Happy New Year!

We've been out of school since December 20th and I have been itching to get back into my classroom because I have had a running list in my head of all the things I want to have done before next week.  Luckily the teachers go back a day before the students.  Well, yesterday I spent a few hours in my nice, quiet, and clean (it won't stay that way for long) classroom and thought I would share with you all the plans I have for the three days that the students will be at school next week.

We will be learning about New Year's traditions and doing activities from Kim Adsit and Brooke Perry's New Year's units.  I emailed the parents from our class and shared with them what we will be doing when we return to school and asked them to talk with their children about their family new year's tradition.  I also asked them to email me back and let me know about what time their child went to bed on New Year's Eve because we will be graphing that information.  I wanted to make sure the students would have some help in this department because some of them might not remember.

The students will return on Wednesday.  We will start the day by talking about our class rules and reminding each other of the discipline dozen.  After we do our calendar activities, we will discuss that we have started a new year.  I will read the book The Night Before New Year's by Natasha Wing.

In the book, the author talks about sharing fond memories of the year past.  We will be doing the same about our school year so far.  We will use the tree map in Kim's "Hooray for New Year's Day" unit. We will list the student's favorite events from each month of the school year from August to December.  After we finish that, we will do the 2 math pages from the same unit all about the number 12.

On Thursday, I will read the book New Year's Day by David F. Marx. 

We will be using Brooke's unit and will graph the times the student's went to bed on New Year's Eve, make party hats according to a glyph, and work together to write words we know that begin with each letter of Happy New Year.

On Friday, I will ask the students what they think a resolution is.  We will do a shared writing activity and write about some of the answers.  After reading the book, Squirrel's New Year's  Resolution by Pat Miller.  I will ask the class about the meaning of the word resolution again. 

Once we have established the real meaning, I will help the students decide on their own resolution. The students will write their resolution or goal unto a speech bubble.  We will make a face to go with the party hats we made on Thursday and put the two together and add a party noise maker blower kind of thingy. We will add their speech bubbles that have their new goal on it and make a hall way display.  

I hope everyone has been enjoying their break!  I can't believe the first semester of the school year is over!  

Out of the Mouths of Kinders...part 2

So, we have been busy learning about "Christmas Around the World" this week.  On Monday, we shared our own Christmas traditions and made stockings. On Tuesday, we listened to The Legend of the Poinsettia and learned about Christmas traditions in Mexico.  We made poinsettias from red and green construction paper. Before moving on to France on Wednesday, I was reviewing with the students what we had learned so far in our journey.  We were discussing what we remembered about Mexico and I asked, "What was the name of the flower we made that came from Mexico?"  An eager student waved his hand in the air and gave me that "I know, I know" look so, I called on him.  He proudly said, "The Mayflower!!!"  Bless his heart!  Too much information crammed into his little brain in the last couple of weeks...
Check out my awesome sister in-law's blog (firstgraderatlast.blogpsot.com) and her super cute "Christmas Around the World Scrapbook"!

Roll a Santa

In preparing for Christmas themed math stations, I stumbled upon this super cute number sense activity at www.makinglearningfun.com.  I have used many different versions of "roll a something" in math stations before and I have found that sometimes the students have a hard time drawing the picture to go along with the activity.  So, I came up with the idea to make the parts for the picture and have the students put them together like a puzzle instead of drawing them.  

I took the directions for the activity from the website and enlarged the picture of Santa on our trusty copier at school.  Then I cut the picture apart making sure I had each part of Santa that a number on the die represents and used it as a template.  I cut parts from the appropriate color of construction paper.  I added a flesh color face to attach the eyes to.  

I made enough pieces to make eight Santas because 4 sets of student partners will be in this math station at a time (remember, we have 40 students in our class...).  I laminated the pieces so I won't have to make this again next year.  When the students put the pieces together, the cute little Santa looks like this:

I am looking forward to seeing the students roll the die and put their Santa puzzles together according to the number they roll!  Ho! Ho! Ho!  

Apples Hallway Display

After our students tasted red, yellow, and green apples, each of them decided which apple they liked the best.  Each student constructed an apple from a small paper plate and paper of the color of their favorite apple.  I used those apples to create a line graph in the hallway.  The students at each table graphed the choices of their table mates.  I stapled the graphs from each set of students from each table together and hung them over the graph.

