We have been busy learning all about counting on from 0, 1, 2, or 3 this past week! The kids have had many chances to show their understanding of this concept through these count-on games. Check them out in my store!
Sunday, October 4, 2015
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Our favorite place to read
I was wanting a new piece of furniture for my room...I had seen something like this on Pinterest and asked my ever-tolerant husband if he would be able to duplicate! He rolled his eyes and said yes...Three days later I now have a new reading corner bench as well as reading box storage! Yay for handy husbands! Kids love to sit on it to read as well as lay down and sit with a friend to share a good book!
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Places to Read
One of our activities to get ourselves ready for the Daily 5. We read the book,
The Best Place to Read, by Todd Parr. We then brainstormed places to read. Kids made it more personable by drawing themselves in their favorite reading place.
Monday, September 28, 2015
Teaching My Students about Listening
As we start the new year, one of the things that I have been trying to instill in my students is the importance of listening. Not just sitting quietly, but listening with our whole body. We talked about how you need to be listening with ears, eyes, mouth (quiet) and with the brain! We need all of these components to help us learn and remember. Our saying is participate-don't be a bump on a log!
Sunday, September 27, 2015
Math Manipulative Storage tip
Stay tuned for more classroom pictures and how we use these manipulative containers.
Sunday, March 22, 2015
Art, Reading, Math and Science! Oh my!
It has been a while since I have blogged and lots has been going on! Dr. Seuss, St. Patrick's Day, crazy leprechauns and Spring!
I would like to share a few things that went on I'm my classroom since last time I posted.
1. Dr. Seuss Week - We celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday school wide all week! One of the activities I love doing is making these gigantic Dr. Seuss'. My kiddos use tracers for the hat, bow and the two parts of the cat's head. The rest they free cut.
I love letting my kids use tracers! Projects take on a life of their own and they tend not to look like cookie cutter projects!
Once they traced and cut out the hat, they drew on the stripes and then came over to the
table to paint them.
While they waited for the stripes to dry, they finished cutting and assembling the rest.
Here is a picture of one of the kids putting the finishing touches on hers! I let them choose what color they want to make their bow and then they paint their hat to match.
These turned out so well, we displayed them out in the hall for all to see!
2. Reading - In my last post, I talked about finishing up on our informational text unit in reading.
In our district, we are required to use a reading journal with our kids. We use them mostly as a respond to reading notebook. I wanted to have my kids share their opinion of what they prefer to read and why. I modeled what it might look like and then sent them off to write on their own.
"I like to read fiction books because they are funny to read" Love the thought bubble in her picture!
"I like to read informational books because I can learn new things."
3. Math - We did a few activities in math with 2D and 3D shapes. As a culminating activity we sorted our snack.
I first gave my students a sheet of paper that they had to fold in half and then draw their lines and put on their headers. Once they had this done, they got their baggie of items to sort under each category.
This child is in the process of sorting his shapes.
Once they sorted under the correct category, they had the teacher or another student who had their paper checked already, go over their sort and make any corrections.
Next, I had them sort them under the category according to shape, group them and label them.
Finally, the best part, they ate their shapes!
As they worked, I was able to walk around and informally assess their understanding of 2 and 3D shapes as well as the names of those shapes.
4. Science - Paper! We have been learning all about paper the last couple of weeks. This is one of our required science units in our district. I am fortunate enough to have a child whose parent works for one of our local paper companies. He volunteered his services to come in and show the kids how to make paper as well as review the paper making process that we learned in the classroom.
Each student got to make a piece of paper to take home. They had a blast!
The kiddos also went home with a ream of construction paper and a baggie of goodies (oatmeal, microwave popcorn, Reeses peanut butter cups and Starbursts). Each of these goodies is package in the paper that the company makes!
Whew! Sorry for being long-winded!
I promise to do a better job of blogging in the future! My goal is to try and blog at least once a week to share things that are going on in the land of Kindergarten!
Two more weeks and we will be on Spring break! Hope you all have a great week!
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
Informational texts in Kindergarten
We are finishing up on our reading unit all about informational text. One of the many lessons I taught was about what the author of the text does to help its readers understand the topic and how they use many features to help organize their information. We made a list of the features they use and then together we looked through a few texts to see if the books had any of those features.
Afterwards, I sent my students off to their tables with a basket of books to look through and search for these features on their own.
I gave them each a small stack of post-its and let them go to town and label the features they found. We found bold words, table of contents, captions, glossary, index and headings to name a few!
Then to wrap up our feature search, I called out a feature and the kids opened a book to a page they marked that had that feature and held it up for all to see.
The next day, we switched our focus from author to illustrator. We talked about how the author and illustrator work together to write the book and that just like the author, an illustrator uses features to help the reader understand the topic better. We listed the features and then, just like the day before, they helped me search through my book(s) to find the features we had listed. Afterward, we went back to our tables and used the same books, but different colored post-its to mark the illustrator's features. The students found features like labels, cut-aways, photographs and diagrams.
