Snowman Directed Drawing

I love to do directed drawings with my students!  They are always so proud of themselves and impressed with their art.  The end results are adorable and I love how different each one is.  I looked on pinterest to get some ideas on a winter directed draw and found this activity from Proud to be Primary with lots of examples and a step-by-step guide!

We traced our snowman with a permanent marker and used watercolor to paint them.  I drilled in the routine, "Water, Paint, Paper," so students would know how to use the watercolors.  Majority of my students have never painted!  It was a successful December art project and they look so great on our wall!

Number Talks

I love Number Talks!  We do a number talk everyday before our math lesson and it is an amazing way to build number sense.  It helps build those critical subitizing skills because students have to think quick.  It's a great routine that I learned at a district training.  The whole activity takes about 10 minutes and my students love it!

Students look at the ten frame to see how many counters they see.  Then we do a partner talk to discuss the different strategies they used, you know I love those partner talks!  I have students come up and tell the class their strategy and I draw the pattern and write the number sentence.

Say It, Move It

This is a great instructional routine to practice blending and segmenting.  I got this workmat from a fellow teacher but there are different variations.  We start with the blocks in the middle of the circle and I tell students the word.  In this picture, we were doing "jet."  First we segment the word and with each sound, we move a block down to the line and write the letter.  Next, we blend the sounds.  We touch each block as we say the associated letter sound, and then slide our finger across to blend the sounds.  I usually use this routine at the start of the week when I introduce a new story at my reading centers.  It provides a great foundation for the new CVC words we'll be reading throughout the week.

This routine is great for all students because it's kinesthetic and builds phonemic awareness.  My students love "Say It, Move It," and have so much fun with the blocks and dry-erase markers!

School Transfer

The school year has started!  My room is set up, we're learning our routines and we are in the 2nd week!  Annnnd I'm being transferred.  With all schools in the district offering Full-Day Kindergarten this year, a lot of families left my school and our enrollment dropped.  Two of us Kinder teachers have to move!  I'm being transferred to another school that had to open another Kindergarten class due to increased enrollment. Fortunately, I'll still be teaching Kindergarten, thank goodness!

So after the 2nd week, and lots of back-and-forth with the district office, it's official.  I spent my Saturday clearing out and moving my classroom.  It's sad to take everything down, I feel like I just hung it all up!  I'm really worried about how my kids will feel coming into an empty room on Monday, they were finally starting to feel comfortable!

Our last day was a sad day!  I loved my school so much and had such an amazing Kinder team.  The staff had a little good-bye party and our kids brought us flowers and cards, so sweet!

K3 Classroom

I am loving my room setup and wanted to share some pictures!  This is my second year at my site and I feel that I fixed the kinks that were bothersome last year.

I have a pretty big classroom but this wide shot makes it look huge!

Above is our Focus Wall with all the ELA weekly posters and vocabulary words.  Below is our Writing Wall.  I hang students' writing each week.  I love that this wall is right next to the door because visitors always see our best work!

Above is the Word Wall, a great reference for student writing.  Below is our Dictation Wall.  Each month, we do themed dictations and I take students' pictures.  This has been great for all my EL's because we have the opportunity to talk about and relate to the different months, holidays, and seasons.  My students love seeing their pictures up on the wall and it's perfect for memory books at the end of the year!  I love looking through them at the end of the year and seeing how each student has grown.

This is our classroom library and Calendar Wall (don't mind the extra tables, they will be moved soon).  This is also where extra work or art projects are hung, and we have a little graph area where we graph our favorite things throughout the year.  I am LOVING my new Calendar Wall this year!  The actual calendar set was from the Target dollar spot and the month signs have themed decorations!  Another great thing for my ELs and so much more fun than my boring month signs from last year.  I also downloaded some of these calendar pieces from Wild About Firsties.  We count the days of school with the ten frames and the hundreds chart.  I use dot stickers to count each day and dry-erase markers to write the numbers and the date.  I used different colored dot stickers to help kids count and see the different parts of ten.  I love having the ten frames to count the days because it exposes students to ten frames and teaches them to count by fives and tens.

First Day Pictures

The first day of school is always so exciting and the kiddos always look so nice!  I love to take their picture on the first day and throughout the year, so we can see how they've grown throughout the school year.  This is a fun activity because the students' perception of themselves is really interesting.  I give them a blank kid template and tell them to draw/color themselves, then, I put it next to their photo.  Their pictures are so cute and it makes for a great beginning-of-the-year bulletin board!  You can download the kid template here!

