Two Hoots and A Holler: October Happenings

Hoot #1

This week we continued to learn about bats, spiders and all things spooky for Halloween! The students had a great time painting and creating their bats from paper sacks. This original idea was from Kimberly Jordano.

Clorox Wipe containers work great to help hold the bag in place!

By the way, we do not have uniforms at our school. The students are mostly wearing orange to bring recognition to stop bullying.

After the bags dried, they were stuffed and stapled. Eyes, ears, wings and feet were glued put in place. 

Our final step: Each student had to wrote their favorite "at" word on their bat.

"Going Batty with the "at" Family!

These kiddos were also jumping at the chance to learn all about spiders!! First, we made covers for our spider books by marble painting using white paint on black construction paper. These web paintings turned out great! I wish I had taken pictures of the finished product!

Next, we did a little science and ate just like a spider! This activity can be purchased in Deanna Jump's TPT store.  It is a wonderful way to teach students the process of how spiders prepare and eat their food.

Of course, no unit is complete without a hat!!

SPIDER RACES!!!!!!

This was the last activity of the day! The students had a blast with this! It has become one of my favorites and theirs too!

Large milkshake straws were cut into thirds. I bought some plastic spider rings at the dollar store. I just cut the ring part off and you are ready to race. The students line their spiders up at the end of the table. When the whistle blows, they blow through their straw and continue to blow until it falls off the other end of the table.

The crowd cheers!!!


To help us get in the Halloween spirit even more, we also read several books that were all about monsters!  After reading Even Monsters Need Haircuts we created our Frankenstein monsters and we compared our name with his by counting letters, vowels, and syllables.  

Hoot #2
As many of you know, October is a busy month with all of the events and happenings....there is Bully Prevention Awareness, Breast Cancer Awareness, Red Ribbon Week, and Halloween; but October isn't complete without a visit from our local fire station!  A visit from fire fighters and paramedics came to talk to our kindergarten kiddos about fire safety and prevention.  The students even got to get in the ambulance and see all of the tools the fire fighters use on the truck.  Their day ended with getting their very own red fire fighter hat and activity book!  They could hardly wait to wear those hats home!  

Thank you Walls Fire Department and Desoto County Emergency Medical Department for taking out the time for our students!  They LOVED seeing the trucks, equipment, and gear! 
 
This Week's Holler...

This week's holler is the best yet. It goes out to our best friend, Stacey Brantley! Stacey and I met 16 years ago when we became neighbors. We became friends pretty quickly.  Stacey was going to school to become a teacher and I was experiencing my first year as a teacher. As the years rolled on, we became strong teachers, but even more importantly we became inseparable friends. She is currently a First grade teacher at Murrell Taylor Elementary in Jacksonville, Arkansas. Her talent with those students is something that would just put a smile on your face. Stacey is not a teacher that you can find on the internet. No, she doesn't have a blog or a TPT store. So you may be sitting there wondering why I would even tell you all about her. ????

Stacey had a beautiful baby this past summer. 8 weeks later, she found out she had breast cancer. Needless to say, her world was turned upside down. (Mine too for that matter!). She is handling it like a champ! Not only is she handling it, she is THRIVING!

So this October is a little different this year for me than most.  I couldn't let Breast Cancer Awareness month go by and not give a shout out to my best friend ! No, this cancer will not define her! She shows up every day to be there for her students.  Those students love her and her bald head, that she proudly shows because she wants her students to understand that it's OK to be yourself, and that it is OK to accept everyone! That is a life lesson, folks! Her strength and dedication to her students inspire us daily.  

I could go on and on and on and on....

She is amazing!!

We are blessed to be inseparable friends!

Two Hoots and A Holler: Kindergarten Activities

Hoot #1
 Fall is finally here!  The weather is cooling off more and more each day, the leaves are starting to change colors, and it just smells like fall outside!  Fall is by far my favorite time of the year.  I love teaching about ALL things that are Fall.  We have been learning about bats and spiders.  These kids absolutely LOVE learning about different creatures! They are using vocabulary words in class such as venom, fangs, nocturnal, arachnid, echolocation, mammals, colony, etc.  It is amazing what kids can do when they are interested in what they are learning and having fun!  Check out some of our fall activities we have been doing in class...

Hoot #2
Centers are one of our favorite times of the day!  It is the time where the students get to be kids and show what they know.  Cooperation and interaction with each other is encouraged, and the activities are developmentally appropriate.  Here are some of the things we have going on during center time right now...

 I spy letters is a HIT!  The recording sheet is in our TPT store for free!  Hop on over and grab it! 

The kids love walking around the room and finding real life objects to measure with unifix cubes and paper clips!  Measure the Room is a favorite during center time.  

The good thing about our classrooms being renovated is that it forced us to have to go through everything!  All of the letters, numbers, colors, etc. that we purchased and had laminated are just sitting in a box not being used.  I was about to throw them out, then I thought why not make it a center?  So the students now can put numbers and letters in order using old teaching materials I used for my classroom.  No prep!  It was already done for me! 

Our read and write the classroom is always a favorite too!  I think it is because they just really like using clipboards!  haha  Right now we have fall words hanging around the room for students to find, read, and write. 

This Week's Holler... 
This week we are hollering at Marsha at Differentiated Kindergarten!  We are always checking out her posts! We absolutely love her more recent post about her morning stations! We love that everything she does is developmentally appropriate! Thank you for share all of your wonderful ideas Marsha!!

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!