Apples!

Our apple unit is already off to a great start! We have a ton of apple themed lessons going on. Here are a view that we are focusing on this week.

Today we started creating our schema chart about apples. Credit to Mr. Greg over at Kindergarten Smorgasboard for such a good idea! We gave it our own spin by using apple cut outs instead of post-it notes.

  

We will add to this chart throughout the unit. We will be using these books to help us learn as well.

 

One of our literacy centers this week uses my apple themed sensory bin pack. The pack includes differentiated recording sheets. We have already completed the page where students color a letter, so this week we are practicing writing the letters.

The pack also includes apple themed letter cards to place in the sensory bin. I switched it up this week with beans and letter magnets. 

I have also found some great freebies from some other awesome bloggers!

Check out Mrs. Albanese's Kindergarten Class for this bobbing for apples freebie.

 

 We will also be using a free interactive math book from Mrs. Kelly's Klass.

Hope you enjoyed this peek at our week! I'll be sharing more apple fun soon!

Fact and Fiction Cows

In the midst of grad school homework, I am coming to you to share just a small part of our farm unit from the past two weeks. Of course we have been reading a lot of farm literature! So I thought this would be a great way to introduce the concept of fiction and non-fiction.

I decided to focus on just one animal for this activity. I chose cows because most of the students in my class had some general background information.

Our librarian helped me find a wide range of books for our unit. Here are just a few of our favorites.

 

After reading each book, the students had to tell me if they thought the book was fiction or non-fiction. They also had to provide reasons for their thinking.

This part was completed over the course of the unit. We recorded our thoughts on a very simple T-Chart.

As you can see from the chart, the cow theme also went along with our nursery rhyme of the week: Hey Diddle Diddle. The students did a great job!

 

Today we also created a graph about our favorite farm animals. I love using Post-Its for our graphs! The horse was the winner.

Next week we are on to apples!

Engaging Guided Math Ideas

I hope the beginning of your school year is going great! My kiddos have their morning routine down, but are so sleepy by the end of the day.

Today I am guest blogging over at Kindergarten Chaos about ideas for your guided math groups. This can really be a fun part of your day by incorporating play and relevance to your students.

 

Make sure you head over there to read the post!

Also, there are certain materials that I always keep on hand during guided math. You can read about those materials here.

Thank you to Abigail at Kindergarten Chaos for having me!

Hope you get some great ideas for your math groups!

 

Back to School Dollar Centers

I am so excited about all of the Dollar Tree finds I have grabbed this summer! They are going to be awesome to use during centers this year with my kinders.

Here is a look at my stash and how I plan to use them.

Chalkboards and Chalk

These chalkboards come with two pieces of chalk and an eraser. I got the  purple sandwich holder from the Dollar Tree to hold everything. I love using the sandwich holders to store just about anything! I grabbed a whole stash of them. I also grabbed some colored chalk from Michael's for a dollar to add some fun. I plan on having students use this center to practice writing letters, sight words, or write the room.

Double-sided Hero and Princess Crayons

I think my kiddos are going to love these! They are perfect for little hands and add just enough novelty to make rainbow writing super fun.

You can grab a Rainbow Write FREEBIE I made specifically for use with this center over at the Grow and Enjoy TPT store. It includes a recording page for super heroes and princesses.

Shape Storage Containers

These awesome storage containers come in one set, so you get all four for just a dollar! I immediately thought of a shape sorting center when I saw them. The pattern blocks shown are already in my classroom.

Small Plastic Containers

These small plastic containers come in a set of 10. I used six of them to hold dice and keep them off the floor, in mouths, etc. Last year I used plastic Gerber food containers and they did not hold up very well. Hopefully, these will work better! One easy way to use these is to have students roll the dice and practice writing the number it lands on. You can also have them roll and graph the numbers. I have a ton of roll and write activities that the kinders always love.

Coordinating Paper Die Cuts

I have to give Mr. Greg over at Kindergarten Smorgasboard for this awesome idea. The Dollar Tree has all kinds of different die cuts you can use for matching games. I did capital and lowercase letters with the milk and cookies and will probably do math facts on the lock and key die cuts.

Foam Counting Blocks

I don't actually have a specific use for these yet, but I can imagine lots of possibilities using them as dice, letter blocks, etc. If you have a good idea for using these, please share!

I hope you can find some of these products at your local Dollar Tree! I have also done some previous blog posts about Dollar Tree centers. Click on "dollar tree center" in the label cloud to the right for more ideas.

Dinosaur Week

Today we wrapped up our fun unit on dinosaurs! You can see my previous post for a couple of resources we used earlier in the week. Yesterday we made shape dinosaurs and dinosaur fossils.

I used the Ellison die cutting machine to cut out pattern block shapes from construction paper. The rest of the project was up to the students' creativity! They loved creating their own dinos.

We used Crayola air dry clay and Dollar Tree dinosaurs to create the dinosaur fossils. We let them dry over night and the kiddos took them home in plastic baggies today. We discussed how real fossils are made, the job of a paleontologist, and what "extinct" means.

I created a Dino-mite door to display all of our dino themed work from this week. I love displaying student work in as many places as possible. 

Here are some other dino-mite resources we used throughout the week that are free:

Dinosaur Make Ten True/False by First Grade Kate 

Dino Dominoes by Wild About Teaching

Number Line Addition and Subtraction by The Teaching Treehouse

Next week we are on to plants!

March Madness Addition

This week we finished up our March Madness themed lessons. They were so much fun!
One of our math centers focused on addition stories. The students got five chances to shoot an easter egg into the basketball basket I got at the Dollar Tree. 

