Monthly Archives: March 2013

Morning Work

I thought I’d share a post about the morning work that my kids complete each morning as they come in my room.  Danielle Kroger from Kroger’s Kindergarten has been creating the BEST morning work packs each month and I’ve been lucky enough to be using them since November.  If I don’t put them out or forget to copy them, my kids let me know…they love them that much.

 

I like that when Danielle creates them, she makes each morning work pack 4 weeks long with enough literacy and math activities to last me an entire month.  I also LOVE them because on Monday, I explain how to complete the work and it’s the same (just different letters and numbers, etc.) for the rest of the week.  The second week builds on the skills practiced in the first week, and then the third builds on the second, and the fourth on the third week.  They are all tied to the Common Core Standards too, so the teacher in me loves them for that reason! 🙂

Danielle has just posted her Spring Morning Work pack, so head to her Tpt store and check it out! 🙂 Her store is having a Spring Cleaning Sale March 30th and 31st, so be sure to head over and check out her morning work!  Also, while you’re there, be sure to check out Danielle’s Spring Emergent Readers–95 pages of spring reading goodness! 🙂

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Kristen 🙂

 

New Center Activities

I went into school to work today (we are on Spring Break) and to check on the tadpoles.  While I was there I copied A LOT of new pages we will be using to write, glue, and illustrate!  I also laminated more than the law allows and brought it all home to cut out. 🙂  Here are some of the new things we will (and have been) using in our Math and Literacy Work Stations.  I’m putting the link to where I got them (if there is one) underneath the picture.

 

Literacy Activities

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We practiced subtraction last week using this song/poem and the kids loved it so much that they asked me to write it down and put it in Pocket Chart Work Station so they could “play” with it more.

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Our chicken eggs arrive next week and I always like to add Humpty Dumpty to the egg mix when we learn about them.  This rhyme will go in our Pocket Chart Station as well.

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We used 5 Green and Speckled Frogs two weeks ago to introduce subtraction.  The kids loved it…so it’s going into Pocket Chart Station as well…along with these guys:

photoThe kids can retell the poem while acting it out.  I’m going to add some velcro to the back of the frogs and the top of the log when I get them back to school. You can get the poem and the frogs in my Ponds and Plants pack. 🙂photo

This activity is also from my Ponds and Plants pack.  This activity can be used in two ways.  You can either show the children the words and have them practice reading them, or you can have the children sort them by middle vowel sound, put them under the correct letter, and then write the words on the included recording sheet.

Math Activities

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I just made this this week and you can get them here. The children match up the sum with the math sentence and then write their work on the included recording sheet (it’s at school. 🙂  ).

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How many more to get to 10?  This activity helps children learn to see quantities quickly on a ten frame and to visually help see how many more they need to get to ten.  After adding the green flowers, children record their work on the recording sheet.  The recording sheet asks the child to record both the ten frame work and the math sentence that shows their work (ex: 3+7=10).

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These awesome cards are part of a pack I purchased from my blogging friend Kathleen Pedersen from Growing Kinders! You MUST own this pack!  In addition to these “I have, Who has” teen number cards, Kathleen has booklets for all the teen numbers (11-20) designed to help your kiddos master them!  I printed off the entire pack and copied most of the activities…I’ll share those when they are in use. 🙂

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Next up are these awesome cards by another blogging friend Greg from Kindergarten Smorgasboard! These are from Greg’s Snapping Numbers, Composing and Decomposing Numbers.  These cards represent just two of the activities in this huge pack!  I’ll be hitting up my favorite LEGO store later this weekend to score some of these bricks off the pick-a-brick wall (I love that wall!)

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I’m a LEGO nerd at heart and it helps my obsession that my 8 year old is too! 🙂

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This is one of our new Promethean Board activities for Math.  It includes both addition and subtraction activities and the kids love them!  I got this at Lakeshore down the street from my school, but I can’t remember right now what the name is…

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Found it!  It’s called Beginning Operations.  Here is a shot from Lakeshore’s website.

