Friday, December 21, 2007

And the Winner Is...

This week we completed our Gingerbread Man book study. Over the past 3 weeks children have read, discussed, retold, and acted out numerous versions of the well-known tale.

This year's versions included:
The Gingerbread Boy by Paul Galdone
The Gingerbread Man by Jim Aylesworth
The Gingerbread Man by Eric Kimmel
The Gingerbread Boy by Richard Egielski (a New York City version)
Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett
The Cajun Gingerbread Boy by Berth Amoss
The Gingerbread Girl by Lisa Campbell Ernst
The Gingerbread Cowboy by Janet Squires
The Stinky Cheese Man by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith

In a landslide vote, both classes decided to award the 2007 Gingerbread Man story Grand Prize to...The Gingerbread Girl by Lisa Campbell Ernst. Congratulations ~ YOU GO, Gingerbread Girl!




Runaway Cookie!

If you didn't hear about this from your child yet, you'll definitely want to ask him or her to tell you the story! (Their versions will be WAY better than mine!) :-)



Yesterday our class gingerbread person ran away!!!! She (yes, both classes made Gingerbread GIRLS) left us clues to follow her all around the school, but we just missed her at every stop! Finally we returned to our classroom where the last clue was accompanied by gingerbread cookies and the movie version of The Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett.

The Morning class could NOT relax and enjoy the cookies or the movie until they knew their gingerbread girl was safe and sound and hanging back on the wall outside our classroom door! E, our teacher's assistant this week, reported that she was "shaking" when I asked her to check and see if our Runaway Cookie had returned. It was a nerve racking but exiting chase.

The Afternoon class had many theories about where the Gingerbread Girl had gone during her brief stint as a runaway. Most popular theories included:
* She wanted to meet all of the teachers in the school
* She ran away to ask everyone in the school not to eat her
* She was trying to learn to write so she had to practice by writing all those clues
* And finally they settled on...she ran away to Wegman's to buy the gingerbread cookies for us! Later an addendum was added to this theory, stating that in order to get back so fast she must have "borrowed" a teacher's car, probably Mrs. Sero's, and the children then warned me that I better look for my keys right away. [Happy to report that the "mommyvan" was still parked in my spot without a scratch on it - she's a good driver for a cookie with such short legs!]

Thankfully both Gingerbread Girls are safe and sound and have resumed their posts outside our classroom door. At least, that's where they were when we left school today for our winter recess!

Happy Holidays Everyone! Enjoy the time with your delightful children!

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Exclamation Points

We have been working on sequencing and retelling stories. Last week during our Writing Club children sequenced and wrote a story about how to make a snowman. During the mini lesson at the beginning of Writing Club we worked together as a whole class to model writing the story. H provided the first sentence: "First make one snowball." She said that sentence should end with a period. M provided the next sentence: "Next make two snowballs!" He said that sentence should end with an exclamation point because "when you get to two snowballs it's way more exciting!" :-)

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Pint-Size Problem Solvers

Over the past several weeks we have been hard at work in our school's Math/Science/Technology Lab with Mrs. Smith. The children have worked together to solve a REAL LIFE problem for Mrs. Benz ~ What kind of books do kindergarten children prefer - fiction or nonfiction? After brainstorming a variety of ways to tackle the problem, children decided to invite all of the kindergarten classes to vote. Each kindergarten student had the opportunity to record his/her vote using the Smart Board. Our data showed that 49 kindergartners prefer nonfiction books while 33 prefer fiction. Children then used the Smart Board along with a program called Create-A-Graph to create graphs to present our data to Mrs. Benz. She was so impressed with our professional looking graphs!

But then Mrs. Benz came back to us with another problem: Which titles should be purchased for kindergartners to check out of the library? Children were given a choice of two fiction and two non-fiction titles. We were given the cost of each title and a "wallet" with $10 to spend. You would have been amazed at the teamwork and problem solving skills children demonstrated as they worked together to determine which books would be the best ones for Mrs. Benz to purchase. Impressive stuff from 5 and 6 year olds!

Out of the mouths of "babes" ~ here's what children had to say about their work:
* I'm a thinker!
* I'm even smarter than the Smart Board!
* I just used my math brain to figure it out.
* My table always has good ideas for solving problems.
* Everyone should read non-fiction so they can learn about real stuff.
* If you want to know the answer, you just keep thinking in your brain and then you'll know it!
* Now we've solved ALL of Mrs. Benz's problems!

What a pleasure to learn with your children!

Friday, December 7, 2007

The Story that Inspired the Blog

The weekly newsletters and slide shows on our class webpage give you some idea of what is happening in our classroom, but there are always cute and funny stories that don't get shared with families...brief exchanges that I may forget if I don't write them down, or things that may seem like "no big deal" that are actually amazing teachable moments. I hope to use this blog to share some of these sweet stories with you, the families of the Superstar Kindergartners I am privileged to spend my days with.

So here's the first story!

Today we read our third version of the Gingerbread Man story, and afterwards we were comparing and contrasting the different versions. M raised her hand and said that all of the stories had a cow, but one was "a chocolate cow" and the other two were "black and white cows that give regular milk." I said to the class, "Is that how you make chocolate milk? You milk a brown cow and she gives you chocolate milk?" EVERYONE said "yes!" Not a single child disagreed with this delightful idea! :-) So I said, "Oh! I thought you got some white milk and added Hershey's syrup to it!" And S replied, "That's only when you make it HOMEMADE!"

This is why I love teaching kindergarten!