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| Sorry it's so blurry...I just wanted you to notice the yellow sticky to mark author's features. |
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| Labeling a caption |
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| Labeling labels |
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| Finding a cut-away to label |
Afterwards we shared the features we found just like the previous days' lesson.
What an easy way for me to informally observe who understood and who needed some re-teaching!
The students had a great time and were actively engaged. A great hands-on way to have them show what they had learned!
Now, we are on to comparing fiction and information and discussing features that are the
same and different.
I love teaching about informational text. This unit will really help my students when we do our informational writing next week! Looking forward to seeing how they use what we learned during reading to help them with their writing!
Sunday, March 1, 2015
A New Product and a Bonus Freebie! Turnaround Facts!
Happy Sunday!
I have been procrastinating starting lesson plans for the week with trying to create a couple of resources to go with my post the other day about teaching turnaround facts. They are done and uploaded in my store. If you want to see more about what I did, CLICK HERE.
The first new product is a freebie! I used this prior to using the resource on turnaround facts.
Hope you can find a way to make use of it!
Here is the link to the resource I used for turnaround facts
Well, I guess enough procrastinating-my lesson plan fairy is on strike so I suppose that means I better get 'er done!
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Day Two-Teaching Kinders about Turnaround Facts
Today we went a little deeper into our understanding of turnaround facts in math. We started out with a review of what we learned yesterday. I used clothes hangers each with a number 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10. On one side of the number I placed one color of pins and the other side another color of pins in combinations to equal the number on the hanger. We read the number sentence left to right, wrote it on our dry erase boards and then as we flipped the hanger around, the kids were able to see, say and write the turnaround fact.
It was fun to hear and see the "lightbulbs" go on in their heads as they smiled and said "OOOHHH!". We talked about what stayed the same in each number sentence as well as what changed.
Then we talked with our neighbor about what we thought the term turnaround fact meant.
Once I felt comfortable with their understanding of turnaround facts, I introduced two activities that they would do independently.
Each child received a baggie with domino cards and number sentences. We first laid out all the domino cards and then set out to match the fact and the corresponding turnaround fact to each domino. The kids did great!! As this student, continued to sort her cards, she realized a couple of mistakes and was able to easily correct herself without any support!
The kiddos next task was to use the containers of dominoes that I set out at their tables to do more turnaround facts. This time, they chose a domino, drew it in their math journal, and then wrote the fact with the answer as well as the turnaround fact. They really were engaged and independently discovered that doubles do not have turnaround facts!
At the end of our math lesson today we watched a Youtube video about Turnaround facts...I'm not quite sure how I feel about it...kids were intrigued...you will have to check it out yourselves and make your own opinions!
Now...on to Friday-Have a great weekend everyone!
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
Finding Balance
So I'm very new to this blogging thing...and new to making products for Teachers Pay Teachers. I am NOT new to teaching! That being said, it is always hard to find balance. It always feels like there is more I could be doing...should be doing. Sometimes I think our pets say it best!
'Anyway, over the next months I am going to be working hard to find balance--so I can add to my blog and store, continue to do great things for my kindergarten students, and still be a wife and dog mom! Advice is welcome from any experts!
One other quick announcement...it's my first ever "SALE" on Teachers Pay Teachers! Everything is 20% off plus you get another 10% off that if you use the code "HEROES". I do hope you'll stop by and see what I have--and I have LOTS of things in the works! Just click the image below if you want to snoop around. Feel free to click the "Follow" star if you want to get updates when I add new products. Thanks for stopping by!
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Celebrating Writing!
We are finishing up on our unit on Personal Narratives. The kids have grown so much with what they are able to do. We have worked really hard to grow as writers and it shows. In our school district, we have been using the Lucy Calkins' writing units. Throughout this unit, we have made a number of anchor charts to help us remember what it is that we need to put into our stories. Here is a look at two of the charts we created together as a class.
When we started out our unit we focused on making a detailed picture, so when a reader read the story, the picture could support what the author wanted to say. Once they mastered the pictures, we moved on to focusing on the words of our story.
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Thus the need for this anchor chart...
We still continue to work on making sure that we have enough detail in our words to "paint" a clear picture in our reader's mind.
As a grade level, for our PPG this year, we are focusing on elaboration with the kids. We are working hard to tell who is in our story, what they are doing and how they felt. As a grade level, we have decided that we would revisit narrative writing for a week at the end of whatever unit of writing we are working on at the time. As an example, we are now doing How-To writing. We will spend another 2 weeks with this genre of writing and before moving to All Abouts, we will spend a week revisiting personal narratives. This is the first year we have done it this way, so we will see how it goes and what the kids have actually retained!
Here are a couple of pictures of my kids working independently on their own personal narratives. They all have writing offices that they can use to refer to personal anchor charts that we have made in class, alphabet chart, mini word wall and a way to keep their stories organized as they work.
