Five for Friday September 2

I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday. Thank you for hosting, Kacey! HOW is it September? 

       

I use my  Character Education Prezi a LOT in the beginning of the school year.  I added some fun clean up songs, so I can have them handy whenever we need to clean up- AKA always.   

I got carried away found lots of songs I loved, so I added all of them for variety- so we can choose a different one each day.

And then, I decided to add a "Be Kind Friends" section to the Prezi- because we always in case we need reminders. 

 THEN- I found some relaxing guitar music that I liked- and thought there may be days I would need that playing peacefully in the background as the children worked, so I added that.  Basically, what I'm saying is that I redid the Prezi.  It's free at my TPT store if you would like a copy of it.  I leave it up all the time- and we visit and revisit videos all the time for reminders.  

                                                                

PB Works Collaborative Learning Site is an awesome site where people have shared online activities to go with each Common Core Standard.   Here is a sample of what the Kindergarten Math Page looks like:

The Web Tools each go to a site that goes with the standard.   It has a lot of web tools for K-3rd grade. I wanted to share it with you if you haven't seen it yet!

We get right into Writer's Workshop when we're back to school.  This post has some of my favorite mentor texts that I like to use for teaching different mini lessons.  

And this post has some great freebies from TpT for primary writing.

Angela Watson from The Cornerstone had a great suggestion to help when students answer, "I don't know."  Her idea is to respond with , "If you did know, what would you say?"  Or, "What would be your best guess if you did know?" "You can read her article here.

Responding with that answer takes the pressure off the student to have to have the "right" answer, and allows the student to respond with what he/she was thinking- which often times is the right answer or at least gets the child thinking and participating.  Participation is a great start to growing risk-takers in the classroom, and provides a lot of information about the student's thinking.

Have a wonderful weekend. Thanks for stopping by!

Five for Friday December 18

Happy Friday!  I'm linking up with Kacey for her wonderful Five for Friday Linky to share some favorite holiday fun from this week. Thank you, Kacey!  

                                                                  

I LOVED this picture from Mrs. Russell's Room!  

Anyway...  We don't.

The kids are so precious and excited for Christmas. It's a fun energy to be around. It's just lots and lots of energy to be around and try to gear toward learning until December 23rd!  

Here are some ways we found to make it fun last week!

                                                      

The kids had so much fun with Snowball Pass! Since we don't have any of our own REAL snow, we  made some of our own.   Each child got a piece of scrap paper with a sight word written on it.  

Once they read their word, they crumpled it into a "snowball."

When I said, "Pass," they passed the snowball.  Sometimes I said it fast- sometimes slow.

When I said, "Read and Wrinkle!" they had to open and read their word to their neighbor, then wrinkle it back up to go again. 

When we were done, I said, "SNOWBALL FIGHT!"  After they threw their snowball, they had to pick one up and read it to me before they could go to their seats. 

Here's some more fun with sight word practice.  We love practicing sight words with our Rocket Word activity!  It's a great brain break- simple/fast/fun- and requires nothing but little bodies. The kids really have to think how many letters they are going to be saying and how low they need to go!  Here's a little sample.

It's one of the ideas in my book with Dr. Jean, by the way...

Our math book comes out in January.  I'm so excited!  I love the ideas we put together for math, too!

We don't send homework home at our school with the kindergarten students.  We send a book home to read each night, and sometimes we send a special activity to complete.  When I send home an activity, I like to put something special on their paper when they return it.

This was one of the holiday homework pages that I sent home.  I sent this paper with a special Christmas paper plate to eat dinner on, and then the children  had to draw and label what they ate.

This is a fun activity to do anytime of the year with any paper plate- even a plain white one! 

You can get the worksheet that I used HERE with my other holiday homework ideas.  (It's Number 5 on that week's Five for Friday- so you can just scroll down to that.)  

I put on a star Post-it with a Starburst stuck in the middle with double sided tape when they brought it back.

My kids are having so much fun with the Vet Center.  They make appointments, take care of the sick pets, weigh and measure the pets, feed them, and write a report about each pet they take care of.  I love, love, love that it is so real to them. They learn so much working together and see why knowing how to write is so important.  They need to get down all the information about those pets!  I love switching out my free choice centers.  

And sometimes the little animals just need to have a story read to them! 

Here is the little vet sheet that I made for the kids to use.  I have clip boards for them to use or just these sheets on the table so they can write about the pets they see. If you would like a copy, just click the picture below!

Here are some of the reports from last year's vet center that still make me smile. 

"Her head is bleeding.  Puttin pressure in and stitch and put on a bandaid."

"She is dying in 54321.  Use every tool in the world."

This one is pretty self explanatory...  he's fat and needs kitty liposuction. 

But this one may be my favorite... It was on my desk after free choice. 

