Practicing with math strategies!

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!

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Count-On-Games-2129137

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!

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.

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!

Math Manipulative Storage tip

Are you always scrambling around to collect manipulatives for students to play math games?  This idea has really saved me time and frustration!  I counted out 25 counters and put them in the plastic Gerber baby food containers.  The kids can easily grab one and get started working right away!

Stay tuned for more classroom pictures and how we use these manipulative containers.

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!

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.

Sorry it's so blurry...I just wanted you to notice the yellow sticky to mark author's features.

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. 

Labeling a caption

Labeling labels

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!