Painting Patterns

My kids love to paint!!!!!  So why not make it meaningful.  I created a Perfect Pattern unit that gives us that painting time.  After I teach a new pattern.....well, of course we need to practice.  I like to let them "create" their own patterns.  Because you know if we tell them what color to use it is way less fun than if we let them pick their own.  :)

This unit is aligned with the Kansas Mathematics Additions to the Common Core Standards, and it includes 14 pages of AB, ABC, AAB, and ABB patterns.  Click here to find the unit on TPT.   

Building Body Shapes

So when I told the kids we were going to build shapes with our bodies.....they hit the roof.   First, with a lot of excitement.......hooping and hollering........and then it hit them, "How?"  I have to laugh because there is always a true look of confusion.    

Free Friday - My Number Bus Book

This was a fun little book we used to work on ordering, 1:1 counting, and printing practice for numbers 0-10.  The kids cut the pages apart, and then put them in order.  I stapled the book together when they were finished.  There are many options from there. :)  First we traced and printed the number at the top of the page, then we put blocks in the bus window to match.  For a more permanent effect, we drew in dots to match the number! :)  They loved it!

You can download the book from TPT!

Printing Practice.....Much More Fun!!

I am back home after four relaxing days in Colorado! :)  It was a great little get away with my husband and a couple of friends!  Yeah!

So, back to the classroom on a Monday morning with 20 little ones who missed me very much.  And, it has to be done.....practice on printing the letters we know! :)  We like to make it a game sometimes.  I use a lot of Kagan Cooperative Learning in my classroom, and one of our favorite things to do is play Round Table when we practice printing.  (Minus the table because we like to sit on the floor!) :)

Put the kids in groups of 3-4.  Give each group a lined piece of paper and a pencil.  Call out a letter name and say go. Each person in the group will print the letter one time and pass the paper and pencil to the next person.  They will continue this until the timer goes off.  I usually set the timer for 2 minutes.  The group with the letter printed correctly the most times....."wins!"  (We really don't have a winner, we just celebrate everyone.)  The students are very engaged, and they really do try to print the letter perfectly because they want it to "count" towards their team score.

We play with letters and numbers!  It can get a little loud (with lots of encouraging go, go, go, go's), but when everyone is working......I can handle a little noise! :)

What Do You Do???

What do you do when you have to teach a class full of "energetic" kindergarten students all day without a voice? Eeeeek!  Well......I teach "J" and give them all scarves to juggle!  Wow!!  Good thing we all just received speaker systems for our classrooms.  :o)

  

 

I love making things real for my students.  We use Animated Literacy to teach the letters and sounds.  Jenny Jaguar juggles, so let's do it too! :o)  

Fall Blog Hop & Spider Ring Fun

I love fall!  One of our favorite things is to play with those crazy plastic spider rings.  The kids love to put them all over their fingers.  So, why not make it "learning" fun!

This is always an exciting way to work on sorting, counting and graphing.  Students are given a bag of those plastic colored spider rings.  I put mine in brown paper bags so there is an element of surprise!! :0  Then the students are asked to sort the rings, count how many they have of each color, and make a graph.

  

Each child will have a different graph because I don't make any two bags the same!! lol  They are always sooooo amazed that the graph next to them is different!! Wow!

Free at TPT !! :)  If you like this, please let me know what you think!!

Does My Letter Say......?

One of our favorite ways to review the letters and sounds we have learned is to play Does My Letter Say.......?  I secretly tape a letter to each child's back and give them a record sheet with all of the letters we have learned on it.  The goal of the game is to figure out what letter is on your back.  The students go around and ask each other the only allowed question, "Does My Letter Say....?"  They say one of the sounds that our new letters could make, and the other student can either say "Yes" or "No."

This requires some practice.  First practice the question.  They will want to ask, "Do I have a T?"....M, S etc.  We practice the question several times.  Next, practice the response.  The kids will get soooooo excited and want to automatically tell them what their letter is.   I make sure they know that they can only say "Yes" or "No."  :)  

The record sheet is there to mark off the letters/sounds that get a "No" response.  When they have figured out what their letter is, they come see me!!  I am the only person that can pull the letter off.  To get your letter off you must tell me the letter name and the sound it make!  They love this game so much they decided we should play it every Friday.  (They picked Friday because they wanted to add it to our Fun Friday activities!  YEAH, I love Fridays too!)

Click here to download the Large Letter Flash Cards from TPT.  :)  

Ripping Red R's

Oh, the joy that comes from ripping paper!  This is always a fun, relaxing activity when your day is going a little crazy.  :0) We just learned the letter R and celebrated by Ripping Red paper for our capital R.

Make It Grow & A Kansas Sunflower Story

We have been working on our living and non-living unit.  Right now we are talking about plants and plant parts.  We talk about what these living things need, about how they will grow and change, and finally we get the chance to watch a plant grow.   Once the kids understood that if we planted our seeds in soil, we would not see the roots grow, they took off!  First we investigated our seeds, then we soaked them in water, and finally we put them on a paper towel (our pretend dirt) to watch them grow.  I asked them what they thought would be the first thing to grow on our seeds, and boy were they happy when their prediction was correct.....the roots!!  Five days later we had roots, a stem and leaves.

    

Day 1                      Day 5

In the book we read Gus Grows a Plant, Gus plants a sunflower.  Well, here in Kansas, we have sunflowers everywhere right now.  Gus grows a very big sunflower! 

 I told the kids that I had a sunflower at my house that was bigger than me.  They couldn't believe it.  So what did any good teacher do, I brought it in.  They loved it.

Remembering 9/11

Today I discussed 9/11 with my kindergarten students.  What a tough topic to talk about!  We started off by watching part of the video on BrainPop.  (I stopped when they started to define Terrorism, and I just did that with my own Kindergarten words.)  We then watched a short clip on Discovery Video Streaming from the actual day.   In this clip the students got to see the "real" helpers from that day.  We focused on talking about who was there to help when those people were hurting!!  The students were very engaged, and we had a great discussion.  The lesson ended with a craft from Rachel Lamb, The Tattooed Teacher (http://mrslambsclass.blogspot.com).  The kids loved building the Twin Towers, and we left with this thought,  we will ALWAYS REMEMBER those GREAT HELPERS who were there for us on that very sad day.