The Mitten, Subtraction and Hearts (FREEBIES!)

Last week we read The Mitten by Jan Brett.  Later in the day/the next day (I can't remember :) ) we read another version of the mitten and orally compared and contrasted the two stories.  Anywho, after reading The Mitten - Jan Brett version, we described the mitten in the story using smilies.  They were cute coming up with ways to say how big the mitten had stretched.  Then I had each kid pick what color construction paper they wanted and create a mitten of their own.  We discussed how it can be big/small, etc.  After we decorated, we discussed (to review) what "describe" means, and they helped me describe my mitten.  Then they went back and had to write 4 things about their mitten.  I was so impressed with how they did.  Most of them remembered spaces and I am always so amazed at how far they come with writing.  Their "kid writing" gets better all the time. (click the picture to graph a copy of the writing page).

 I have no idea where this originally came from, it's a hard copy activity I got from my friend my first year of kindergarten.  It's a CVC activity.  The kids read the words on the the white and match them to the picture on the left.  Once all pieces are glued in place, it makes a picture of the animals in the mitten.

On Friday, we voted on if we thought the groundhog would see his shadow or not and graphed the data.  I am not doing so hot the last few days on taking pictures of the students working ,but here is our graph.  Turns out, the majority of them were correct...6 more weeks of winter.  I apologize to those who are hit hard with snow and are over the cold.  On the other hand, today had a chill in the air and it was nice to not be able to wear shorts. :)

Nothing Fancy. :)

Many of my kiddos understand the idea of subtraction but we need more practice remembering to use the minus sign and that the large number goes on top.  We practiced addition so much and the majority of my kiddos can do their facts fluently (to 5) that getting them to change their thinking to subtraction is taking some time.

We used dotters the other day.  I had the kids fold their papers (into fourths) and they wrote the equation I said out loud.  Using our dotters, we dotted the first number and then cross out the minuend. (I think that's the correct term) :).  My littles love all things dotters.

Today, we used mini dominoes (I *think* I found at the dollar store a while back).  I created this fun little page (again, nothing fancy but it gets the job done).   We did this all together.  We pulled a domino, determined the larger number, put it on top, put the smaller number on bottom and wrote the minus sign and the equal sign.  My kiddos need practice working on math equations that go vertical.  After this, I had spread crumpled paper around the room (that had subtraction problems on it).  Each kinder picked up 7 and solved them.  Then they glued their snowball to the area on the chart it belonged (according to the difference).  Some of my kiddos glued them on in wrong places and we discussed why it didn't belong.  Next time I do this, I will put each answer on a different sheet of butcher paper, or get a larger piece.

Domino Subtraction
Subtraction Facts horizontal (cut into fourths)
Subtraction Facts vertical (cut into fourths)

Didn't snap a picture of the final product (which is probably a good thing seeing as it looks a hot mess)  BUT the kids had a blast and did math, so all is good.

My first year in kindergarten I was so blessed to teach across the hall from who is now my wonderful friend.  She was amazing and I learned so much from her (especially having come from 4th grade...first grade before that).  She was amazing and shared all sorts of awesome things with me.  One thing she shared was the pattern for a really cute heart bag.  Well, let me tell you, they are so cute, that I have had my kiddos create them every year since.  I found the bag to always overflow and I finally had a chance to make the sides of the bag larger.  She told me I could share the pattern (yay).  So click on the picture below and it will take you to the pieces.  You need two hearts for each child, one of the pages with wide pieces and half of the skinny page.  So once all is cut out and set to "sew" each child will have two hearts, two wide pieces (hole-punched) and two thin pieces.  Once my kiddos start sewing, I will share pictures of how to assemble.

Whew! It is nice to be caught up a bit (for a millisecond at least. :) ) but I better head to bed for another day with my kinders!

Flash Back

Wowza.  I can't believe it's been a few weeks since I have posted.  I have had some ideas of what I wanted to post, but just have not had the attention span/awakeness to do it.  January flew by in a flash and I am expecting that February will follow in it's footsteps.  We learned about Martin Luther King Jr., celebrated our 100th day, learned about penguins, I celebrated two birthdays on our team and the list goes on.  I want to catch up a bit on what's been going on in our room and in another post, talk about our 100th day.  The 100th day is one of my absolute favorite days of the year.  But I'll save that for another post.

When finishing up our Penguin theme, I had the kids paint penguins and when they were dry (aka a few days later when we had a chance to do it!), the kids added eyes, beaks, feet (if they needed to) and some of my littles made their penguins macaroni penguins (They were IN LOVE with them).  We also did a bit of writing to go with our penguins.

I don't know if you have read the book Pierre the Penguin.  I LOVE this story.  So did my kids.  When I searched for a webcam on penguins, there were many I was not able to open at school, but this one from California Academy of Sciences opened with no problems AND it is where Pierre is.  Oh.My.Goodness. My kids could have watched the webcam and those stinking cute penguins all.day.long.  I'm not even kidding. If I would have let them, they would have watched them all day.  To be honest, I could have watched them all day.  They were too cute.  One little guy, we kept thinking he would dive into the water, he was on the brink but he just waddled back and forth.  We were in love.

Flash Back Moment
I still have our new year's resolutions up, because they make me smile and they are so bright and colorful (and glittery!).  I think my favorite was my little girl who said she was going to wash her hair better.  She further explained to me that she doesn't always get the shampoo out.  I love kinders.  When thinking about it, I can see how she would have this problem...she has thick hair.

One other can't-help-but-smile moment I had was a couple weeks ago when my class went to the library to check out books.  One of my kinder babies chose to check out a book on tape.  He was sitting at the long bench/counter sort of seat bag in one hand, book in the other and the tape sitting a little bit down on the ledge.  He is asking for help.  I ask him if he needs help putting it all back in his bag... Nope.  While slowly opening the book from the corner, he says, "I can't hear it."  I turned around to stifle a giggle and then explained that the tape has to go in a player, just like a dvd, and just like our listening centers in class.  It was too cute!  Once we figured that out, he was counting to 100 (with 1-1 yes!). :)