Category Archives: Graphing
Grid/Graph
I created this sheet to use in my Kindergarten student’s binders next year. I want them to be able to graph various things and not use so much paper. They can use dry erase markers to fill in the boxes and we can use this graph over and over again.
I also designed it to be used at a new Literacy Work Station I’ve recently created. I haven’t settled on it’s name yet, but it will be one of the following:
Word Family Work Station
Rhyming Work Station
Sight Words Work Station
This grid can be used for Roll-A-_____ games (word family games, rhyming words, sight words, etc.) and can be customized to what ever you need it to be. At this point it’s blank, but as the year goes on, (next school year), I’ll post them as I make them, and then there will be an entire collection of them! 🙂
I am hopeful that it will work when you download it-I made it in Word and it’s just a table with nothing in it, so let me know if you are able to use it.
Please also let me know how you use it or plan to use it and I can make a list for everyone to share ideas with! 🙂
Lucky Charms Graphing
Here are the pictures–a little bit late…
I made the graphing sheet and sorting sheet MANY years ago and we always end up having to scribble out some picture of a marshmallow and adding whatever the new “special” marshmallow is for that year. I can’t find it yet (still looking on my computer) so when I do, I will come back and edit that in for you–there’s always next year! 🙂
Kristen 🙂
Shake The Beans
Today, during our Math time, I introduced Shake the Beans (3). I like to introduce it as close to Dr. Seuss Day as I can because I use red and white for my colors. I don’t know where this game came from, where it got its start, but I just love it and we will be playing it pretty much everyday from here on to the end of the year. I could not find my sheets for adding to 3 and 4, so I had to make new ones:
To play you need beans that have been spray painted on one side (I use red). If you are playing STB 3 you would need 3 beans.
I have the children color the first number in the number sentence red so that they can visually see what number needs to be red. They shake the beans and separate red from white. I then ask them to remember that RED ALWAYS COMES FIRST! and we repeat this over and over. They look at their beans and tell me the number they have red and then the number they have white. They then need to locate the correct number sentence. So if you had 2 red and 1 white you would need to find the number sentence that said 2+1=3 (and the 2 would have been colored red). They write that number sentence in the box above the number sentence and continue until they get 1-2 winners (or columns to the top).
It’s much easier to explain in person so if you have any questions or I’ve confused you terribly, let me know! 😉
Kristen 🙂
Dr. Seuss’s Birthday 3/2/09
We will be celebrating Dr. Seuss’s birthday along with many others tomorrow and here’s what we will be doing:
I will be dressing up like The Cat! I wear all black and my red and white striped stove pipe hat–no paint or anything! 🙂
Here is the link to Seussville.com (there are TONS of printables there and games for the kids to play online)
The Kinder. kids will be rotating through 6 stations, one for each table in my room. I will lay it all out in the AM, but generally here’s what the stations will entail:
Station 1: The students will color a white hat with red stripes (I’ll photo tomorrow) and then we will staple it on a pink/red sentence strip.
Station 2: The students will color and cut out a red bow tie and a button that says “I’m Hooked On Reading” (from Copycat Magazine)
Station 3: The students will complete a maze I got years ago from Seussville.com and try to get the cat back to his hat.
Station 4: The students will play the -at family word game and tally the number of times they roll each word
Station 5: The students will create a door hanger for their bedroom door so their family knows not to disturb them when reading! (from Copycat Magazine)
Station 6: The students will complete a rhyming sheet, matching two pictures that rhyme in the -at and -an families (from Teacher’s Helper Magazine)
We will be reading Dr. Seuss books all day long and listening to books on tape as well! Afterwards, we will graph our favorite Dr. Seuss book!
What do you do?
Stay tuned for pictures tomorrow! 🙂
Kristen 🙂
President’s Day #4 and #5
Thursday, we completed the graph that went with our Patten Block Snowflake (PDF page under “P”).
We also read Silly Sally and I showed the children how to act out the story using the Drama Props. We also did Cut Up Sentences and we really got some of the sentences mixed up! 🙂 We also completed our first 6×6 Sudoku puzzle (using shapes) and have started on another one.
We also checked in on the Monarch Butterflies in Mexico and watched a slideshow from www.journeynorth.org
We watched a movie about Dental Health and will talk more about that and Nutrition next week. I reviewed some of the basic topics covered in the movie (I got it from Colgate a few years ago, along with teeth brushing booklets and toothpaste samples and coupons and a board game). They still offer them, however you have to request them in September to be sure to get them in February each year. They are available in English and Spanish.
