Base Ten Apples on Top

I am so excited about my stations for next week!  This math station is a response to reading a book by Dr. Seuss.  The students will be stacking apples with tens and ones to compose numbers 11-19.  (This semester the kinders will be assessed on composing and decomposing numbers from 11 to 10 for their report cards.) I hope they have fun putting apples up on top after we read one of my childhood favorite books!

Visit my TPT store to get your copy of Base Ten Apples on Top math center activity!

President's Day Activities

We all enjoyed a long weekend over President's Day weekend. (We had Friday and Monday off!) To celebrate our country's leaders we have been doing lots of reading and writing about the presidents. Last week we made these cute Abraham Lincoln handprints. I got the idea from an email I received from Mailbox.com.

The students wrote what they would do if they were the President.

Yesterday we read So You Want to Be President?  by Judith St. George. The students enjoyed learning facts about the presidents. Did you know that eight Presidents lived in log cabins?!?

 

Today we brainstormed a list of jobs the President has to do.  The students wrote what they would have to do if they were the President. They came up with a lot of good responses!

 

(And I couldn't resist sharing this one!  I felt it very fitting for our cupcake themed classroom!) 

 

Wacky Rhyming Write the Room

Next week my class is having a week long birthday celebration for Dr. Seuss!  I have been working on my literacy stations. In honor of all the rhyming words found in the well-loved books, I created a rhyming write the room. The students have to find words around the room that rhyme with the words on their clipboard record sheets.  The Wacky Rhyming Write the Room is now available in my TPT store!

I originally had this product under a different name. To avoid any infringement of copy right laws, I changed the name and the graphics.  

Linky Party

I joined my first Linky Party today at Teaching Blog Addict. I found a lot of new kindergarten blogs to follow! Thanks, Mrs. Phillips of Kinder Doodles for suggesting this Linky Party! Now to enjoy the rest of my four day weekend. :)

Literacy Stations Week of February 11

Wow! I can't believe I'm posting my literacy stations BEFORE the week begins!  There never seems to be enough hours in the day for me to get things done, but somehow I managed to find a little time to work at my computer today.  Here is a preview of what my class will be working on this week:

Rhyming Words: I love this rhyming word activity from Apples and ABCs. The students look at the pictures and find pairs of rhyming words.  We have been working a lot with rhyming words because the students will be assessed on that with the next report card.

 Counting Syllables: This activity came from Apples and ABCs, too. The class has been working a lot with counting syllables in words. 

Stamps: My class LOVES stamps.   And I love that I found this cute beginning and ending sound activity on Pinterest! Instead of cutting a pasting, I will have the kids use the stamps to show the beginning and end sounds.

 ABC Order: Students will read sight word cards and work together to place them in alphabetical order. Check out my TPT store to get your copy of this Valentine themed station for free!

 Creating Sentences: Another great Valentine activity Apples and ABCs. The students will read the cards and create a sentence. We have been working with making three word sentences on the iPads, but it will be a good challenge to have more than three words in these sentences!

First Teachers Pay Teachers Product!!!

I am very excited to have a Teachers Pay Teachers store!  My first product is now available. (Did I mention that it is free???) I created the Valentine's Day Bingo game for my class to play on Thursday during the Valentine Party.  My school system uses Jolly Phonics, so I thought it would be a great way to review the Jolly Phonics sounds and have fun at the same time.  Check out my FREE game!

Literacy Stations and a Freebie!

Our literacy stations have been going well. The majority of the class has been working very hard. I decided to give the students a grade on their literacy station work. Every station has a worksheet that supports the learning goal. The students keep a folder with all of the worksheets. At the end of the week, I collect folders and grade the worksheets. We use the one, two, and three star grading scale that was established during a past writing lesson.

I need to make a point of posting our literacy stations at the start of the week rather than the end, but here are some of the stations the class used this week:

Jolly Snowmen Word Families: The students sorted the cards into word families and wrote their word families on a sheet. Then they had to choose two different words from the cards and write a sentence for each word. Thank you to Mrs. Phillips for these awesome snowmen cards!

 

Build a word: The students had to tap out the sounds in each word and find the cubes to build the word on each card. 

 Write the Room: The students loved the fancy glasses I picked up at Party City! They wore the glasses to help them look for T words.

 Rainbow Writing (& a freebie!): I made cards with the third quarter report card sight words for the students to use for rainbow writing. They thought it was cool to circle each word with rainbow colors after they wrote all of the sight words. Please use the rainbow writing freebie in your classroom!

Snowy Day Sort: The students had to cut, sort, and paste activities. They had to determine if the activities are done on snowy days or not. This activity came from a packet from Mrs. Bremer's blog. We will do more of the activities next week!

Since we have been reading about different kinds of weather, I created a list writing station for the students. They looked at cards with pictures of different kinds of clothes and had to write the name of the clothing in the appropriate list.  (Last week we worked on writing lists during the writing lessons.) Here are the clothing cards and chart.

Weekly Newsletter

Click on the Weekly Newsletter page to read about this past week in kindergarten and what is in store for next week!

Literacy Stations

Although I have already set out the new stations for the upcoming week, I wanted to share the literacy stations we did last week.  The first half of the ninety minute literacy block is spent doing literacy stations.  We do two rotations of literacy stations each day.  During this time, two to three students work in a station. My instructional aide works with leveled reading groups while the rest of the class is working on netbooks to do differentiated Reading Eggs activities or at one of the eight literacy stations. Here are a few of my favorite:

Write the room. This week the students had to find words with one, two, and three syllables to record on their clipboards. 

Build a Word Family: They used the alphabet cubes to build words in the -at, -ad, and -it word families.  Producing rhyming words will be on the third quarter report cards, so we have been doing lots of word families to help the kinders practice coming up with rhyming words.

Writing Station: This week in the writing station, the kids made birthday cards for Alicia, the main character in the book for the week, Alicia's Happy Day.

Cupcake Words Families: I love the cupcake theme of these word family cards by Mrs. Phillips of Kinder Doodles. The students had to choose a word family and find the words that fit in that word family.

100 Days Smarter!

We celebrated the 100th day of school on Thursday. The kids were so excited all week leading up to this momentous day.  Earlier in the week we made 100 Day Crowns. They loved wearing their crowns all day long.

(The class LOVES to use glitter. I have found the best way to have them add sparkle is to have them use the glue and then bring their projects to the Glitter Station. My aide and I sprinkle the glitter on their glue as they watch in amazement! I am so thankful that our awesome custodians allow us to use glitter!)

The students were welcomed into our classroom with a banner on 100th Day. It was neat to see students in higher grades stop to admire the sign.

The reading comprehension skills of the week were naming the main idea and details, and summarizing. The class did a great job summarizing the events in Lester Laminack's Jake's 100th Day of School.

During math, the students were given the chance to share their collections of 100 items.  We had many collections of Legos and pennies, as well as collections of toys, cars, and hair clips!


We made cupcakes with 100 sprinkles. My mom gave me the idea. She teaches kindergarten, too! 

The kids worked with their table groups to count out 100 sprinkles and wrote a recipe for their cupcake. The groups agreed on a name for their cupcake, too. I love that one group named their cupcake Mike!

I gave the class the writing prompt, If I had one hundred dollars.... It was interesting to read what they would do with one hundred dollars.  I copied large $100 bills on green paper and stapled it to the paper with their sentence.

We also made snacks with 100 treats. The kiddos had fun counting ten pieces of ten different snacks.  All in all, 100th  Day was a success! What did your class do to celebrate the 100th day?