Special Friend of the Day- Two

Every child in Mrs. B.'s Kindergarten class has the opportunity to be Special Friend of the Day and, since all of the children have had a turn, Mrs. B. chose me to be "Special Friend" this morning. 

Last time I was Special Friend of the Day was in 2012. (Click HERE to see portraits of me from that group of students.) By comparison, I think the Kindergarten graduates from 2012 have more artistic talent than our students this year, nonetheless, they drew some pretty cute pictures. Take a look...

Never mind that I'm pig nosed and built like a box. This little girl is a future calligrapher! 

I'm sure it's obvious, but I'm going to tell you anyway. This is me getting out of my green car at Disneyland
 and Mickey and Minnie Mouse are there to greet me. 

The fact that this little guy took his time drawing my picture makes my heart melt. Usually, he is either daydreaming or hurrying to get through his assignments. (By the way, it was 'wear your school t-shirt' day.
I don't typically sport shirts with roadrunners on them.)

Here I am, riding Toy Story at California Adventure Park. I don't know what's going on in the crotch area. I was afraid to ask. 

This is me riding California Screamin'. The two girls in the box are waiting in line. IF ONLY lines were that short! 

Once again, I'm at Disneyland. This time I'm riding Pirates of the Caribbean. In Ethan's words...
"It's the dark part before you go up the hill. The box is where that thing flashes."

 I sure am going to miss Mrs. B.!

Kindergarten Writing Assessments/ #prettyfunnystuff

Mrs. B. gave our class a writing assessment this week. She orally instructed them to write this simple sentence, "The dog sat in the sun." After the children wrote the sentence, they were allowed to draw a picture at the bottom of the page, then Mrs. B. asked me to write the proper sentence in pen underneath the box before filing their papers. At the end of the year, the students will be given the exact same assessment, hopefully showing improvement.

As you can guess, Kindergarten students enter the school year with varying levels of ability, especially when it comes to writing. Here are a few papers that I deemed worthy to share...

The paper above is a perfect example of typical Kindergarten writing. This little learner obviously knows the sight word 'the' and was able to hear some beginning and ending consonant sounds in the words 'dog', 'sat' and 'sun'.

This child did a pretty good job as well, except his poor dog has too many legs and a sore, tailless bum.

With a little help learning the correct use of upper and lower case letters and punctuation, I imagine this Kindergartner will write a near perfect assessment at the end of the year.

I love this picture. Most kids draw dogs standing on four legs, but this little guy made his puppy lay on the grass, belly up, with paws in the air AND holding a flower. Adorable!

NOW--- I saved the best for last. If this one doesn't put a smile on your face, something is wrong with you.

At first glance, it looks like this sentence says 'The dog shit', but let me share with you how to decipher Kindergarten writing...

#1- You can see that this little girl knows the sight word 'the' and the word 'dog'.
#2- You can tell that she heard the 's' sound when Mrs. B. said the word sat. 
#3- She also wrote the word 'in', she just wrote it backwards and the 'n' happens to look like an 'h'. 
#4- Obviously she started to write 'the' again, but for whatever reason, didn't get it finished. 

And THAT, my friends, is how 'The dog sits in the sun' can easily be mistaken for 'The dog shit'.  :)

Kindergarten Art

One of the little girls in our Kindergarten class drew this picture of Mrs. B.

By looking at it, can you guess what Mrs. B’s ethnicity is?







She's Caucasian. :)

The Worth of a Child

Do you remember my posts about the student that stole things from our classroom, pooped in a urinal, talked out of turn and pretty much had behavior issues all school year? Well, one morning last week he said, "Mrs. Lancaster. Don't look." (Words every adult wants to hear from a child, right?) He then preceded to ask me, "How do you spell you?", so I had him search for the sight word 'you' on our Word Wall. Then he asked how to spell 'are'. Trying to encourage him, I said, "If you can't find it on the Word Wall, sound it out. You can do it." He then continued to work hard on his 'secret project'. After a time, he got out of his chair and walked over to the table where I was testing students. Handing me a piece of scratch paper, he said, "Mrs. Lancaster, will you write your name?" I quickly jotted down my name and handed it back to him. A few minutes later, he got up from his desk, came back over and handed this to me...

THIS is why I do what I do. EVERY child is worth it!

Musing Over Mother's Days Past

(This one was from Casey. He was obviously into poems.)

Love this part!

By the looks of Casey's name, this had to have been when he was in Kindergarten.

Special little decorative hearts along Katelyn's name.

Cody working on his braille machine...Cute!

I guess I sing too much? haha