We have been working on writing true stories during Writer's Workshop. Here are the anchor charts that I made.  The bottom "playground scene" idea is from the Lucy Calkin's books.  

Thank you for stopping by!  If you are off for break, enjoy every second. If you have three more days, hang in there. We can do it!  

Merry Christmas to all of you!



Five for Friday October 17

Happy Friday! I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday. Thank you for hosting, Kacey! This was one of those short weeks that seemed LONG.  Why does that happen?

Last week had a lot of fun in our class  making butter to help us remember the letter Bb. I made this Making Butter booklet for each of my students to make and take home, so they could have the "recipe" too. Just copy the pages one side to two sides, fold in half, and ta da!  Then, I had the children glue on the pictures that matched the directions. I found the great butter making pictures at chicaandjo.com.

                           

If you have never made this with your children, it is so easy and always one of the favorite memories of the year.  All you need is heavy cream, a baby food jar, and a little salt!  We spread our butter on crackers, so you need those, too. I made butter four times, once with each of my groups, filling the baby food jar half full each time, and I used only one 8 oz container of heavy cream. That sounded a little like a Common Core math problem there for a minute. I was getting scared!

The children help shake the cream, but be prepared to do most of the some shaking to help.  By the time I made the butter with all the groups, I did quite a bit of shaking. It's a great time to practice counting to 100, saying the ABC's... while you or one of the children shakes that cream.   We talked a lot about holding onto that jar with two hands as we shook it, because it was made of glass.  They did great with it.

Last year, one of my little guys described the butter as "Red Lobster butter," which made me laugh, because it did look just like that ball of butter they put on the baked potato.  Yum.

                                        

                                                             

Since we reviewed Ff this week, we talked a lot about being a kind friend. We did another one of my favorite activities.

I explained that each person would have a clipboard, paper, and marker. Our job was to go around to each person, and ask each friend to sign our paper as we signed our friend's paper. We would only be writing our own name every time, once on each paper. We would collect all of our friends' names. I modeled this with a few children. I said, "Would you please sign my paper, and I will sign yours?" We switched boards, signed, said, "Thank you!"  and moved to another child.

For this activity they practiced gooooood manners when they asked friends to sign their paper and then said, "Thank you," afterward.  We also practiced name writing about 18 times in half an hour-and had fun!  Not too bad!   

If you want a copy of the simple sheet I used for recording, just click the picture below.

Feel free to make a "fancier" sheet!  I liked this simple sheet, because I told the children that the paper would be so colorful and pretty after they each wrote their names with different color markers. The minute they got the paper, they started reading, "I like, I like, I like..." so even that was great!

Speaking of names, can you tell from our sign in sheet that we've been working on noticing and trying to use periods this week? I just love when the kids play with punctuation marks.  

                                            
                                                                 

Last week I sent home my 5 Week Reports to parents.  I like to send home some things that parents can work on with their children at home.  This was the first time I printed out and used  the flashcards from ESGI, and I LOVE them! 

                                                       

I printed them for each student, cut them apart, and put each child's in his/her own baggie, stapled with a note to parents with different ways to use them.  Thank you, ESGI! I started using ESGI last year toward the end of the year, and I am so glad that this year I was able to start using it right away. They offer a  60 day free trial, which is how I started using it and loving it.  If you would like to buy ESGI (or have your district buy it for you- even better yet!), you can get $40 off the first year's subscription using this PROMO CODE:  B1119.   ESGI  has really made assessments so much easier, faster, and more useful for me.

I found these fabulous "What Can I Write About" papers FREE at Two Tall Teachers TPT Store.  They shared ideas for three different genres. The papers were made to go along with Lucy Calkins' Writing Units, which we are actually using this year, but they would be great for any program. Sometimes it's just HARD for the children to think of ideas.  Thank you for sharing these!

Here they are!

What Can I Write About? Personal Narratives

What Can I Write About? Opinion Unit

What Can I Write About? How To Books

I made this  Draw and Label book to use early on for Writing. If you'd like a copy, just click the picture below.

                            

It's simple, but  gives the children a chance to be creative, draw with detail, and begin to learn to label pictures.  You can print out and use only the pages that you want- you don't have to use all of them! I made quite a few- I think 19, but I chose six pages, and we did three each day for two days (another Common Core math problem just for you...).  I made it so you can just double staple the side and cut in the middle to have two books.  Here were some pictures I thought were pretty clever!

(mouse.)

HERE is my post with a fun Halloween poem that I had the children make into a book.  I put a link to download the book or just the poem on a single sheet of paper if you'd rather have it that way.  My kids loved it, so if you need something to do in the next couple of weeks, there you go!  

Also, if you haven't gotten a chance to see my TPT FREEBIE Posts- you can click on the pictures below to check out some  LOTS of awesome freebies for Halloween. Those will keep you busy until NEXT Halloween!

Happy, Happy Weekend!