Happy Halloween from the Rider Family!

Hope you all have a fun, safe Halloween... 
with plenty of tricks and treats!
 

 Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Head over to JibJab to make your own! 

Police and Firefighter Visit

The students enjoyed a visit from some special Madeira Community Helpers.

We welcomed Sam's uncle John, who is a Madeira Firefighter for a discussion on fire safety. 

It was so fun watching the firemen climb the huge ladder on their truck.

Police Officer Miller shared great safety tips and let us check out his cruiser.

An Article on our Book Lovers Club!!

Our Book Lovers Club is going strong!!

It has been absolutely magical watching my group of kindergarten friends fall in love with books and reading.

To hear them talking about books with their friends, being thrilled when we beat our read to self time record, bringing in books from home to share with other club members, and inviting every guest that steps into our classroom to join the book club is SO REWARDING!!!!!

Parents,

Did you see this article about our Book Lovers Club??

Teachers, you can find all of the Book Lovers Goodies here:

Read about ways I use the Book Lovers Club in my classroom by clicking HERE! 

Our Tree Named HAPPY! :)

We will be studying trees throughout the year in Science. 

We have read many great fiction and non-fiction tree books, including this one...

We decided we needed a tree like Steve...

We walked around the school grounds until we found "our tree". The students all agreed that this tree would be a great one to observe throughout the year, learn about, read under, and make special memories with ... just like Steve.

The students decided to name our tree Happy! :):):)

 We will draw our tree throughout the year in our science notebooks.

We also did bark rubbings ...

and drew the tree again, learned about the different parts and labeled them. 

Looking forward to learning more about happy! :)

FUN GAMES for Alphabet Practice

I created this ALPHABET GLOG for my students.

It is a collection of MANY great online games for students to practice letter names and letter sounds. 

You can find many great links to fun websites across the curriculum by clicking HERE or by visiting the Kindergarten Corner tab near the top of the blog.  

Celebrating Growing Readers and Writers

It is so important to take a little time to celebrate the hard work that students put in everyday. 

Last Friday we had 2 (!!!!!) celebrations to celebrate our growth in reading and writing!!

My book lovers club members have been hard at work during reader's workshop. 

We've learned:

how to take of books

parts of a book

the 3 ways to read a book

why practicing reading is so important

finding good fit books

and what being a book lover is all about.

We decided to have a Book Lovers Bash to celebrate all of this growth.

Students brought in their favorite books to share with other members. They had discussions at their tables about WHY the book they chose is so great and why it is so special to them. 

We also had a special guest reader join us

Mr. Weber read If You Take a Mouse to School and Knuffle Bunny!

He also shared that WE INSPIRED his daughter to start a book lovers club in her neighborhood!!

LOVE!!!!!

Way to go book lovers!

We spent the rest of our bash relaxing and reading. 

In the afternoon parents joined us for a Writing Celebration. We celebrated pigeon style with a Hot Dog Party. :)

Here are some fun pics from our celebration:

Customize your own free digital collage

Check out THIS POST to see all of the things we have been doing in writer's workshop leading up to this celebration! 

Blogging Friends:

Here are the 2 resources I created for these first units in Reader's Workshop and Writer's Workshop:

Follow my TpT Store here! :)