Our next-to-the-last week in Kindergarten has been a fun one!
On Monday, we had Camping Day. After Morning Meeting, we read Tacky Goes to Camp. This is one of Helen Lister’s hilarious Tacky the Penguin stories. The kids laughed so hard as Tacky ate dozens of s’mores and fell asleep headfirst in his sleeping bag amidst a pile of s’more crumbs. It’s one they will want to read again. Put it on your summer reading list. We made a chart of what Tacky took to camp versus what the “normal” penguins took to camp. Students read strips of paper with the items, then added them to the chart.
In teams of three, students got to make their own campsite. They made tents from plastic tablecloths and built fires of tissue paper. They used their flashlights to make the fires glow, which was a nice touch. Everyone unrolled their sleeping bags inside their tents and took off their shoes! Yes, they were so excited to take off their shoes in the classroom! After lots of giggles and snuggling up with their reading buddies in their sleeping bags, I rang the camp bell to call them out to the campfires.
We read aloud together an emergent reader called, “How to make s’mores.” Then I gave them a little Camp Journal booklet with some challenging word games to do - a word search, a word scramble, an alphabetizing list, etc. We told them that for each page they completed and Mrs. Wolfe or I checked, they would get a part of a s’more in the afternoon. They were very motivated! Mrs. Wolfe and I helped them complete the tasks by flashlight. Some students worked independently in their tents.
They didn’t want to leave their tents and begged to eat snacks in there, so we did that at Snack Time. It took the rest of the morning to color their emergent readers and complete their Camp Journals. We also ate lunch in front of our tents. And there was an epic Knock-Knock joke extravaganza! They were all tripping over each other to tell me Knock-Knock jokes! One of those moments that make me love my job!
After lunch, we struck camp. Everything was cleaned up and put away before going out for recess.
After recess we had our dress rehearsal for Graduation. We got a lot of last-minute details worked out for that, then returned to the classroom for our s’mores. Everybody got to have a whole s’more, which was totally 😋!
On Wednesday, we finished up our Calendar Folders by completing the May Calendar and working on the May project (a butterfly).
Everyone was pumped to finish our devotional book, Little Pilgrim’s Big Journey. It was so satisfying to see the ending where Christian and his friend Hopeful finally make it to the Celestial City and get to see the King face-to-face. We began reading the book in January, so it was a big deal to get it finished! They begged me to start reading “the green book,” which is Part II. We’ll start on it next week, but won’t be able to finish it.
I read A Camping Spree With Mister Magee. Another funny camping story, written and illustrated (beautifully) by Chris Van Dusen.
We read two poems together: “I like to Swim” and “I like the Ocean.” We marked various sight words with different colors, then colored the pictures. These will go into their Calendar Folders.
Mrs. Wolfe explained the rules and procedure for the Reading Bee. She had already done it in Mrs. Williams’ class. She took the cards with all of our Kindergarten sight words and showed one to each student for them to read. If they read it correctly the first time, they remained in. If they didn’t know it or said it incorrectly, they were out and had to sit down. We went through all the Kindergarten words. That’s 100 words! By the time we got down to Archer and Wells, they were well into the first grade sight words! It took a bunch of rounds before Wells finally missed one and Archer won the bee.
After snack and recess, Mrs. Williams’ class joined us for Round 2. Her top 5 readers and my top 5 readers (as decided by Round 1) faced off. Mrs. Wolfe started with the February list of Kindergarten words and worked on through a good chunk of the first grade words again until Joy and Archer were the only ones standing. At last, Archer missed one, and Joy took the top prize.
We had a bit of time, so we made a morpho butterfly, which was a project we were supposed to have done when we learned about Rainforests.
We had an early lunch, then took a little field trip down to the Castle so they could see everything set up for Graduation. We went back to class, got some wiggles out, warmed up our singing voices…then you know the rest!
I know you’ve heard me going on about Graduation for months, but now you can see why we put so much time and energy into it! It does take a lot of work, but it’s something the kids are really proud of. I am so, so pleased with how they did! It was a lot to learn and memorize and a few things they’d never done before. We were very excited to share it with you and your families.
But wait! School’s not over yet!
We do Graduation the week before school is out so we can have some chill time to have fun and say goodbye on the last week of school. So, I’ll see most of you on Friday, but everyone else on Monday and Wednesday next week. THEN, we’re done!
With a very grateful heart,
Mrs. Duckworth
Coming Up, etc.
Monday, May 23 Beach Day! Send a towel and 🕶! We’ll be sharing a beach treat (ocean blue jello with “sand” and an umbrella) and making some fun things! (This won’t be a getting wet kind of day, though)
Needs:
Has anyone got a collection of corks they’re willing to donate? We’re making little boats from corks and I don’t have all I need. Could use about 36.
Does anyone have a small kiddie pool we can borrow? We’d like to race our boats after we make them.
Please send backpacks, as we’ll begin bringing home supplies. And send their water bottle, snack, and lunch.
Wednesday, May 25 Last Day!
We’ll have a Last Day of School Party for part of the day. I’m sorry that I can’t remember who is working on the party. I’m sure you’ve talked to me, but my brain is a bit fried at the moment!
I’ll then take some time to wrap things up, say goodbye, and clean out the rest of their supplies, projects, etc.
Do send backpacks, water bottles, snacks, and lunch.
Shout-out to all of you! You’ve been amazing, encouraging, supporting, and I’ve truly loved getting to know each of your families this year.
