YouTube Videos That Kindergarteners Will Love!

I have survived the first month of school!  We have been busy learning the letters of the alphabet, shapes, and numbers.  I think it's important to build a strong foundation for our learning.  Let's face it.  Many students enter kindergarten with fewer skills than what I feel they should know.  It takes a lot of exposure to fully grasp and retain information.  Our job as a kindergarten teacher, is to build the best learning foundation and get kids excited about learning.  YouTube is one of the ways that I get students learning and they don't even realize it.  I have found many great learning resources on YouTube.  Here are a few of the resources I have been using lately:

1.
 

We have been singing this alphabet song by Have Fun Teaching every day.  The kids are really excited about this video and they love to sing and dance along.  This video shows both upper and lowercase letters and goes through the sounds too.

2.


This song by Harry Kindergarten has helped us learn to count to 20 while getting our wiggles out.  There is also a section of the song that counts backwards from 20.  I don't think we will sing this song the entire year, but it has been a great starting point for improving our counting skills.  The students get to see the numbers as they count, so we are learning our teen numbers too.

3.



The Shape Song 2 by KidsTV123 has become our class favorite!!!  The kids ask for this song everyday!  It is very relaxing to sing and it is one that we sing when we need something calming.  It has taught us a lot of shape names and there is a section of the song that introduces some harder shapes.  I think we will know our shape names really well this year.

If you want to see more posts of how I use YouTube in the class, then leave me a comment and look out for some future posts.

Light Box/Table

I have been seeing a lot of great ideas using light tables and ideas on making one.  I really wanted to go shopping today to buy stuff to make one, but my laziness got the best of me today.  I sat around and read.  I think I have some kind of book addiction.  There should be meetings for people like me.  I mean, seriously, I try to find a home for every book that is disposed of in the building.  There is a kid somewhere that will read that book.  I can't stand for books to be thrown away.

So my plan for tomorrow will be to actually make it to the store and make one of the light boxes that I have been seeing around the net.  I have a few modifications to my design and I hope it works.  Fingers crossed.  I will post my results soon.

I'm Back!!!

I have been back at work the past 3 weeks and it is totally draining me.  If you didn't know, I haven't been to work since January.  I had to have major Crohn's related surgery.  I am getting back into the swing of things and I hope to have some things to share soon.  

Last week, my class made a book using our new sight words "I am___."  They drew a picture of themselves and glued their sentences to the page.  I plan on adding a small picture of them to each page so we can read the book easier.  Oh, did I mention I only have 12 students!  I love the small class, but it makes me question job security.  I think I need to go recruit.  Lol, I'm not sure where you would go to recruit new kindergartners.

This year I plan on changing out my traditional play centers.  We had a big training about "developmentally appropriate" practices in kindergarten and purposeful play.  The sad thing is that we knew what was developmentally appropriate, but we were pressured in the past to do things that weren't.  I'm so glad that we are moving back in this direction! 

I hope everyone has a great week!  I'm taking my camera to school tomorrow so I can, hopefully, post some pics. 

Where Have I Been?!

After all the craziness with the water around here, I ended up needing surgery.  There was no way around it.  I didn't want surgery, but I had to or I wouldn't get better.  You see I have Crohns and I have struggled with bowel obstructions for the past 2 school years.  In the past, they cleared on their own without surgery, but it required an NG tube and no food or water for a week.  This time I spent a week in the hospital, went home, and had to return the next day because it was back.  When I saw my bowels on the screen down in x-ray, I realized that I had a really narrow area and it wasn't going to get better so I finally agreed to surgery.  I spent a month in the hospital.  I haven't been to work since January and I don't plan on returning until next school year.  I hope to start blogging soon with my ideas for next year.  I am just now beginning to feel like my regular self and I'm getting excited for summer with my son.

School Closed Contaminated Water

Our water has been contaminated by a chemical used to clean coal.  I could smell it on my way to work yesterday morning at 7:15.  They didn't find the leak until around 9:30 am.  I thought something was wrong with my car.  We don't know when we will be able to use our water again.  This incident may cause long term effects.  I'm not sure why this type of chemical would be contained along a river.  It seems to me that this should be stored somewhere else.

Another Cold Day Off

We have been off school the past two days because of extremely cold weather.  It makes me wonder what they do in Alaska.  I have been enjoying the time off though.  I must admit that I haven't thought much about school this week.  I have been working on becoming more organized at home.  It's so easy for me to be organized at school, but home is a different story.  I live with two really disorganized boys (one being my husband).  While I do love them, their lack of organization is killing me.  Our family resolution is to be more organized so we are working on changing some bad habits.  I admit that I may also contribute to our lack of organization too.

Well, we already have a 2 hour delay for tomorrow which means I will wait an hour before heading to work.  I have learned the hard way not to leave at my normal time.  I have traveled dangerous roads in the past just trying to get to work just to pull in the lot and get the call that school is closed.  This girl is not doing that anymore.  Did I mention that I'm not really prepared for school tomorrow and the closings have messed with my plans?  Oh, I will figure it out, but it makes for a rocky week.

I hope everyone is staying warm.

Happy New Year!

I took a break from my digital life to spend more time with my family during the holidays.  My husband bought me a new laptop for Christmas and today is the first day I have plugged it in and turned it on.  I can't believe I let it sit in the box for that long!

My next step is to transfer my files over to the new laptop because my son will be using my old one.  He loves going to Lego.com.  He is a Lego genius!  You know that age range they have on Lego boxes?  It doesn't matter what it says.  My son can build it on his own using the directions.  He's only 7 and some of those boxes say 10-12 years on them.

I don't have anything new to share today.  We started back to school on Thursday and had a snow day on Friday.  I hear that we might be getting more snow so I'm not sure how next week is going to go.  I do hope everyone had a great break and spent time with their families.  Oh, yeah, Happy New Year!