Blog Archives
Phenomenal Phonics
I don’t know about you, but I always seem to run out of fun activities to do during my small guided reading groups to keep my students engaged and learning! I’ve got 4 activities to share with you today that will keep your students engaged and LEARNING! These activities are great because they can be used in a small group and then introduced as part of an independent practice time. I also love that more than one student can participate at a time!
Each of these activities requires little to no prep work and can be used many times as your students skills grow and change. Click here to check out these Phenomenal Phonics ideas!
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?
Forces & Motion
For those of you who visit often, you know how much I LOVE Science! When I was asked to help write the new standards for science in Indiana, I knew right away that I wanted some Force & Motion standards in Kindergarten because there are lots of fun toys out there to help students understand how Force & Motion work.
Using a few very simple toys, I was able to help my students understand how they can affect Force and Motion. We used pinwheels, tops, spinning wheels, and several ramp kits. While working with these materials, my students not only had fun, but they learned about Force & Motion. We talked about how we can move the pinwheels with our breath, push the tops and spinning wheels in different directions, and help cars move more quickly or slowly down ramps by changing out the texture of the ramps!
Check out the fun we had here!
Painting Like Eric Carle
One of my favorite things to do is to tie in an art project with a literacy study. As we studied Eric Carle’s books, my students were interested to know more about how he created his art. I did some research online and found a few videos that gave us some ideas to help us create art like Eric!
The art we created was AMAZING!!! From start to finish, this has to be one of my favorite projects we’ve ever done and it was EASY! Can you believe we had 25 Kindergarten students all creating their art at the same time and there were no spills, accidents, or mishaps? Check out all the supplies we used and some details about making our art come to life here!
Cool Coding ideas!
I am lucky enough to have 2 Sphero SPRK robots in my classroom. Recently, we got them out to participate in the Hour of Code. My students had two opportunities to try Sphero out and test their coding skills. Using the robots is fun enough on its own, but I decided to step it up a little bit and add in some extra details! We also practiced retelling one of our favorite stories with a bit of a coding twist!
What you’ll need:
The first thing we did was create a grid on one of our classroom rugs with Colorful Masking Tape. We were working on retelling stories and so I challenged my students to use paper arrows to help get the Gingerbread Man through the grid and to stay away from the fox! I placed the characters from the story into different boxes on the grid and then let my students work their way through as they placed the arrows. They then took the Gingerbread Man and tested out their path to determine if it worked or not. We used Sphero (posing as the Gingerbread Man) later to follow the path and I forgot to get a picture of that!! 😦 The best thing about this grid is that its still stuck on our rug! My students begged that I leave it on the rug so they could use it again and even with all of us walking on it each day, its still there!
Next, we used some more Colorful Masking Tape to create a bowling alley! I taped off a section of the floor with red tape and then added in some white tape to show where the pins should go (and to create an “x” for my students to stand on). My students set up the pins from the Small Bowling set on the white lines and started bowling! They loved trying to see how many pins they could knock down. We played just like real bowling, they got two chances to knock down the pins, but we did not keep score. Eventually, we will add the number of pins knocked down in each turn together as we work on adding to ten, but for now, we are just exploring! We also left our bowling alley taped to the floor and we cover it with the rug (from above) when we are not using it. So far, the Colorful Masking Tape has not left any residue on the carpet, so our housekeepers will be happy!
Finally, to make things a little more challenging, I set up an obstacle course with Colorful Traffic Cones for my students to maneuver the Sphero through. To begin, we set up a simple in and out weaving pattern. Later, we added in a turn to the in and out pattern and that made it a little more difficult, so we will be practicing that for a little longer!
These ideas could be used with any robot that you might have or if you don’t have any “bots”, you can always have your students “program” each other through the challenges!
The Three Little Pigs
Around this time of year every year, my students and I read at least one version of The Three Little Pigs. I love that this story is one that my students immediately connect with (mostly because of the Big Bad Wolf) and are easily able to retell.
I generally have my students try to build houses out of the three materials from the story (sticks, bricks, and straw), and this year was no exception, but I wanted to take the experience up a notch by transforming the space around them, so that they felt like they were in a forest where they might actually run into the Big Bad Wolf.
I’m always a little intimidated by room transformations, but I have to be honest when I say that I’m not anymore! This was so much fun to do and it didn’t take me long at all! I think I spent about 30 minutes prepping the materials and another 30 to hang and decorate the space. The key is in thinking out what you want the finished space to look like, and in collecting all your materials so you can knock it all out in an hour or so!
My students felt as though they were in the woods building their homes! We had a great time and were able to talk quite a bit about what materials we should and should not build homes out of. Check out more details about our fun day building with The Three Little Pigs here!
Exploring our 5 Senses
We recently had one of the most fun days ever in my classroom exploring our 5 senses! I transformed my classroom into a Mad Scientist Lab so that we could learn more about our 5 senses.
In under 30 minutes I had my classroom transformed into a lab! I set up 5 different stations to help my students explore more about each of the 5 senses. Read more here about how the transformation took place and for more details about each of the stations.
October Fine Motor Drawers
Last month, I shared a post all about setting up our new fine motor drawers. My students need as much practice as they can get developing their fine motor skills. Each month I change out the activities in the drawers to keep them new and exciting, but also to continue to strengthen and challenge the skills they have.
Here’s a look at this month’s activities:
My students love each of these activities! Click here to check out the full description of these activities and to get what you’ll need to set them up in your own classroom!
What else would you add to these fine motor drawers? I have trouble each time narrowing down the activities to share with my students each month!
Starting STEM Early
Instead of having my students work on papers or worksheets when they come into our classroom each morning, I have them use STEM boxes. These boxes help my students develop critical thinking and problem solving skills.
My students loved using these boxes so much that they would race down the hallway each morning to grab their favorite one! Read all about them here and get your own supplies to create some! 🙂
EDITED TO ADD: You can download the labels for these STEM Boxes here. 🙂
Sight Word Practice
Raise your hand if your students need to learn sight words each year!! Mine do and practicing them can get boring…quickly, so I decided to find a way to engage my students in the learning and practicing of the sight words!
I used truly active learning to engage my students in the learning of sight words! We used these three fun activities to amp up our learning (and to review) sight words. Once these activities were introduced, I kept them out so my students could keep enjoying them!
Click here to read more about the fun we had (and are STILL having!)
Kristen's Kindergarten 