Christmas Overload!

Is it just me, or has this year FLOWN BY?! It's hard to believe that we are already on Winter Break. I'm sure I speak for all of us when I say, I miss those little rascals already. Our entire week was full of holiday spirit! From 8:00-3:00, we did all things Christmas. Anyone a little burnt out? ;) If you walked in our halls, I'm sure the displays made your smile widen from ear to ear.

My favorite activity of the week was "Santa's Stuck". We read the story, then the students came up with different ways they would save Santa from being stuck inside their chimney! The ideas are hilarious!

Here are some other festive activities your child completed this week!

*** While preparing my students for our class Christmas Party, news broke of the school shooting in Connecticut. It made me cherish the time I had with my students even more than I already do. I hugged them all a little tighter as they walked out of the classroom to go home that day. At this time, we'd like to take a second to honor and remember those lost in the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary. To the school and community of Newtown, you are not alone. Our hearts mourn for you and our positive thoughts are with you, now and forever. ***

We hope everyone has a wonderful break and spends loads of quality time with the ones they love! 

Happy Holidays!!! See you in 2013 :)

XOXO, Sutton Kindergarten Team

You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch!

You can't celebrate the Christmas season without recognizing the king of mischief, Mr. Grinch! Of course, we don't celebrate the fact that he was cunning and mean... rather, we celebrate how he was able to strengthen his heart and make it grow 3 sizes bigger on Christmas Day by giving back to the Who's. How could we have our students give back to one another and make their own hearts grow? Our grade level team decided to bring that lesson into our classroom by making a class Grinch and decorating our Grinch with hearts full of random acts of kindness! The holiday season is all about love and making others feel loved. Check out how kind our little friends are (we are continuing giving hearts for acts of kindness up until the last day of break!)

We incorporated the Grinch into our entire day- from reading to math! Tons of grinchy fun was had by all. Our classes brainstormed ways to make the Grinch grin, solved Grinch math problems, read different stories, had a special Grinch punch for snack, and even were able to watch the movie that afternoon! Last, but not least.... THE GRINCH EVEN CAME TO VISIT US!!!!! What a great day to be in kindergarten! 

This writing piece simply warms my heart!
"To make the Grinch grin, I would give him a family."

We still have many more Christmas ideas up our sleeves, so stayed tuned!

Run! Run! As Fast As You Can!

Run! Run! As fast as you can! You can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man! If you were a fly on the wall in our classroom, this is a line you would have heard MANY times throughout the last week. To celebrate the conclusion of November and the beginning of December, we had a Gingerbread Theme Week! Who knew there were so many things you could do with gingerbread? All four kindergarten classes spent all week discussing all things gingerbread, but each class put their own twist on the activities.

Of course for our read alouds, every story was about a gingerbread. Our classes explored the similarities and differences of each story. Many of the stories had the same refrain, but a few of them had different unexpected ones! A favorite was the refrain from "The Gingerbread Cowboy", which always began with "Giddy Up! Giddy Up!". Too cute! The students completed lots of story maps and text-to-text worksheets for comprehension. Mrs. Hoffman's group made an adorable jar and wrote about each story they read. They did an AMAZING job!!

The kiddos completed Gingerbread Glyphs this week as well. I love being able to learn different things about each child through glyphs :) Check out Mrs. Williams gigantic gingerbread!!!!

 Next week has potential to be the best week EVER. It is Miss DeWitt's personal favorite movie and the kindergarten teachers have lots of fun things up their sleeves! I'll give you a hint... he's mean and green. Can you guess the theme?!

Welcome to Turkey Land!

The hallways of Sutton have turned into a land of turkeys! From kindergarten to the 4th grade rooms, there are the neatest art and writing projects being displayed. It makes the long trip to the workroom more pleasant :)

Our kinder cuties have learned so much about Thanksgiving this week. They know tons of facts about turkeys (what they look like, what they eat, etc.) and loved reading stories about the pilgrims and Native Americans. We talked about the differences between fiction and nonfiction a lot this week because our stories varied each day! What smart little cookies we have!

If you've been in the school in the past week, you've seen Turkey Land in full force, but for those who haven't had the opportunity to see the work in person we are so excited to show you your child's masterpieces!

This is Miss DeWitt's and Mrs. Bratcher's kiddos all dressed up for the Thanksgiving lunch on Wednesday! The students in all kindergarten classrooms decorated their headbands and vests with Native American symbols. We were a hit to say the least!

