Monday Monday

I always dread going back to work after a break... Ok not always, but I think, man I enjoyed not worrying about getting this or that done, and I really enjoy wearing sweats or pjs or yoga pants. all.day.long.  However the second I saw my kiddos this morning, I had missed them!  It was lovely to see them and even better when they attack you with hugs.  There is nothing better.  I think the break did them good and I know it did good for me.  We had some great listeners today (YAY).  We wrote in our Monday Journals as we do every Monday, but instead of writing about our weekends, we wrote about what we did over break.  I am so amazed at how far my kinders have come.  I always forget that they came in, most could write their name, (a few couldn't) and now they are writing sentences. I love it!  We work on adding detail to our drawings as well as to our writing.  I love that my kinders are getting better at stretching out words and being able to read what they are writing (often without their help).  I didn't take pictures of it today, but it was great.

I have a unique situation in my school due to funding and such, in which some of my kiddos are half day students while others are full day.  This can be tricky and its always a juggling act of getting everything in.  One thing I do in the afternoon is centers. Oh.My.Goodness do my littles love centers.  Every so often we have centers in the morning too, and on special days I make sure to include the majority of stuff in the morning so everyone can participate.  Anyway, back to centers.  I often make my own centers (I have since I started teaching) but have also recently splurged a bit on TPT.  I don't know about your kinders, but boy do mine like using the dotters. There is something about those dotters that they just love.  Once activity I started last year is dotting and graphing.  I have a few varieties, but this week we are dotting sight words and graphing the amount of each.  When explaining centers I pulled this one out and you could hear the excitement and the "Yes!" coming from the kids. It was pretty cute. (click on the picture to get a copy for yourself).

I have recently created a reindeer version and a Christmas tree version (which I realize won't help now that it is January, but help yourself and tuck them away for December. :) )  Stay tuned for more versions (math and literacy), as I make them, I will share.

Spiders, Veteran's Day, and Kindness

We started off with a graph on how we felt about spiders.  What Would You Say If You Saw A Spider?  Well, to my surprise, most of my littles said they would say, "Cool."  All I can think is EEEEEK! It's a creepy crawly.

After we graphed, we analyzed the data.  I have yet to take a picture, because I do not have them hanging in the hallway yet.  We are going to make paper plate spiders, but with the way our week was last week, we didn't get to finish.

We have been reading many non fiction spider books, and boy do my kids like learning about spiders!

I do centers in the afternoon, because we just do not have time in the morning.  Some of my kiddos are full day while some of them are half day.  There are certain things I MUST get done in the morning, so centers is something my kiddos look forward to in the afternoon.  This week our centers were all spider themed.

Mixed Up Spiders

The kids get a half sheet with spiders holding equations.  They solve the problems and glue them to the web that has the correct sum.

Spider's Tiny Words

Using a magnifying glass, students find all the sight words that are teeny tiny on the spider.  All the words are numbered, and they write the word on the recording sheet next to the correct number.

Spider Write the Room

I hung spiders all around the room and each have a different pattern.  The kids search the room with their clipboard and write them all down.  They LOVE this center and I enjoy trying to find different places to put them.  

Spider Words

Each colorful spider has a picture of a CVC word.  The kids color the spider, and then write the sounds they hear in the words.

Sounding out CVC words with me.  A game I created and instead of using cubes as the markers, we used colored spider rings.  My kinders could not WAIT to be in my group.  I love that it is the simple things in life that makes them so happy.

I LOVED Cara Carroll's Web Of Rhymes, and created my own from a "web" I created last year for our graph.  I used the pictures I found here and here.  Thanks Google for making it so easy! :)

Since we played this rhyming game, my kiddos have been asking to play it again and again. I'm sure we will play it this coming week, because who am I to argue kids who want to practice learning!

We also did a ten frame "game" in the ten frame I taped to the floor.  One child rolls the dice, then that many kids get in the ten frame.  We have them sit down and see how many more kids were needed to make a combination of ten.  We recorded our results on a page, but I cannot remember where I found it. When I find it, I will link it.

I created this ten frame one day while the kids were having free choice.  "Miss Jameson, is that a race car track?" haha no kiddos it is not, but they were excited once it was done being taped.

We have been working on various word families, and this past week we were working on the "-an" family.  What better way then to write on our desks!  My kiddos were so excited and bamboozled when I said, "Write the word _____ on your desk."  After we wrote many "-an" words we switched markers and practiced writing sight words.

I have been working with four other teachers at my school to put together a Veteran's Day Assembly, that turned out amazing.  We had the color guard present the colors, and many family members of our students who have served or are serving in our military were present.  We had a very touching slideshow including the kids in our K-8 school with signs etc saying, "Thank You," in so many various ways.  The kids also sang a very sweet song found here. (This is not our song or our kiddos, but where we found the song).  We then had a light continental breakfast for our heroes.  I am so proud at how the kids behaved with our honored guests and think they got the meaning of why we have a day off tomorrow.  My heart swelled with pride for them and with thanks for all our Veteran's and those serving to keep us free.

I found these shoes to FINALLY be on sale.  I had been eying them for months at Target and was excited when they went on sale.  They were perfect for our assembly, and will get so much more wear from this patriotic girl.

In addition to our Veteran's Day Assembly, we had an assembly on Thursday (the day before) to kick off our Kind Kids program at our school.  You can learn about it here, and we have participated in it for many years.  It is a powerful thing, kindness, and I'm glad we make such an effort with our kids to be kind and recognize kindness in others.  You can learn all about Ben's Bells here, which started the whole kindness program.  I actually found a Ben's Bell a few years ago...the day I was pink slipped.  It reminded me that everything would be ok, and the right thing would come along.  It sure did, and now my bell hangs in my classroom.

