U.S. Symbols, Door Decorations, Mother's Day, and Measurement- OH MY!

This post is long overdue, and I have lots to share! :-)  Let's see...where shall I begin?  


Back in February, I started a Social Studies unit about U.S. Symbols, because one of Ohio's Social Studies Standards is to understand that nations are represented by symbols and practices.  I used Deanna Jump's America Unit and Caitlin's (Kindergarten Smiles) awesome book covers for our Symbols Books.  It took us a long while to complete the entire book, including a table of contents page and the covers.  They are finally finished, and on display in my hallway.  Here are some pictures.  I'm so proud of my kiddos' work and so were they!  Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of the inside pages. 

Next year these will get done in a more timely manner. :-)


On another topic, for Teacher Appreciation Week, our school always has a theme, and it changes each year.  This year's theme was "Around the World."  We were asked to decorate our doors to fit this theme...at first I thought, wait- teacher appreciation week= give the teacher extra work?  But I thought of an idea and ran with it, and it turned out really cute!  Each student was given a passport.  He or she wrote "Child's Name's Passport to First Grade" on the cover.  On the inside they all wrote why they were ready to go to first grade!  Here are some pictures.

For Mother's Day, I wanted the children to do something special for their mom's while also working on their important kindergarten skills.  I found this adorable Mother's Day Gift Book from Deanna Jump.  Can you tell how much I LOVE her ideas??  Here are a few pictures of their adorableness.  I hope their moms loved them and had a few laughs as well! 

The covers with portraits of their moms.  I was really happy with how they turned out.  The only change I will make for next year is to buy thick ribbon to tie the book together instead of the thin, stretchy string that I used.

This one makes me laugh- especially the speech bubbles in her picture!  I hope her mom laughed too. ;-)

 I love how simple children make things.  So cute! :-)

My last topic for tonight is about Measurement.  One of the last Kindergarten math standards that we have yet to cover is:

K.MD.1 Describe and compare measurable attributes of objects, such as length or weight.  Describe several measurable attributes of a single object.  
I introduced measuring the length of objects first, and students explored measurement using connecting cubes.  I called them Unifix cubes in my worksheet, though I know they are technically connecting cubes because they connect to each other on all 4 sides.


The students worked with a partner to measure some objects in our classroom.  I explained the directions and let them have at it.  I was excited to see that all the students really *got it.* They remembered to line up the very edge of the object with the first cube, and they worked really well with their partners. Here's a copy of the recording sheet I created to go along with the activity.  Underneath are some pictures of my kinders actively engaged in their learning. :-)

Measurement Unifix Cubes

These students were measuring the height of a book.  I taught them that they could make a long link of connecting cubes and then break it off at the end of the object, or just count up to the end of the object and stop.  

Whew...I probably broke some blogging rules about putting wayyyy too much in one entry, but I had so much to share and didn't know what to leave out!  I promise I will do better about blogging more regularly and keep my posts shorter ;-).