Mrs. Bratcher's class read the story "Run, Turkey, Run!" and completed a writing and art project to go along with it. The students came up with different ways to catch a turkey (the responses are HILARIOUS!). They also colored coffee filters and added water to them to create these beautiful tye-dye feather look.

Miss DeWitt's class read a story about the life of a pilgrim girl and boy. They learned that the pilgrim children worked very hard to stay alive and to keep their village going. We connected the stories to our own life and wrote down chores they have to do at their home. The students discussed how thankful they were for electricity, sturdy homes, grocery stores and cars :)

Miss DeWitt's group also made the coffee filter art project like Mrs. Bratcher's class! Above the art are the anchor charts made during whole group. The students explained what they had learned to the teacher about turkeys. They also explained their own Thanksgiving Day tradition!

Every student took home a feather. They decorated the feather however they wanted and brought it back to school. This is a very special project because no class turkey is the same! Each class is different just like each turkey! We LOOOOVE how they turned out!!

Miss DeWitt's class turkey

Mrs. Bratcher's class turkey

Mrs. Hoffman's class turkey

Mrs. Williams class made a schema chart about Native Americans. Look at how much they knew!!

It was a crazy, busy week to say the least! But what a wonderful time of the year. All four of us are SO thankful to have each and every one of these students in our classroom. They mean the world to us and have made us better people. We hope everyone has a blessed and safe Thanksgiving Break!! It's hard to believe the Christmas season is right around the corner....

And the winner is...

It's election time! Sutton held a school-wide mock election on Oct. 30th so the students could get a real perspective about what it is like to vote (and to understand why they get a day off from school!). We cannot wait to see the results!!

Though our kindergarten friends don't quite understand all that goes into a real election or the details of the candidates/political parties, they are able to form their own opinion. Our students loved learning about our government and the candidates! We learned that Obama loves chili and collects comic books! Romney's favorite food is peanut butter sandwiches and he helped save the 2002 Winter Olympics! Take a look at we were doing in our classrooms last week!

The teachers got a little creative and made an adorable "photo booth" for the students. Both the girls and boys got to "picture themselves" as President of the United States. In our classrooms, we talked about following your dreams and that hard work could lead them to a future in leadership.

Our classes also talked about what a good President should be (I think even Obama and Romney could learn something from our students). It was neat to hear what the students wanted in a good leader. The discussion was very moving. 

For our writing lesson, we discussed how candidates persuade people to vote for them. We asked the students to share what they would promise to people if they were running for President of the United States. The answers are varied, but all truly special. This response in particular warmed my heart.

"Vote for me! I promise to give everyone love." -Damien

Other election activities included labeling, designing your own coin and other writing prompts!

Pumpkins, Pumpkins, Everywhere!

When you think of fall, of course pumpkins come to mind! There are SO many things you can do with them! Our students learned about pumpkins all while incorporating reading, writing, math, science, and social studies. Needless to say, it's been a busy week for Sutton's Kindergarten friends!

To begin our pumpkin unit, we started out by discussing the life cycle of a pumpkin. The students even discovered that a pumpkin's life is a lot like a circle, it is neverending. The students then used their knowledge and created their own pumpkin sequences! It turned out to be a very cute pumpkin patch for our hallway!

The next day, we became kindergarten scientists. We wanted to experiment with our pumpkins. Before our experiment, the students predicted whether the pumpkin would sink or float in a bucket of water. We analyzed our data using our new math skills and tallied the results. Then... it was experiment time! Pumpkins float!

 We read lots and lots of stories about pumpkins this week, but our FAVORITE was "Big Pumpkin". It was about a witch who wanted to make pumpkin pie, but couldn't get the pumpkin off the vine. Ask your child about what happened next :) Miss DeWitt let her students transform into actors and perform the story in front of the class. The students talked about what behaviors they would have to change to become the new characters and how they would retell the story to the others. It was tons of fun! The actors even had a little tumble at the end just like the real ending of the story (except our tumble wasn't planned)!

 For our weekly art project, we created a pumpkin glyph. We love glyphs because each pumpkin turned out differently than all the others! Our students also measured themselves using pumpkins instead of rulers (the picture on the glyph is their measurement). After the entire class was measured, the students graphed the data. They did this all on their own! Our goal is student-directed learning and this activity was a perfect opportunity for the students to create their own learning!!