Brain breaks!

I am a huge fan and student of whole brain learning. I use this in my classroom daily and I'm constantly trying to become better at incorporating it into everything I teach. One of the parts of whole brain teaching is a scoreboard.  The class as a whole is rewarded with tally marks under the smiley face or the frowny face during the day and then rewarded based on the score. If there are more smiles than frowns by lunch, the students are rewarded some brain breaks after recess. Then we wipe the slate clean and start all over for the second half of the day. At the end of the day, if there are more smiles than frowns, they get to choose a piece of candy from the candy box as they leave. Here are the kids enjoying a brain break after recess. As you can see, some of them prefer to just color or watch from their seats - and that's okay, too!  

Using our new Bibles!!!!!!!

We are all so excited about our new Bibles his year!  We've always had the kids bring a Bible but everyone had different ones. They were all wanting us to help them find the story in their Biblles. We just didn't have enough time to help that many kids every day, SO, we decided to ask them all to get the same Bible this year so that we could all read the stories together!  I don't know who was more excited - the kids or the teachers!?  I also purchased the entire Beginner's Bible app this summer. It has the exact pictures and words as our stories that we are doing in chapel. If you think we were excited about the Bibles, you should have seen how excited we were once we realized this!  I've been making each story ino a flip chart that we can use on our Promehean boards. Here is an example of Mrs. Cave teaching about Adam and Eve and how the kids were able to see the story in their Bibles AND on the board!  

Here is Mrs. Cave pulling "Adam" out of the dirt. Thank you, Mrs. Beller for making the teachers our own Adams and Eves!

Here is Mrs. Cave showing a model of a skeleton and showing where the rib bones are. She covered the face because Mrs. Kelsey thought it might scare some of the kids. 

Mrs. Cave is a great teacher and presented an awesome chapel lesson!  I'm so thankful that we get to have chapel together with the kindergarten classes.  Most of all, I'm thankful that we can tell the kids about God every day at OCA!

Whisper phones

Here are the kids practicing reading from their phonics readers using whisper phones. They're so cute! They love using these. 

A special visitor for chapel!

Even though Mrs. Laxton retired last year, she promised to come and visit us for chapel. She came for day 5 of creation. (Day 5, Day 5, God made fish and birds alive). Here she is swimming in the sea and sharing her bird friends with us. It was a fun time for all!  

Earth Day

Here are our activities for Earth Day on April 22. Mrs. Laxton has a passion for Earth Day, so she shared a lesson with the kids during chapel and then we all went to the cafeteria and made the craft below!  

 

Sock it to the Devil

Mrs. Laxton led us in our chapel thoughts about Jesus being tempted in the desert. The students learned that Jesus used God's word to resist the devil. After the lesson, we all went to the cafeteria to make a craft. The kids colored the "devil" and glued it to a tissue paper tube. They were each given a Ping pong ball to knock down the devil. At the end of the day, I took my class to the front hallway and let them "knock down their devils". They loved it!  Here are some pictures! 

I Have a Dream

Here are the crafts the kids did for Martin Luther King Day. I'm especially touched by the dream to cure cancer since I, personally, was affected by that last year. I'm now celebrating one year of remission from breast cancer.  God is good!  Cancer affects so many people. I do pray that one day there will be a total cure for all kinds of cancer.