Easter Party

I love Easter! Usually for us, it means Spring Break is coming, but also it means we get to have a fun party!

So what do we do for our party? First, we have an egg hunt! Every child brings at least 21 eggs.  We number the eggs from 1-21.  Every child gets a number from 1-21 (or how many ever kids we have.) Then every child hunts for their number only! This is great for number recognition! You can differentiate based on what level your kids are on and the egg hunt lasts more than a second.  Also...it makes it fair!

 Then we go back in the room and look through our eggs to make sure we didn't get anyone else's.  Believe it or not...it happens.  Sometimes random eggs but especially 6 gets 9 and 16 and 19 and 12 and 21 ... those are the ones that get mixed up the most even when we put lines on them.  So we get them all straight and let everyone eat a piece of candy and then put them away.

 Then on to our "party!"  For the party, we have several activities going on where the students rotate.  This gives them a chance to do several things we didn't have a chance to get to during the week that are thematic, makes small groups, and makes the party centered around learning.

Tissue paper Easter Eggs

Graphing M&Ms

Jelly Bean Addition

 Easter Egg Dying

Peep Sight Word Memory

 We did finish up with some yummy food, but I missed pictures of that because I went to my own little guy's Easter Party where they were flying kites and having an egg hunt!  We had a great time! Did you do anything special for Easter?

Community Garden

We are really blessed to have an opportunity to visit a Community Garden across the street from our school.  This initiative started as a grant a few years ago and only a few classes were able to go, but now all the Kindergarten classes go once a week to the garden.  It's an inter-generational thing, so there are seniors there volunteering to work with our little guys.  I am not a gardener in the least, so I learn something every time we go!

This is what the Welcome Garden looks like when it's all grown.  It doesn't look like this just yet :) 

Every week when we go, our wonderful Master Gardener Ms. Joni has something planned for us to do and then there is a volunteer as well.  We break into 2 groups and do 2 activities and then we switch and do the other activity.  We do things like weed, plant, water etc.  The students learn about worms, the compost bin and they take a tour of the garden every week so they get to see how everything is growing every time.  It's really a great experience.

 Looking at plant parts (flowers) with magnifying glasses.

 Here they learned about how the bugs eat up the plants and using things other than chemicals to kill them.  Ms. Joni talked to them about hand picking them and putting them in soapy water, but they were petting it first.

 Checking out the strawberries and how much they have grown.

War Heads

On Friday we have our spelling test...as an incentive, we let the kids go to the treat jar if they make a 100.  We found some war heads in there and got some pretty funny reactions from the kids.  We wished we had enough to let everyone try them because they were so funny and cute and everyone wanted to try, so Miss Currie bought some more and we let everyone have a try.  It was really the cutest thing ever.  These silly moments where we get to take a break from all the structure, curriculum and seriousness sometimes just make it all worthwhile.  I love these kids...take a look :)

Have you ever tried War Heads in your classroom?  What's fun in your class?

Truck Day

In lieu of career day this year, our school had Truck Day.  On this day, several trucks of popular careers came out and explained their jobs to the kids and showed them how their trucks worked.  This was super neat EXCEPT it was FREEZING that day.  It had been 70s-80s and then suddenly it was 50 and we were freezing.to.death.  I snapped the best pictures I could.  Our favorite was the crime scene unit...because not only was it neat...it was also heated! :)

This was on the way...she was so cute in his cat coat I had to snap her picture :)

Cement Truck - I really wanted them to turn it on and mix something! 

Pet Grooming - They didn't actually groom in the van, but he explained all the grooming.  The van was more for advertisement he explained.

Suddenlink Truck - This was pretty neat.  He had a ladder that went way up in the air, but I couldn't snap a picture.  He did a great job of explaining to the kids what everything was for! 

 Crime Scene Unit - Cue the heat!! (And the cameras that could see to the Intermediate School!)

Apparently they have a toilet in there that burns whatever you do...the kids wanted to see that but you have to be 18 to see that..ha! :) 

 Fire Truck - It never gets old! There was a woman fire fighter, which I've never seen! Pretty neat :)

When we get back, we'll be talking about Community Helpers and this was kind of a perfect lead into it. Does your school do any kind of Truck Day or Career Day?