Peek at my Week! 1/27 and Freebies!

So I have basically been a missing person for over a month! I have absolutely no excuse. Winter Break and at least 5 snow days were thrown in there. But, I'm back and would love to share our plans for the week!

We have begun our talk curriculum unit and are really delving into how to talk to partners. I have modeled it with other teachers, had them practice with me and each other, given them prompts, practiced with read-alouds and more....but I will tell you none of this really got them talking. They all sort of tried, but they basically sat with their partner and read books to each other.

What got them talking? VIDEOTAPING THEM. So simple. I happened to have a 2 minute free window when I was done with my conferring during our partner block and saw two girls in my class just nailing their talk about their story. I videotaped them on my iPad and showed the class and all of a sudden, I have little superstar talkers!

We are doing so well that I get to show videos of my little experts almost everyday! I want to make sure that they are still independent when I'm not watching/videotaping them, so I made these little bookmarks to remind them of what they can say to each other.

You can get them here!

In math, we are starting our geometry unit! Our scope and sequence doesn't have us starting shapes until now (weird!). But anyway, we have been learning all about 2-D shapes and sides/corners!

I use this great song to help them relate the shapes to the environment.



I also found TONS of freebies on TPT that I'm using as math stations this week. They are on my lesson plans!

I also made two subtraction games using Dollar Tree finds for my math stations. You can get Fancy Hearts Subtraction and How Many Hearts? here and here! Both games practice basic subtraction skills.

 

 

My last math station game comes from my newest product that gives students opportunities to work towards mastery of addition skills covering all K.OA CCSS. You can check it out here! You can check out On A Mission for Addition! I will be posting pictures of my kiddos playing the games over the next few weeks.

Here are my lesson plans for the week. I have an extended observation, our 100th day, 2 birthdays, Bring Your Parents to School Day, and buddy time. It's going to be quite a week :)

 Enjoy the last of January!

Peek at my Week! 10/14 and Giveaway!

Last week was spider week! We had so much fun learning spider facts and I even convinced a few of my little girls that spiders aren't all scary! Winner in my book :)

Here are a few pictures of some of our spider-tivities last week! (Sorry for the blurry iPhone pics!)

First, we made a counting spider. The kiddos first had to count out 8 legs to glue on the spider. Then, the mommy/daddy spider had babies (1-8) and had to draw the numeral and quantity of spiders on each leg.

 

All week we were reading The Very Busy Spider and discussing what it meant to be busy. The kiddos each made another spider and dictated to me something that they are always very busy doing!

Next, I FINALLY finished my Fallin' for Fall Math and Literacy Stations pack! It includes 20 CCSS aligned stations! I worked really hard on this one and truly designed it for my kiddos needs! I have tried out almost all of the games on them (we're continuing to play them this week and next week) and they've been a hit!

I will give this away free to one random person that comments on this post! Just leave your email address and your favorite fall read-aloud :) I will choose a winner Wednesday night (9pm).

Here is a peek at my week! (Super boring, lots of assessment type stuff....boo!) You also may notice my math/literacy stations are the same. My babies need lots of practice :)

 Link up with Mrs. Wills for a Peek at my Week! All of you lucky people who have Columbus Day off and are enjoying fall break, I'm jealous! Happy Monday!

Remember to leave a comment with your favorite fall read-aloud and your email for a chance to win my Fallin' for Fall Math and Literacy Stations! I will choose a random winner on Wednesday!

Peek at My Week! 9/23

Oh my word! It is so amazingly wonderful to sign onto my beautiful blog now :) It just makes me so happy!

So my little babies have been learning all about their names the last few weeks to the point of Miss M going crazy, BUT I am happy to say that 18/18 can now recognize their own and 16/18 can write it! (This is truly an accomplishment!)

This week we are starting our unit on Emergent Storybooks and learning the power of reading pictures and retelling stories! My ELA curriculum does not allow direct instruction of letters, but I think having a weeklong anchor text is going to help me wiggle this rule a little :)

This week our anchor text is The Little Red Hen!

I am starting with this story because not only is it an awesome story for shared reading and retelling, but it is also a wonderful lesson on being a good friend! (Something my babies DESPERATELY need.)

We will start our is, can, has chart on the first day and continue to add to it throughout the week. I love this cute chart from Conversations in Literacy!

I also love this poem about the things a hen can/can't do. We love poems in my class and this will allow them to be creative and make a class book!

We will be making our own little red hens and be super helpers ourselves! Each child will think of how they can be a "helper" and we will write it on their hen. It's based off of this pinterest idea that I cannot find the link back to! If it's you, let me know!

We will be making this adorable little craft that I found  from Fairy Dust Teaching. I couldn't find the actual link on her page, but I wanted to give credit where credit is due! My kiddos will be using this as rhyming practice and first letter/sound correspondence.

