Hello Again!

It has been a while since I've last posted anything!  Sorry!  As I'm sure you all are, I've been super busy with the holiday preparations - and trying to keep my Kinders on track.  Christmas - and other December holidays - really add a whole other dimension to a Kindergarten classroom!  Really, they have been pretty good.  

Here are some pictures of a few activities we've recently done.

 How many will fit?  My Kinders enjoyed this lesson on volume:  Testing how many items will fit into a small plastic cup "with the lid shut" (a hand placed over the top).  Using a white board & clothes pin to fashion clipboards, they recorded their findings on this record sheet.

 Each table group had the same six *mushroom* tubs of objects.  The little pompons were the most challenging to count.

When they compared their results, they were amazed to find out that their numbers were very similar.
                                        
 Math Art!  I have really enjoyed incorporating art projects into our Math curriculum.  In this activity students sorted large and small triangles, circles, and stars.  After sorting they created these cute Christmas trees for our classroom bulletin board.

We recently read Yoko - a tale of a girl who is teased for her lunch of sushi.  (As it happened on the day I read this - before I read it - a little boy told me that he had sushi in his lunchbox!)  Using manilla file folders (which are on our school supply list) I had my eighth grade helper cut out these lunch boxes, which the kids decorated.  Inside they wrote a menu of what they would like to have for lunch, and then drew the food.

                                  

This little boy has such nice handwriting! 

Learning Stations for the Week of 11/26/12

 I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving with your families.  Mine was filled with fun, love, and laughter.  About seven years ago my mother finally announced that she could no longer host the 40 - 50 of us at Thanksgiving, so my siblings (all six of them) and I began hosting our own family dinners. We still all gather for Christmas (it's Barb's turn to host this year!).  Last Thursday my three beautiful daughters, two sons-in-law, two adorable granddaughters, sister Debbie, brother John & his daughter, Mom, friend Megan & her son, husband Kevin and I sat down to share a delicious meal of turkey and all the trimmings.  After stuffing ourselves, we settled in by the fire to play "Apples to Apples," and enjoy the wonderful desserts (that I didn't have to make!).  It was kind of difficult to go back to school after our five day weekend (serious fog on Wednesday cancelled school).  Anyway, here are the stations we are doing this week.

Mrs. S.'s Station.  This is the third week of our Lakeshore Learning sight word rotation.  It has been quite nice rotating the stations - no additional planning necessary!  This file folder activity focuses on color words.

A page from a Teacher's Helper gives additional practice in reading color words.

Writing Station.  Nut books filled with "N" word pictures.  Occasionally we will plan an activity in the Writing Station that gives the Kinders fine motor practice.  In addition to coloring and cutting out the nuts and pictures, they practiced writing the letter n and copying the picture names.

 

 Word Work.  Short i word sliders from Make Take Teach, plus the -it slider I made, give the kids practice reading CVC words.  A worksheet from Teacher's Helper whose photo absolutely refused to load below this one gave extra short i CVC word practice.

My station.  We named and described shapes with this fun game from Lakeshore Learning.

This page (from one of my partner's resource books) extended the shapes practice.

Learning Stations & a Math Craft

Here are the stations we began last week.  They will continue tomorrow and Tuesday.  We'll begin new activities on Wednesday even though the four day Thanksgiving weekend is coming up. 

Listening Station.  If you haven't read this book, try to get a copy before Thanksgiving.  It's really funny!

                                      

Mrs. S.'s Station.  This is week 2 of a three week rotation of sight word activities.  My two partners and I are taking turns with three of our Lakeshore Learning file folder activities.  We love these ready-made centers!  (But, I'm sure Mrs. S. is going to be tired of them at the end of the three week rotation...)  The candy jar page is something from an old book belonging to one of my partners.

 

Writing Station.Students write a sentence (or two) about Thanksgiving using the sight words we have studied thus far.  As for the other words, they are encouraged to use their "best kindergarten spelling."  So far, I have been pretty impressed!  :-)  Here is the writing page.

Word Work Station.  Super simple - this web is from the resource book included in our Reading series.  The Kinders trace the letters (T and I - not shown), and look for words that begin with the letter to write on their webs.  This seems so easy, but they have fun searching for the words!

My Station.  Another one of our nifty Lakeshore Learning Instant Learning Centers - week 2 of another three week rotation.  In this activity students sort out a variety of interesting items.

As with most of our Learning Stations, we like to have the students complete a worksheet or record sheet of some kind so that we can check their understanding, and give parents something to see. This page is from the old book (from my preschool days) pictured below.

