one more week and then I'm gonna bite the bullet and just pay for them full price.  Eeeek!!!

And now that I've been slowly restocking on pencil boxes, writing folders, fadeless butcher paper, etc. I am also starting to redo a lot of the activities I've done for years in my classroom.  I've already done two so far and wanted to share them with you.  I promise I will have better posts that talk in detail about how I do these activities once I am back in the classroom with the kiddos.  For now, I just have these resources on TpT for you to get for free if you like!  I'm all about sharing and collaborating so as I redo/make/create...I'll be sure to share them with you all!

The first project I redid was my Gingerbread Man scavenger Hunt.  I LOOOOVE THE GINGERBREAD MAN STORIES and got hooked by my mentor teacher years ago.  When I took over her classroom she had this as her theme and I couldn't resist using the same gingerbread theme in my room.  Now granted, I'm not talented in classroom decor like many teachers out there but I do like to incorporate the gingerbread theme as best as I can in my room.  I start, of course, by introducing this character on the first day of school.  In September, I'll post in more detail about my gingerbread theme and the activities I do but for now....here is the link to my scavenger hunt clues!

Next, I started to redo my calendar worksheets.  I know many of you do something similar but I thought I'd post it as a freebie on TpT for anyone who hasn't had the time to make these or wanted a different version than the one they are currently using.  I looove to use these calendars as a quick assessment on how my students are doing in terms of writing their numbers, recognizing them, putting them in correct order, etc.  It's also a great activity to have a substitute do!  I like to make copies of the calendars before I send them home to keep for conferences to show the progress students are making in writing their numbers.  Sometimes I feel like we get so busy doing all of the other rigor that we forget to focus on things as simple as writing numbers correctly so this is a quick and easy activity to incorporate into your busy day that is also a great assessment for numeral writing!  Anyway, I'll be working on the other months and posting them soon.  I plan on doing an art activity with each this year and will add that as soon as I can :)  Hope you enjoy this freebie too!  I can't believe school is just around the corner!  eeeeek!!!!

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Cherry