Hello Fairy Tales!

Hello!

So we've been super busy in the classroom recently, getting ready for Open House and then Spring Break (which I am currently on) but that still isn't an excuse for being so distant from here! So I've written a few blog posts and will schedule them to post fairly regular so you wont be without some fun news from our classroom!

Anyway, I'm here to talk about my favorite unit that we have covered so far this year (it's actually my favorite that we cover all year long) : Fairy Tales!! My Littles and I have spent that past month learning all about fairy tales and folk tales. We did so many fun activities that came out so awesome!

We started our unit off with talking about common "rules" for both Fairy Tales and Folk Tales. We named specific stories that followed each rule, and then made a big poster showing the rules we needed to classify new stories we were going to read!

The first story we read was Jack and the Giant Beanstalk. This was the perfect way to kick off our unit because the kiddos got to do some science (which seems to be their favorite subject) and they had a "take home" product that parents were really impressed with. We got to grow our very own MAGIC BEANS! We started with a big chart and discussed the three main things our magic beans would need to grow: sun, soil, and water.

The kiddos replicated the chart on a paper plate that I divided into three, and I put that up on our science board. The next day we planted our very own magic beans.

I learned early on that I cannot grow anything to save my life if I have to worry about watering it every day, so now any time I have to grow something for the class I follow this method. I place dry soil in a Styrofoam cup punch a hole in the middle of the soil about an inch deep, place seed in the hole and then lightly cover. (The kiddos did all the this in class.) Then I put some water in the cup until the soil is MOIST, not muddy! Now, here is my trick for making things grow. I take a square of plastic wrap and lay it flat over the top of the cup and then rubber band it to the cup. This creates a greenhouse that will self-water and hold in the heat! I place all the cups in a plastic container and then place them in the sun every day. That's it folks! I don't touch them at all, except to pull them into the classroom for the night. This is how they turned out!

We read Cinderella next and talked a lot about what it might be like if we had a Fairy Godmother. We talked about the wishes we would make, and many students were actually quite concerned about whether or not they could use wishes for other people! I had a bunch of my littles share with the class what they would wish for with a Fairy Godmother, and many asked for toys, some asked for things for their family, and others asked for things for their friends. They were all really excited to share and it made my little teacher heart happy! We did a guided writing assignment (my early birds did one sentence, and my late birds do another) and then completed the craftivity that went with it. My kiddos got to pick the color hand they wanted and the colors for their "magic burst" behind their wands, so those aspects are 100% individual to each student.

 My early birds came up with the sentence "I would do magic." They helped me spell everything, and I wrote each letter down just as they told me to spell.

Right now they have select sight words they need to spell correctly, and then they need to focus on the beginning and ending sounds of words. I think they did pretty stinkin' awesome!




My late birds chose to write the sentence "I would give presents." Many students wanted to give presents to specific people, but trying to write so many different people got really complicated so we just settled on giving presents in general.

Again, they are focusing on the beginning and ending sounds with the select sight words being spelled correctly.



After all the writing and gluing was done I went back with glue and glitter and I glittered EVERYTHING! It came out super cute! (Although, I'm still finding glitter all over the room, and the night custodian that cleans the kindergarten wing still hasn't forgiven me. Haha!)

The next activity we worked on was a compare and contrast activity between The Three Little Pigs, and The Three Little Fish.

This was the version of The Three Little Pigs that I read to my littles. It was the perfect way to introduce folk tales since it so clearly followed all the special rules we were looking for.

This story is so adorable! (**I am NOT sponsored to promote this book at all! I just love it and I use it every year when I do this unit.) It mirrors The Three Little Pigs and is a great way to get young thinkers to compare and contrast two stories! We did a quick compare of the stories and found ways the stories were the same, and we did a contrast to show how the stories were different. The typical differences were the settings and characters since one takes place on land and one takes place in the sea. My littles LOVED talking to each other about the differences between the two stories.

After we compared and contrasted I had my kiddos complete another craftivity that related to each book. 

