Wrapping Up 2012

All of my gifts are wrapped, most of my cookies are baked, and school is out for Christmas break.  It's hard to believe that we are already here - Christmas Eve Eve!  We had a fun class party - planned by my awesome Room Moms.  The kids enjoyed making a craft, playing games, and eating a yummy snack.

This year our school is participating in an number of philanthropic opportunities.  One is Heifer International Read to Feed.  Out  PTO has secured donations to purchase animals for this program: one dollar per book read.  So far, my Kinders have "donated" a trio of rabbits (60 books), a flock of chicks (20 books), and are well on the way to donate a goat (120 books).  Of course, in kindergarten these are read aloud books.  Because of the crazy nature of last week, we spent more time reading than we usually have time to do.  As of Friday, 12/21, my class total is 182 books read aloud in class since the beginning of the school year!  We have an envelope of "dollars" - after a book is read, one is transferred to our collection folder.  Periodically we would take them out and count them.  This past week we counted them, and I wrote the total on a sticky note.  Each time we read one, we got to practice "adding one" and changed the number on the sticky note. The kids loved doing addition with such big numbers!

Here are some Learning Stations we did in the past few weeks.

Addition activity.  Students used this "Instant Center" from Lakeshore Learning to practice addition skills.  A page from Teacher's Helper (not pictured) was used to give additional practice.  

                                              

Counting and reading number words activity from The Mailbox.  Students cut apart the cards and matched the correct cookie jar pictures with the number words.  Mrs. S. helped them do this station.  Now that everyone has done this activity, I plan to copy the cards onto card stock and place it in a Skill Tub for independent practice.

Write the Room.  We studied the letter F last week.  When describing what to do in this station, I had to be sure to tell them to look for words beginning with f, not to look for f-words! 

Sight Word Memory & practice page from Teacher's Helper.

Christmas Ornament  The kids drew a Christmas picture and wrote a sentence (or two) about it.  The word list is from an older issue of The Mailbox.

CVC Spelling.  This great activity is from Of Primary Importance.

Color by Sight Word.  One of my wonderful teaching partners found this on Pinterest.  There are no "identifying labels."  Is it yours?  If so, let me know so I can give you credit.

 Foam ten frames to make numbers to twenty.

 Here are some crafts we did this month.

Kinders love to make crafts - especially when they are gifts for their parents!  They sponge painted these little tree cut outs (from Michaels), affixed a small photo, and went to town with sequins & glitter.  The bags in the background are gift bags made from lunch bags and sequined trees. 

The tree theme was continued in the cards they made for their parents.  I'm sure not too many of these gifts are under any trees - they were so excited to give them to their parents!

Gingerbread Babies dance around our hallway bulletin board.  I made the gingerbread house a few years ago after reading Jan Brett's Gingerbread Baby.

Snowman Word Family Chart.  I made this little snowbuddy to help my Kinders read word family words.  I figure it will take us through January, etc.

Under the Tree.  The kids had fun making numbers to twenty on this page (get it here).  We used linking cubes for the "gifts" before coloring in the ten frames.

I hope that you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!