An Afternoon to Remember

Hi Friends!! This is Page from Kindergarten Squared! In my opinion, Kindergarten is the best place to be! Even on a rough/comical afternoon, there is no other place I would rather be. So...I thought that I would share one of my most recent afternoon adventures with you in hopes to give you a good giggle and maybe get you to share some of your "fun times" with us :).

Picture this:

All 22 students sitting in their squares "completely" engaged in a number talk. Really it was a great number talk about dots and ten frames, and subitizing, and shapes and lots of other math standards rolled into one!! It was awesome. However, toward the end of our number talk, imagine a cute sweet blond friend chewing on her skirt when suddenly an equally cute friend beside her yanks the skirt from her mouth!

Immediately my cute blond friend bursts into tears and is screaming while holding her mouth. The concerned teacher that I am, of course, I rush to see what has happened. Well my friend is bleeding and holding her tooth. I quick send that friend to the sink and tell her I will be there in a minute.

Then I ask the friend next to her, who yanked the skirt, "What happened?". She told me that the blond friend was chewing on her skirt and that she just shouldn't have been, so she yanked it out of her mouth. I think, in my most serious voice, I asked what we should do with our hands and who should we worry about. My friend answered correctly by saying that she should keep her hands to herself and worry about herself. When I asked what should happen, she said, "I know... change my light to yellow, but I really don't want to!". I told her I agreed with her punishment and to take care of it. I quickly headed to my bleeding friend holding her tooth.

I then hear more crying and screaming from the other side of the room! What now you ask? Well my friend who was changing her light was boohooing because she didn't want to change her light. I told her to go get a drink and calm down.

Still my toothless friend was whimpering and waiting for me to send her to the nurse for a tooth treasure box, when what else do I hear? Yep, more crying!!!  Well a different friend, a cutie pie little boy was crying because HE was sad that he DIDN'T get to lose a tooth yet. Still more? You bet!! My friend who was crying because she had to change her light made herself so upset that she threw up!

Yikes! Fun times in Kindergarten :). While a little more challenging than usual, it was still a GREAT DAY in KINDERGARTEN!



This is my friend who lost her tooth :). Her mom said we could use her cutie pie picture :).

So Friends, the moral of the story is to build a great community of friends to keep teeth from flying in your room!! Enjoy this student interview freebie below. Just click the link!

Freebie Student Interview Graphic Organizer

Tell us about your adventures!!    :)

Cafe with the Sisters

Hi Friends!! Guess what Cafe we went to on Sunday!! It was the 2 Sisters Cafe! That's right, Daily 5 and Cafe creaters Joan Moser and Gail Boushey! We were so fortunate to have our PTA send us to Cafe Training! We learned lots of tips to make Cafe smooth sailing.

If you don't know what Cafe is, it is an explicit method for teaching reading strategies. It is awesome. Cafe stands for Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency and Expand Vocabulary. Teachers use mini lessons for exposing students to reading strategies in each area. Students are then able to practice strategies during the Daily 5. Daily 5 consists of Read to Self, Word Work, Work on Writing, Read to Someone, and Listen to Reading. After many weeks of training, students build stamina for each of the Daily 5. Then teachers are able to confer one on one with students and conduct small group instruction.  We love creating anchor charts for everything. These help students know what they should be doing and what the teacher will be doing during Cafe and Daily 5!

I-Chart or Anchor Chart



Daily 5 Choiceboard

 
Tip 1: If teaching really young kids, place your cafe board headers at the bottom of the board so kids can easily reach the board to add their name to the strategy they are working on.



Cafe Board with Headings at the Bottom

Cafe Board with Headings at the Top

Tip 2: Touch points can be used for formative assessments. For example 1=Below Standard , 2=Approaching Standard, 3=Meeting Standard, and 4=Exceeding Standard. This is helpful when trying to explain to parents about how you can grade using Cafe. This also helps teachers know when to have students move on to the next strategy.

Tip 3: Soon the sisters are coming out with an electronic conferring notebook. So, if you are more technologically savvy you will love, love this! Be on the look out for it on their website.

Happy Reading!!

"Giveaways" and "Cruise in for Back to School Ideas"

Hey super blogging buddies!

We are helping Tammy over at 1,2,3... Teach With Me celebrate gaining 400 FOLLOWERS on her blog.  400???? Say what???? That is awesome!  To help celebrate, Kindergarten Squared (along with 19 other super bloggers) are offering one FREE item from each of our TPT stores!  To enter this awesome giveaway click on the photo below and have fun picking out the products YOU just may win!!!

Join us in another giveaway over at A Series of 3rd Grade Events.  We are helping Patti celebrate 300 FOLLOWERS!  Several blogs and TPT stores are offering up some SUPER products in this giveaway.  Head on over to see what goodies are up for grabs!

On another note, we are 2 weeks into school already!  Woo-hoo!  We have survived the "This is how to walk in line, Don't forget to make your lunch choice, Do you remember where to put your folder when you come in?..." procedure days!  Whew!!!  We know we must say the same things over and over and these poor babies probably get sick of hearing us!  BUT...it's all worth it come Monday...ahh...blessed Monday of week 3!!!  They come in knowing just what to do (OK, so that DOESN'T include the few still in training!)! 

So we thought we could share a few pictures of our classroom setup and outside "Welcome Back" displays for those of you who haven't yet started!  Hope you enjoy!  And we'll be praying for your 1st 2 "procedure weeks" to fly by!

How do you take a boring old bookcase and make it fan-tas-tic?  Adhesive Spray!  We LOVE this stuff!  It makes it so easy to turn that yucky brown wood into this wicked cute board ready to post our Commom Core standards.  (That's one of our amazing kindergarten assistants Christie taking care of spray adhesive business!) 
(Thanks Deanna for the awesome CC standards pack!)

Boring lunch choice setup...be gone!  We LOVE this cute ribbon idea instead!  Our school mascot is the gator so we turned these little ice cream spoons into waaaay cute alligators for the kiddos to make lunch choices.  (We are not even gonna lie, cause when we say "we", we really mean our awesome assistant Natalie who is the WAY creative one in the group!)

 

 

Here's Page and Natalie's "welcome back" display!  What do you think?  Pretty awesome, huh?  (And if you are thinking, "I bet Natalie-the creative one-made that rocket...then you have already caught on to how we roll! )

   

Here's Cristy and Christie's "welcome back" display.  We won't lie...we are NOT as creative as Natalie the rock star.  So we enlarged cute graphics we purchased and then traced the designs onto bulletin board paper.  We added the silver paper for bumpers and headlights...That counts as creative, right?  :)

 

 

 

 Here's hoping your school year starts out great!

Check out our Back to School Lessons and Activities Pack and our Back to School CommomCore Kindergarten Math Unit 1 Pack to make your first weeks a "smooth ride".

   

 
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Super Sale!

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