Self-Portraits

One of my FAVORITE art projects of the year = 

my kindergarten students' self-portraits. 

They are absolutely beautiful to me. 
These bright faces are displayed front and center for the rest of the year. They are a reminder of the wonderful learning community that we have created. 

This idea came from Ann Marie Corgill's book:

Students create these by drawing in pencil first, add color with oil pastels, and fill in the background with liquid watercolor. 

The students are SO proud of these!

CLICK PLAY!!! It will make you smile! : )

Create a free slideshow

Wordless Wednesday (Why I Love Kindergarten)

Spider Research

Kindergarten Friends,

Here is a really interesting website on spiders that I thought you would like to check out:

We'll be making our webs tomorrow. 

I am proud of you!

Love,

Mrs. Rider

P.S. Share 2 cool spider facts with your family! :)

Thumbprint Monsters

Check out the students' a-d-o-r-a-b-l-e thumbprint monsters! 

Wheel of Fortune!!

Oh my word... I am SO excited!?!

Wheel of Fortune held auditions in Cincinnati this weekend. 

I am totally obsessed with the show so I was super excited about this opportunity.

 However when I arrived and saw thousands (NO JOKE!) of others already lined up I knew it was a loooooooong shot. 

There were three audition shows being held on Saturday. 

 Each group had 1500+ people in it and only 25 would be randomly chosen to come on stage.  

The host said they are looking for people who are 3 things:

 fun, energetic, and enthusiastic.

My son leaned over to me and said

"Good news: You are ALL 3 of those things"

"Bad news: You have a 1% chance of being called."

Umm... I just love him! 

Okay, enough stalling, ....

My name was called!!

I about died and ran to the stage screaming!!

Showed my crazy personality on stage. 

Yes that's me raising the roof.  BAHAHAHA!!! 

I won a Wheel key chain, a cute pin, and a hat that I rocked all day today. : ) 

Now I have to wait 1 loooooooooooooooooooooooooooong month to see if I make it to the next audition. 

The next one will include a written test and interview.

Cross your fingers!!!

P.S. Try to guess the solution to the puzzle we solved:

S  P ___ ___ ___ I  N ___

___ ___ ___ 

S T I N ___

(category: Before & After)

Wordless Wednesday (Why I Love Kindergarten)

Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria

We learned about Christopher Columbus today.

Here are a few of my students' drawings of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria:

Punctuation Hunt

In Reader's Workshop the students learned about the parts of a sentence.

As a group we used big books to find capitals, sight words, spaces, and punctuation. 

Then I sent the students off on a punctuation hunt. 

Before they could add it to our punctuation board they had to tell me the correct name... and when it was used. 

They loved this lesson and I am thrilled that they are already using "official" reading and writing terms. : )