Poetry from A to Z, Big Giveaway Winner and Apples!

Happy Saturday folks! Lindsay here . . .

Well, yesterday marked the end of our second week of school here. It was a long week. A hot week. A looooooooooong hot week of sweatiness and classroom procedures. We also celebrated the letter A and all things pertaining to apples, naturally.

Here are our cutie "Parts of an Apple" art (courtesy of Peace, Love, Kindergarten - labels from What The Teacher Wants):

Then on Friday we made crockpot applesauce - and it was delicious!  I was an applesauce-making rookie, and I was SURE most of the kids wouldn't like it, but they gobbled it right up!

 



There was definately no short of fun activities as we learned all about our first Letter of the Week this week!  One of the weekly activities I do with my kiddos for our Word Work practice in the morning is our A to Z Poetry Book.  We learn one new poem every week (for our new letter) and the kiddos are always SO excited to see what the new poem will be!

First, we learn the works to the poem (or song).  We then practice singing or saying the poem and tracking the words on each line with our "Go-Go Gadget Pointer Fingers" . . . after lots of "finger push-ups" and finger warm ups, of course. 

Then . . . the magic happens.  My kiddos get to take out their *coveted* highlighters from their pencil boxes and begin their search for the letter of the week throughout the poem or song, highlighting the letter wherever they find it.  As the year progresses I might also have my kids look for familiar sight words, word family patterns, etc. 

Finally, after the letter search is over, we get ready to illustrate.  Before I have my kiddos begin, we talk about the characters, setting, vocabulary words that might be unfamiliar, etc. so they they have a better idea of what they will be drawing.  Then Mr. Ding-Dong gets set (the timer) and off they go! 

This is a page of one poetry book while we worked on the letter A this week:

This poetry book is such a powerful tool for practicing phonemic awareness, letter recognition, tracking, rhyming and other important literacy skills.  Each week before we learn our new poem, we first go through ALL the previously learned poems, so that by the end of the year our class knows all 26 by heart!  There have been many a bus ride to and from field trips when my kindergarteners begin singing songs from their poetry book - they just plain love it!

Here is a preview of my Poetry From A to Z that is now on TPT: (click the picture to check it out in my TPT store)

One last item of business . . . We need to announce the winner of our cutie Burlap Wall Hanging courtesy of Must Love Art Studio on Etsy.  And the winner is . . .


a Rafflecopter giveaway

We have already emailed you Kristi!! Congratulations! Thank you to everyone who participated!!

Well, that's it for now!  I am off to staple Scholastic Book Club catalog pages on the couch in my PJs and watch some Real Housewives.  Yes, just another exciting Saturday night here folks! Hope you all enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Lindsay