Let's Make a Saint!



Hello Friends,

October and November are months when we think about saints in my Catholic school. I have been making paper saints with my kiddos for years and years. Throughout those years, I have worked to refine the project into something that is easy to create, but also educational and fun. FINALLY, I think I have a resource that will work for most early education Catholic school educators.


My students have been making these saints since mid-September. I now only have to show them an example and give them the materials that they need. They are usually able to complete them independently.... now...... When I first introduced them, we had to do them together step by step. Here are a few examples of student made saints...




I like to give my students a little information about the saints. There are MANY books and websites that can be used for information! I created a small poster for each saint with just a few facts about each one.


If you lack the time to create a paper saint, I have included coloring pages for each saint.







 If you are interested in this resource, you can find it by clicking the image below. One thing to note..... Because this project has been a work in progress for many years, I have made a few revisions to the labels and symbols since taking the photos. What that means is that the symbols you see in my blog photos might not match the ones provided in the resource.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Lets-Make-a-Saint-2865885


So... that's it for now, my friends....

Until next

Bats and Owls..... and.... Is it Really Fall here in Central Illiinois?

Hello Friends,

1.  We made our traditional 3D bats and owls this week. I absolutely love doing this project with my kiddos! They learn so much and it aligns nicely with our kindergarten science standards.






2.  It's so hard to believe that it is fall here in Central Illinois! My hostas are actually blooming again and the fall colors that we are used to on the trees just aren't there this year...




3.   But...... When I see my husband on his combine, I DO know that it is Fall..... This is the time of year when I hardly see him and remember how hard he works in the fall....




4.  Our priest is a HUGE Cubs fan. A few years ago, he promised the students in our school a day off if the Cubs won the World Series.... Well... friends... guess what? No school on Monday for us... yep... we have a priest who keeps his promises....  Even a Cardinal fan like me can reap the benefits of the Cubs win.... :)



5.  Finally...... When I was bungee jumping taking my fitness walk 2 weeks ago, I broke 2 bones in my ankle and am once again, I am in a boot..... sigh... I really need to stop bungee jumping.... not watching where I am going......

That's it for now, my friends... Make sure you visit Kacey at Doodle Bug Teaching!

http://doodlebugsteaching.blogspot.com/2016/11/five-for-friday-linky-party-november-4th_4.html


Until next time,

Using iPads to Create a Pumpkin Activity and Pumpkin Patterning

Hello Friends,



It's been another crazy week (s). I cannot believe that the last week of the quarter is next week! How did that happen? Soon, we will be writing Thanksgiving plans. So crazy how fast time goes!

 We have been doing fall activities. Yesterday, I took my kids out to our school garden. I divided them into pairs and gave each pair an iPad. They took photos of different parts of the pumpkin plant; which by the way, is totally taking over the garden! They found huge leaves, vines, blossoms, little pumpkins, big pumpkins...all sorts of things..... I then took their photos, downloaded them onto my computer, projected them upon my Promethean board, and the kids decided which photos they wanted to keep and which ones they wanted to delete. I sent them to Walgreens to get prints. Today, they took the prints and sequenced them upon a poster. I was thinking that there are all kinds of things they could do with a project such as this... They could take photos of living and non-living things. They could do a scavenger hunt for objects that show the colors of the rainbow. They could take photos of insects that they see. All sorts of ideas are swirling through my head!


We did pumpkin investigations. I only got a few photos of the activities. It's so hard to take photos while trying to keep control and teach at the same time! This photo shows measuring the height of their pumpkin. They also measured circumference, investigated float/sink, and explored the inside of their pumpkin.


 When the investigation was over, they painted their pumpkins!


 I still do patterns in kindergarten. We don't call them AABB or ABC patterns, but we DO create patterns. Here is a fun activity for the fall to do with patterns.



So that's it for now, my friends!

Until next time ...

Blessings,



Apple Posters and Monarch butterflies

Hello Friends,

I have to say that this year has been soooo super busy. I am not exactly sure what is different this school year, but when I get home, I am exhausted - super, duper exhausted. It's crazy, too, because I gave up tutoring after school this year, so you would think that I would have MORE time.... but... It's not happening yet... maybe it will soon!

We are very close to finishing our apple unit. If you read my blog, you know that we create an APPLE book every year; encompassing both literacy and science. This year, I decided to change the way we make the book.

 I have always done apple tasting with my kids. This year instead of giving each child an apple cutout, I added Velcro dots to sentence strips ( rough side) . Each child picked out a felt square that showed their favorite apple flavor and attached to the Velcro - super, super easy!

 2. We have been working on labeling in our writing journals.  Most of the labels can be found in my APPLE resource, but I also found the labels for the parts of the Apple HERE. The last photo in the collage is "Ten Apples Up On Top." In the past, I have taken photos of the kids pretending to hold apples on their head and then they cut and glued apples in a stack on top. This year, though, I wanted to do something different, so this is what I came up with..... If you would like the printable, I have uploaded it as a Google doc which you can find HERE. If your school does not allow you to download resources from outside your network, you will have to download from home on YOUR personal network.





We let our Monarch butterflies go a couple of weeks ago. I love, love, love this project!