My early birds completed the Three Little Fish craftivity and my late birds completed the Three Little Pigs craftivity. I gave each student actual pieces to identify the materials used to build the houses in each book. I did substitute a few things that I couldn't get a hold of in time (i.e. seaweed and hay/straw) so I used green tissue paper cut into wavy strips for seaweed, and I used yellow present stuffing to simulate straw. If you have those materials available you can use them, although I don't know how seaweed would do with the glue or if it might start to smell. If you try it, let me know how it turns out!

The students again focused on phonetic spelling. Straw, Sticks, and Bricks.

Phonetic spelling of seaweed, sand, and wood.

Our last big activity we worked on was actually inspired by an AVID lesson I did for some district higher-ups. I have a big theme board that I decorate with every new theme we do. For our AVID lesson I had the kiddos work together to create a castle out of large shapes that had been cut out. They did a great job. The next day I gave them individual sheets of paper and they had to do it on their own. Each castle was unique and beautiful and the kids had so much fun. When they were done creating they needed to come to me and identify how many of each shape they used to create their castle. 

**Note: We focus on the four basic shapes: square, rectangle, circle, and triangle, so those are the four shapes on my write up. If you do more, you can always add more or have them verbally identify them!

Here is the large "theme board" that proudly displays their AVID creations as well as their individual creations.

As you can see, they all did a wonderful job! Here are a few up close looks at some of the student works:

 They are a little blurry but the write up says "To make my fairy tale castle I used ___ squares, ___ rectangles, ___ circles, and ___ triangles." The kiddos were expected to count each shape and then write the number in the correct blank. My kiddos were expected to create their own circles, and for beginners (some of these littles have never even looked at scissors before much less cut with them) I think they did a great job of trying to cut out some circles from some rectangles and square pieces!

I did a few miscellaneous worksheets to tie in Rapunzel, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and the Princess and the Pea, but weren't nearly as exciting or as engaging as these fun activities.

Well, I hope, if you are ever in the mood for some fairy tale activities that you give some of these a try! My littles loved them and I know yours will too! And I hope, above everything else, that you always remember: Every moment is a learning moment!

Sincerely from TK,

Rainbow Sight Words!!

Hello!

So we have officially started our second trimester at school. Grades are in; conferences are done. I can breathe a sigh of relief! Now that we have started our second trimester I have officially started teaching sight words! This concept isn't "graded" on our report card until third trimester (so end of the year) but I start teaching it now because many of my kiddos like having the extra time to really master this concept.

Since I am in TK I don't have specific words that I need to teach per my report card. I chose 30 words from the Fry's High Frequency lists that they need to know for kindergarten. TK is all about preparing them for kindergarten so I figured using the same words would be beneficial.

I arranged my words into a set of "rainbow" lists which are put up in my room in color coded pocket charts. (THANK YOU WALMART!)

White list: I, a, in, it, at, or.
Purple: like, see, to, my
Blue: is, he, and, go
Green: the. are, for, play
Yellow: said, of, she, have
Orange: on, with, that, you
Red: was, were, me, can

I introduce the words in a variety of ways. I start with printing out 30 pictures of a bus and writing the words in the middle of each bus. Then we sing the song "The word on the bus..." We cover one word a week. I also write the word on index cards and create necklaces for each word that I wear and the kiddos must name before they leave the room to go to the bathroom or recess or going home. Once I have covered the word I tape the bus to the floor on the tile (these are great for line-up activities) and I tape the necklace to the door. (These are great for the "Slap it!"activity we play once we cover the whole list.)

The kiddos also each get a sight word sticker book that has the words organized on color paper by each list.

As they master a word/list they get stickers next to that word. When they master the whole list they get different parts of our rainbow on our "Rainbow Sight Word" wall. The white list they get to write their name on a cloud, and for each colored list they get a sticker on their cloud until they have the whole rainbow.

After the kids get their stickers and rainbow pieces they get a certificate, their picture taken and a class cheer. They also get their kindergarten sticker book too (I made the first 100 Fry words into a sticker book too. The kiddos get really excited about getting their blue kindergarten sticker book!)

I'm hoping that by starting earlier the kids get more exposure to the words and are able to master more of them. 