I also spent some time after school organizing my books by month/theme. They were like this already on the bookshelf, but I couldn’t find them when I needed them, so I decided to switch to this:
I’m still working on it, but basically each month has it’s own tub/or theme has it’s own tub and they are in the order that I use them in the year. I am in the process of dumping things out of other tubs to steal them to use for this project! 🙂 When the month changes, I can just pull the tub I need and set it on my bench and pull books from there all month long and then put it back on the shelf when I’m done with it and pull the next tub. I also need to have a general tub for books that can be read anytime. My hope is to take up some of the next shelf as well and add more books to each tub that are scattered around the room in several places. Today, after school, I plan on tackling the Library Work Station to reclaim my Arthur and Clifford books–hey, those are in tubs–I can steal those tubs too! 🙂
On Friday, I had the children play a different heads/tails game:
The children had to shake a penny in their small Dixie cup and then pour it out gently on their paper. They then had to cut out the appropriate picture and glue it on their graph. After 10 minutes, I stopped them and they totaled up their graphs and wrote those numbers down. We again, made a class graph to show the results of everyone’s papers and found that heads was again, most likely to come up! 🙂
I also introduced the children to a game I learned from my friend Karen Berman, called Enchanted Forest:
You will need Attribute Blocks:
or some other manipulative that has at least two attributes (like these farm animals have two sizes and are 8 kinds of animals, and come in several colors):
Here’s how you play:
1. Each child randomly picks one attribute block (I dump them all out on the floor and have a few children at a time choose one)
2. They put the block on the floor in front of them and you look to see what attributes you have to choose from (thick, thin, red, blue, yellow, big, little, etc.)
3. Choose an attribute and do not tell the children what it is. (for example, thin, yellow shapes) You can pick one, two, or three attributes.
4. Have each child one at a time ask you, “Will this key get me into the Enchanted Forest?”
5. If the shape meets your criteria, then you answer yes and that child lays their shape on the floor in front of you.
6. If you say “No”, then the child returns the shape to you and you put it away.
7. Let everyone have a chance to ask and then ask if anyone knows what the “key” was.
8. I then put the shapes back on the floor and we play again and again and again! They beg to play! 🙂
Have a great weekend!
Kristen 🙂
Presidents Day #2 and #3
I was out this week on Tuesday and it was just chaos in my room and I cringe thinking about the guest teacher I had that day. 😦 They did complete the Pattern Block Snowflake and several Sudoku puzzles while I was away. You can find the snowflake on the PDF page under “P”. Click on it twice to make it actual size.
Wednesday, I was back and we picked up with President’s Day activities again.
The children played a game where they had to stand a penny on it’s side and then bump the table. They tallied whether it fell heads or tails side up. I let them do this for 15 minutes and then we counted up our tallies on our papers and wrote that number at the bottom. We then brought our papers to the floor and tallied up what everyone had written down and made a class total. In our room, the penny was much more likely to fall heads side up.
I got this page from a Scholastic teacher book about July I think (it’s thin and blue–they have them for all the Holidays and other special days)
We also read Silly Sally and I showed the children the drama props I have to go with the story. We talked about right side up and upside down. We also completed our Predictable Chart titled, “Silly Sally can…” and touch read the sentences. Lots of the day was spent playing catch up from Tuesday when NOTHING got done…not even calendar! 😦
Kristen 🙂
If You Give A Mouse A Cookie
This week, we have been reading If You Give A Mouse A Cookie:
We used it to make our Predictable Chart:
Monday, we took a picture walk through the story and then I read it aloud. We had 1/2 of the class finish the sentence on the Chart.
Tuesday, we retold the story and then Choral Read it aloud. The second 1/2 of the class finished their sentence.
Wednesday, we used props to tell the story and then touch read the sentences aloud.
Thursday, we echo read the story and then did cut up sentences.
Friday, we read the story one last time, acted it out and then we made a class book using the sentences from our Predictable Chart.
We’ve also been learning about Abraham Lincoln and celebrated his 200th birthday. We looked a the 4 new pennies that are being released in honor of the day and read a book about pennies (see below). We also read a book called Honest Abe (see below) and the children had a good discussion about honesty. Pictured below are the books that we have been reading this week (a few will be next week!)
This is my favorite book about Money–in pictures it shows the process of how coins are made–very cool! 🙂
This is my MOST favorite book about Abraham Lincoln–it’s written for a young child’s level (I usually leave out some of the details about how he died from the story though), but has just the right amount of details and the pictures are interesting to look at (they’re all paintings).
Monday, I introduced my students to the wonderful world of Sudoku. We started with a 4×4 puzzle and have worked our way to a 6×6 puzzle and the children did a great job! 🙂 Tuesday, I gave them a blank 4×4 puzzle and they were able to finish 2 on their own. I got several Sudoku books at Books-A-Million and also at Borders and Barnes & Noble in the kids section. I also found one last year at BAM called “Sum-doku”. The children have to add while filling in the boxes in the puzzle, so the sums have to add up across and down–way to hard for most Kinder. kids, but I had several students a few years ago who LOVED them! 🙂 Some days I put them on the overhead, ELMO or I just hand them a copy. We are all addicted now! 🙂
Tuesday, we did another Sudoku puzzle and then finished our pattern block heart (found on the PDF page under “P” or do a search on my site for “Pattern Blocks” and it will come up.
