Our Chicka Boom Room

Will There Be Enough Room?

This unit is always a favorite...of mine and the munchkins!

We always begin with a reading of the story, which is so very interactive and fun.  Then we use our pocket chart to practice the repetitive text, one-to-one reading, and sight word recognition.  It reinforces alphabet letters, too, as we add different letters to our blow up tree.

It's always funny when our tree gets too full of letters and...

Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom!

We take some time to make our own little Chicka Chicka Tree.  We fill it with all sorts of letters, just like in the story.

We also have fun searching for and working with letters throughout this unit.

Whether it be our letter bingo game...

Or the sand box filled with letters at the science center...

Or the fun little letter games we created at center time...

The munchkins had tons of fun with letters!

But we also learned all about the coconut tree...

Its life cycle...

It's many parts...

And what all those parts do for the tree.

We practiced several math concepts too.

Like patterning at the math center...

And working on patterning jobs at center time...

We also counted coconuts into the coconut tree...

And some of those malted milk balls coconuts were soooo yummy!

We enjoyed listening to the story on tape...

And getting our paints out to make our own version of the Chicka Chicka Tree.

But probably the most fun was the recipe!!

We made the Chicka Chicka tree!

It was complete with roots, trunk, leaves, coconuts and letters!

Chicka, Chicka!

Boom! Boom!

Until next time...

Giggles,

Mrs. D.

Happy Birthday Mary!

A Special Birthday

Our school celebrated the Nativity of Mary with a special afternoon birthday party, complete with cake.  Our class enjoyed celebrating with the first and third graders. 

The cake was super yummy...

But unfortunately, we only had a handful of munchkins at school that afternoon. 

It was a special way to dedicate the afternoon to Our Blessed Mother.

~  Happy Birthday, Mary  ~

Until next time...

Giggles,

Mrs. D.



The Kissing Hand

A Kiss From Me to You

Our first unit has come to an end!  It's hard to believe we've been working for three weeks already, but time does fly when you're having fun...

And we've had lots of fun with our Kissing Hand unit, based on the story The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn. 

Chester is always such a fun little character to get to know, as he helps us make it through all the "rough spots" of being in school for the first time.

We began our unit this year making Chester for our wall.  What a great activity this is!  Even though it looks like a simple cutting and gluing exercise, the munchkins have to work very hard at following directions in order to get him to go together the right way.  Not to mention, during the first weeks of school, cutting and gluing are simply NOT all that simple!

They turned out sooooo cute!

  

Just like the munchkins that made them!

After reading all about Chester's first days of school, we read about his need for a Pocket Full of Kisses...the fun sequel to the first story.  We had all sorts of fun with activities from this book. 

We had a special "Chester's Pocket" snack...

Then we made a little pocket that we filled with kisses (the chocolate kind!)...

Then we made a BIG pocket to fill with some fun learning games...

 

Like the number matching game that the munchkins loved to play when they had extra time.

We also spent some time with several fun math and language activities, like counting kisses...

graphing probability results from our "Chester Spinner"...

and coloring & reading from a fun little emergent book about Chester. 

What a great way to help us practice the sight words we are learning.

Last, but definitely not least, these munchkins were introduced to the all-important kindergarten tradition of Recipe Day!  As always, our Wednesday afternoons have a little time set aside for creating a fun treat to go with our unit for the week.  These munchkins loved learning all about this tradition and loved even more making their first one!

"The Kissing Hand Toast"

YUM!

Although we're sad to say good-bye to Chester...

We can't wait to start our new unit.

I wonder what that will be?

And I wonder...

"will there be enough room?"

Until next time...

Giggles,

Mrs. D.