Freebies and Linking Up

Freebies & Linkys
It has been a long few weeks for me at home and at school. So I have a few freebies for you. : ) I am linking up with Five for Friday; TBA's Freebie Friday, Manic Monday & Coast to Coast Kinder's WOW Wednesday.

First, I do not speak French. Our school is in the PYP certification process and our school district funds a part-time French teacher. Kindergarten doesn't get any instruction. However, I decided to try and put together a center with spring words in English & French.  My class was thrilled to get this center added as a Write the Room. I love these frames from Teaching in the Tongass. You may have seen the rainbow ones in my Rainbow Reading.

My disclaimer: I do not speak French so if you see an error in my word choices, please email me. : ) If you are a native speaker and think of other great garden/spring words, feel free to email me.  
 You can get the freebie here. 


Second, we are studying plants. We are growing them for our Science project. Our class chose the medium as the variable (soil, dirt, sand, empty pot, rocks). Thankfully, the fish tanks from our Science kit are making mini-greenhouses because plants don't grow well in my classroom. The pea plants have even survived over-watering. Bonus: We learned the dirt turns to mud when you add too much water.

Third, we loved learning that we eat roots. My class' favorite root veggies: radishes and carrots. For morning work this week, we added to color the code. We always write sentences on the back. So for these, we wrote word problems. I pick 5 carrots and 3 radishes. How many in all? The kinders can use rebus pictures in the sentences. Then they showed how to solve their problem.

You can get 2 different versions for free from my TPT store here. Both featuring these cuties from Kari Bolt's Gardening set.

Fourth, we have Math meeting after new games and workstations. We don't do a lot of questions every day but sometimes we have long discussions. A change in our schedule has allowed for some parallel teaching and the class requested trying small group games as opposed to just partners. Some questions we reflect on alot include: 
What materials did you chose to use? Would something else have worked better? 
What worked with the game? What didn't work with the game? 
What would you change? Why? 
What strategy or hint did you use that might help a classmate?
Did you preserve?
What problems did you have? How did you try to solve it? Were you able to?
What did you do that helped your partner?

It vary your math meetings, try using question cards. Go to my Facebook page and download this freebie. Click on the April Freebie tab. The "phones" have blank bubbles for you to write your own questions. The picture above is an example. As a freebie, it is a pdf and you are not able to type in it.  Laminate the colored pages for a wipe-on and off response sheets or print the b/w for students to write answers on. Kids and teachers from Educlips & Phones from Ashley Hughes.

Fifth, I am joining in the Spring Cleaning (even if the weather is not Springy here) & having a 15% off sale at TPT. I love the toadstools in Krista's springy sets.

Have a great week!
Jenn