  I ordered a class set of scoop rockers this year. I LOVE these little seats and so do my kiddos! It's such a nice way for my kids to have a comfortable place to sit while at the same time being allowed to "squirm" a little.... I also like that they can place their rocker any where in the classroom during reading or independent work time. They were well worth the expense! Here they are graphing their favorite apple flavors.


Rainbows and bubbles - Adding Science (STEAM) to my Curriculum

Hello Friends,

Goodness.... It has been a very looong time since I have written. We had a few family crises this past month which took priority . All seems to be back to normal, so hopefully, I will be better at posting now!

My goal for this school year is to add more science (STEAM) activities to my curriculum. I have to say that it takes a change in thinking to accomplish. I have had to allow my students to explore on their own without much intervention from me. This has been a little difficult for me because I usually have an end result in my mind which doesn't always match what my students ACTUALLY take away from the activity. Kindergarten activities often involve making a "mess", so I am used to that part. It just takes a little more patience to accept that the mess is part of the learning process!

Our first activity was understanding how rainbows are made.  I used a glow stick to demonstrate light. I held up a glow stick and told my kids that light is like this glow stick. All the light travels together in a straight line and looks white like the glow stick. But when it passes through an object like a prism or raindrop, it is broken up and we can see the colors. I broke the glow stick to demonstrate how light can "break" and create colors. Of course, a glow stick only shows one color, but it still shows the "breaking up" of one color to another.


I divided the kids into partners and took them outside. We were lucky that it was a sunny day! They captured the light with their prisms and saw that the light was broken into a rainbow. We looked at the order of the rainbow colors. They also experimented with creating rainbows with a cup of water. This is a bit more difficult, but when it works, it is an amazing way for kids to see why rainbows can be made on a rainy day.




We looked at how light is made of all the colors and is called "white." But when you mix all the colors together in Art, they create black. They had a great time mixing colors and creating secondary colors as well as black.

 This week, we studied surface tension using bubbles.  First they stirred plain water with spoons and saw that they created bubbles, but the bubbles did not last very long. This is because the surface tension of water is strong and is not "stretchy", so bubbles pop easily.


 Then they tried adding soap to the solution and saw that soap makes water "stretchier", so the bubbles last longer.

After they made bubbles with soap, they tried out different types of commercial bubble solutions. The kids were divided into small groups. They took turns being the "bubble blower." The bubble blower blew the bubbles and the rest of the group counted to see how long the bubble "survived" before it broke. They took turns being the bubble blower and counter.


 The children were given the opportunity to create their own bubble solution using different types of soap and compared the “lasting power” of their homemade solution to the commercial solution. They also added corn syrup to their solution and found that the bubbles lasted a REALLY long time. This is because corn syrup made the bubbles even more stretchy. A warning, though..... If you can do this outside, your clean up will be much less. It was raining on the day that we did our activity and our classroom became pretty messy with bubble solution and sticky corn syrup!

It was a fun activity, though… when I asked my kiddos what they had learned, I was told “Bubbles can have rainbows in them because light bends through them” and “You need to add soap to water to make bubbles stretch and last longer.”
I think these are  pretty awesome BIG IDEAS for five year olds!


 Click HERE for the link to the bubble activity.

So... that's it for now, my friends...

Until next time!

Blessings,

Classroom Reveal.....Almost finished....

Hello Friends,

I met my "littles" on Friday. Even after all my years of teaching, I continue to get excited for a new year. All those eager little faces and apprehensive parents...... There is just something about the beginning of the year that is delightful and exciting.....

I thought I would share a few photos of my classroom. I am not completely finished; but really, really close!



I love this reading nook. I have had this beach umbrella in my classroom for many years. This summer, I ALMOST replaced it with a newer one, but the colors of this one fit so perfectly with this room, that I thought I would give it another chance and I am glad that I did! The letters for READ are simply KG Second Chance font in Power Point that I blew up REALLY big and then copied onto colored card stock. 

This is the first year that I did NOT do a complete overhaul on my classroom library. I am happy with how it worked last year, so there are no changes there. I think I purchased the black plastic shelves from Lowes.


Here is another little reading nook. This is where I will have my CD players set up for my kiddos to listen to a story.  You cannot see them from this photo, but I also purchased 6 scoop rockers that my kids can use when sitting in this nook or actually anywhere in the classroom where they are comfortable and not in the space of another child...... You also can see my "pile" of filing on the bottom right that I must get to before the first day of school.... sigh.... filing is ALWAYS last on my TO Do list..... :)



I moved my reading table/small group area to the front of the classroom.  I don't have it completely organized yet, but my splurge this year is my new teacher cart! I can't wait to have everything I need to teach a lesson right at my fingertips...  and by the way... that is not an outside door that I am blocking with the cart! :)


You can "kind of" see a table with striped place mats on the bottom right of the photo. This is my iPad table. I am hoping to give my kids their own space when using their device. We'll see......


 Here is my religion bulletin board and you can see the iPad table a little better in this photo...

  Here is another bulletin board... nothing really new, but it sure brightens up the corner of the classroom!

I love owls, so here is my little classroom collection of owls.


So... that's it for now, my friends... I need to scoot and spend some time with my family today....

Here's to a wonderful and rewarding year to everyone!

Until next time!

Blessings,