Kindergarten Alphabet Soup

Well fellow bloggers and friends, the time has come for a little throwback Thursday action. I am going to start a Thursday entry each week (hopefully!!) where I will share with you one of my favorite memories from school past, teaching ideas from my past, or funny stories from my childhood. In honor of Easter coming so soon here's a silly story --

One Sunday morning during the children's message in church, Pastor asked us all a questions. "Who is coming back?" He asked. I quickly raised my hand and yelled out, "MICHAEL JORDAN!!!!" (I assume this was the year that MJ was returning to the fabulous CHICAGO BULLS, but I think the answer Pastor was looking for is Jesus...)

PS: You can now find me on twitter!! Follow me @littlemissABC for funnies, teaching tidbits, and ideas!
Follow @littlemissABC

KEEP SMILING!!!
xoxo,

Kindergarten Alphabet Soup is on FACEBOOK!

Hi followers, visitors, pinners, and teacher friends! Make sure you head to facebook and click "LIKE" for Kindergarten Alphabet Soup's new facebook page! The page is another great way to keep connected with the blog and teacher updates! :) Thank you so much for all the support!

https://www.facebook.com/kindergartenalphabetsoup

xoxo,

Little Miss ABC

Update post!! Letters to Mickey and Cinderella!!

We have heard back from the main Mouse himself!! Mickey sent my kiddos some cute little postcards in reply to the letters they sent last week to Mickey or Cinderella! I am so glad that we were able to get replies, and even though the kiddies were looking for actual letter responses to their writings and questions, they were overjoyed to receive a response from Mickey Mouse.

Here's what YOU can do to use this as a fun tool for a letter writing introductory activity! And (hopefully) you'll get a reply from the main Mouse too! :)

During Fairy Tale week, I thought it would be fun to let the kids do some letter writing to some Disney characters. I had seen the activity done all over Pinterest/teacher blogs, and being a Disney girl I wanted to give it a try to see if it would work! I introduced the kinders to a basic letter writing template, where we discussed headers and ending statements. (Dear __________,

From, ___________)

I had read that usually the responses people got after sending letters to Disney were from Mickey or Cinderella, so those were the two character choices I gave to the kiddos. I wanted to be sure to do everything so that they would get a response! We had some ADORABLE letters to these characters, I was floured with how excited they got about writing!!! (see picture in previous post)

I put each letter into a separate envelope and addressed them separately. I didn't know how the postcards would be sent back, so I wanted to be sure to get one for each child. On the return address line I put each students' name and then the address of our school (make sure to inform your school secretary that you may be getting a package from the Mouse so they can get it to you! Our FABULOUS school secretary was totally happy to help deliver the envelope!)

We sent the letters to the fan mail department at Disneyland:

Disneyland Resort

Guest Communications

Attn: Character Fan Mail

P.O. Box 3232

Anaheim, CA 92803-3232

Within a little over a week we had received a big white envelope from the MOUSE! I was so ecstatic that we had gotten a reply, and a quick one at that! They sent about 25 blank postcards to us, which I then took and wrote (in Mickey's autograph, of course) each child's name onto the postcard. I handed them out and I have never seen such happy kiddos! Such a fun activity to get kids excited about writing, and learning in a different way!

Check out http://www.mousekatools.com/2013/05/07/disney-characters-respond-to-fan-mail/ for another example of how this activity works! Thanks for the idea :)

Keep Smiling and have a MAGICAL day!

xoxo, Little Miss ABC

Hello fearless Kinder teachers! It's been a while since my last post...almost a year to be exact. My fault! I want to keep this up more!! This year has been insane, as many of you can attest to I'm sure.

Today we had a visit from a silly leprechaun who not only messed up our traps, but he got into our Lucky Charms stash AND left green foot prints all over. But at least he left us some gold before he skee-daddled out the door.

I have recently been traveling a lot for conferences where I have learned a ton of great ideas, interventions, and activities that I am excited to implement in my classroom. My next post will be a compiling of some of the great things I learned at the conferences! Some of the teachers I had the privilege of listening to are some of the Kinder community GREATS! So excited to share their ideas with you.

