Blog Archives
Community Helper Bags
I am SO excited to share these Community Helper Bags with you!! I’ve wanted to create them for awhile, but was just waiting for the ideas to come together in my mind so I could make them happen! I created 6 different bags and inside each one of them, I added items that would help my students experience a small part of that community helpers job. 
My students have had so much fun using these each day! They ask for a different bag each time and I love that they are interacting with each other as they explore.
A few days ago, some of my students found out how the Chef depends on the Grocer to get the food they need to prepare it! What a great connection. Its fun to watch the student who chooses the Mail Carrier bag go on their delivery rounds each day around the classroom! 
This is a closer look at each item that’s in each of the Community Helper Bags!
In this photo, you can see one of my students borrowed the fish from the Grocer bag so he could feed it to the kitten! 🙂
My students are THRILLED to be able to use these easy to make Community Helper Bags! You can read more about how I made them here! What other Community Helpers would you include?
Community Helpers
We are deep into our study of Community Helpers that ties into our IB unit “How We Organize Ourselves”. We invite many members of the community into our classroom to show us how they do their jobs. Last week, we had Domino’s Pizza Makers visit our classrooms. We had a GREAT time!
All we had to do was call our local Domino’s and they came right out and did this great demo for us! They also brought us pizza for lunch and gave us cups full of goodies to take home. 🙂
Doctor Bag
A few weeks ago we studied Community Helpers. As part of that study, we looked at the tools that different community helpers use. This is the Doctor Bag we made to include in our Inquiry Notebooks.
We took these items (cotton balls, band-aids, stickers, tissues, tongue depressors) and glued them inside the Doctor bags we made. We took a 9×12 piece of black construction paper, folded it in half, rounded the corners, and cut some handles out of scraps of black construction paper. We then added a white circle and two red strips of paper for the first aid sign on the outside of the bag. The kiddos labeled each of the items so they could use those words in their writing.
New Math Work Stations
I was able to take some pictures of the new Math Work Stations that I introduced today. Normally, I introduce them one at a time over several weeks, but we needed to start with a clean slate today and the kiddos were ready to listen, so I went for it and they did GREAT! Here is a look at our newest work stations:
This is one of A Differentiated Kindergarten’s Spinner Math Fun Galore pack. The kiddos spin the spinner and write the number and corresponding number word.
This is also a free game Marsha has in her Tpt store. We needed to practice addition and subtraction and have some fun at the same time! 🙂
We are studying community helpers so I brought out my community helper greater than, less than, equal to clip cards. The kiddos look at the cards and decide if the picture on the left is greater/less/equal to the one on the right and place the clip on the appropriate symbol below.
This is a little activity I made this past weekend. The children find a baker and read his ten frame. They then find the corresponding number and number word cupcake and base ten block cookie and match them in a group.
We are also reviewing our measurement work and to tie in with our community helper theme, the kiddos are measuring different tools a construction worker might use. They measure the length or height in cubes and bears and then record how many.
We are also reviewing 3D shapes, so this quick game is called 3D Grab a Shape. They grab a 3D shape card and record it on their recording sheet. (This isn’t the actual recording sheet, I just had these left over from the last game {3D Spin a Shape-its also included in this pack} and wanted to use them up).
This game is also from Marsha’s Spinner Math Fun Galore pack. This game is called Spin and Win and these kiddos are working on recognizing numbers in the teens.
The kids did so great with these today! I’ll snap some pictures of the other stations that were not open today and our new Literacy Work Stations. 🙂
P.S. Don’t forget Tweet Chat is tomorrow night with Vanessa Levin from @PreKPages as our guest!
Winter Break
How many of you go back to school tomorrow? I’ll be with you, but I wanted to share some pictures of some work I did last Friday at school to get ready for my K’s to come back to school.
We are going to be learning about Community Helpers the next 6 weeks, so I switched out my Science/Sensory area to a Community Helper sensory bin. I used some well washed rocks from the playground, and got a pack of 5 CAT construction vehicles from Target {My favorite place on earth–other than IKEA!}. I also added some Matchbox construction vehicles and some IKEA community helper people and cars.
I also switched out my sensory bin {using A Differentiated Kindergarten’s January Sensory Tub pack}. There are letters hidden in the bottom and the children will make their sight words as they find the letters.
I also got a new shelf from IKEA. You might remember that last summer I invested in a “rainbow cart” when they went on sale at Michaels. I still really like it, but two things made it not work out so well for us. 1) We couldn’t put our pocket dice in them and they kept getting separated from our Math Work Station, so we couldn’t do our work! 2) The tubs that came with it were difficult for my K’s to put back in. We already have one of these shelves from IKEA for our Literacy Work Stations, so we already know they can hold more and are easy to put away. I think this new system will work so much better for us!
I’ve re-purposed the “rainbow cart” to an area behind my desk. I will use it to stash upcoming Math and Literacy Work Stations so that I can stay on top of switching them out. I think it will help me and the K’s!
Stay tuned for some more new organization! I’m participating in a blog link-up with my friend Tammy at Live, Love, Laugh Kindergarten. She’s created a monthly link up to help get different areas of your classroom organized. First up is the teacher desk area/binders. I bought some cute things at Target over the weekend to help get things in order on my messy desk, so I’ll be sharing those soon. You can participate even if you don’t have a blog! Just post the pictures to Twitter or Instagram using the #TeachersGetOrganized2015 and be sure to tag Tammy!
Also coming up on Tuesday we have our weekly Tweet Chat with guest host Vanessa Levin from @PreKPages. She’s hugely talented and shares amazing things on her Facebook page and blog.
Don’t feel intimidated! Tweeting is really easy…even if you just lurk in the background, I promise you will get some great ideas! You will need a Twitter account {its free to sign up} to join us, but after that, you can use my tutorials to help you:
Tweet Deck is another platform to use when tweeting. I find it easier to use than Twitter because I can narrow my screen easily down to the one conversation. On Twitter, all your conversations appear at once, making it harder to follow along. 🙂 Give it a try and watch for me giving out prizes!! My twitter name is @fuzzlady77, so be sure to tweet me if you have any questions!
Have a GREAT first day back!!
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Kristen's Kindergarten 