Two Hoots and A Holler

Hoot #1
Several blog posts ago, I discussed about Presley House working to create life size outlines of themselves. The big kids in the house worked so great with the littles, as always, but this ended up to be a very large project. First they drew an outline of each other using chalk on black butcher paper. Then they had to be cut out. Once cut out, the students used shapes to give it a more abstract look. Then we had to cut off the arms and legs so that they would fit through the laminator. Finally, we put them back together and hung them. They give our gym so much character. We love them!

Hoot #2

 Have you ever heard of a game called Tapple??  Well we heard about it last year, and we knew we HAD to have it!  We found it at our local Target.  We use it to help my students who are working on letter recognition.  The students have to push down and name letters and hit the red button before time runs out.  We try to get all the letters pushed down with out time running out.  It comes with a set of cards that students can use to help choose categories for them.  For example, if the category was food, then students playing would have to push a letter down and name a food that begins with that letter before time is up.  This helps with phonemic awareness of hearing beginning sounds of words.  It is so much fun!!  We even get in on the fun sometimes and play with them!!  

This Week's Holler...

This week's holler goes out to our Walls Elementary Family!!  We are so blessed to be a part of this wonderful group of people!!  This past week reminded us how much we love our school family.  What do teachers do on a cold Friday afternoon at dismissal?  Line up in the foyer (out of the cold of course) and cheer for each other as they come in from the buses!  Thanks Amanda A. for starting this!  This just might be a regular Friday afternoon celebration!  We definitely know how to have fun together, laugh together, lift each other up, and pray together!  
We are Walls Elementary!  

Two Hoots and A Holler: Class Activities

Hoot #1

Last week one of our focus letters was Rr.  To celebrate Rr, we learned all about rainbows and their colors.  Of course we learned the "Rainbow Hair" poem!  The students loved it, and they did so good remembering the order of the colors in a rainbow.  Check out these kids and their rainbow hair!  These are always a class favorite! 

Hoot #2 

Our second hoot is all about measurement! The kiddos had a blast measuring around the room. For those wondering, we use Deanna Jump's math units.  The students love them, and they cover all of the standards and then some! Students need to be able to explore and have conversations between each other. I love the hum of collaboration that happens in my classroom in these moments.

This Week's Holler... 

This week's holler goes out to Keeping up with Mrs. Harris! This blog is awesome!!!! I loved reading her post "5 Reasons to Shut Your Door and Plan!" I can not tell you how this post spoke to me! Jodi and I have had so many conversations about this topic! I loved her post "You Are Enough." Don't we all need to hear that !?! Go check her out! You will not regret it!!

Two Hoots & A Holler: Ff is for Field trip, Fingerprints, Feet, and FUN!

Hoot #1

Last week went on our first field trip! We went to the Memphis Zoo! Boy, it was hot, but that did not stop these awesome kiddos from enjoying the day! The day was filled with fun and plenty of laughs!

 Hoot #2

One of our focus letters this week is the letter Ff.  After the zoo, we decided to tie in our letter with the zoo.  Ff is for Fingerprint Giraffes and Footprint Measurement!  

We couldn't go to the zoo without doing a little art project.  We just love giraffes! As a salute to them, we made fingerprint giraffes!

We also talked about all of the footsteps that we took as we walked the zoo.  We had the opportunity to tie in our zoo experience with the letter Ff and math!  We ended the lesson with a little footprint measurement. We used cubes, paper clips and round counters to measure the length and width of our feet!

 I love Ashton's face in this picture as he is using the number line to make sure that he writes the correct number. 

This Week's Holler...
This week we are hollering at Melissa over at The Husky Loving Teacher.  She loves teaching and her husky, Shilah! Shilah is a beautiful Siberian Husky who serves as her classroom mascot.  Her latest blog post is all about Books Teachers Love,  and we are so in LOVE with her books and activities she shares.  She has an awesome rhyming activity to go with Goodnight Goon just in time for Halloween!  Rhyming is such an important skill for kinders to know.  Thanks Melissa for being so dedicated to teaching and helping other teachers!  You Rock!!  

Two Hoots and A Holler: Our Start to the New Year

Hoot#1
We are back!! Boy, we had a wonderful Christmas Break! We spent some time with family and friends,and we spent a lot of time laughing and making memories! 
We hope yours was just as enjoyable!
Last week, our letter of focus was the letter C. On Fun Friday, we read "If You Give a Cat a Cupcake." 
Then we followed our reading with this cute activity!

 The frosting is made of shaving cream, glue, and food coloring.  The students got to choose the topping that they wanted on their cupcake.

   

We also made caterpillar's from the letter C.  

The children had a blast make these crafts! 

Hoot #2 
It has been all about Winter here in the Delta! Believe it or not, we have had the weirdest weather this season! We actually wore flip flops over Christmas break! This was the first week that students needed to wear winter coats! So we set off to explore anything that had to do with snow!

Mrs. Jamie's class did a little writing with their tear art snowmen.

Ms. Jodi's class did these cute kids catching snowflakes on their tongues. Check out that hair!!!!

