Camp Meeting 2011

Camp Meeting 2011

Six Flags 2011

Six Flags 2011

Bumper Cars

Monster Plantation

An Old Gas Pump...he wanted a picture of it!

Sky Buckets

I LOVE Back to School Shopping

This week we were in Target, and I was immediately drawn to the dollar section with cool stuff for my Kindergarten classroom. Here are my finds:

This wire basket was $2.50. They had them in several colors. Then I got 4 sets of plastic cups. Each set had 4 cups/$1. I got the idea at Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits. The kids take a cup and fill it up with items they need for Writer's Workshop, and then they take it wherever they need to write.

$1 Super Star of the Week Items: awards and bookmarks

$1 Items for Birthdays: awards and stickers

$1 fun stickers and Congratulations awards

$1 Stars that I'm using for my students "Center Pictures." The kids move their Center Picture to mark what center they are working in. I will glue a photograph of each student inside the stars.

$1 Wipe Clean boards that I'll use for handwriting practice. These will be great for name writing practice. Each set has 4 boards.

I will use the $1 star name tags to label the kids' cubbies.

And who can resist a Cat in the Hat notepad for $1?

Hubby couldn't get out of the Target dollar section fast enough, but I could have stayed there at least another hour or 2 or 3... :)

July Journal Writing: A Dog and A Cat

Today was "Write-Whatever-You-Choose" for the kids' summer journal writing assignment.

Our Boy chose to write a song about a dog. Like to hear it? Here it go:

There once was a dog named Spot that lived in his dog house.
He eats kibble and has a great time.
He takes walks-many, many walks.
He goes many places, and places, and places.
He has 25 pounds of kibble.
Do you know what Spot would like?


Our Girl wrote a story about cats:

I love cats because they are soft. I do not have a cat because my Dad is allergic. When I go to DoDo and EJ's and play with one, it's name is RJ. The End.

Summer Sentences

I always have our kids work on academic skills during the summer. This week we've been working on writing better sentences using the format from here. You start with a simple sentence: The dog barked. Then you use these prompts to improve the sentence: describing word, who or what?, did what?, where?, and when? Both kids really liked coming up with silly, new sentences orally. Then they each had to record one new sentence on their own.

Original Sentence: The dog barked.

Our Boy's new & improved sentence: The friendly, sweet, fluffy, white dog loved his dog house outside all the time.

Our Girl's new & improved sentence: The golden retriever rocked (imagine fist in air here) in the house this morning at 6:00.

Review:
The good: Both kids were excited about writing! Neither of them are big fans of having to write, and this assignment really made them excited about writing. A+
A concern: Let's be real...not every sentence we write has all of these components: describing word, who or what?, did what?, where?, and when? B