Saturday, December 6, 2014

Five For Friday Book Style

Five for Friday - Christmas Book Style with a Freebie too.

I love Christmastime...music and movies and lights and books. I've now taught kindergarten in December at 3 different schools (not to mention teaching older students). Each one had their own approach. My first kindergarten teammate had three major weeks: Trees, Reindeer and Gingerbread. These are still 3 of my favorites. We made lots of hats and ornaments and talked about Hanukkah, Kwanzaa & Christmas as well. Another school did winter holidays as part of Social Studies and the students had a wide variety of religions. This year, my new teammates have a ton of time honored crafts including light bulb name necklaces, Kwanzaa hats and actual gingerbread houses (yum). All of my kinders this year celebrate Christmas. 
On all these topics, I have collected books...my class books, my retired teammates books, my personal books...3 boxes full of books. My daily dilemma ....which books to read. Some of the books are out for the students to go through, some are older and just for me to touch, some have tapes/cds and others are in between. This week, my love of reading December books met this pesky cold.
My Five for Friday is about a few of these books.

1. At bus dismissal, we read Merry Christmas Big Hungry Bear. There wasn't a lot of reading for me. : ) I had one of my students share the pictures. As she held up the book, she asked the class -  how the mouse got to the top of the tree. She had used the picture to come up with a comprehension question. How excited I was for this evidence that she was comprehending the story. She continued to ask questions on each page after I read and the class raised their hands and answered the questions.


2. Dewey's Christmas at the Library was another end of the day read. Dewey is such a fun cat and I love that he was a real library cat. This is one that the kids like to read during free time. I brought it home one night so my son could read it. He loves our two cats even when they chewed the lights on our tree so he enjoyed Dewey's ball of red yarn. Merry Christmas Curious George  was the favorite at listening center this week. We are loving curious animals this week.


3. A Wish to be A Christmas Tree - We watched the read aloud of this book on youtube with pauses to discuss it. The tree is sad because he never gets taken home to be a Christmas tree. The animals all tell him how they are grateful for the tree because he takes care of them. We talked about why trees are important to the animals and how their actions made the tree feel. I gave the kinders green construction paper. They cut out pine tree shapes, wrote loving thank you notes to family members, and decorated them like the animals decorated the tree in the story. Our tree theme continued with The Night Tree by Eve Bunting. This is a great tale about a family who goes in the woods looking for a tree...to decorate with food for the animals. The kinders loved it. We made predictions and drew a flow map to sequence the story. 


4. Not a book ...but more trees. As our solid figure assessment, we color coded the objects as roll, stack or both. Then the kinders cut them out and used them as ornaments to decorate a "cone" hat. How cute do they look? At Math centers, the tree theme showed up with Count the Gifts

5. In reading group, we researched Caribou...using Pebble Go and the book Deer, Moose, Elk, Caribou After we researched, we shared with the class. We read some of the book A Caribou Alphabet. The kinders picked letters for me to read. They loved learning facts. We'd researched wild turkeys in November and bats in October. 

On our book list next to Mooseltoe. So I made a few things to along with it - not a whole unit but a little freebie. Click here.


Linking up with TBA's Freebie Friday



Saturday, October 18, 2014

Friday Freebie Costume Party

I'm late. I'm late. For Freebie Friday, but I'm not a white rabbit. Who Am I? Check out my newest unit Costume Party for a Who Am I? reader, costume party write the room, writing, and write the math rooms. I love to do write the rooms for vocabulary. We're also using smaller cards in the sensory table with holiday colored streamers torn into different lengths. The preview on TPT includes a freebie.


Check out my other Halloween items as well. We are using Candy Corn sorts in workstations next week. Can't wait.
Freebie (in the preview) looks like this...

Jenn
Freebie Fridays

Saturday, October 4, 2014

Why is Your Graph Upside Down?

I love to throw in a graph or two ...in Science, Social Studies, Language...and oh yeah Math. We take surveys and graph, count objects and graph, spin and graph....we graph.
I decided this year to change the traditional roll and trace the letter activities I had to a spin and graph. I designed the pages in PPT so that the spinner was on the page. I made them with Capital letters on the spinners and lower case letters to trace and with initial sound pictures on the spinners. I put them in my workstations....and wondered why the kids were struggling to graph from the bottom up.
 Then as I was giving directions on it, it hit me. Here I am saying start the graph at the bottom and start at the top for the letters. 
All the time, I remind the students to write top down left to right and here they had to keep that idea and learn graphing from the bottom. We aren't going to change how we graph - but we can change to a horizontal graph. Click on the pictures below to try the new horizontal graph. Now when one bar reaches the right side, we can answer the questions. What a difference a little thing makes.

Have a great weekend.
Jenn

Freebie Fridays

Friday, September 12, 2014

Fall Math Freebie

Fall Kids Roll & Cover Freebie
We have had super busy week 2 at school. We learned to play Roll & Cover. We solved problems like "what happens when we roll a number and there aren't any uncovered?" We also played around with choices for Math tools. Did we like the 2 sided counters or unifix cubes better? One allows us to stack and the other means we can share pieces.