I'm super excited to be starting literacy stations this week (for real). We're mostly just going to be practicing the games, but it's exciting to see small group work on the horizon now!

Here are my visual plans, linking up with Mrs. Wills Kindergarten!

Here they are! They are a little different this week since I am starting to really implement literacy and math stations! Enjoy :)

There are quite a few activities for this week from my Oh What Fun! K.CC.A.1 pack. It is really great for the beginning of kindergarten when kiddos are building that initial number sense.

There are also many games from my new pack (coming soon!), Fallin' For Fall! I'm just using the ones that are already finished for my kiddos :)

Back to School, iPad, Common Core Math, and a GIVEAWAY!

I am floating on air right now! I just got an IPAD! Woo :) I mean the elation is diminished a tad by the fact that I spent $500 but...it's so awesome! I cannot wait to use it with my kiddos this year!

I have been looking around the app store have found some apps that I really like! I'm not opposed to paying for good apps, but it's so hard to tell what it is like from the lite version sometimes!! I haven't found many yet, but these are my favorites so far!

Some of the apps I got that I really liked are:

 

Letter School is the most fun way I have ever seen to learn handwriting! So interactive :) It's $2.99 and teaches students how to write uppercase and lowercase letters and numbers 1-10.

 

 

Circus Math is a really fun $1.99 math app that teaches all kinds of common core skills: counting, writing numbers, addition, subtraction, etc. It also includes patterning games! 

 

 

 

Three Ring is an awesome app that syncs with your computer to store student assessment data. It is basically a visual portfolio that you and parents can access! How cool!

 

So I haven't had the time to fully investigate everything my iPad has to offer, but I'll keep letting you know as I find new things!

 

So this year I am making the change to KINDERGARTEN! Nothing like teaching a new grade level every year :) Luckily, I will be in the same school, just in a new classroom. I LOVED my old classroom. So bright and pretty. My new one is just as big, but has no windows. GULP. Here is the chaos of me trying to organize and unpack.

 

 

Craziness! How do I brighten this room up to compensate for no windows? Any ideas?

 

As I dive into my new kindergarten curriculum, I realized that I needed to make some new supplemental activities for my math curriculum to meet the CCSS. So I created a math packet specifically for K.CC.1: Counting to 100 by ones and tens. I feel like this is a BIG one and I wanted lots of materials to help teach.

 

Sidebar:

I have been really disappointed with some of my favorite teaching blogs lately because I feel like blogs have turned into advertisements for TPT products and not the fun teaching ideas I used to go to them for. Don't get me wrong, if I was making $100,000 on TPT, I would promote the best I could too...but the reason their teaching materials got so popular is because of their loyal blog followers.  Sorry! That's just my way of saying that I don't want my followers to think of my blog as an advertisement so I try hard to only promote products occasionally :) And I always include freebies to balance it out!

 

Oh What Fun! K.CC.1 is a 215 page packet with TONS of activities to help your students work towards mastery of this standard. And it's only $5.00!

 

 

Here are some of what is in the packet :)

 

 

100 Charts and 120 Charts (for differentiation) in blank, colored for counting, and highlighted for counting by tens.

 

Five Frame Fun is a game where students practice counting and subitizing in regular and irregular form for numbers up to 5.

 

Ten Frame Fun is a game where students practice counting and subitizing in regular and irregular form for numbers 0-20.

 

What's the Missing Number? is a game that gives a child a card with a missing number, and they can either write in the missing number or use the number cards included. This game is available for numbers 0-10, 11-20, 20-120, and counting by 10's.

 

These number puzzles are perfect for early finishers or extra practice. They are awesome because they are self-correcting :)

These setting cards are an idea from Debbie Diller's Math Work Stations book. She talks about how important it is for students to practice using mathematical language. So in using these setting cards, students may have conversations like:

 

"How many aliens are on the rocket?"

"There are 5 aliens on the rocket."

or

"There are 5 aliens in space."

"2 and 3 is the same amount as 5."

 

There are endless possibilities!

 

 Tricky Tens is a fun board game to practice counting forwards and backwards by tens. Both students start on the start square of this endless game board. They can move in any direction they please with a roll of a die. If they land on +10, they get to add their first star. Then if the same student lands on +30 the net turn, their star cards would be up to 40. Keep going until students get to 100 or 120.

 

 

I Have, Who Has is a game everyone knows! This game has cards up to 120!

 

 Snap Cubes Counting by 10's is a great activity for students to practice counting by ones and tens. They use the snap cube cards to count by tens and can build the actual towers to go with them.

 

Number Neighbors is a great activity for students to understand numbers that come before and after +1, -1, +10, and -10.

 

If you read all of this BRAVO! You can get your copy on TPT here! Because you read all of this and didn't leave me, I'm going to giveaway 3 copies of this pack on Sunday! Enter below :)


a Rafflecopter giveaway  

I will announce the winners on Monday! Enjoy your last few weeks of summer :)

Sarah