creepy or cool?

thinking about christmas

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sunday morning...

Here's the Story...

yeah...only it's not the story of a man named Brady, and his lovely lady, but it was a hunch,

a hunch that we could take these children from different classes,

and somehow form a family- a school family...

okay, okay...enough of The Brady Bunch...and sorry if you are too young to even get this reference!

but, this week has sort of felt like the blending of a family.

This week 12 children from my original kindergarten class joined with 10 first graders from classes down the hall to make one k/1 class.

This week has felt a bit like the first week of school all over again as we got to know each other, relearned daily routines and began to form our learning community.  We are building relationships.

There are no shortcuts here.  Relationships take time and grow with careful nurturing.

So, before I can to forge my way through combining the curriculum of two grade levels, I will spend time with these new family members.  We, of course, need to learn each others' names, but we also need to learn about what kind of stories we like to read and we need to learn how to share our own stories.  We need to decide how we will celebrate birthdays and other special occasions.  We will learn who is silly and who is kind of quiet.  We must find out how to encourage each other. 

We will build our reading workshop together, and a workshop for writing and math.  Some kids are 4 years old and others will turn 7 this year.  There will be growing pains..."Growing Pains"...I feel another sitcom connection here.

This bunch of k kids and firsties will somehow form a family, that's the way we all become the...hhmmm, Bugaj Bunch.  I probably should just go to bed now.

colorful friday

What a busy week!!!
We spent our days learning about colors and enjoying Pete the Cat.
And, yes, it was "all good".
Here are some pictures from our science experiment today.

Have a lovely week-end.

it's all good

it's all good.
really it is.
i tell myself this over and over...and then i have to tell myself again.
it's all good.

I have been working with a delightful bunch of children for the past 4 weeks.
And yes there is a bunch of them!!  This class has 30 children. 
30 beautiful, eager, lovely children.  Children that have made me giggle, inspired me and have E.X.H.A.U.S.T.E.D. me!
30 kindergarteners are certainly a bunch!  The size of the group has made it challenging to do the lunch count, challenging to present lessons, challenging to manage the supplies...
BUT it has been easy to fall in love.  Each of the 30 kids have brought their own stories to our class, tried their best to be big kids and now another challenge.

In order to provide a better program for the children, we are adding a new class.  This new class will allow us to better group our children in kindergarten and first grade.  As we shuffle our classes, our children, ourselves... we see that it will be good- very good.

I will teach a multi-age class of first graders and kindergarteners.  I know that this will provide a wonderful opportunity for learning and am eager to get started.  I will keep some of the k kids and bring in a group of first graders.  Sounds great.  But my challenge will be to say goodbye to some of the children that I have been working with the past 4 weeks. 

These boys and girls are my very first group of kindergarteners.  It will be so hard to say goodbye to the children that will be going to the new kindergarten class.  Already they have made a place for themselves in my heart.

But it's all good...it really is.



Mama Got Some New Shoes

So what do my new shoes (cute, huh?) have to do with our literacy lesson this morning!  Well, let me tell you, inspiration is everywhere, even in the Kohl's shoe department!   Because just about everything I need to teach can be related to finding cute shoes...

Today we taked about picking out "just right" books to read.  My goal is for the children to confidently choose books that are interesting, at thier level and serve their purpose for reading.  Choosing "just right" books means we look at:
*PURPOSE- why we are reading
*INTEREST- is this interesting to me?
*COMPREHENSION- can I understand this?
*KNOWLEDGE- what background knowledge do I have for this?

Back to the shoes...I showed several shoes and we had a great discussion about why I would pick each.  Each shoe serves a different purpose, is used for different interests, comes in different sizes.  My husband's work boots would not be a good choice for me to wear out dancing (yeah, I go out dancing often!!), etc.  We related these ideas to our book selections and will come back to this discussion often.  One size does not fit all- THANK GOODNESS!!!