Monthly Archives: September 2012
Sound Eggs
This week, we’ve been learning about using our 5 senses. One of the activities we did was to listen to items that I had hidden inside plastic eggs. (Thanks to my friends on the TT Kinderland blog for helping me out with that one!). I put 4 different objects into 8 different eggs (4 of the eggs had the same things as the other 4 eggs).
First, my kiddos listened as I shook the eggs and tried to guess what was inside. We then created a flipchart and drew eggs on them as my kiddos did the same thing in their science notebooks.
These are my horrible drawings showing 1. paperclips, 2. plastic math tile, 3. marble, and 4. 2 pennies. After we drew pictures of what we thought was in the first 4 eggs, we shook the next four and drew them (the ones shown in green). We then drew lines in our science notebooks to match up the eggs that were alike. The kids wanted to see what was inside the eggs, so after that we opened them up.
Kristen 🙂
Roll, Say & Write
I just created a new game for my K kids to play the week after next to work on their lowercase letter recognition. It’s called Roll, Say & Write. I have an old version of this game using uppercase letters I got from somewhere, but I could not find a lowercase version. My K kids seem to know their uppercase letters, so lowercase is now my focus.
Head on over to my Teacher’s Pay Teachers store to purchase it! 🙂
Kristen 🙂
Kindergarten Common Core
I don’t know about you, but I’m always looking for ways to improve my teaching of the Common Core Math & Language Arts standards in Kindergarten. I’ve found a great resource that can help!
The people over at Common Core State Standards have just released their new Common Core Standards Workbook that has LOADS of activities, worksheets, and posters to help you teach the Common Core Math & Language Arts standards in Kindergarten.
You can click click here {Kindergarten Common Core} to find out more about this awesome resource.
Make sure you check it out!
Kristen 🙂
Pinterest Idea
I found this great organizer on Pinterest:
I wanted to make one, so I sent my husband off to Goodwill to find a used stand like this one or some buckets we could repaint to make cute. No luck, so off to Target he went and he came back with this exact stand! He also picked up some buckets from the Dollar Spot there and after some spray paint, the whole thing looks like this:
It was really difficult to keep my son’s supplies for homework from vanishing. This way, he can take the bucket he needs (my husband took the handles off the blue and pink buckets so they would take up less room) and bring it back when he’s done. This sits on the counter in our dining room and now his supplies are ready when he is!
I think they used soup cans that had been spray painted in the original and if I had eaten enough soup, I would have used those!
I think it took me probably 10 minutes to put this together, but about 1 hour while waiting for the spray paint to dry.
The stand was $19 and the buckets were $1 each, so the entire project was under $30. We had the spray paint from another project, so that didn’t cost anything. 🙂
Kristen 🙂
Target Dollar Spot
I found these awesome wipe off boards in two sizes in the Target Dollar Spot last week:
I thought the bigger ones would be perfect for small group work. I purchased 5 of them.
The smaller ones came in packs of 4, so I got enough for a class set. I thought it would be fun to practice writing our names on them or for showing me an answer to a question. 🙂
What would you use them for?
Kristen 🙂
Apple Baskets
I’ve posted a new product in my Teachers Pay Teachers store:
Apple Baskets:
Here’s what they look like after they are all laminated and ready to use (pom-poms are not included):
The children place the correct number of pompoms on each apple basket according to the number printed on the basket. Click here if you’d like to purchase your own set–all you have to do it laminate and cut out and they are ready to go!! 🙂
Kristen 🙂
Counting Plates
This is a picture of another swap that I received this summer:
I am going to use it as one of my Math Work Stations. The plates have dots on them and the children take the correct number of color bears and place them on the dots. There are also number cards that the children match to each plate. I like this because it really works on the Counting and Cardinality standards for Kindergarten.
Kristen 🙂
Melting Ice Cubes
This week, we melted different color ice cubes and then mixed the resulting colored water together. We put our goggles on (because that’s what scientists do!):
I made the ice cubes using food coloring and these ice cube trays:
We made predictions about what we thought would happen while we watched the ice cubes melt. Some thought that one ice cube would melt and fill up the whole cup. Others said it would change to a new color. Some of the children thought we were going to let the ice cubes melt and then drink the juice that resulted.
We had to wait until the following day to check back on the ice cubes. We talked about what happened (they melted) and the differences. We drew in our science notebook a picture of how the ice cubes and cups looked when we started and then how they looked after they melted.
We also drew a picture in our science notebooks to show what happened when we poured red water into blue water, blue water into yellow water, and red water into yellow water. The kids were also curious about what happened when we mixed all the colors, so we did that too! 🙂
Kristen 🙂
Sesame Street
We’ve been playing lots of the sorting games on Sesamestreet.org. We really like the “Elmo’s Laundry” game and “Bert’s Bottlecaps”.
Here is a picture of Elmo’s Laundry. Elmo gives the kids a description of how to sort the laundry (it keeps getting more difficult each round they play). It might say “pants with white stripes” and the kids tap the laundry that matches that description. It falls into Elmo’s laundry basket and then they tap the next one. It starts out with underwear, so they all get a kick out of that! See the tiny green button just to the right of the laundry game? If you tap/click that, it will make the game screen larger, helping us to reach on the Promethean Board. This game has been bookmarked on my student computers so they can all play it there during Math Work Stations.
Here is “Bert’s Bottlecaps”. The kids have to sort Bert’s bottlecaps based on the attributes he gives them. This one was red objects on the left, animals on the right, and red animals in the middle. This one is a little bit harder, but once the kids catch on, they really do well!
I also like that it’s free and there are no ads that pop up on this site! 🙂
Kristen 🙂
Science Notebooks-color mixing
We started our Science Notebooks this week and our 2nd entry was a color mixing sheet. I shrink each sheet down (78.5%) on our copy machine and it fits perfectly in our composition notebooks.
I’ll upload this sheet later (it’s on my computer at school).
What I like the most is that I can put my Science Notebook on my ELMO (visual presenter):
and project it on my Promethean Board for everyone to see:
This is a really zoomed in look–I was reminding everyone to put the date in their notebooks because that’s what an actual scientist would do. 🙂
Kristen 🙂
Kristen's Kindergarten 