Peek at My Week 9/29, Apples and the Three Little Pigs!

This week we were doing all kinds of learning about the Three Little Pigs and Apples!

We read this version of the Three Little Pigs this week. I like it a little better than the traditional version of the story because I believe it allows for us to dig deeper into the story.



I also loved reading this version because if you are a teacher that has access to Discovery Education videos, there is one of this exact book! My kiddos freaked out when they got to watch this close read as a video at the end of the week. It was like Christmas!!

As I said above, we did a lot of deeper thinking with this book. We always talk about tough vocabulary with each close read we do. These were the words we focused on this week:

We also got to make two fun craftivities! The first was of the last little pig. We talked about how he was SO smart and he kept tricking the wolf so he stays safe. We made our little piggy and wrote how we would trick the wolf.

I would tell the pig to dress up as the wolf.

I would jump in a barrel and run into the wolf.

I would still hide from the wolf.

The kids loved thinking of how they would "trick" the wolf! But of course, we also had to make a tricky wolf! I've been trying to integrate character education into my curriculum as much as possible. So we talked about how the wolf was unkind, and how he might have been able to be friends with the pigs if he was nice. So we made our wolf craftivity, and inside the mouth, the kiddos drew a way the wolf could be nice to the pigs.

I would play with him. (I know...great phonetic spelling here haha!)

They LOVED that the wolf's mouth opened. It was the greatest thing ever!

Lastly, we had our 3rd grade buddies come to our room and make the Three Little Pig's houses with us. We made a house of straw (yellow paper), sticks (popsicle sticks), and bricks (red paper)! It's so cute how different they turned out based on the different kiddo!

 This little guy insisted the pig in the brick house had to be first because he was the smartest, even though he was last in the story. :)

I am working on scanning the templates for all of these craftivities and will link them for free to this blog post as soon as I do :)

Last, we had a special Three Little Pigs snack! Potato straws for straw, pretzels for sticks, and licorice bites for bricks.

(Picture to come)

Then we also finished up our apple investigations this week! We got a lot of cute ideas from Cara Carroll, including these apple games below.

We also used her colored apples and color words to do a predictable sentence activity. The kiddos loved all the reading they could do and it was a great introduction to some new sight words!

I plan on laminating these sentence strips and allowing my kiddos to build these sentences as a literacy center!

We also discussed the parts of an apple and did a cute craftivity. My students put together an apple and labeled the: skin, flesh, core, seeds, and stem!

Last we did an apple taste test! We tasted red apples, green apples, and caramel apples to decide which one was our favorite. This was one of our first introductions to graphing and my kiddos did great!



I made this graphing sheet and favorite page to go with this activity. After tasting each apple, my kiddos drew a picture of their favorite apple and then drew/wrote 3 reasons why they liked it! Then, we graphed those favorites. You can get your copy these sheets here.

A day late (this is my conference week! STRESSFUL!!), here is a peek at my week! I'm linking up with Mrs. Wills' Kindergarten.

Up this week is the Three Bears! Can you believe that only half of my class had ever heard this story before????



Enjoy your week! Hopefully not filled with conferences. This was my table this morning....not pretty I know!!

Peek at My Week 9-22, Names, and the Little Red Hen

I LOVE the season of fall! I get to teach some of my favorite units. I love teaching about seasons, the five senses, apples, and all that fun stuff! We've got a lot of that planned for this week. I'm linking up with Mrs. Wills Kindergarten for a Peek at my Week. 

Get a copy of my lesson plans here.

I finally got around to uploading some of my pictures and want to share with you some of the name activities that we have been working on!

I got a lot of my ideas/activities from Deanna Jump's Literacy and Math Fun with Names unit.

We read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and made our own coconut trees. My kiddos got the letters in their name and got to hang them from the tree however they wanted! Then, we counted how many letters were in our names.

These little sweeties stayed pretty close to the box. I had some kiddos that put letters on the back of the paper!

We also used Deanna's cute poem Bippity Boppity Bumblebee to practice syllables. We did this before through our Star Student days earlier in the year, so my kids were pretty familiar with the concept. They loved the cute song and loved making the class book even more!

We also read Silly Sally! I always forget home much my kids love this book until I read it again :) We used the language from the book to create a class book (also from Deanna's unit). I modified it a little and added in a picture of my kiddos! They thought this was the coolest!

We also made rainbow names! I used this activity along with DeeDee Wills' Sticky Situation poem from her August and September Poetry Stations pack. My kiddos needed to practice the "just a dot" method and this was the perfect way to do it. I just happened to have a TON of tissue paper cut up so it worked out perfectly! Here is a finished product.

This was also our first week of our emergent storybook unit. I love starting with the Little Red Hen because it's always a favorite! 

We colored our own retelling pieces and practiced telling the story to each other. 

We also talked about how the little red hen was such a big helper. She helped so much in her house and no one else did. We talked about how we could be helpers, at home and at school. These are some of the ideas my kiddos came up with.

Sweep the floor.

Make the bed.

Stack the chairs.

They had so much fun with them and it was super easy to differentiate for my kiddos who are ready to stretch out sounds!

This week is apple fun and the Three Little Pigs! More fun to come for fall :)

Have a great week!

Names, Names, Names! with a Freebie

I don't know about you all, but I LOVE LOVE LOVE teaching about names. There is no more authentic, engaging learning tool than each of your student's names!

We do name work for about the first month of school. My school does not teach "letters of the day" or "letters of the week," so letter work is integrated daily through learning from our names.

We start the year off with Star Students. Each student gets the "honor" for one day. This kiddo gets to do all the class jobs, be the line leader, and get a special sticker.

On this day, we also learn all about the kiddos name! I got a good part of our routine from this picture from Ketchen's Kindergarten and I made similar cards for my class. You can get those cards here.

The student is called up to stand in front of the class to help with their name work. We read a cute poem to start out Star Student called Everybody Has A Name.

**Say it: All students say the SS's name

**Cheer it: Spell SS's name in a cheer (Give me an S, give me an A...)

**Clap it: Clap the syllables in the SS's name (I often compare their name to previous SS)

**Count it: Count how many letters are in the SS's name

**Fix it: Write the kiddos name on a sentence strip, cut out each letter, and mix them up. My SS gets to choose friends to come up and fix their name. Then, we spell it together saying the letter names.

Then, the SS gets something very special. My kiddos watch me do a drawing of the star student. I talk about each body part as I add it. It is a great way to practice drawing people for writer's workshop later. Then, each of my kiddos go back and draw a picture of the SS. They all add their own little twists to it. We write the SS's name together on the paper to practice letter formation.

Then the SS gets to take home a book of all the pictures as a keepsake! Parents and kiddos love this!

After all of my kiddos get to be star student, they get to put their name up on the word wall. Can you believe I have 5 kids who have a name that starts with C?? 

We keep on trucking along by using tons of read-alouds to continue our name learning!

I'll update you more soon :)