Hip, Hip Hooray for the 50th Day!
I cannot believe I’m typing this, but it’s true! We’re one week away from the 50th day of Kindergarten! How did that even happen?!
At our school and in our classroom we celebrate #allthethings and the 50th day of Kindergarten is no exception! This year the 50th day of school falls on Halloween. Our students are not allowed to dress up for Halloween, but guess what they are allowed to dress up for- 50’s Day for the 50th Day! Our students will dress like it’s the 1950s. We will too, which means an extra jean day! YAY!
This year I’m trading in my neck bandana for a red handband with a bow. I may even wear a chambray top with dark wash jeans! I haven’t decided for sure yet.
In our classroom we start our day with Morning Work. Normally Morning Work is penmanship practice, but on the 50th day of school we’ll do a tracing 1-50 sheet and a 50th day of Kindergarten coloring page. While the students are working on their Morning Work I’ll pull each student to take their picture holding the ‘My 50th Day of Kindergarten’ letter board. I’ll use the picture I take on the 50th day, along with the picture I took on the first day and the pictures I’ll take on the 100th day and graduation day, to create an end of the year gift for the parents. (I’ll share this gift idea, along with end of the year student gift and Room Mom gift ideas in later blog posts!)
At our Morning Meeting we’ll do a special song- Count by 1s to 50. Throughout the day we take brain breaks, usually GoNoodle, but for the 50th day of school we’ll turn on some 50’s music and let the kids dance! One of our brain breaks will be a hula hoop competition. The winners (a boy and a girl) of our hula hoop competition will go on to battle it out with the winners of the hula hoop competition in the other kindergarten classes.
Another competition we will have is bubble blowing competition. We’ll start by giving each student a piece of bubble gum and see if any of them are able to blow a bubble. If any are I’ll ask them if they’d like to teach their classmates how to. If they want to great, but if not I’ll teach the students how to blow a bubble and give them time to practice. As they’re practicing I’ll be looking for a boy and a girl to represent our class in the Kindergarten Bubble Blowing Competition. Then we’ll write teaching how to blow a bubble.
During our math block we’ll pass out gum one more time and give students another opportunity to try to blow a bubble. We’ll create a graph showing who can blow a bubble and who is still learning to blow a bubble.
At recess we’ll have the hula hoop and bubble blowing competitions and enjoy Coke floats for afternoon snack!
I know what you’re probably thinking at this point- it sounds like all fun and games, and it is fun and games, but we are covering content too!
At our school and in our classroom we celebrate #allthethings and the 50th day of Kindergarten is no exception! This year the 50th day of school falls on Halloween. Our students are not allowed to dress up for Halloween, but guess what they are allowed to dress up for- 50’s Day for the 50th Day! Our students will dress like it’s the 1950s. We will too, which means an extra jean day! YAY!
2018-2019 50th Day of Kindergarten
This year I’m trading in my neck bandana for a red handband with a bow. I may even wear a chambray top with dark wash jeans! I haven’t decided for sure yet.
In our classroom we start our day with Morning Work. Normally Morning Work is penmanship practice, but on the 50th day of school we’ll do a tracing 1-50 sheet and a 50th day of Kindergarten coloring page. While the students are working on their Morning Work I’ll pull each student to take their picture holding the ‘My 50th Day of Kindergarten’ letter board. I’ll use the picture I take on the 50th day, along with the picture I took on the first day and the pictures I’ll take on the 100th day and graduation day, to create an end of the year gift for the parents. (I’ll share this gift idea, along with end of the year student gift and Room Mom gift ideas in later blog posts!)
At our Morning Meeting we’ll do a special song- Count by 1s to 50. Throughout the day we take brain breaks, usually GoNoodle, but for the 50th day of school we’ll turn on some 50’s music and let the kids dance! One of our brain breaks will be a hula hoop competition. The winners (a boy and a girl) of our hula hoop competition will go on to battle it out with the winners of the hula hoop competition in the other kindergarten classes.
Another competition we will have is bubble blowing competition. We’ll start by giving each student a piece of bubble gum and see if any of them are able to blow a bubble. If any are I’ll ask them if they’d like to teach their classmates how to. If they want to great, but if not I’ll teach the students how to blow a bubble and give them time to practice. As they’re practicing I’ll be looking for a boy and a girl to represent our class in the Kindergarten Bubble Blowing Competition. Then we’ll write teaching how to blow a bubble.
During our math block we’ll pass out gum one more time and give students another opportunity to try to blow a bubble. We’ll create a graph showing who can blow a bubble and who is still learning to blow a bubble.
At recess we’ll have the hula hoop and bubble blowing competitions and enjoy Coke floats for afternoon snack!
I know what you’re probably thinking at this point- it sounds like all fun and games, and it is fun and games, but we are covering content too!
- Students are practicing number formation when they trace the numbers 1-50.
- Students are practicing counting to 50- our mid-year counting standard.
- Students are writing ‘how to’ pieces.
- Students are creating graphs and analyzing data.
Throughout this special 1950’s fun we’ll be having we’ll still be covering content! We won’t be doing a room transformation {I know they’re super popular on social media right now and I also know just the thought of them can be daunting for some of us and that’s okay! Take baby steps!}, but we will be dressed different than we normally are, we’ll be playing different music than we normally play, we’ll be enjoying some sugar, and most importantly we’ll be learning, the students will be engaged, and we’ll be having fun all at the same time!
You don’t have to go big and over the top to create special memories and learning experiences for your students. Small things like dressing up, playing different music, using bubble gum in your writing and math lessons can go a long way in terms of teaching and learning and student engagement!
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