Math Craft!  We have been working and working and working on numbers, so I thought that it would be fun to make a craft featuring numbers!  The kids loved making these links (in school colors) to show different ways to make six. 

Now that I am writing this, I realize I should have taken a picture of the first step...  Using the number 6 number bracelets, the Kinders arranged their beads as desired.  The number on the top of the bracelet represented the number of yellow links, and the number on the bottom showed how many green links.  They transferred this information onto their number bond page.  Once this was done, the fun of creating the links began!  And, I am happy to say that it went pretty smoothly.  As you can see from the pictures above the craft turned out very well. 

Number Sense Activities

We have been busy working on building number sense this year.  As mentioned in an earlier post, our corporation has adopted Math in Focus - a Singapore approach to math.  This method of teaching math focuses on using lots of manipulatives - something that really makes a lot of sense for kinders!  They have really  enjoyed working them.  Here are some pictures of a few activities we have done.

Dino Math Mats.  I made these to help my kinders to practice today's lesson on "How many more?"  Partners took turns rolling the die and placed that many spikes (wooden blocks) on the dinosaur.  They then determined how many more were needed to make six.  After working for a while, some of my little smarties figured out that they were making number bonds!  *yay!*  I added ten sticker spots to each dino - for decoration - but also with the thought that these prehistoric pals could be used when making ten.

Match me!  Partners take turns building a tower of cubes for the other to match.

Roll & build.  Roll a die and make a cube tower with the specified number of cubes.  Gerber baby food containers make a great "shaker" for die - they can be sufficiently rolled, but don't get away.

Laminate construction paper to create durable work mats.  Mine are color coded for our four tables and have been in use for three years.  They give the kids a defined work space and help to keep their materials organized.

 

 Playing cards are a fun alternative to dice and number cards.  (Remove the face cards and be sure to tell the kids that the Ace card stands for 1.) 

One more - select a card and then add one to get a new number. 

Gobble Gobble!

 We made these cute turkeys yesterday.

It was quite an undertaking, but my Kinders cut out all of these circles and glued them on in the correct order!  My high school helper spent several days tracing the five circles needed for each of my eighteen kiddos.  (You may be wondering how do you have middle & high school student volunteers?  Our school is a little, country school with K - 12 in the same building.  On a side note, we may be small in size, but our student achievement is great!)  I made the cute letters with my Cricut "Speaking of Fall" cartridge.  

Our cute Thanksgiving bulletin board.

Several years ago a student gave me this wooden basket wall hanging.  It came with some schoolish clip-ons.  I later found out that it was made by a local crafter who sells the baskets and additional clip-ons at the various festivals in our area.  I was happy to find this cute turkey when I visited the "Scarecrow Festival" last year.  I have found that I am able to personalize this basket by simply sticking seasonal items to wooden clothespins with poster sticky *stuff*.

This Week's Learning Stations

We began these stations on Wednesday of this past week.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, we have found it to be convenient to start stations in the middle of the week because we don't feel the need to stay late on Friday getting everything set up.  This also works well when we have a short week - as long as the stations are rotated in order everyone gets a chance to visit each one.

The yellow station cards are rotated down one pocket each day.  When "Mrs. Phillips" gets back to the top, it's time for a new round of stations.  (This picture is from last year.  I am so happy that I took the time to cover my focus wall entirely in fabric - it looks so much nicer!)

Writing Station.  Students copy the sentence frames onto their papers to write a rebus story.  This masterpiece is my sample - so far no one has copied it!  :-)  Here is the worksheet for the story.

Word Work Station.  Students sort picture cards by initial sounds.

 

 The little boat pictures came from this book.

After sorting their boats, they sorted pictures on this page.  The theme of this unit of reading is transportation, so these activities fit in nicely!

Mrs. S.'s Station.  Students sort picture/word cards into categories.  They practice using picture clues to help figure out the words with this page I found at www.tlsbooks.com

My Station.  The kinders practice counting objects with these cute picnic work mats and *creepy* ants.  As they work, I ask them questions such as which food has the most ants?  Does the sandwich have more or fewer ants than the hotdog?  The kids like playing with these creepy crawlies, and I am able to get a quick look at their understanding of greater/fewer, one more/one less, etc.

After the fun of counting the ants, they are asked to write a number and draw that many ants.  The back of this page (not shown) has a skip counting activity - place ten ants in a number of circles and count by tens.  This worksheet seems super simple, but it was a nice tool to use for differentiated practice.

 

Listening Station.  I made copies of this page for each of our book/CD combos.  The kids complete one after listening to the story.  As the year progresses, I ask them to write some words or sentences in addition to drawing a picture.

I got the form shown above from this book.