Two Hoots and A Holler: Deck the Halls

Hoot #1

Thanksgiving and Black Friday have now passed, so it is time to let the Christmas Madness begin!  We have come back from break, and we hit the ground running to get all of our Christmas projects and end of the semester assessments completed in time.  We only have 2 more weeks of school before we get out for Christmas break!!  YIKES!!!  Check out some of our projects we have been working on...

Here are some ornaments the kids have made, and we hung on the tree.  We usually make the Rudolph from popsicle sticks, the Christmas tree from popsicle sticks, the snowmen hand print, and the Santa hand print.  There may be more, depends on if time allows us to make more.  

We tried gingerbread men cookies, and we graphed what part of the cookie we ate first.  Tomorrow, we are going to build a gingerbread house for our gingerbread men!  By the end of the day tomorrow, we will have 44 gingerbread houses decorated and ready to send home! Talk about a busy day!! 

 
 The Jitterbugs made toy soldiers to line up down our hallway as the kiddos walk down the kindergarten hall.  Look how cute these are!!

 

Hoot #2

Unfortunately, we will not be able to do our weekly blog post next week because we will be at RON CLARK ACADEMY (sorry, not sorry)!!!!!!!  OH MY GOODNESS!!! We are so excited to get to go see what everyone keeps talking about.  It is going to be an amazing, mind-blowing experience.  We absolutely cannot wait to get to tell everyone what we saw and learned, that is if we are calm enough by then to be able to put it all into words!  We are so blessed to have the chance to go visit RCA.  We started this blog together 2 years ago.  Over the past 2 years Kinder Glitter Girls have been on some amazing adventures together, met TONS of awesome teachers, and learned so much along the way.....and now we finally and actually get to go to Ron Clark Academy for 2 days!  It seems like a dream!   Jamie, get your red pen ready...this time next week you will be able to check this off of our bucket list!!  Stay tuned for pics and our latest adventure!  

This Week's Holler...

This week's holler goes out to Elizabeth Hall over at Kick' It In Kindergarten.  She is a kindergarten teacher and presenter who is creative and excited to share and collaborate with other teachers.  We LOVE her "in my fur ring" idea! Go check out her blog to see what it is all about and check out her latest products on TPT!  She really has some awesome stuff that is now in our wish list!  Thanks Elizabeth for your dedication to teaching!  

 

Two Hoots and A Holler: Growing with Kindness

Hoot #1

This week we started our reindeer in the classroom. I have never done anything like this, so I thought it would be fun as part of the holiday spirit.  This is an idea that I got from Pinterest.  It is called R.A.C.K (Reindeer Acts of Christmas Kindness). It doesn't require a certain kind of reindeer.  I actually borrowed one from our preschool teacher. It visits in different areas of the room, like elf on a shelf, but that is where the similarities end.  If you haven't heard about of this, here is my version. When the reindeer first made its appearance, it came with a note explaining to the children that they were to help the reindeer earn its bells for Santa's sleigh by completing a mission each day. Each day the reindeer makes it appearance in a different location with a letter.  We read the letter and mission each morning.  The mission are just acts of kindness that you would try to instill any other day, it's just causing them to focus more on a particular kindness. The students love it! Each day they are so excited to see what the new mission will be. 

The students wanted to name our reindeer. Here is Sarah making her Glitter Girl debut!

Here are samples of letters that were written to the students.

Hoot #2
We got our results from our letter screener we did in August and then again in October.  It was absolutely AMAZING to see how much these kiddos have grown!  In August our school ranked 9 out of 14....by October we ranked 4 out of 14!  We were ecstatic that our kids showed so much growth!  It is little things like this that help remind us, "IT IS WORTH IT!"  It helped us to realize how far they have actually come in such a short amount of time.  There are no words for how proud we are of our kids!  And of course, ESGI helped make the actual assessment part A LOT easier!  It took hardly anytime at all to screen our whole class!  We have no idea how we survived without ESGI!!  If you haven't heard of ESGI, click on the link on the right side of our page to check it out! 

This Week's Holler...

This weeks holler goes out to Jennifer at Stories and Songs in Second!  Right now, she is part of the Pick 3 Pinterest Party! Jennifer shared some really cute Christmas crafts, foods, and centers (stations) galore! We love her Teacher Holiday Toolbox! We will definitely be putting that to use! She does a ton of collaborative blogging too! Really blogging buddies, she has a lot of great stuff! Check her out!