Keep smiling :)

Little Miss ABC

PS: Here's a picture of some of the ADORABLE letters my kinders wrote to their favorite Disney characters during Fairy Tales week. Love that my little lady asked Cinderella if she was having a "very nice day" :) <3

Weeks of Weather

I have been MIA the past few weeks. It's been hectic in Kindergarten with the end of the year approaching. But I just HAD to share the fun things we've been doing the past few weeks while learning about the WEATHER! And we've had some crazy, real life examples of all kinds of weather in the Chicagoland Area. Rain, floods, snow, sunshine and 70 degrees, wind, clouds, you name it we had it.

The first week when we began talking about weather the class and I discussed the water cycle, clouds, and precipitation --

Clouds

We had one nice day to be able to go outside and look at the clouds. Before heading outside, we read the story Little Cloud by Eric Carle. We talked about how clouds may sometimes look like different shapes, as well as when lots of clouds join together and get heavy, they produce precipitation. The students all had clipboards, "sky" paper, and white crayons and were able to draw the cloud shapes they saw.

I found an awesome way to make puffy paint using glue and shaving cream, and the next day we painted our own clouds. The students were able to choose whatever shape they wanted to make their cloud, and they LOVED painting with the puffy paint!

Precipitation

Once we had learned about clouds it was time to talk about the water cycle and precipitation! We used some science experimentation to discover how the water cycle works. One experiment we tried was by creating our own rain storm using a glass vase, boiling water inside of the vase, and a plate with ice cubes on top to create the condensation. The kiddies struggled with sitting and watching the rain form, but once it began to drip down they were very excited that we made "rain!"

We also made a rain storm using shaving cream, food coloring, the clear vase, and water. This experiment helped show the children how once a cloud gets heavy, the rain falls down.

Check back next week for some pictures of our Weatherman project where we made our very own Kindergarten Weather Reports! :)

Xoxo,

Little Miss ABC

The Rainbow Connection

This week we have been talking about rainbows in honor of St. Patrick's Day. We made a class rainbow Monday afternoon (I noticed we had quite the array of colors on that day!). Tuesday and Wednesday we worked on tissue paper rainbows, one of my favorite rainbow projects as a kid. We also got to do some rainbow sorting with beads and an egg carton (SO easy and so cheap). Check us out!!

We also got a chance to practice a fun activity that I learned at a conference called "Cottonball Breathing". The object of this activity is to try to blow a cotton ball from your palm to in between your partners feet. This is a calming activity, but also helps encourage team work and cooperation. We LOVED it! Thanks Mindful Practices :)
http://www.mindfulpracticesyoga.com - Carla is amazing.

Check back at the end of the week for our St. Patty's Day fun, including Leprechaun traps AND lotsa LUCKY CHARMS! Yummmmy :)

xoxo,

Little Miss ABC

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!!

What a week it has been! We have had tons of fun celebrating Dr. Seuss and his legacy this week. Here are a highlight of some of the fun activities we did each day!

Monday we talked about the Cat in the Hat and got to experience a celebrity story-time as well as think about what we would do if the Cat in the Hat came to our house.

Tuesday we talked about Oh the Places You'll Go and the kids made some SUPER cute hot air balloon projects. I was so pleased with how they turned out. It was a multiple step (and subject) project involving art, literacy, and following directions. Check out their hard work!

Wednesday was WACKY WEDNESDAY!!!! Some kids came with wacky hair, wacky clothes, and we even had a few "Things" at school!

Thursday was a fun day with One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. We graphed some Color Goldfish and had a fun snack too :)

Friday was a fun day FILLED with Dr. Seuss fun. We got to hear Green Eggs and Ham, read by Tim Tebow, have a Seuss-ical snack, and wear Cat in the Hat hats. What a week!

We finished the week of with watching the Lorax.

Oh the Thinks you can Think!!!

Next week check back for fun Lutheran Schools Week activities!

xoxo,

Little Miss ABC