Fun With Gingerbread Men, December Centers & Tallying

We kicked off the month with the always fun and interactive, gingerbread unit! The kids enjoyed reading many different versions of the gingerbread man and even got to decorate their very own gingerbread cookie!

Below is a picture of a sequencing activity that the class worked on after reading, The Gingerbread Boy.

This year was the first year I read Jan Brett's, The Gingerbread Baby. It was a huge hit! I would highly recommend adding this book to your personal library..such a fun and cute twist on a classic, holiday story! Below is another picture of a sequencing mini-reader we worked on together. We will be spending a lot of time working on sequencing the remainder of the year. The ability to comprehend and retell a story is an extremely important skill needed for kindergarten.

After reading about gingerbread men all week, we summarized some of the things we read about and made a craft to go along with it. I must apologize for the craft looking a little on the spooky side! I'm still trying to figure out why they ended up looking like clowns. Teacher oopsie :).

The only way to end a week about gingerbread men is by eating gingerbread! Everyone enjoyed decorating their cookies and sneaking in some M&M's :).

Below are some pictures from our December centers. The kids will be working on: beginning letter sounds, greater than/less than, addition, non-standard measurement, numbers 1-20 recognition, number writing, tallying and sight word games.

Last week we started our "tallying" math unit and we will continue with it the next two weeks. We are using popsicle sticks to help make this tricky concept a little more hands-on. Not only is tallying challenging because it involves some unusual steps, but it also requires the ability to count by fives. We learned a short poem/song to help us remember when to "slash" the group of tallies. We also played a game called, "show me the tallies" (I write a number on the whiteboard and they have to show me the number in tally form with the popsicle sticks). 

With all this work, we had to throw in a little fun :). Below is a picture of a student who is working on a "countdown to Christmas" chain. 

October Update

October is such a busy month (both in school and life), so I apologize about this long overdue update. Enjoying the pumpkin patches, spending time with family, eating everything pumpkin and renovating a home took over this past month!

We have been a group of busy bees this month. We started the month learning about the different types of community helpers, specifically the firefighter. The Lake Zurich Fire Department even paid a visit to our school! We also learned all about pumpkins and even carved one for our classroom. Enjoy a little snapshot of the beginning of the month :).

Sight word readers are always a great way to kick off a unit. It allows for sight word reinforcement, all while learning about our topic for the week.

Labeling helps children recognize that words have meaning. Below is a picture of a student's work from our firefighter unit.

My (funny) attempt at drawing a firefighter :). We talked about the different parts of a firefighter and then labeled it together.

Wearing firefighter attire is no joke! That stuff is HEAVY and HOT! Hats off to our servicemen who put their lives at risk to help keep us all safe. 

We loved learning about all the different parts of the fire engine!

And we had to have one funny face picture :)...

We read the story, The Five Little Pumpkins and worked on sequencing the parts of the story. We sequenced the speech bubbles and created a cute, little craft to go along with it :)!

Can you guess what we will end the month learning about :)?

Academic Centers

Every afternoon the students are paired together and they complete "academic centers". These centers build upon what we are working on in the classroom. The centers also change every few weeks depending upon the material. I love center time for three huge reasons:

1. It is a GREAT way to differentiate a child's work.

2. I meet with my "small group" (a time where I meet with two students at a time). 

3. The students learn how to problem solve and work in a "team" setting.

I could go on and on about how valuable this time is, but I will spare you the chatter and just show you how great they are :).

Below is a picture of two students playing a letter name/phonics board game.

Here is a child working with bears on completing AB, ABBA and ABC patterns.

Number 1-20 number recognition is a lot more fun when you are fishing for them!

These two are working on color words while playing a game of memory.

This group is working on letter formation with allergen free playdough (greatest creation)!

Color words are a lot more fun to learn when you get to stamp them out!

These are only a few of the great centers we are working on. 

Check back this week for even more :).

Fun with Ten Frames!

As a teacher, I find that ten frames are the greatest teaching tool in math. Not only are the kids learning how to subitize, but they are also learning how to slow themselves down while counting items (one to one correspondence). For the next two weeks we will be working with ten frames. We have spent the last week learning what a ten frame is and how to count each circle within a ten frame to find the amount. This week the students will continue working on that skill, however they will also learn what to do when they are given the number first as opposed to the circles.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? I See Colors Everywhere!

For the past two weeks we have have learned all about our color words. We spent the week focusing on the Brown Bear, Brown Bear story series which is all about the color words. It is also a great series for teaching fluency. We learned how to use the word wall in our classroom to help us spell things, as well as the color anchor charts. Below is a little snapshot of some of the fun things we did in class :).

We used a die that only had color words on it. The kids really enjoyed learning their color words, all while playing a game with a friend!

Below is the project we ended the unit with.....our crayon friends! Each student responded to the prompt, "My favorite color is ________". Aren't these the cutest things you have ever seen? 

Happy birthday, Jill!

Happy 5th birthday to this little gal, Jill! I love that your cute, chevron leggings match our birthday backdrop :)!

Happy Birthday, Luke!

Happy 5th birthday to this little cutie, Luke! We hope you had a wonderful day :)!

Happy Birthday, Ryan!

Happy 5th birthday to this little fella, Ryan! We enjoyed celebrating YOU today :)!

Tuesday's Talk

If you had a chance to take a peak at the blog this morning, you probably noticed that I gave you a "sneak peek" at what I introduced to the class this morning. Today was our first day of poetry journals! Each child received his/her own journal with a poem of the day in it. For the next two weeks our journals will contain poems all about colors (as we are learning about color words). We will only use our poetry journals on Monday, Wednesday and Friday (of course we start off schedule!). These journals will expose the students to new and old sight words, while working on fluency when reading. They really enjoyed their first day with them!

Red

Red is a stop 

sign.

Red is a rose.

Red is an apple,

And a funny, clown's nose.

Below is a picture of the math activity for today. This week I introduced a lesson on the different ways numbers can be represented (dominoes, dice, etc.). This is to work on the skill of subitizing (Illinois Early Learning State Standard). Subitizing is "instantly seeing how many." From a Latin word meaning suddenly, subitizing is the direct perceptual apprehension of the numerosity of a group. 

In this activity, the students were paired up and used one die to play the game. Eventually, the class will play this game using two die (or dice) to work on subitizing and addition.

Sneak Peek!

Today we started something new and exciting! Below is a "sneak peek" at something your son/daughter started this morning. Swing by the blog this afternoon for more details on what we are doing with these fun, little notebooks this year!

An Applelicious Week

Last week we wrapped up our two week apple unit. The class really enjoyed diving into the literature and interacting with the material through crafts, writing and science experiments. Below is a picture of the book we read to kick off our apple unit.

We read about where an apple comes from and documented the seasons of an apple tree. We learned what a label is and why we label things. We practiced this skill through labeling the parts of an apple.

Although in my "teacher brain" I would like to think the class enjoyed creating a web and learning about labels (wink, wink), I think the most enjoyable part for them was being able to dissect an apple :). 

 

Below are two pictures of some students working on their apple math and science journals. They loved using new science and math materials!

We wrapped up the unit with an apple art project. We read our last apple story and talked about the different ways an illustrator can represent an apple. In the story we read the illustrator used quilts. We loved observing the pictures!

I think we can officially say we are now apple experts :)!