Merry Christmas!

Make a video - it's fun, easy and free!
www.onetruemedia.com

Behind on Pictures :)

Hi everyone! I hope you're enjoying your break (and the snow)! Too bad it's so cold out or I would totally go sledding :)

Just a little mess after opening some presents :)

We made bead candy cane ornaments! Some of the kids decided our classroom tree looked a little bare. How sweet.

Look at this tree. Haha. I didn't move the ornaments to evenly space them out. I think it's adorable like this!

Happy birthday to Devan!!!!

Our bears get to hibernate on the way home :)

Goodbye to fall celebration!

A big thank you to all of you for making this job even more special. I got a little teary eyed when I was opening up the presents yesterday. I didn't even care that the party was crazy...I usually would...but with last week's events, just being with the kids was enough. I really appreciate how thoughtful your gifts were. They were funny, cute and some really took a lot of planning. I was amazed and touched that you know the class motto....and I got a halo?! ADORABLE! Have a Merry Christmas! Miss D

A Message from Lisa Moore....Party Coordinator Extraordinaire :)

A big thank you to all of the parents who helped with the party! I didn't have a chance to check my email until last night. I'm so thankful that you just came to help out instead of just not coming because I didn't respond. Everyone's help was appreciated. I think the kids had a good time. Happy holidays and safe travels to everyone :) Lisa

Willow's Wonderful Visit to K02

Make a video - it's fun, easy and free!
www.onetruemedia.com

Happy Thursday!

Each year I have the class work on a puzzle together. It promotes the idea of teamwork and it makes for an adorable memory of each class that I can hang in our library :)

HIDDEN WORDS! See the doubles at the bottom?

There will be a movie of Willow's visit! Coming soon.....(also on shutterfly)

Cookie Monster!

Funny story for you! So once at snack I saw that Cason had these UNBELIEVABLY yummy looking homemade chocolate chip cookies---which are my ONE vice in life. I was joking around with the kids and asked them if we could add a 6th promise to our classroom promises. It would be, "If your parents make cookies, you have to bring Miss Dunker one." Ha. We had a good laugh....

 

but now, I've received a cookie from Logan (and one from Jaxon last week!!!)

Good thinking on my part. Ha! Have a GREAT week!

I am so thankful for all of you and for your beautiful children. Enjoy your weekend and kiss your little blessings tonight.

Love,
Miss Dunker

Happy Wednesday!

We love 12-12-12! :)

So today I pulled a group of 3 kiddos to work on an extra challenging problem. We've been working on greater than/less than all year. I added an extra step to this problem. I asked them to figure out how many more. It was SO fun to be able to work with this group and really watch them push through and discuss what they were trying and why.

Remember those 8 Standards of Mathematical Practice I sent you? It's also going to be on the report card. Today I saw several of these report card behaviors....Discuss mathematical thinking, use appropriate tools, make sense of problems and persevere.

They all started the same way. It was really easy for them to count each group and record the number. They also had no problem deciding which was greater. They did have trouble figuring out how many more.

I kept questioning, but they were really stuck. So I pulled out two smaller groups (4 snowman eraser and 2 teddy bear counters.) They all instantly said, "There are 2 more!" WHOA. So I built off of that and slowly they started to figure out how to move the objects around (basically matching them up to see how many of the bigger group were left over.) I did NOT tell them how to group them or how to match them. They figured it out. Isn't it SO fun to see????

Avery pulled two objects to the side...but wasn't sure where to go from there. Then, Cale had an idea.

Here is Cale explaining his matching/grouping technique to Jorgia and Avery.

It's 12-12-12!!!!

What a SWEETIE! Today is the best day because it's our favorite number alllll day long. Hot Pink 12 comes from the story, Chicka Chicka 123. We love this number and today is 12-12-12. How cool!

 

Ike and his wonderful family bought me a hot pink 12 shirt and made an awesome poster! It's SO cool! I'm a happy teacher. So we all made badges to wear all day too. We'll post a picture today :)

Thanks Ike!

CUTE BAG. Lost a few letters...it is kindergarten after all.

Cookie Exchange!

Make a video - it's fun, easy and free!
www.onetruemedia.com

Happy Monday!

Darn...you can't really see the story that well....but Miss Mahlaya got this done in approx the first 10 minutes of writing. Now THAT'S hard work!!! Look at that great story about the snow :)

So in math we were trying to use color tiles to interpret a sound pattern that I started (clap, pat, clap, pat). It's amazing. Look at Cale's pattern for a head, shoulders, knees pattern. He said, "Rhombus, square, up, rhombus, square, up." Wow.

Kurgan did blue, green, red, blue, green, red...for the same pattern.

Today our story problem was difficult. I gave them a difficult problem on purpose...to make sure that we're teaching perseverance (one of the 8 Standards of Mathematical Practice that are listed on the report card). The problem was....I had 5 pieces of fruit on my plate. Some were strawberries. Some were bananas. What could my plate look like?

We had several interesting ideas brought up during math talk.
*Some kids drew blueberries and apples (and other fruit). Most of the children agreed that this was not what the problem said.
*Some kids questioned what some meant. One child thought it had to mean 2. Interesting isn't it???
*Some were ready for this problem and drew all parts of 5 (3/2, 4/1, 5/0). 

We decided to act out the problem with red and yellow cubes. I think it helped!

Happy Friday!

Our bears are hibernating. We learned that bears can wake up from their light hibernation to get some food! Ours will probably be hungry for some salmon next week.

 

 

So today I gave the kids a few seconds to look at the graph. They had to choose the side that had the greater amount. Then they wrote down a 1 or a 2 on a sticky note and we went to PE. Later, we examined our graph and had some AMAZING math discussion. We numbered the objects and found out that, indeed, there were more stickies than cottonballs. Do you see that a few friends picked side 1? So I asked them....

Why did some kids pick side 1? Look at this next pictures to see what ideas they had. They ALL participated and were really thinking. I did not lead them, prompt them or anything at all. These were all ideas straight from their heads. SO FUN!!!! 

Oh no! The words are mixed up! That birthday song didn't make any sense :)

Ike took care of that! Does it look better now?

Devan noticed that Marjorie made Ike's birthday book on the printer. Very cool!

So Ike told us about one of his favorite characters....Julius (the monkey!) Thanks for such an awesome book Ike. I can't wait to let the kids read it and see those pictures up close. I'll need to check out other Julius books too. Can't wait!