Reading Street Kindergarten "Smash! Crash!" Week

Yay for Smash! Crash! week!  The boys always love this week - trucks and tractors galore!  So, let me show you what we did in our centers this week:

1. Math Center

I really went all out in the math center this week.  In math we're learning about one-to-one correspondence, and I wanted to tie in the trucks and tractors.  I found this great free bundle on vehicles at homeschoolcreations.com.  One of the games was these cards that had a certain number of vehicles, with three numbers at the bottom, then the kids put a clothespin on the correct number.  It reenforces one-to-one correspondence, number recognition, and fine-motor skills.

I caved, and actually bought a packet on teacherspayteachers.com.  It was totally worth it!  It had a few different games.  The first one was a domino game, using tractors instead instead of dots.  Big hit!

It came with a matching game too.  Again, great for one-to-one correspondence!

I also used a game from the first game, where the kids put numbers 1-10 in order.  They used orange and green train cars, which was also great for reenforcing patterning.

2. Literacy Center

I found some great sight word practice sheets.  

I used part of the first packet to practice sequencing (which could've gone to math also, but I thought it might help visual learners, when we're talking about sequencing our stories).

I made a fun sight word practice.  (One of our words this week was "a", so it was super easy, but it'll get more interesting.)  You'll need an old cookie sheet, some tape, sight word cards, magnetic letters and white board markers.

 

I made a great, differentiated CVC word practice game.  You'll need a picture of a Weiner dog, and a clip art of a bone.  For your below- or on-level students, you can cut the bone into three pieces. This way it'll help them know it the letter is a beginning, medial or ending letter.  For your advanced students, you make the bone smaller, and they have free range of the order they put the letters in.

3. Science Center

I found a worksheet on motion; where the kids had do decide if the action in the picture was "pushing" or "pulling".

4. Complementary Books

We read Little Blue truck one day, and Little Blue Truck Leads the Way the next.  We then compared (what's the same), and contrasted (what's different) them.  THE KIDS HAD SO MUCH FUN!!!  And, we were using our vocabulary words.  Score!!!

Compare:

- Same main character.

- Same author.

- Same illustrator.

- Someone was rude to Blue.

- But he showed them kindness.

- Same opening line,

Contrast:

- Little blue is a lighter color (haha, my artistic kiddo).

- Different setting (country vs. city).

- Different supporting characters (animals in first one, vehicles and people in the second one).

That's all for now, folks!

Next week is Dig, Dig Digging, so some of the center games will stick around for one more week.  

Hope I was able to give you a few ideas for your own kiddos.

Let me know if you have any thoughts, ideas or questions!

Reading Street Kindergarten "Plaidypus Lost" Week

Happy Sunday, all!  As I'm thinking ahead to this week's theme, I'm also thinking about last week's theme, one of my favorites - Plaidypus Lost.  It's about a little girl, whose grandma sews her a "plaidypus" out of her grandpa's plaid shirt.  Throughout the course of the book, she loses the plaidypus, and then finds it.  It's a great book for teaching about what a poem is, and there is a lot of repetition.  Your kids will be reciting the whole book by the end of the week!

Let me show you what I did in my centers for this week!

(I took in Aidan's special quilt from his grandma, that has squares from his daddy's shirt.)

1. Literacy Center:

I found this free Literacy Center worksheet at teacherspayteachers.com.  It's simple, which is great, because then the kids can do it on their own, but it reinforces the letters we're working on.

I made a word family game, using paint chips.  I wrote the ending on a white rectangle with a window, and the beginning letter on the paint chip, with the idea that they can slide it up or down to read CVC words.  I drew a colored dot in the corner of the white rectangle, to add one more element of matching the colors.  The kids really enjoyed it!

Our reading curriculum also comes with these great sequencing cards for each story.  The kids had fun putting them together!

2. Math Center

This week we are learning about patterns, which works out perfectly for the idea of "plaid".  I found two different "plaidypus" cliparts, which I printed out, and made a pattern chart for.  I differentiated it for on-level students, and below-level students.  For on level, the instructions just say "make an AB pattern".  For the below-level students, each box says "A" or "B", to help them out a little.

I also found a good adding worksheet that was platypus themed.  My kids haven't learned adding yet, so I wrote in 1+1, 2+1, 3+1, etc.  I also gave them manipulatives to help them.  This was my above-level activity.

3. Science center

I love when the theme leaves room for science, which is actually pretty regularly.  This week I had a platypus coloring sheet here, that showed their natural habitat.

4. Listening Center/Media

As I explained last week, I combined all the audio for the week into a playlist, which the kids then listen to.  We also watched the Octonauts episode that featured platypus.  It's on Netflix, or you can find it on Youtube.

5. Craft.  So, this wasn't a center, but we made a pretty cute craft this week.  I drew the outline of the Plaidypus, which the kids cut out.  Then, I gave them each a few squares of scrapbook paper with different patterns on them (tying back into the math unit).  They glued them on, cut back down around them, glued on button eyes and a beak, and voila!

We had a really fun week, and hopefully the kiddos learned something along the way!