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This pond roll and cover sheet has funny story behind it.  I set out to make something that resembled a lily pad and got that finished.  Because I was so tired, I started adding cattails and grass around the edges to finish up my pond.  Then I colored it green…still thinking that it was a lily pad, but also thinking it was a pond.  So now it’s either a really big lily pad, or a pond pad, a mix of a pond and a lily pad! 🙂  The children roll the two dice and cover the sum with a cube. 🙂

photoThis activity is also from Lakeshore (if anyone from Lakeshore is reading this, I LOVE your store and would LOVE to be a spokesperson for you or guinea pig some of your new products! 🙂  )

The children use two different colors of linking cubes (included) and then write all those combinations down on the opposite side of the card.

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Here is our Frog Dice Toss activity.  The children roll the two pocket dice and then write the two numbers down along with the sum.

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This is Subtraction Bowling…the latest craze to hit our Kindergarten classroom!!  The children set up the 10 pins and then roll the sphere at them.  They count the number of pins (cups) that fall down and record that on their recording sheet.  I found this activity through a pin on Pinterest, from a site called What the Teacher Wants.  Click the words above to go there. 🙂photo

I thought they would throw the sphere everywhere, but with lots of careful modeling, they did an awesome job! 🙂  They were so engaged too! 🙂

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These are our Domino Mats I got in my Math Swap last summer.  I pinned the idea on Pinterest from Kindergarten, Kindergarten. photo

We’ve been using the mats for about a month now, to get us warmed up to the idea of addition with the amounts on the dominoes.  I decided to step it up a level by asking the kiddos to record their work on this recording sheet.  It’s not available yet, but I’m working (slowly) on a pack of domino ideas and this will be in it> 🙂

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This is Dunk it Dominoes again.  I’ve shown it before in this post, but I wanted to show you that I also added the same recording sheet here in this station as well.  The kids were getting done earlier than everyone else and they were truly trying to dunk the dominoes from far away, so I added this sheet. 🙂  They can now slow down, take their time, and show me they are working on mastering their addition facts. 🙂

This was a long post! 😉  If you’re still reading, thanks for sticking with me! 🙂

What are your favorite Literacy and Math Activities you can’t live without right now?

Kristen 🙂

Ponds and Plants

I just finished up (finally!) a new 72 page pack about Ponds and Plants.  Lots of math, literacy, and science notebook activities are included along with recording sheets for each activity.  Click the picture below to check it out! 🙂Screen Shot 2013-03-26 at 8.18.20 PM Screen Shot 2013-03-26 at 8.19.48 PM Screen Shot 2013-03-26 at 8.18.56 PM Screen Shot 2013-03-26 at 8.21.01 PM Screen Shot 2013-03-26 at 8.20.24 PM Screen Shot 2013-03-26 at 8.20.05 PM Screen Shot 2013-03-26 at 8.18.43 PM Screen Shot 2013-03-26 at 8.19.08 PM Screen Shot 2013-03-26 at 8.19.35 PM Screen Shot 2013-03-26 at 8.19.22 PM Screen Shot 2013-03-26 at 8.20.37 PM Screen Shot 2013-03-26 at 8.20.50 PM

 

Kristen 🙂

Spring Problem Solving Pack

I finally got the new problem solving pack done!  It snowed here last night, into today, 9 inches! So much for the first day of my Spring Break!  It is supposed to be in the 50’s by Saturday though…still…it’s Spring!! 🙂

This pack is designed to cover April and May.  It’s got 45 activities in it…and assuming you’re in school every weekday from April 1st to the end of May, you will have one for each of the 42 days that are included in that time. 🙂

Here are some pictures of the new pack.  If you click on any of them, it will take you to my Tpt site where you can purchase it for your own.  It is a little more expensive than my other packs, but it contains 2 months worth of activities, so I priced it accordingly. 🙂  It covers a wide range of Common Core Standard skills and I made each activity last at least a week, so you can really practice each skill with your students. 🙂

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Let me know what you think!

