Valentine's Day Handprints

How is it already mid February?  I have a CRAZY week ahead of me in kindergarten, including the 100th day tomorrow, an early out on Wednesday (more about that later this week), and Valentine's Day on Thursday.

The Valentine's Day party is my last big "holiday party" with my class.  It always feels a little like the beginning of the end of the year.  I have such a great group of munchkins this year, I'm sad to see it winding down.

You can't have any major holiday in kindergarten without some sort of handprint craft parent gift.   Nothing better than painting little ticklish hands. :)

0

New Year's Unit

I'm in the middle of those days between Christmas and New Year's Eve where I'm not quite sure what day it is, or what time it is.

In the midst of my stay-up-too-late-sleep-too-late-Netflix-binging days, I updated my New Year unit for the week we go back.

That week, I plan on talking about goal setting, new beginnings, and trying new things...all the things I love about the new year.

When I create a new unit, I am developing small group activities for my small group rotations.  This is our skills practice time of the day when the students are working on skills independently while I am working with my reading group or math group.

When planning my small group activities for literacy I use a modified Daily 5 (but I have control issues) plan.  I plan weekly activities for:

Working with Words

Working on Letters

Working on Writing

Working with Names

Listening to Reading (my reading group)

My math rotations are similar, with activities each week based around the math strands:

Geometry

Counting and Cardinality (Number Sense)

Patterning and Base 10

Measurement and Data

Operations and Algebraic Thinking (my math group)

For New Year's here is my small group plans:

Can't wait to celebrate the new year with my munchkins!

Happy New Year Unit on TPT

0

Christmas Counting Collections

I LOVE counting jars and counting collections.  My kids get so excited when I finally open up the counting jars center as a transition activity after math rotations.  We work on rote counting, efficient ways to count (grouping by 5's, 10's, etc), and learning to record our thinking.

This year, one of my fabulous kindergarten team mates, Nicole, had the idea to introduce counting jars that last short week before Christmas break with some special holiday themed counting jars. I LOVED the idea, we went shopping for things to add to the jars.  We went to the Target dollar spot to get little Santa erasers, and cut up Christmas garland from Walmart (where I also found my little tin pail containers, and jingle bells, bows, and these adorable mini cookie cutters from Hobby Lobby.  In the end I had about a dozen containers with 20-100 items to count in each container.

 I created a recording sheet to go along with it.  

counting mini cookie cutters

counting jingle bells

counting bows

my counting jar collection

0

Christmas in Room Eleventy Three

Some pictures from our busy month of December in room "Eleventy-Three" (as one of my munchkins calls it).

Buddy the Elf had a great visit!

Paper towel snowmen!

Chicka Chicka Christmas Tree!

Gingerbread Houses

0

Busy Days

I am ridiculously behind on Blogging!  Been super busy getting ready for presenting at the Florida Kindergarten Teacher Conference on December 6th.  I am presenting 4 sessions:  Number Sense, Morning Meeting, Literacy Centers, and 8 Math Practices for Kindergarten. Spending my day on December 5th watching my good friend Dr. Jean all day. I can't wait!

In the mean time, things are busy in Mrs. B.'s class as well.  Freight Train Bulletin Board

I love the book Freight Train by Donald Crews.  It's a great book for reviewing color words, and one that my kindergartners learn to read right away.  We did lots of fun Freight Train activities on this week.  The kids did a great job with this simple retell/geometry activity.  

Train Activity Bundle

Pizza Sight Word Game

I love making dice games.  This is an easy one I did during our pizza week.  You roll the dice, and highlight the word (highlight=cheese on the pizza).  I've played it as a Bingo game as well as an individual "Keep rolling till you are done" game.

Planets and Stars Math

For my CGI math friends, this is a fun Part/Part/Whole Part Unknown activity for early in the year. Circle stickers are planets.  Star stickes are stars.  The problems are all planets +stars= how many all together. 

Included in my Outer Space Unit  

High Tech Listening Center.  :)  This is kind of a sad picture.  I think my cassette player is finally dead.  This was the last week we got to use it, and the last picture I have of it in my Listen to Reading Center.  I love my iPads, my Elmo, and my Mimeo, but sometimes simple is best.  I'll miss you old friend!

This past week we read several versions of the story Stone Soup.  Our culminating activity on Friday was to make our own version of stone soup.  Everone brought in veggies, and we had the crockpot going all day.  Anyone who was brave enough to try our soup got to take home a stone "trophy" that said: "I tried Stone Soup!"  I'm proud to say everyone tried it!  It was yummy!

This next week, (and the 3 days after) we are doing some fun Turkey activities for Thanksgiving.  I'm excited about the fun activities we will be doing.  Here are a few!

Turkey Bundle on TPT

0