Elves

Our district went to school through December 22, so we were desperate for fun and engaging activities to keep our kiddos occupied this week. One lesson I did was on Elf Day. (By assigning a Christmas symbol to each day it narrowed down the crazy a teensy bit, I think). We read Elf Memoirs by Devin Scillian and Elf Elementary by Edward Miller. We talked about some of the Christmas traditions mentioned in the book and I led them to a discussion about Christmas cards. ("It's sooo boring when we have to get our picture taken for our card.") Then each kiddo got to choose a card and someone in their life they'd like to send it to. We then used our sight words to write a sentence in the card, and signed our name using our best handwriting. One of my lovelies wrote her card for me! 

PS- We also made Elf Selfies to go with the new book, The Christmas Selfie Contest by Rosie Greening!

Reindeer

'Twas the week before Christmas and Kindergarten was crazy! To keep kids focused this week but still in the holiday spirit, we've been reading tons of books. 

One of my favorites to read each aloud (I know I always say that!) is a nonfiction book called Reindeer by Mary Ann McDonald. I'm not sure if it's still available, but it's super informational and at a level even little kids can understand. On Reindeer Day we read the book and created this chart recalling facts about reindeer. The next day, as I pointed to each part of the picture, even though most of my kids can't read they were able to tell me what they knew about reindeer. Then of course we pretended to be reindeer and had to line up by name in order for lunch. Rudolph was first, of course! 

Birdseed Ornaments

One of my favorite Christmas stories is The Night Tree by Eve Bunting. After reading the story, my kiddos made their own birdseed ornaments using gelatin, birdseed, boiling water (electric kettle for the win!) straws, and cookie cutters. There are tons of recipes online but my favorite is from Debbie at One Little Project. They took a day to dry but the kids loved them! 

I pulled up the materials needed as we measured each ingredient into bowls (pairs shared) and then we followed directions step-by-step. Our PALs tutor came in to help so that was fabulous! 

Indian Math

To teach comparing sets of numbers and Indians simultaneously, each pair of kids got an Indian workmat, number cards to 10 (or dice), and their own cup of popcorn kernels. (Yes, being kindergarten there was a lecture about not eating them or putting them where they don't belong.) They each rolled a number and counted out their corn, then used the velcro greater-than/less-than/equal-to cards to determine who had the greater amount. For kids that found this a breeze, it turned into a game: the person with the greater amount got to keep the kernels, and play continued until one player no longer had enough kernels to play. 

Leaf Man

Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert is one of my favorite fall stories. We read the book, and then went outside on a leaf hunt. Each kiddo counted out 10 leaves from the playground in their baggie. When we came inside we glued our leaves onto construction paper making our own leaf creatures. 

Counter-Pillars

I've seen this idea several times on Pinterest, so I made a cute little activity mat for my lovelies to practice making sets up to 10. Each kiddo gets a container of play-doh and they use their fine motor skills to roll out little balls to make each caterpillar's body parts.

Apples!

It's been a whirlwind so far this year teaching Kindergarten. Most of the pictures I'll be posting come from ClassDojo, so they have kids in them. I'll block out faces best I can.

During our unit on seasons, we spent a week bringing in apples. We used them as math manipulatives all week, and then on Friday we made apple pies! In addition to sorting and graphing by color, you can graph by taste, count the seeds, read about 1,000 books, cut them up and paint with them, discuss fractions, and of course measurement when making the pie. 

Our favorite book was Amelia Bedelia's First Apple Pie by Herman Parish. In addition to a great story, it also has a diagram that shows what different kinds of apples look like. My kids were OBSESSED. FOR. DAYS. 

Kindergarten

This year I'm teaching Kindergarten, so I'll likely be super busy and not create a lot of my own stuff. I hope to blog some... (maybe catch up at Christmas?) but I really don't know what to expect. Here we go!

St. Patrick's Day Activity Booklets

A couple of years ago I made a point to purchase books for St. Patrick's Day. The kiddos love this holiday, in part because of the magical feeling of wearing green (as if we're all part of a secret club!) and the whimsical mischief of leprechauns and rainbows.

A popular (and free!) resource I've been using for years is my Clever Tom and the Leprechaun Cause and Effect activity. 

Over the last few weeks I've been working on more activities for my St. Patrick's Day books. I decided to create a cover page for each book and post them as "activity booklets." Of course, the pages can be used individually, but I plan on making small booklets using the pages (all things we've done in class) as a review during our small-group reading the week of March 13. 