Here is a free Fall Kids Roll and Cover for you. 

I also added these pages to my Fall Kids Write the Math Room (and Games too) unit.
Linking up with 


Freebie Fridays

Friday, August 8, 2014

Five for Friday Write the Math Room Write On Bookmark

            Linking up with Five for Friday
1. Do you keep free write journals? My kinders like to keep journals to write in when they finish early or don't eat breakfast or there is indoor recess aka Magic School Bus and draw a picture or an IEP meeting runs long or you get the picture. They can write and draw anything they like, revisit old work or write about topics I give them. Once a week, we take time during calendar to share something we wrote that week so I like them to work in their notebooks in order. Usually, I give them a sticky note to mark the place...but I'm using bookmarks this year. I made Writing Bookmarks.

2. For my Friday Freebies, I decided on a growing freebie. Each Friday for the next few weeks, I will be adding bookmarks to a freebie file on TPT. Last week's bookmark was Adventure Awaits. I resized it in different options and directions for you to choose from. I also added 2 writing bookmarks. Star Writer and Write On using the kids with pencils above. Check out the growing freebie here. I'm linking the freebie with TBA's Freebie Friday so hop over there and check out everyone else's freebies as well.

3. I'm still battling sinus issues and some vertigo but had good headway with doctors visits this week. Then I was able to get a good number of new items finalized and posted to my TPT store this week. Click here to check out some different versions of Write the Math Room.




4. I get back in my classroom on Monday. I'm so excited as it is a new to me classroom. I've been sorting and resorting all summer. 

5. Since it is my last full Friday of vacation, I took my girls to the farm. It was the youngest's first pony ride. The park near us has a 4H petting farm so she loves to pet the goats and we like to visit the zoo. But she got to this.... 
Have a great week.
Jenn


Freebie Fridays

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Is it Fall yet? TPT Sale

Just a quick update with....
Some new items I was able to complete and post.
Fall Kids Write the Math Room and Math games too.




Crunch Series
Check out this project...
Do you think I was having fun with EduClips' Fall Kids set? :) 
And of course, the bundled WRITE THE ALPHABET set.
They are now up on TPT and included in the sale.
Jenn

Friday, August 1, 2014

It is August! Five for Friday

August...Almost Back to School
1. Edu-clips had this great freebie today so I made it into a free bookmark.
2. I'm changing schools for the new year...still in Kindergarten. : ) Before I started bringing in my books and files, I wanted to drop off a little something for the custodial and office staff. So my little one and I took this over this week. I'll get to start moving in the 11th.


3. You've probably heard about the BIG TPT sale.
120 × 125
My TPT store is 20% off August 4 & 5. Don't forget to enter the promo code for the extra TPT discount. I even figured out how to make a banner for the store with different product covers. I'll keep working on it. : )

4. I've finally put my alphabet cards into units for TPT. I've used these all this year. I print them 50% and use in a small pocket chart. My kinders use them to complete an alphabet book center - a folder with circle maps, sentences and handwriting practice. You can check out a free sample as well as download the generic recording sheets. 
Here are some of the recording sheet options.

You can pick up the sets as well:
S to Z
5. I'm glad that it is still SUMMER.

Linking up with Freebie Friday & Five for Friday.
Have a great weekend!


Freebie Fridays
fiveforfriday2_thumb[3]

Friday, July 25, 2014

Five for Friday Vacation Style & Apple Sounds

I'm linking this post up with Five For Friday and Freebie Friday. : ) 
Freebie Fridays


Five for Friday- The last few weeks
1. We went on vacation for 2 days to the BEACH. The sand was too cold for toes but we had fun running up and down it and into the waves.
 
 2.We went to the pool while visiting PapPap. Always use your noodle.

3. I packed up my old classroom getting ready to move into a new one. After moving a few things (including lots of books) in random containers, I to buy packing boxes. Now to get it all organized and into my new classroom.


4. I worked on our county technology connections with some great ladies - formatting, linking, and lots more.

5. A new unit and freebie.
Teachers will use anything to make centers ...especially kitchen supplies. Last year, I made a candy corn phonics center using pie plates. The kids loved sorting into the plates. This made me remember peeling apples and making pies with my grandmother. For this Fall, I made apple sounds sorts with fun sorting mats including ...pie plates.

You can cut the pieces into squares or apple shapes, sort directly in the pie plates or use the apple crate mats.




Here we sorted onto a tree mat.and drew our own.

Check out the complete unit with over 450 apple cards to sort beginning and end sounds, 10 focus sounds with printables, & variety of sorting mats.

Click the preview to download the Freebie Sampler with sample apple cards featuring /m/ and /b/, sorting mat and printables.

Have a great week!
Jenn