Conferences, Celebration, Cheap, and Craziness!

Such a busy week! I haven't been able to take the time and blog for a few days because I have been doing so much work preparing for our "Celebration of Learning." At the school I'm interning, in the spring they have "Celebration of Learning" instead of two days of conferences. This past Monday, for kindergarten we had individual parent conferences with only those we really felt it was necessary to meet. This was my first time sitting in on conferences since the last ones were in the fall. It was an experience to say the least! All parents want to only hear the best about their child and some seem to share wayyy too much of their personal life! None the less, this was a great opportunity to be able to add my input on the student and their work/progress/behavior and see a glimpse of how conferences are run.

"Celebration of Learning" will be happening tomorrow. This is a chance to parents to come with their child to the classroom after school and see all the work they've done. Every family is invited and each classroom does things a little differently. I created Kindergarten Portfolios for each student (which took 5 hours!!) of their work through out the year so far and pictures from fun days at school. They are pretty cute and colorful. Some of the other teachers went as far as making binders for each child with dividers and all sorts of things, but my CT and I decided against all that work this year. When the students come to "COL" tomorrow with their families, they will pick up "I can___" strips of paper and fill in three things they are able to do in school (ex. count by 2's, 5's, 10's, read a calendar, use the smartboard, answer Question of the Day, read a book, etc) and place them in their "I Can" can's they decorated at home and brought in this week. At the end of "COL" each child will fill out three "My goal is___" strips and set goals for themselves for the rest of kindergarten. We will keep these in the room so we can help each child work toward their goals and change them into "I Can" strips once they've met the goal! I have also created a cute hallways display with leprechauns, leprechaun math, some fish book reviews (our school is "Riding the reading wave" for March and reading month), and a hand print rainbow.

I ventured to the dollar store this past weekend and bought 15 great finds! PAPER! Cute cute cute paper for sending home parent notes or to use for pages in my portfolio! 40 sheets in a pack, normally around $4-5 at other stores, but $1 at the fabulous dollar store :)