Hootin' & Hollerin'

Here's what has us Hootin'...

We are back! The students are getting into their routines and beginning to learn the rules of the classroom. This is our 20th year teaching. So we decided to celebrate, by hiring an artist to come paint our rooms. Chrissy Dodd did better than we could have ever imagined!!

Since I am the Jitterbugs, I asked her to do a bug theme. The students were crazy over the glow in the dark moth in the bathroom.

 I didn't get a very good picture of the Japanese beetle. It is peeking his head out from around the desk. I did dress up the lights just a bit. They are the same lights that I had last year. I ran sparkly green ribbon through them. I was able to just punch out flowers from the di-cut machine at out school to put around the light bulbs. It added so much to the room!

My class has a Rockstar theme, so she came up with some art work for my classroom.  I LOVE everything about my room!  She exceeded my expectations!  The students absolutely LOVE their room! I am actually missing one picture of an area that she painted, I will add that later. 

 

This had us Hootin' too...

I don't know about you, but we stopped everything today to talk about germs. The sneezing and coughing has gotten out of hand. So I decided to do a little lesson I saw shared on Facebook on how germs are spread.  We talked about how everyone has germs, and that we do not want to share those. Then I decided that I show them how they are shared.

First, I chose my two helpers to start the "spread of germs" (glitter). I did this by putting lotion on their hand and dipping it in glitter. 

Next, they gave each other a high five.They were able to see the germs that could spread when we cough or sneeze in our hands.

 Then they shared them with all of their friends!

 Before we knew it, everyone had "germs!"

They loved this lesson! They remembered all day to sneeze and cough correctly.

It is messy, but so is Kindergarten. 

This is what has us Hollerin'...

This week's holler goes out to ESGI! We have already finished our letter screeners AND turned in our data, thanks to ESGI!  If we had to do these paper/pencil, we may still be struggling to do them while trying to teach rules and procedures and everything else that comes with the beginning of the year chaos! ESGI provides automatic documentation, progress monitoring, and provides so much more detailed information that is available to teachers and parents. We are able to look at previous records from students that are repeating kindergarten, so there is not any time wasted re-assessing these students. This week our parents received a letter, generated from ESGI, about which letters their child knows and what needs to be worked on at home. 

ESGI offers a free trial for teachers who want to try it out.... We promise once you try it, you will never go back to paper/pencil assessments again!!   ESGI has made assessments easier and saved us hundreds of hours of testing! Imagine getting all of that instructional time back and giving it to your students!  IT IS SO WORTH IT!!   
Click the ESGI button on our blog page to get started!! 
 Go try it out!