Candy Land Day!

 

Yesterday Kindergarten kiddos came into school to discover that it was CANDY LAND DAY!  The kindergarten kids worked hard last week to make all sorts of SWEET themed directed drawings.  We used those to help decorate the halls!

The hall was decorated with all things sweet! 

We spent the morning doing normal learning, well at least as normal as it can be when your school has transformed into Candy Land!  

After lunch students went to the library and wrote a song with Ms. Dobson!  Normally we encourage healthy eating, but on Candy Land Day, we say NO WAY!

After our song writing session the kids gathered in the gym where there were various fun activities for them to do while waiting to start the game.  Students were put into groups with kids from other classrooms.   Students rolled a dice and moved through the game board together as a team.  

The first candy trap they fell into was Gumdrop Mountain!  Students worked together to build a mountain out of solo cups.  They had to see how high they could get their tower without knocking it over! 

Students then rolled their dice and moved through the game board!

They continued to through the game until they came to the PEPPERMINT FOREST!  At the Peppermint forest kids had to work together to form a tube of peppermints to get a marble from one point to another without it touching the ground.  This station required them to communicate with each other and problem solve!  It was tricky but they did not give up!

After traveling through the Peppermint Forest, they found themselves stuck in Gumball Grove!  In order to escape Gumball Grove they had to get the gumballs out of the pit and sort them into their word families.  Sounds pretty easy.... not quite, there were some tricky gumballs that didn't belong to any of the word families, so they really had to pay attention!

We had a special guest volunteer at the Gumball Grove... my mom!

As they left Gumball Grove, they made their way to Cupcake Commons.... but OH NO... Molasses Swamp took over Cupcake Commons, the kids had to wade through the swamp to find all the cupcakes and match them to the correct plate!  

Luckily all the kids made it out of Molasses Swamp!!

After Molasses Swamp they made their way to...

DONUT DANGER ZONE!!!

At Donut Danger Zone Mrs. Peterson had a physical fitness activity waiting for them.  They rolled the dice and hopped that many spaces, if they landed on a space with a donut they had to complete an exercise before moving on!

Once they made their way through the Donut Danger Zone they continued through the gameboard until they got to Lollipop Lagoon.   At Lollipop Lagoon they worked on reading decodable words and ABC order! 

After they finished their tasks in Lollipop Lagoon they made their way back to the gym where they were rewarded with a donut and juice!  Life sized Candy Land is hard work!

This day was made possible by a grant I received through the Community Foundation of Northern Illinois and by the generous donations made from our Candy Land Day Amazon Wish List that was sent home earlier this school year.  We will continue to use the Candy Land games and centers throughout the week during our center and play time.  

Enjoy some more pictures from our EPIC-ally awesome day. 

100th Day Of School!

 Can you believe we have been in kindergarten for 100 days!!??!?!??!  Time sure flies when you're having fun... and a lot of fun was had today!  We started our day out working really hard and we read 100 words!

Here is the slide show with the 100 words if your child wants to practice reading them at home! 

Click Here for 100 words slide show

After that we worked hard and did 100 exercises!

We worked really hard to count 100 stickers!  This was tricky because we had to use our finger muscles to get the stickers off the sticker sheet.  Our hands got tired, but we didn't give up!

We practiced counting to 100 by tens and made crowns!

Mrs. Laue hid 100 Hershey Kisses all over our classroom and we had to work together to find them and put them in number order.  Of course, when we were done, we got to eat a hershey kiss too!

Our 100's Day snack was a HUGE hit!  They got to choose ten pieces of ten different snacks.  Some friends brought their extra snack home in a baggie.  It takes a long time to eat 100 pieces of snack when you are only 5 and 6!

Working hard and counting to 100 so many times really aged us today.  

Merry Christmas!

 It is hard to believe that this school year is already to the halfway point.  Time sure flies when you are having fun!  

I'm sure your kiddos told you that our class received a grant from Donor's Choose and we got a drying rack and painting supplies so we can step up our creativity in the classroom. The kiddos have had so much fun painting!  

We will continue to utilize our new supplies in the classroom.  I am very thankful that our classroom was chosen to receive the grant.  Donor's Choose is a website where teachers create a project and post it with hopes that someone will fund part or all of their project.  Our project was funded by multiple different people on Giving Tuesday.  

This week we have had so much fun celebrating spirit week.  The kids really seem to enjoy spirit weeks.  

We also have done a couple science experiments with candy canes this week.  I believe their favorite was the taste testing.  They definitely prefer sweet over minty! 

This week we also got to go to a Scholastic Book Fair and choose three books free of charge to our students.  This project is funded by United Way and we are so thankful they do this for our students.  

Lastly, I am SO proud of these kiddos for ROCKING out their concert.  They were very nervous, but they owned the stage.  I can't wait to see their future performances!

I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and I hope the kiddos have a nice and relaxing break. 

GLOW DAY!!!

 

This week we had our very first theme day this year!  We had GLOW DAY!  We had so much fun!  We spend the day doing all sorts of learning activities that glow under the black lights.  

We started the day working in our phonics journal.  The kids got to use neon crayons and highlighters to write their words and their making words letter were on neon paper. 

After phonic we started literacy learning centers.  Students got to learn at different glowing centers.  They got to make words in the neon rice bin, write the room using highlighters, learned about the sight word you, played tic tac toe, and worked on building fine motor skills by placing glow beads on decodable words. 

In the afternoon we read the book Creepy Underwear which is always a class favorite!  It is especially cool, because the illustrations glow in the black light!

We transitioned into math centers where kids worked together to build towers and count how many cups high their towers were and they completed many center activities to build number sense. 

We ended the day with free play and glowing volcanoes!

We had a great glow day!  

This Is Halloween!

 We had so much fun celebrating Halloween on Friday and Monday.  The kids all looked super cute in their costumes and had so much fun walking in the parade.  On Halloween we talked about our five senses as we carved a pumpkin.  We will try eating pumpkin seeds soon. 

Apple Fun!

 We have had so much fun learning about apples this week! 

We learned all about how apples grow, the different types and colors of apples and we taste tested lots of different apple things!  

All of the students LOVED the Mott's apple juice!

We learned about the different parts of an apple! 

Today we spent our morning peeling and coring apples to make homemade applesauce!  The kids were very helpful and used their GIANT muscles!  

We put it in the crockpot with some water and sugar and put the temperature to high.  Our classroom smelled SO good all day!

When it was time to taste test, Mrs. Kurich's friends came to join us.  We made PLENTY of applesauce!  We compared how Mott's applesauce and homemade applesauce are similar and how they are different by looking at them.  We talked about how the homemade applesauce doesn't have preservatives and only stays good for a couple of days, and it is also why the homemade applesauce looks brown and the Mott's applesauce is yellow. 

Then the fun part came!  We got to taste test!  As you can tell from the photos, some friends LOVED it and some friends...not so much!

After we taste tested both types of applesauce, we graphed which one we liked better!