Wednesday, we completed the graph that went along with the heart.
Thursday, we sorted, counted, added, and graphed our candy hearts. Those pages can be found in my last post (below this one):
Friday, we also did our Roll-A-Valentine (see 2 posts below for the sheet we used).
I also introduced a new Literacy Work Station called Playdough Station. We were having trouble keeping Name Work Station organized, so we substituted this one in it’s place:
I explained to the children that this station is meant to help develop their fine motor skills (we talked about what that means) and help them become better readers and writers in the process. There are laminated file folders with numbers, shapes, and squiggles, as well as rings of upper and lower case letters and sight words for them to form with playdough as well.
Next week, we will be reading Silly Sally! 🙂
Kristen 🙂
Graphing/Sorting Candy Hearts
Here are two sheets I used today with my students to sort and graph candy hearts. I also have them pattern with the hearts and find other ways to sort than by color (phrase, icon, etc.) Click on them once and then when that image pops up, click again to make it actual size.
Enjoy!
Kristen 🙂
The GBM Day 8 and 9
Last week, we wrapped up our GBM theme with letters from 2 more countries. Germany and The North Pole.
I started off the week knowing where we wanted to end up, so I decided that our theme would be Polar Animals. We read a Big Book:
and this got us started.
We then made a KWL chart so I would better be able to focus my instruction:
We then read several books over 3 days about Polar Animals:
During our whole GBM theme, we were keeping track of all the places we learned about with the GBM’s travels: (it is not updated)
Look what was also delivered to our room this week:
The GBM also shared with us that there are no penguins at the North Pole, but there are ice bergs. I showed the children how to make them:
After reading one of our books on Polar Bears, some of the children wanted to know what the predators of Polar Bears were. I was telling them about how humans are the only predators of the PB. They wanted to know more about how we were hurting PB’s, so I showed them how acid rain and other chemicals we put into the air/rain are melting the icebergs:
This blue water was meant to represent the chemicals we put into the air.
The children were asked to see how fast the ice berg would melt with the “chemicals”.
We then got another round of icebergs and put salt on those (acid rain) and compared how fast they melted:
We graphed our favorite Polar Animals (don’t you love my spur of the moment drawings???!!! I can’t draw!)
This is our package from Germany!
We were left with instructions how to make cinnamon applesauce ornamanets. I decided to show my kids how to do this without measuring anything! Bad idea!!! We ended up adding all sorts of extra things (oats, glue, powerded tempra paint, more cinnamon) to get it to thicken and harden, but after leaving it over night, no such luck. Next year, I’ll measure!! 🙂 Lesson Learned!
We also colored and hung these NOEL banners I made a few years ago, but the GBM brought them this time!
We got a package from the GBM on Wednesday (we are in our jammies). He sent us our last package from the North Pole. Inside was a copy of the Polar Express movie, the soundtrack, tickets to ride the Polar Express, a letter and these puzzles:
The children had to work in their table groups to put them together. It was very intersting to see who took charge and divided up the pieces and who just sat there waiting for direction. It took them about 10 minutes to get it all together. We did this as a time filler right before lunch and after their puzzle was all put together they had to get their lunch boxes and sit quietly, so we would know that they had finished their puzzles.
All the puzzles were the same:
I found an image of the book cover somewhere and cut it into puzzle pieces. The kids had such a blast with it!
We also wrote about where we would go if a train came to our door and could take us anywhere we wanted to go–there were lots of Hawaii’s !!! I imagine they all wanted somewhere warm! 🙂
If you look at my previous post: December15plans, you can see how all this fit into the week. I posted my lesson plans for last week in that post.
I’ll be back in a few minutes to post the plans for our first week back (I like to plan ahead!! I’ll be getting the rest of January in order by Friday).
Kristen 🙂
Good Bye Hoosier Dome!
Today, the RCA Dome/Hoosier Dome was imploded here in Indy to make room for a bigger better convention center.
It’s so sad to see it go! I went to my only Colts game there and many, many workshops and conventions were held on the floor of the Dome. They already have taken away Market Square Arena–where my hubby and I both graduated from High School, so I’m hopeful that there’s nothing left to implode! It’s so sad to see a place of such rich history be blown up in 25 seconds!
I’ll be back later this weekend with updates from our short, busy week!
If I don’t get back before the Holidays, have a wonderful, restful holiday with your friends and family and don’t forget what this holiday is truly, truly abou! Merry Christmas!
Kristen 🙂
Kristen's Kindergarten 