Monthly Archives: October 2011
Math work stations
I am in the process of introducing some new activities into our math work station tubs. The children were becoming bored with three or four of the activities, so it was time to change some of them out.
This is an activity from a site called K-5 math resources. I printed out the dinosaur pictures and then cut them apart. The children need to put the numbers back in order to complete the puzzles correctly.
This game is another from the same site. It’s called race to trace. The children each have one of these sheets and they also have a die and a dry erase marker. The first child rolls the die and traces one of the numbers that they roll. They keep taking turns until one of them has traced all their numbers.
This last activity is one I created. It’s called roll a pumpkin. Again the children share one large die but they each have their own pumpkin mat (these can be found on my blog under pattern blocks). They take turns rolling the die and consulting the answer sheet. The answer sheet tells them what block each number corresponds with. They then put that block on their pumpkin sheet and then the other player takes a turn.
Kristen 🙂
Centers/Discovery time
Here is a look at the some of the centers we have going at the end of our day that the children can visit.
Meaningful morning messages
I’ve decided that this is the year I want to work on making my morning messages more meaningful each day. I’ve been working different skills into my morning messages so that it helps me and the children focus in on what our target skill will be for that day/week. This week, we have been focusing on rhyming words.
The children love coming up with words that rhyme with our sight words and try to guess what the word will be that I pick to rhyme with on that day.
Kristen 🙂
Anchor charts
One thing I have promised myself that I would do more of this year is to create anchor charts. I’ve been creating them for our reading, writing, and literacy work station times/areas. Here are some examples
I’ve found that not only do these charts help the students remember what to do, they cut down on lots of behavior problems because the children know exactly what they are supposed to be doing because they suggested the ideas on the chart.
We create these charts together after lots of modeling from the children and myself. Writers workshop has been great so far because the children can tell you exactly what they should be doing and how they should be doing it.
How do you store your anchor charts?
Kristen 🙂
Another idea from Debbie Diller
Another idea that Debbie Diller shared was this one about punctuation and how to help children understand what the various marks mean. I really liked this stop light version because my children can visualize the punctuation mark and then remember the color associated with it.
I tried this idea out today so that I could link the idea of finding commas in our big books with using commas in writing. I also like that it is a ready made anchor chart that the children can refer back to many times in the year. Now I just need more wall space to hang them all up! 🙂
Kristen 🙂
So much to share!
I had the pleasure of seeing Debbie Diller again when she came to talk in my district. She had some great ideas (as always) that I was able to go try in my classroom right away.
This chart is a schema chart. We listed all the things we knew about apples and such before we went to the apple orchard. I told the children that their job at the orchard was to listen for some new information they could add to their schema. Boy, did they do their jobs!
Today we took the copies of the pictures I took on our trip and glued them around the edges to make a border. Thanks to Debbie for that awesome suggestion!!!
I can see using this for so many different topics! The children were/are so proud of their work, both all the things they already knew and all of the things they learned!
Kristen's Kindergarten 