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!

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 :)