After shooting, the students had to work with their teammate to fill out the addition story and write an equation showing how many points they made.

This center was so easy to set up and kept all of the students engaged! They wanted to see which teams could get the most points.

 

We also incorporated several other basketball activities into our lessons this week. You can see the students using the number line cards below. Click on the links below for more basketball ideas that we used. Oh, and go CATS!

Math Facts Game

Basketball Syllables by Live Laugh I Love Kindergarten

Real Word/Nonsense Word Sort by Nicki Thigpen

Madness in March Core Training by Primary Graffiti

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

March Madness Math

I am so excited for March Madness this year! I haven't completed my bracket yet, but you can bet the Kentucky Wildcats are going to be my champions.

We are starting to infuse March Madness into our math lessons. Today we practiced measuring with a yard stick. The two paw prints at the top are the 7 foot players, Dakari Johnson and Willie Cauley-Stein. The middle paw-print is my height and the bottom ones are the kiddos.

We took the students' pictures in front of the wall to show the height difference. Of course, they wanted to use the camera to take my picture too! (This was the least blurry one lol)

They couldn't believe the players are that tall in real life! Not many of the students knew their names right off the bat, but they knew they played for the Wildcats. One of my students was even wearing a Cauley-Stein jersey today! He was very excited.

After we had everyone measured, we discussed which students were the tallest and shortest. The students were naturally making comparisons to see who was the same height as themselves. 

Your state might not be as crazy about basketball, but this lesson could easily be adapted to any basketball team for March Madness. 

This classroom is busy cheering on the CATS!

Zookeeper Measuring

Welcome to the Zoo!

I was trying to think of something fun for the kiddos to measure and dug these old Beanie Babies and stuffed animals out of my parents' garage. It was a huge hit!

We talked about zookeepers and that their job is to take care of animals. Then the students got to take their turn being a zookeeper.

Each student chose an animal to do their measuring report on. When they were done with their report, they were able to measure the other animals. We said that they were baby animals so we had to be very careful with them. The kiddos ate it up and were hilarious interacting with the toys!

Here is a look at one of the finished reports. You can snag it for free on my Grow and Enjoy TPT page!

Today we moved on to weight. The students made predictions about which animals they thought would be the lightest/heaviest. We then compared them in our pan balance.

I love that these activities kept the students engaged. They took their jobs very seriously! I knew those old Beanie Babies would come in handy someday. ;)

Guided Math Essentials

We will be back to school tomorrow for the first time since Valentine's Day! I headed up to the school and worked on getting organized today. This math tub is something I always keep right behind my group table. Inside are materials that I use to support typical guided math lessons or pull out when we have a couple of extra minutes.

Flashcards

I love picking up sets of flash cards from the Dollar Tree! We use the number flash cards for recognition, greater/less than, sequencing, and more. I let the kiddos use the same or different cards in pairs and they describe the attributes to each other. The shapes cards we mainly use for recognition and practicing drawing the shapes. The kiddos love the Disney math facts cards! If they get a fact correct, I let them keep it. They love seeing which characters they can collect.

 

Number Lines and Number Cards

I have number lines to 10 and 30 for differentiated groups. I have number cards up to 100 that I also use for differentiated groups. We use these for number recognition and sequencing. One of our favorite games is seeing how fast we can sequence the cards. Give each student 3-5 cards and tell them what the starting number is. The students then have to lay down the card that comes next in the sequence if they are holding it. Then, we shuffle them up and see if we can beat our time.

Go Fish Finger Pattern Cards

These are great for my kiddos still working on representing numbers and counting. You can use these as flash cards, to play Go Fish, or to play a matching game.

Spinner, Dice, Domino Patterns

We use these tools for a variety of lessons and games. A lot of them focus on counting and addition/subtraction stories. We spin the spinner and practice writing the number it lands on, counting out that many objects, or creating a number story with two numbers. We play similar games with the dice and dominoes. 

I forgot to take a picture of our strategy cards! They remind us of strategies that we can use to solve math problems.

We use many other types of manipulatives, but these are the ones I always make sure I have on hand. Please let me know if you have other suggestions!

100th Day of School

It's hard to believe that yesterday was our 100th day of school. We had so much fun celebrating being 100 days smarter :)

During calendar we have been counting scoops of ice cream each day to get to 100. On the 100th day the kiddos got to make their own giant ice cream cone. We counted by tens and drew ten sprinkles on each scoop. My kinders' cutting skills need some work, but they loved building the ice cream cone!

You can download a free ice cream template from Michaela Almeida.

Then we colored an owl picture and compared it to the picture the students colored on the first day of school. It was so funny to see their faces when they saw the difference. Several of them couldn't even write their name on their paper at the beginning of the year. It was an easy way for them to see some of the progress they have made.

During writing time, we completed this freebie from Two Pink Peas in a Pod. My favorite answers was definitely, " If I had $100 I would buy a scratch off ticket." My student said those were fun ;)

Finally, we made our 100th day snack. I set out 10 cups with 10 different ingredients. The students counted out 10 from each cup to make a snack with 100 items. We had raisins, Cheerios, rice chex, chocolate chips, mini vanilla wafers, goldfish crackers, Cheeze-Itz, marshmallows, M&M's, and pretzel sticks.

Each student went home with a mini 100 Grand bar and a "I'm 100 days smarter" sticker. I have to say, this has been one of my favorite days of the year so far. Only 71 left to go!

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/