Spring Has Sprung

Whew!  Life has been busy!  We finally got back to full time learning in person and I haven't had a chance to even look up!  It has been a wild ride these last few weeks, but it has been the best feeling ever to be back in the classroom full of students!  If you follow me on Instagram, you have probably seen a lot of what we have been up to, but I figured I'd give everyone an update just in case you've missed out.

Since we have been back in the classroom, we had a chance to celebrate Read Across America Week, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, and now we are on Spring Break.  Told ya it's been hectic!  It's been so much fun to be able to bring out all the fun activities to do with the students.

Read Across America Week was during our first week back and things were a little thrown off by some weather issues.  Fortunately, we were able to postpone the fun during the next week and I was still able to cram in some fun activities.

The next week was St. Patrick's Day, so there was more fun to be had!  Here is a look at some of the fun activities we did this year.

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This past week was the week before Easter and spring break.  My class was so hyped for Easter this year, and we made sure that we had as much fun as possible.  Here is a look at how our week went.  You can also find other fun videos on my Instagram account, including a look into our "Peep Day."

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These last few weeks have felt like August in March/April.  We have had to adjust and spent lots of time going over rules and procedures while trying to continue with the things we normally do this time of year.  I plan to take time to rest up during Spring Break and be ready for the last few weeks of the school year.  We still have lots of exciting things coming up in our classroom, so stay tuned because we may just have some eggs hatching next week!

The Snowy Day

We all love a good snow day here in Kentucky and "The Snowy Day" by Ezra Jack Keats is such a fun book for me to read to my class every winter.  I truly enjoy all seasons and the changes they bring, but as soon as cold weather hits, all I can think about is the magic of falling snow!  Being at home with a winter wonderland of white falling is definitely one of my favorite things in life (don't hate me!) and I love sharing that excitement with my students.

We have still been doing small groups of students for three hours per day, but I've tried to make this time fun and educational. (Side note: We are still learning on Google Classroom the rest of the time.)  I've worked hard to find that balance of letting them experiences the joys of kindergarten that they have been missing out on all year, but also taking advantage of these face-to-face learning opportunities.  Kids love a good art project and we had a blast with our puffy paint experiences, so I gave them another chance to use it!

We started out by reading "The Snowy Day" by Ezra Jack Keats.  This book received a Caldecott Medal for its illustrations and it's one of my favorite things about this book.  The white snow and the little boy in his red snowsuit are iconic and always stand out in my mind when I think of this story!  If you haven't read this book or don't have your own copy, check it out on YouTube.  There are so many good read alouds there if you need a book you don't have and it works in a pinch.  I also like to use this super cute animated version, which I used with this lesson.

Click here to find the book on Amazon

After reading the story, we talked about all the things Peter did in the snow.  Then, we used this set of pictures to help with our story retelling.  To start out, I had the students color and cut out each piece from the story retelling set.  Then, they glued the "snowy hill" onto a piece of blue construction paper.  This is when I let them make some more puffy paint.  You can check out this blog post for details on how to make your own.  They painted the snowy hill, which gave them a guide so it didn't end up all over the paper and their hill had shape, but I let them have control over how it turned out.

After painting the snowy hill, we watched the animated version of the story.  As each event happened in the story, the students added a story retelling piece.  They don't actually need glue for this part and can just place it on the snowy hill.  My kiddos thought that it was so neat for everything to stick in the snow and everyone's picture turned out a little different since the pieces didn't have to be in a specific place.

To complete our project, each of the students did a little Q-tip painting to make snowflakes on their background.  They loved sharing their pictures with each other and retelling the events of the story.