Brown Bear, Brown Bear

It's the first week of school and we have been reading lots of stories and practicing different classroom routines.  My students have been loving the story, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?.  Every time I read the story, the kids love to read aloud with me, they just can't help themselves!  We have also been learning how to do partner talks, and this is a difficult concept for my new kinders.  We do partner talks throughout the day, everyday, so it's really important that they master this routine.  I thought I could incorporate the story into a partner talk lesson, since they are so comfortable with the storyline.  We made puppets with the characters, then students took turns telling each part of the story.  I originally saw the puppets in action in Miss Kindergarten's classroom and just had to use it in my classroom!

I was so excited with how well they did!  They took turns with each character and the partner talk concept just came naturally with the taking-turns part, amazing!  The best thing was watching my spanish-speaking students, seriously, these kiddos do not know any English!  They were retelling the story to their partner and with so much confidence.  I was amazed and so excited!  You can download the puppet template here!

Shoebox Centers

We use Shoebox Centers a couple times each week, usually at the end of the day.  I love these because they help students practice the reading and math skills we have been learning.  At the beginning of the school year, some centers help students with their fine motor skills.  We practice our social skills too because they are forced to work together and share.  They are so focused on their center and I rarely have any behavior issues because they are so engaged!

Students can chose the activity they want to do and I allow 2-3 students at each center.  I may assign a student to a specific center if there is a skill they really need to practice.  They take their center and find a working spot in the room.

Pictured above is a center that practices fine motor skills.  I found it at the Target Dollar Spot!  Both bottom pictures are counting centers that use clothespins or beads to practice math and fine motor skills, a two for one!

 

Direction Cards

I got these picture direction icons from Miss Kindergarten and I love them!  They are a great visual for my students, especially my EL's.  I printed mine to make cards with magnets on the back.  They are also a great recap for after I model an assignment; as I give the directions, I post the picture.  Today, we practiced numbers and I modeled a worksheet, then used the picture cards to recap what students were supposed to do.  When students forget what to do next, they can look at the board to see the next step!

Name Art

It's the first week of school and I need simple activities!  So today we did name art.  It's great for kids to practice their name and fine motor skills.  It took quite some time which was great since we haven't started curriculum yet and need lots of things to do!

I wrote the students' names and gave them bowls of construction paper squares.  They had to tear the paper into small pieces and glue them over their name.  They loved all the colors and learning to use the glue sticks!

They turned out so cute!  A couple were difficult to read, so I retraced their name on top of the pieces of paper.  Overall, it was a great first week activity!

Dry Erase Markers

Using dry erase markers is a great way for students to get used to holding a writing utensil and writing!  The marker makes drawing lines easy so they don't have to push hard and the thicker width of the marker is easy to hold.  Plus, the different colors are so fun!  I used a hot glue gun to glue pom-poms to the tops so students can use it for little mistakes.  It's great because they quickly erase little mistakes without having to stop and go get an eraser.  I got the idea from my teacher friends at my school, love these little teacher hacks!

First Day of School

Today is the first day of school!  It's my second year and I feel much more comfortable and excited!  I learned so much last year and I can't wait to see what this year brings.

My sister also teaches Kindergarten and her school started the day before! #RossGirlsTakeOnKinder

Circle Maps

Do you use thinking maps in your classroom?  My district has a big focus on writing and thinking maps so I use them all the time!  We create circle maps, t-charts, flow maps, and venn diagrams.  This was a circle map we made of our weekly focus letter.  We made it when we had a few extra minutes, they are great time-fillers too!

I'm attending a training this summer which is great because I've only learned about the different maps from my colleagues.  I'm super excited to learn more about using them in my classroom!

Anchor Charts

I just want to share how much I LOVE anchor charts!!  I love making them with my students because it really gets everyone involved in instruction.  I love how their opinions and ideas become part of the lesson and the classroom decor!  Anchor charts are also a great focus for a class discussion, you know that it's all about the visual aid!  After our discussion is over and our anchor chart is complete, I find a special spot to hang our poster.  Students refer to it throughout the year and I love seeing them looking at the posters for strategies or spelling words!

This is my favorite!  This student was looking at our anchor charts to spell a word in his journal.  I loved that he was taking responsibility for his learning and was seeking out the information he needed.  This very action is EXACTLY why anchor charts are so amazing!  Students create memories and build background knowledge during the lesson.  They remember creating the anchor chart; where they were sitting during the lesson, their contribution and connection to the lesson.  Later, they remember where that information is and know how to access it.

 

 

These are just a few of our anchor charts, I have to give credit to Pinterest for the different ideas and blog links!