Polar Bear Day

We had our polar bear day today which was really fun! We incorporated polar bear themed science, writing, and reading into our rotations.  For science we made a blubber glove using shortening and dunked it in ice water.  We talked about what blubber is and then made a scientific drawing of our experiment.  At another station we made polar bear snacks using rice cakes and talked about their senses.  We also made a polar bear mitt and talked about how polar bears adapt to the cold weather.  Finally, we had a write the room for polar bears.

                                   

The Little White Owl

Last week, my teaching assistant brought the cutest project for us to do.  It was based on the book The Little White Owl by Tracey Corderoy.  The book talks about being a good friend and acceptance, which I love.  Anytime we can bring in character development is awesome and doing it through books is my favorite way to do it.  We made paper plate owls after reading the book and made an anchor chart on being a good friend.  Each kid also made a cloud with what they will do to be a better friend.  I got my ideas from this blog  and here!  These neon colors make it feel like spring!

Kindergarten Math Games

When I taught fourth grade, I loved playing math games with my class. In kindergarten, math games that are both independent and not too competitive are a little trickier to find.  One of my favorites is called Q-Bitz. It works on spatial reasoning, strategy, and patterning.  I will usually make it a rotation because 10-15 minutes is usually perfect timing for this game.  It also is a game that doesn't have to be "finished" or "won" so it's easy to stop and move onto the next rotation.

My Favorite Reading Street Components

Getting a whole new reading curriculum can be overwhelming, especially when it arrives in about 8 different huge boxes!  I appreciate how each weeks gives us a ton of different materials that all relate to one common topic.  It makes it really fun to focus on one topic for the week and pick and choose which materials work with my kids.  At this point in the year, I've figured out my favorite parts of the Reading Street Curriculum that we've received.  Here are some examples from a week long material on pandas.

The guided readers work really well for my groups that are right at grade level.  They would be way too easy for my higher readers, so I usually pull different materials for those groups.

A fiction and non-fiction read aloud are provided on the topics. They provide great opportunities for our work with retelling, comprehension, and predictions. 

My most used components are either the big books or the retelling cards.  Who doesn't love big books?? The retelling cards are great for using throughout the week to think back on the book we read and identifying important details.  

Secret Morning Messages

For the first half of the year, I do a morning sign in process where my kids come in and write their full name and date on a strip of paper for me.  Sometimes I have them add a short sentence or math problem to their sign ins.  Just to spice things up, we started secret morning messages when we came back from break instead of our name and date slips.  It's similar to Deanna Jump's chit-chat messages, but I have them copy down the message into a journal when they come in.  Here's how our process works:  the kids come in and copy the message into their journals, they then read the message and figure out the missing letters and add them in.  We then discuss the morning message during our carpet time and I have kids come up and fill in the letters and read it to the class.  We work in some great phonological awareness when we're done by filling in our blanks with a random letter and I'll have volunteers read our new silly message.

Happy New Year!

On the first day back from break, I had the class write about something that they would like to learn about in the new year.  We made some sparkly hats and did a worksheet to write about our ideas.  On the top of the hat they wrote "Happy New Year!" and on the bottom line they wrote "In 2014 I will..."

                                  "...walk a dog."                                         "...drive a race car."

I love seeing my independent writers!!

Gingerbread Activities

Our kindergarten has always constructed a life size gingerbread man. We make the dough, roll it out, bake, assemble, and decorate it all with the kids.  I have to give credit for this idea to my teaching partner, Cathy, who came up with this idea and masterfully executes it every year.  Our gingerbread man ended up a little quirkier, but the kids loved it nonetheless.

Before we made the gingerbread we did a comparison of the different types of gingerbread man stories.  I adapted this idea from Deanna Jump's unit.