Gingerbread!

Happy Friday!!  This week we chased the gingerbread man in our class!!  I know I say this all the time, but this is one of my favorite days!  I love to watch the kids face when the oven opens and the gingerbread is gone!!!
We begin, by reading a couple of different versions of the gingerbread man.  I personally love the Gingerbread baby by Jan Brett.  She is an amazing author!
We make the gingerbread man and put him in the oven.  We ask the moms to watch the oven while we go out to play.  When we come back, the gingerbread man smells soooo good.  We gather around the oven and when we open it, He is GONE!!!  And the adventure begins....We squeal and race all over campus looking for him.  We finally catch up to him in our reading buddies room!!  We then enjoy eating him...
BUT...I have to tell you all what happened next....We have writing workshop and I had my kids draw a picture of the gingerbread man and what part of the day they liked the best.  One of the kids looked at me and said, "What if my gingerbread man jumps off the page and runs away?"  Well, I could not let that go.  The next morning, I replaced plain paper for the ones they had all made. (they put things in their "mailbox" when they finish something).  I asked my most animated child to go and get her picture so we could show the librarian what we did.  WELL....when she pulled out a blank paper, she was FLOORED!!  It was precious!!!  I love this age and their sense of wonder!
Here are some fun pictures of our day...

Let's Talk ipads!

I recently purchased a pocket projector from Brookstone and just got an Apple TV to go with it!  I love using my ipad in the classroom!! These apps and projectors also work with an itouch and iphone. With these "toys", my kids should have a blast!!
These are my current favorite apps:
Teach me Toddler (which is actually geared more towards 4 year olds)
Teach me Kindergarten
Letter of the day
Photo touch sight words
Magnetic Board
and the White Board

 Photo touch sight words, Teach me toddler, and kindergarten was free and then I added enough for each of my students.  It is great because you can change names any time you want to.  I do these apps one on one during center time.  You can see the students progress and what areas they struggle in.  My kids love playing this game.  I start all my kids out in toddler and then most of them will switch to kindergarten in January.  A word of caution is the kids can learn quickly how to "cheat".  That is why I watch them while they are beginning.  I usually use this time to cut things out while I watch.

Letter of the day I use as whole class instruction on the projector at the beginning of the week to introduce a new letter.

The Magnetic Board and White Board I use as whole class and one on one.  I love putting letters up and have the kids find the one I call with a pointer. (I like to move it around once they find it and have them chase it.)  One on one I use this as a 3 step approach.  I start with a file folder with letters and sight words the kids are working on.  Then they spell it with the white board and they spell it with the magnet board.  It is great tactile learning.  I learned this technique from my sister in law and have found many of my struggling students begin to excel after doing this with them for a few short weeks.

I have others I love, but would love to hear what works for some of you.....

White Board

sight words 

   letter of the day link

magnetic board 

teach me