One of the ways that we like to wrap up the day's writing, is to meet on the floor with a writing piece of their choice to share with their neighbor! They love to do this and are so proud of what they have accomplished!
Saturday, February 14, 2015
Friday the Thirteenth and Valentine Fun!
Well, another Valentine's Day is in the books...the kids were crazy excited and had lots of fun!
During all the craziness, my principal decided that it would be a good time to do her unscheduled mini observation! Seriously?? Oh well, it is what it is and at least I can say it is over. She happened to walk in while we were doing some math activities with candy hearts. My group was doing some estimating, tallying, measuring and graphing while my aides group was sorting, graphing and counting.
Why is it that I always second guess myself with activities and wonder what I should have done better or differently?
Prior to the kids coming in for the day, I attached their valentine holders to their tables so that they would be ready when we started passing out our valentines. I think that the kids did a really good job of making their holders.
The kiddos used tag board tracers for most of the parts and then they free cut the rest! They had a choice of making a cat, dog or bear. The large heart with their names is made from scrapbooking paper and the rest from construction paper. My group this year sure does love doing crafts-maybe because we have time to do so few that when we do it is a break from routine and something different to do.
Our day was low key as far as activities. I have found that what they really want to do is just open up their cards and read them and acknowledge the friend that gave it to them. It is so fun to watch their reactions to opening each card and hearing them give an enthusiastic "thank you" to the person who sent it.
For the past few years, instead of having too many treats for snack, we have done a Secret Valentine in a Bag. A white bag goes home with each child to decorate and then inside they will put one salty treat, one sweet treat and a juice box along with a valentine card that says "to my secret Valentine". We put our chairs in a circle and I put a bag under each chair. We then play a version of musical chairs (without removing a chair) and when the music stops, they sit down. We will play a few times to make sure no one has their own bag that they brought in under their chair and then the kids will take their bag to their table and open up. We will go around and share who everyone's secret Valentine was and then eat our snack! Easy-peasy! No need to pass things out or take the time to go choose things to eat! The kids love this!
We also incorporated some science into our day with candy hearts. First, we predicted what we thought would happen to the candies and I wrote them on our chart. Then a few times throughout the day we would check the progress and talk about what we noticed happening. At the end of the day we jotted down what actually happened.
It was a fun day!
I am glad we have an extra day to our weekend-I need the time to recuperate! Haha! Hope your day was as fun and successfully exhausting!
Bring on the weekend...
Sunday, February 1, 2015
Currently February!
I am joining up with Farley from Oh' Boy 4th Grade for my very first Currently!
Listening: We love Criminal Minds in our family! It's our new t.v. show obsession. My springer is laying here on the couch next to me sound asleep-he snores like a person!
Loving: End of quarter means report cards! I have spent the last 2 weeks assessing my kids so that I can feel somewhat confident in filling out our report card-ugh. I think we spend more time assessing kids than we do getting to teach and interact with them. How I miss the old days, sigh!
Thinking: Oh boy, February is such a busy month! We have Groundhog's Day, 100th Day, Valentine's Day, Dental Health, President's Day and finishing our science unit on Balls and Ramps. On top of everything else reading, writing and math-can you here me yelling "CALGON!!"
Wanting: Wishing I could just relax and spend the day with family, but planning is calling my name so off I go to get 'er done so it is not hanging over my head.
Needing: My mom is coming into town this week for a few days and will be spending some of her time with us. I love having her visit-but always feel in a panic because my house never seems as clean as hers!
Pageant Title: This really fits into many parts of my life-personal and professional. I always say today will be the day that...and I truly believe myself that I can do it and then something (whether food or meeting or lack of organization) gets in my way! Nothing like not owning it, hey!
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Another great article!
Oh boy! When I read this, all I could do was enthusiastically nod my head and agree! How sad, but true, that it has come to this...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/03/23/kindergarten-teacher-my-job-is-now-about-tests-and-data-not-children-i-quit/
Monday, January 26, 2015
Perfect timing!
As we get ready for Kindergarten orientation for the next school year, this article might be a good resource to have! Talk to incoming families or hand out to them when they come to register! I know a lot of parents ask during Open House or conference time, what they can do to help their child be successful-wouldn't this be a good article to give to them prior to school starting! Somethings that they could work on during the summer prior to the start of the school year!
Sunday, January 25, 2015
Hello and New Product
Hello friends! I know that it has been a while since I last blogged. It has been a crazy last couple of months. My goal for the new year is to dig into learning more about blogging and how to use it to help others and myself make our teaching the best it can be by sharing and talking about all things primary!
I have been putzing around with an activity that I have used often in my classroom, especially at this time of year when all of the required sight words that we need to get our kids to know inside and out, have been introduced.
I have created a product called Love Bug! Check it out! Here is the link..
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