Kristen 🙂

Simple Addition

Here is a quick and simple idea I’ve been using to help my kiddos who are struggling with writing addition and subtraction equations:
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I gave each of them 10 of a different color of cubes (but you could use anything!).  I asked them to show me a particular math sentence, first with cubes and then to write an equation for it.  They picked up pretty quickly, now we will just review everyday, until I’m sure they understand. 🙂
How do you practice addition and subtraction with your kiddos?  What materials do you use?
Kristen 🙂

Ladybugs

We are still hard at work on collecting information for our ladybug report.  Along with collecting information, we have been writing it down on post-it-notes and posting it on our R.A.N chart:
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Initially, we made notes about all the things we thought we knew about ladybugs.  After a few days of researching, the kiddos had to find out if what they thought they knew was true or not (and had to find information to back it up).  If it was true (since we are working on writing an informational text) they got to move it to the middle column.  If they learned new information, they wrote that on a post-it note and put that in the new learning column.  We will use this chart to help us collect information about our own insects after Spring Break.
Kristen 🙂

You Tube

If you haven’t checked out all the great resources you can use in your classroom on YouTube, you SHOULD!  Here are some of my favorites! 🙂

This is one of our FAVORITES!! On Friday, we have a little dance party while counting–my kids have some moves! 🙂

The 3D Shape Song:

The Short Vowel Song:

This is a recent find and we are loving it!  The kids sing it all day. 🙂

We use these Just Dance for Kids videos for our Brain Breaks

Kung Fu Fighting:

The Hamster Dance:

I’ll add more as I find them, but these are videos we use everyday in my classroom. 🙂

Kristen 🙂

I think I’m in love….

…with The Quietest Classroom Pencil Sharpener!  Troy sent me one to try out in my Kindergarten classroom and it’s seriously one of my new favorite things!  The kids stood in line just so they could use it and they still bring me pencils to sharpen even when they don’t need to be, just so they can use it!

If you’re not familiar with this awesome pencil sharpener, you should be!  I could sharpen pencils ALL day!

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I love the red color!  It’s so easy to use, my K kids caught on in about 5 minutes.  All you do is pull the metal part out, pinch the black squares at the top and start twisting the handle!  It sharpens in about 1/4 of the time that my old electric sharpener did and the point is much finer using this sharpener.  The best part is that it even sharpens those cheap dollar store pencils like butter!  You can also secure the sharpener to the table or other flat surface, but I like being able to take it with me and my kids are able to come get it, sharpen their pencil and bring it back to me.  I also love how many “scraps” the clear bin at the bottom holds.  Seriously, we must of sharpened 30 pencils when I took this picture and it’s not even half full! It is REALLY quiet!  I can’t believe that I was sharpening pencils and didn’t disturb any of my kiddos while they were at work!  I usually only sharpen before and after school on my electric sharpener because the noise is so loud!  Oh, and that annoying arm vibration you get from your electric sharpener–gone!  A few cranks of the easy to use handle and you are all sharpened! 🙂

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The kids really like that the metal part on the front that holds their pencil lets them know when their pencil is sharpened.  I like it too, because they can get back to their work. 🙂

You can’t beat the price either!  $24.99 for one of these beauties!  My husband tried to steal this sharpener from me, so I think I’m going to need to get one for him too! 🙂

You can check out Classroom Friendly Supplies here.  Be sure to tell Troy that I sent you. 🙂

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Kristen 🙂

Tadpoles

Here are our tadpoles that have recently hatched!  We got them as eggs and now they are making their Promethean Board big screen debut! 🙂

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I put them on the ELMO (visual presenter) and projected their cute little picture up on the Promethean Board so my kiddos could observe them a little closer and write about them in their science notebooks.  They are about the size of a large grain of rice. 🙂photo

Frog Freebies

I’m SLOWLY working on getting my Pond/Frog unit done and ready to go…most of it is on the to-do list for Spring Break (along with the April Problem Solving Pack), but I thought I would give you a preview of some of the things that will be included. 🙂

Here is a simple addition game that you can download that’s all froggy themed. 🙂  Print out one or two copies of the frog squares and insert them into your pocket dice:

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If you print two copies, your children can add up to 12, but up to 6 if you just print one copy.  I’ve also included a recording sheet for you. 🙂

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Click here to download the froggy dice. 🙂

Let me know what you think. 🙂

Kristen 🙂

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