Thanks to Kim Adsit for the "Apple Pie Graph" activity.  Remember we have 42 children in our team taught class so our "apple pie graph" is BIG!  I placed aluminum foil behind the brown paper to hopefully make it look like a pie pan.  

This is what I hung between the two graphs.

Love how this shared writing activity turned out!  It looks just right in our apple hallway display!  Happy fall y'all!!

Out of the Mouths of Kinders...

So, on Friday, I was teaching a math lesson on positional words. I was using an adult size chair just like the ones the students sit in as a prop.  I stood behind the chair and asked the students, "If I stand here, what am I to the chair?"  They responded, "Behind!"  I stood in front of the chair and asked the students, "If I stand here, what am I to the chair?"  They all said, "In front of it!"  This went on until I said, "What if I crawled under the chair? What would I be?"  I was waiting for the response, "Below."  But instead, from one of my friends, I got the response...., "Stuck?"  HAHAHA!!  Then another friend said, "You couldn't fit under that tiny chair!"   Well, at least they were listening!!
To go along with this lesson, we used the awesome "Little Spider" positional words book that Shannon over at
Kindergarten Hoppenings shared with us.  Thank you, Shannon!!
I also just found and pinned this little book about positional words over at Can Do Kinders!  We will be using this soon for a follow up.  But this time, I will not be using a chair as a prop.... ;-)

Common Core Math Standards ~ Free "Dates Taught" Checklist

We have been so extremely busy with our new class and life in general that we have not had a chance to update our blog.  I feel like such a slacker!  Everyone else has been doing such a great job and we appreciate all the awesome ideas we have been getting from all of you as usual!
We have been given the Common Core Standards for Math in our county and have been told which ones to add to our teaching this year along with our state's course of study. We have also been given an updated month by month pacing guide which includes the CCS that aren't already in our state's course of study.  Basically, the pacing guide is to help us stay on track so that we cover all the standards by the end of the school year. Our school uses Scott Foresman Investigations series as our math curriculum.
Anyway, I created a very simple table to help me keep up with when I teach our sweeties all the standards.  The reason I did this was because I use extra games and activities that I find from all of you or on Pinterest in my math work stations and I want to include the standard covered with those activities as well.  I want to use this table so I can reflect on what skills I have given our students plenty of opportunities to master and be able to check at a glance and see what skills I still need to give more attention to.  Here it is if you would like to try it:
Common Core Standards Math - Kindergarten
Common Core Standards Math - Kindergarten 2
Common Core Standards Math - Kindergarten 3
Please forgive my lack of cool skills when uploading documents from Google Docs.  I can't remember how to upload them unto the blog showing the actual document.  I will try to do better next time.  =)
I think my husband, family, and dog would love for me to get out of the "back to school - need to organize - need to plan ahead - want to make all the things I find on the web mode" and pay a little attention to them.  I know my poor house needs some attention as well!  What can I say?  I love this time of year!!

Shapes and Colors

We finished our 2 week unit on shapes and colors last week.  Here are a few of the highlights:

During calendar time, we used our color quilt to sort pictures that Tanya and I cut from magazines.  I would pull a picture from a big envelope and give it to a selected student and they would attach the picture to the correct color on the "quilt". I made the quilt by laminating the pieces of construction paper after I labeled each piece with the name of the color.  Then, I just simply taped the pieces together on the back.  The students loved this and now that the quilt is full of sorted pictures, we might hang it in the room as a reminder of our colors or hang it as a hallway display for a while.

We had a special "shape snack" on Friday to celebrate the end of shape unit!  We asked parents to help send in the ingredients.  For rectangles, we had graham crackers and cheese.  Our squares were "Life" cereal and Cheez-its.  Fruit Loops and banana slices were our circles.  For triangles, we had Triscuit Crisps crackers and Bugles!  Our students thought the special snack was delicious!

After reading Brown Bear, Brown bear, What Do You See? we made these necklaces for a lesson in symmetry and as a retelling aid for the students.  We got the idea from the website www.makinglearningfun.com.  The students and parents LOVED this activity!   

Our next unit of study will be The Farm....  EIEIO!!