See you next week, for Miss Kindergarten Takes a Field Trip!

Reading Street Kindergarten "We Are So Proud" Week

For the second week of school, our unit was called "We Are So Proud".  The book of the same title is about a class working together to create a float for a patriotic parade.  The Amazing Words are: proud, cooperation, float, guide, preparation and creation.  This unit just happened to fall on the week after Labor Day, and this year Remembrance Day (9/11) fell on the same week too.  While I did not discuss Remembrance Day with my kindergarteners, I decided to take the opportunity to do a patriotic-themed week!  Let me share with you a few of the things we did.

1. I found this great free math game on teacherspayteachers.com.  It's a cube game, with a few variations.  Since my kids haven't learned graphing yet, we did it together first, with each student taking a turn to roll the "dice", call it out, and color it in together.  Once they mastered the concept, I felt comfortable putting it in the center.

 

Tip: To make the cube, I color-printed it, and cut it out.  I wanted it to last (we all know how rough kids can be on anything made out of paper), but I also knew laminating would be too strong.  So, I covered the paper in packing tape, and then used the tape also to seal the edges.  It worked out very well!

2. For the Library, I always have a box labeled "Topic Books".  I update and change that box weekly, and put books that have to do with our unit in there.  When we have centers, the kids are supposed to read the books from that box.  Here are a few of the books from this week.

I read the Keeping Quilt aloud to them.  It's one of my all-time favorite books.  I told them at the beginning that our Amazing Words weren't in the book, but the idea of many of them were in it. So we talked about how the ladies used "cooperation" to make a new "creation" out the things they already had.  We also talked about how they were "proud" of their heritage, but also of their new home.  (Also, one of the illustrations has the Statue of Liberty, which was one of the pictures in our cube game - so there! :))

3. At the beginning of the year, I uploaded all the audio for the reading curriculum (read-alouds, songs, etc.) into iTunes, and then onto an old iPod I have.  I sorted it all by unit and then by week.  During centers, I just play the file for the week in my listening center.  It has been a HUGE success, and my kiddos always feel like they're getting away with something when they're in the listening center.

4. I found a couple free worksheets about Labor Day (what do you want to be when you grow up), and our flag which worked well for morning work or center work.  One in particular was a flag coloring page, which I modified into a letter recognition coloring game.  I wrote the key in the bottom (what color to use for which letter), and then wrote the letters in the coloring page.  This was a great reinforcement for some of my weaker students!

 

5. One of my student's dad is an engineer in the Navy.  So on Friday, I asked him to visit the class.  The kids had a wonderful time!  It was great!  He talked about how he has to cooperate with his fellow sailors, how it's important to prepare for what he has to do each day (using our Amazing Words), he asked each student what they wanted to be when they grow up, we got to thank him for his service, and talk about how proud we are of the men and women in our armed forces.  If there's anyway you could do something like this in your classroom, I highly recommend it!  It was a wonderful experience for the kids, and really brought home the concepts we were learning about this week!

We all had great fun in Mrs. Blair's Kindergarten Class this week!  Hope you enjoyed some of the little tid-bits from our "We Are So Proud" week.  Join us next time for "Plaidypus Lost"!

The Kissing Hand Kindergarten Welcome Week

Welcome back to school!

Going back to school, especially for kindergarten-age children can be very scary, and can cause separation anxiety.  That's why I like to spend the first week of school on the Kissing Hand books, and talking about emotions.

In case you aren't familiar with the book, it's about a young raccoon who is anxious about going to school, until his mother shows him a secret.  She opens his hand, gives him a kiss in his palm, and tells him, that whenever he's missing her, he can press it against his cheek, and he'll know that, "Mama loves you, mama loves you!"

It's the perfect way to introduce a child to a new, and seemingly scary situation.

We read the story, and then I asked each child how they felt today.  Then, I had each of them draw a picture of how they felt, and helped them place it on a chart.

Their very first graph!

There are a couple other books in the series, none of them quite as good as the first, but still worth a read.

I found this great, FREE packet on teacherspayteachers.  It has a couple math center activities, a few literacy center activities (upper/lower case matching, missing letter, letter sound bingo, etc.) - any of which can be modified for small group or large group activities.  Yay!

I printed out the flashcards in color and laminated them for my center, and also printed them out in black and white to send home for at-home reinforcement.

It was wonderful to see the kids working together as a team, and having fun while learning.

Although it may seem simple, one of the best items in this packet is a "Color Book".  Each page has a picture of Chester (the raccoon), and the name of a color below it.  The kids then have to color the raccoon the correct color.  This is wonderful for teaching them to follow directions!  It's simple, but they have to be listening, and paying attention.

 

On the first day, we also made the parents a little something.  I printed out this cute poem I found:

I traced each of their hands on brown paper, had them cut it out, and then had them glue a heart in the middle of it.  It turned out very cute!

Finally, on the end of the last day, I also gave each child a Hershey kiss to take home.  In retrospect, I should've just let them eat it in class, as we live in Florida, and chocolate melts.  But regardless, it was a hit!

Yay for back-to-school!