I love the way I can differentiate the booklets for each child, so after reading the story aloud my students can work independently on whatever skill I feel they need some review with. Here are the ones I've created so far:

The Luckiest St. Patrick's Day Ever

Tim O'Toole and the Wee Folk

The Leprechaun Who Lost His Rainbow

And then to kick the month off I'll be sending home this awesome Create a Leprechaun Trap project home for students to complete. The Book How to Catch a Leprechaun by Adam Wallace is a perfect read to introduce this. On Friday (March 17) we'll test out the traps. I created a brainstorming page in which students must plan 2 traps, create a pros/cons list for each, then determine the best way to succeed before building. Nothing like a little engineering thrown in for good measure!

A few other ideas I'm planning for March include keeping a class record of the leprechaun-themed books we read and graphing if they're good/neutral/mischievous creatures. I also plan to do a ton of writing this month (it always amazes me to see how far they come from August as far as writing goes) and since it's Reading Month our school will be participating in D.E.A.R. (Drop Everything and Read). We also have a few surprise readers coming (including a police officer and our school secretary!) which I know will thrill the kids. 

Learning Carpet Vocabulary

I'm not sure if I've blogged about this before, but I have the most amazing Learning Carpet in my classroom. It doesn't sound fancy- a 100 square floor mat, but it's been an integral part of my classroom this year. My principal purchased the alphabet and number cards to go along with it and we use it for both reading and math. During Daily 5, a couple of kids will use the cards to make their spelling word lists. At the beginning of the year, I have a couple kids at a time make a 100s chart with it so I can get an idea of their number sense. This past week, our reading story was about bees and some of my early-finishers asked if they could make their robust vocabulary words on the carpet. (Yes, they asked. I'm in teacher heaven!)

Beauty and the Beast Read-Aloud

In anticipation of the new movie coming out in March, I've been reading Beauty and the Beast to my students. My school-bestie picked this up for me from the book fair a few weeks ago (I don't know how I could've possibly over-looked it!) and I actually had no intention of sharing it with them, but one of my kiddos noticed it on my desk and asked if that would be our next read aloud. Scholastic recommended Grades 3-7 (ages 8-12), but since I'm reading it to them and there was a high-interest level (we voted), I decided to go for it.

Here are my thoughts on reading a higher-level book to younger readers:

1. Because of their age level in regards to the book, we watched the classic Disney cartoon on the Friday afternoon before we started the read-aloud. We discussed "painting a picture in your head" as we read, and I wanted my students to have a good idea of what was happening.

2. We also talked about how a movie plot sometimes diverge's from a book's storyline, so we make a point to stop every time that happens and discuss the differences. (For example, in the book Maurice makes music boxes, in the movie he was an inventor.)

3. I'm reading the book slow and steady. Usually I try to read a novel in a week, but since this is a 16-chapter somewhat heavy-reader, we are taking our time and reading one chapter a day.

4. We vote and make charts quite frequently in my classroom, so it was no surprise to them that each day I pose a question (sometimes from the story, sometimes a 'what would you do?', etc.) for each child to give their thoughts on. Below is an example of a picture graph we created yesterday. I think it's important that kids feel connected to the text, and if they know I'll be asking questions they'll have an even better reason to listen along.

Famous American: Jackie Robinson

Our new Social Studies SOLs feature 10 famous Americans (Well, 9 plus Christopher Columbus...) Although we are slated to teach them as part of our curriculum until next year, we decided to get a jump-start.

As it turns out, my kiddos wanted a teacher-directed drawing for every.single.one. Unfortunately, I couldn't find lessons on how to draw all of them, but I did my best and the ones we were able to do turned out pretty awesome.

Here is Jackie Robinson. We made our own baseball cards using 1/4 sheet of construction paper. They had to write an interesting fact about him on the back, then together we learned how to draw his portrait on the front.

Pizza Fractions

Here is a collage I added to our Class Dojo page about the pizza fractions we made this morning. It was a hectic day (1/2 day sub, observed this morning, remembering all of the ingredients but forgetting plates!!!) and everything turned out great. 

We have talked about fractions for a few days, spent some time with fraction tiles yesterday, and today brought out fraction circles. The kids made various fractions, we discussed equivalency, and then they came to the carpet. We read Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza and discussed how the pizza would be split among the number of characters. Then we passed out ingredients to make our own mini pizzas (canned biscuit, shredded cheese, tomato sauce, and mini pepperonis, along with a fork and plate) and discussed the fractions involved (1/20 of the sauce was on Abbi's pizza, Braelyn used 0/20ths of the pepperonis.) They had an activity sheet to do as the pizzas were cooking, and then they had to split their pizzas into halves, thirds, and fourths before devouring!