Mrs. Jodi's class did a directed drawing of this cute snowman.
They did a really good job on these drawings, and they were so proud to see them hanging in the hallway for all to see.  

 

This Week's Holler...

This week's holler goes out to Ciera Harris at Adventures of Room 129. Ciera is a Reading Specialist who we got to meet at the Nashville Teacher Meetup this past summer. We love that she is a looping teacher.  We have looped in the past, and we thought that it was one of the best learning experiences as educators ever!  This really gave us an insight to all the needs of 1st grade.  It definitely made us stronger Kinder teachers.  We also love the her idea for her (almost) paperless reading circles.  
Check out her blog and read all about it!

Two Hoots and A Holler: Fall and Freebies are finally here!

Hoot #1

 According to the calendar, fall began several weeks ago...but here in Mississippi, it hasn't felt like fall at all! Well the fall weather is finally here!  I love everything about fall...the weather, the smell, the fall holidays, the colors outside, the leaves falling, teaching about fall, and the list goes on and on!  Fall is my (Jodi)  personal favorite time of the year.  I love Halloween, I would still dress up and go trick or treating if I wasn't too old!  I love going to the Haunted Houses and getting scared...one day, I will have to drag Jamie with me kicking and screaming.  In addition to learning about fall, we have been learning about spiders and bats in class, and it has been a lot of fun!  I had one student cry and scream because he didn't like spiders because they are scary!  He got so interested in spiders before the day was over, he was writing about it and making a book!  Now he says he loves spiders!  Haha  Every student made a book with a spider fact on each page.  We made a front cover, and published them in the hallway for others to stop and read!  

We talked about how spiders use venom to eat their pray, and Jamie's students even got to pretend they were a spider eating its prey.  They had a blast doing this experiment!  

Hoot #2 

We have been working hard to make sure that we have our letter units done each week to share with our team.  If we don't have it ready for them ahead of time, they come knocking on our door asking for it!  They motivate us to stay ahead and keep pushing!  So finally, we have posted 6, that is right...SIX, letter units to our TPT store.  Two of those are FREE!  We thought that in order for everyone to see what exactly the letter units have in them, we should have at least one free.  We got together and picked which letters have been some of our favorites so far...Jamie picked the letter Ii to be a freebie, and I chose the letter Nn.  Click on the pictures below to hop on over to our TPT store to grab these FREE resources!   

 

 Don't forget to like our Facebook page and check out our other units on TPT while you are there!  

 

This Week's Holler. . .

This weeks holler goes out to Amanda Wilp at The Primary Gal! Wow! That is the only word I can use to describe her blog.  If you teach 3-5, then she has anything that and everything that you would ever need. We personally have never taught these grades, but we have a Kinder teacher that just went to 3rd grade.  As soon as I stalked this blog, I ran down the hall to find my friend to tell her all about it. We are really interested in learning more about her "flipped classroom." We see a weekend project in our near future!

Two Hoots and a Holler: Hula Dancing Hippos and Teddy Bears Too

Hoot #1

Last Friday, our students had a blast celebrating the letter "H".  I think we had as much fun as the kiddos!  Here is just a glimpse of some of the things that we did for Fun Friday.

We made horses out of the letter "h". Of course, we could not celebrate the letter "H" without hats!! Each child was asked to wear their favorite hat from home to school.

We also learned all about Hawaii!  The students made Leis by making a pattern using jumbo straws and paper flowers.

Of course, the girls wanted to use the pink straws to make their patterned lei.

In the above and below picture, students are making honeycombs using hexagons.  The different variations of their honeycombs were amazing.  No two looked alike!

These kiddos loved getting messy to make their hand prints on the letter "Hh". Yarel laughed the whole time that she was at this station.

A day celebrating "H" wouldn't be complete with out hippo hats and learning to hula dance!! Finally, at the end of the day,  we put on our grass skirts and hula danced our way home!

Hoot #2

Today we had our Teddy Bear Picnic!  We were so busy graphing teddy bears and writing about teddy bears, that I totally forgot to pull out my camera! So here are the few photos that I have, but these are the moments that made me proud the most.  We have been learning all about the zoo.  We are actually going on our first field trip tomorrow to the Memphis Zoo. We have been working on this book about the zoo in class.  So who better to listen to them read, but their teddy bears! 

Is this not the sweetest thing ever?!?!?! 

And check out our newest Jitterbug, Laura! She found her own comfy spot and couldn't wait to share the book with her teddy bear! Yep! It was a great moment for me to know that in just 5 weeks of school, they were confident and were eager to share what they have learned!

This Week's Holler...

This week's holler goes out to Casey Jane Cooper at Wiggling Scholars. She has tons of neat tips and ideas on her blog!  Jodi loves the blog post about the glasses. We didn't know the numbers on the side meant anything?!?! But if you go to Wiggling Scholars, you can find out all about it.  After reading Casey Jane's post about the book Unbreakable, by Angela Watson, we definitely want to check it out!  Maybe even do a book study with our kinder group! I mean who wouldn't want 20 more ways to enjoy teaching?!?!  Be sure to stop by Wiggling Scholars and give Casey Jane a comment or two!