(feel free to ignore all the other stuff on the wall. :)  It thankfully isn't that cluttered anymore.)

Last year, we decorated our doors in school to be drug free and something with voting.  Last year our door looked like arms reaching out for hugs and said, "We Vote to Give Hugs, Not Do Drugs." [hopefully I can find a picture of this*update... FOUND! yay!*]. 

This year our door is focused on kindness.  I just have one last touch the kids and I need to add.  I am going to have the kids write a kind act on a hook to have sticking out of our fishies' mouths.

Went to a beautiful wedding this weekend for a couple friends and one more day off this weekend, life is good!

We've Gone Batty In Kindergarten!

We have gone a bit batty in kindergarten...but truth be told, kindergarten in and of itself is a bit batty. :)

Some of our Batty Week I talked about in this past week's Five For Friday.

Our centers last week (and into a few days this coming week) are all batty themed.  We postponed centers two days last week because I had so many of my little kiddos out sick..7 one day!

Whole group we did a "Counting on Bats," similar to our "Counting on Apples".  I used this cute bag from Target to hold our batty numbers.  We pass the bag around, write the number we pull in the bat and then write the following three numbers.  We discuss the different strategies, backtracking a bit, using the number lines on the walls, as well as using the number lines on the name tags.  I love that the kids tell me the different strategies, and even better... USE THEM!

You can find a copy of Counting on Bats here.

We used Cara Carroll's super cute beginning and ending sounds Bats.  You find find the link to it here. In addition, you will find her "Rhymes with Bat/Doesn't Rhyme with Bat" mats.  We are loving these in centers this week.

We went batty with graphing.  Students sorted their pieces by shape and then created a bar graph to show the data.

My littles are so good at counting by 10's to 100, we practiced putting them in order.

We are counting and recording numbers from ten frames.

We also went batty over rhymes.  I created this stamping page and then pull out my stamps from Lakeshore. However, I do not see the set I have any more. I bought it a few years ago.

They stamp two rhymes and then in "kid writing" write the words they stamped.

On Thursday, I had 7 kiddos out.  I didn't want to introduce new learning with SO many students out.  So instead I wrote numbers on half sheets of papers counting by 2's.  I gave each of my kids one and the first round we put them in order together.  Then I collected them all and handed everyone a new number.  This time, I did not help and we timed how long it took them to get in order.  We played a total of three rounds and they LOVED it. So simple. Then they cut and pasted bats in order counting by 2s.

In my Five for Friday, I mentioned making a bat craft.  I gave the kids the following papers.  We cut the small brown one into the body.  We folded the big brown one in half, drew a wing, and cut two.  Then we folded each white one in half.  One was for the eyes, one was for the teeth.  I love how with the same instructions, no two bats turned out the same!  They make me smile.

 

Here's to another great week!

We Appled On

It has been so fun teaching my kinders about apples.  They are little sponges that just soak it all up. This coming week is early out days for 4 of the 5, for parent teacher conferences... and then FALL BREAK!  After break we'll be learning about spiders and bats, I can't wait!


I mentioned in my last post that we tasted red, yellow and green apples and then graphed our favorites.  I told the kids before they ate the other half of each of their apple pieces to use their five senses.  To think about what they hear, taste, smell, see, and touch.  They called out their words while I wrote them on index cards.  Then we sorted them according to which sense was used.  Then, a day or so later, I cut the words out and the kids glued them onto the big apple.

We had some fabulous mom helpers hang up our trees we painted on Applicious Day, and then the kids cut out their own apples and glued them anywhere they wanted on the trees.

Here are the apple windsocks the kids made during Applicious Day.  It is so fun having these hang in my room.  As a class, we discussed not pulling on them etc., because we don't want anything to ruin them/break them.  The kids have been doing a fabulous job respecting each other's creation.  I have had two different kiddos put their mouths on them [I could tell because their mouths had changed colors (ew)].

We finished up our apple centers this week.  I created most of these last year from ideas I found perusing Pinterest and Googling.  I am in LOVE for a few years now, with my Silhoutte.  I have used it to create and cut out pieces of my centers.

One of my apple centers has number cards involved and my kiddos pointed out there were doubles in each container, so I had them work together to separate the the cards by putting them in order. Boy, do I LOVE sporadic teachable moments.  Some kids made two separate lines, and some lined them up in two rows right next to each other.  I love that they worked together and problem solved ways to get this done.

Between my awesome student aide and parent helpers, the kids painted the brown trees for our Life Cycle of an Apple Tree.  Then as a class we sequenced the descriptions (they had numbers on them) and then added our blossoms (tissue paper), green leaves (punched out) and apples (also made from a punch).  For winter, we used glue and glitter to make our snow. Isn't glitter a blast?!

Roll and Record is a game in which students take turns rolling a dice and then finding and coloring that number in the picture.  If there are no more of the number rolled, it becomes the other player's turn.

Not apple themed at all but I have been doing this little sight word activity with the kids the last week and a half.  I found this idea a few years ago in one form or another, but FINALLY had a chance to implement it.  The kids "high-five" each hand on their way out and in our room and read the words.  They.love.this.  If they forget to do it, they walk back over to read each word.  I rearrange the words so that they are not always in the same order, or the same words (yay sticky tack!).

We also love to read in our room.  I couldn't help myself but take pictures as the kids enjoy books, because they are just too darn cute.

Looking forward to another day off. Love the weekends!  Then onto next week!