Spooktacular Pumpkins: Numbers Greater than 10

With several months spent away from the blog, I'm afraid it's gotten a bit cobwebby in here!

~sweep sweep~

~dust dust~

~cough~

~SNEEZE~

Goodness!

Experienced kindergarten teachers know what new-to-service kindergarten teachers discovered in August and September: the beginning of the school year, though exciting, is c-r-a-z-y busy.  Throw in a barrage of new germs shared by many enthusiastic children, and you can imagine how difficult it can be to find not only the time but the energy to blog once the dismissal bell rings.

The big payoff to all of the extra time and effort spent teaching, practicing and reteaching routines, rules and procedures is apparent when students and teachers alike enter the classroom one day, and can feel the rhythm and step right into the tempo of our scheduled activities.  Last week was when that magical stanza was reached by my Super Stars, and I was extremely grateful to find it ~still~ in place today, after students returned from a three day weekend during parent teacher conferences.  

With a smooth transition after calendar and story time, the Stars sat through directions, and returned to their seats to assemble large orange blobs, and black, white, green and brown construction paper into jack-o-lanterns with toothy grins.  The goal?  To fill each jack's mouth with MORE than ten teeth:

The candy corn footprints are helping us learn to count by fives (parent volunteers discovered how many students have ticklish feet!):



Has your year gotten off to a good start?  I hope so!

Let me finish sweeping the place and letting some fresh air in... I'll be back to my regular blogging routine soon!