St. Patrick's Week

Another crazy week! Between meetings and my KTIP unit, I am definitely ready for spring break. Only one more week to go!

This week was packed with St. Patrick's day activities. Leading up to the big day we had talked about leprechauns. The students were doing some intense thinking about whether they thought leprechauns were real or not. After reading The Night Before St. Patrick's Day, they were all ready to set traps for the leprechauns.

The students found leprechaun hand prints all around the room when they came in the next morning! He even left them some gold. But, as the kiddos say, "He is tricky!" Turns out the gold was really just chocolate ;)

We searched for sight words hidden in a leprechaun picture with our magnifying glasses.
This was a huge hit! I'll be looking for more of these pages to use.

Of course we had to sort Lucky Charms during math centers.

Here are some other activities we did throughout the week.

The students were able to cut the pieces out for this puzzle and take it home to practice counting by tens. 

One of my favorite things was reading how my students were going to catch a leprechaun. They had some pretty creative ideas. 

Even with all the craziness we still had a fun green-filled week!

 I was especially happy that all of these activities were free :) See them below and save or pin them for next year! 

I Spy CVC Words by The Teachable Teacher

Worth More Than Gold by The Teacher Wife

Lucky Charms Graph by Fran Kramer

I Caught A Leprechaun! by Lisa Lilienthal

Math Freebies

I called this the week of the math freebies. I finally downloaded/printed/laminated all of the awesome freebies that I've found on Pinterest. I have no idea how teachers did it before Pinterest. 

Here are some of the freebies in action during centers this week.

 Arctic Addition: Choose a card with an addition problem, solve the problem, and cover the answer. A great color version is also available.

Snowflake Tally Marks: A simple cut and glue sheet. Great practice for this new skill.

Hot Chocolate Subtraction/Addition: This is technically Christmas themed, but the kids didn't really notice. We had been practicing addition and subtraction with marshmallows anyway, so it fit right into our unit.

Here is a compiled list of where you can get the freebies I used this week. Kuddos to these creative teachers!

Arctic Addition by Rowdy in Room 300

Snowflake Tally Marks by The Printable Princess

Hot Chocolate Addition/Subtraction by Khrys Bosland

Oh and one more! I don't have pictures of it, but we use these cute penguin mats to practice addition stories today. The kiddos used goldfish crackers to tell their stories. It was during one of my observations and worked great!

Penguin Mats by Kroger's Kindergarten 

I spend way too much time on Pinterest, so follow me on there for ideas by season/theme and subject.

https://www.pinterest.com/casey_harlan/

Morning Work

I haven't been up for blogging much this week since I've been fighting off stomach problems, but I'm finally feeling better. When my kinders came back to school after Christmas Break I started them with a new system for their supplies and morning work. It took a lot of set up work at first, but I am very happy with how it is going now. Maybe these suggestions will help another first year teacher.

When I first set up my classroom I had table baskets of supplies simply because that's what I saw most of the other teachers had. I also printed out morning work for my students to work on each day after they were dropped off. This resulted in a lot of fighting over supplies, a lot of time searching for work, and an overwhelming amount of morning work papers stuffed in seat pockets. 

Now each student has their own supplies pouch and morning work journal.

  

Each supply pouch has crayons, a pencil, and an eraser. The students no longer fight over supplies and they have to take responsibility for their supplies. If they break their crayons or tear the eraser off their pencil then they are the ones that have to deal with it. 

I don't have to take planning time to find morning work or sort through papers each day. Students automatically come in and get their morning work journal. They know that they have to write the date, draw a picture, and write about it. This makes the morning work differentiated to students' ability levels as well.  

Before, my students would finish the morning work I had picked out in two minutes. Now they can work the entire time they are in the classroom before the bell rings. This is really important for our school because we have some students thirty minutes before the school day begins. If students do finish their work, they are allowed to read a book. 

These simple strategies have worked really well for our class! A little change can make a big difference in your classroom's environment and productivity.