I love this time of year and all the fun things we get to learn and experience! Always remember, every moment can be a learning moment!

Sincerely from TK,

 

TpT Seller Challenge week 3: Make your Masterpiece

Hello!!

After a year of teaching a new grade I realized there was a serious lack of resources out there for Transitional Kindergarten! So I started my mission of high lighting the key standards I was expected to cover through out the year and create a simple, easy, print and go packet of morning work...this turned into a HUGE bundle of common core morning work! 

Unfortunately, this HUGE bundle got shaved down a bit (more like broken down into 4 pieces) so that I could get this project tackled (otherwise I would never have even started!) What I have to present for (the beginning) of my masterpiece is:

There are 150 pages of ELA morning work! Each page has letter practice, name practice, days of the week writing practice, beginning sounds, colors, rhyming, sight words, and sentence corrections. Students get a week's practice of writing upper and lower case letters as well as identifying beginning sounds, a weekly sight word, a weekly color and name writing practice. 

 I even added the digraphs "th" "sh" "ch" "wh" because at the end of the year I cover these blends as well. They follow the same format as the alphabet pages with sentence corrections, sight words, and rhyming!

Did I mention it's all common core aligned? Yeah it is!! Each page has the target standards labeled at the top so that there is clear identification of the concepts being taught, and assessed. These can also be used as great assessments for report cards!

Coming soon (once I recoup from the craziness of putting together this monster bundle!) there will be a math version as well as some challenge bundles that are targeted more for kindergarten to first grade standards!

I'm so excited to be able to share this with everyone! Please stop by my store to take a look at it {here}!

Thank you so much for stopping by!

And always remember, every moment can be a learning moment!

Sincerely,

Nichole

Fairy tales

We have been working on Fairy tales all month. We have read a wide variety of fairy tale and folk tales and the kids are having a blast. The first activity we did was after we read the books The Three Little Pigs and The Three Little Fish. The students had to identify what each house was made out of for the different stories and we wrote the name of each material and glued a sample over the house. The kids loved this activity and the parents loved looking at this during our Open House this week. What do you think?

 

After that we read Cinderella, and did some independent writing. The kids were asked to think about what they would do if they had a magic wand. Their answers were really touching. We worked together to inventively spell different words. I think they came out great for some of their first independent writing for the year.

I will make everyone happy.

I will do magic.

For our art we worked on "collage"-ing and mosaics (kind of) with our stained glass castles! The kids had to glue tissue paper over the picture of the castle and then they needed to carefully spread a layer of glue over the top of their art work. The kids loved, loved, LOVED this activity and I cannot wait to do it again for our butterfly unit. 

The next fairy tale we read was Jack and the Bean Stalk. The kids had to sequence the story and they learned about what Jack's magic bean needs to grow! 

Our sequencing board

Hello Science! This really leads into our next unit and the kids really enjoyed figuring out what Jack's magic bean needed to grow! 

Teacher poster!

I have a couple other activities we did that I will add once I get my pictures loaded onto my computer! I hope you enjoyed and maybe find some ideas you can use in your own classroom!

Always remember: every moment can be a learning moment!

Sincerely from TK,

Nichole

Arctic Animals

Phew! I cannot believe it has been over a month since I've posted anything on this blog!! Well, I'm here to fix that with not one, not TWO but THREE blog posts today so stay tuned for the next two installments. This first post is all about our arctic animal unit I did through out January. 

The kids had so much fun learning about penguins and polar bears. I got to introduce some science readers and some informational texts to the kids so we really got to explore new forms of writing! The kids LOVED it!

We did our traditional guided art lesson that the kids really, REALLY enjoyed! I wanted to introduce expository writing (writing about facts) so we spent over a week practicing our 'can, have, are' charts and finally I taught them how to transfer the facts from their chart to our writing paper. The kiddos were so proud of their writing they couldn't wait to show their parents.

I had them hung up above their desks so that parents could look at their student's work when they brought them in for the beginning of the day. I was surprised at how many of the parents were surprised and moved at seeing their student's work. I guess, being in the classroom with them every day, I forget that this is all new for the parents to see. These are their babies and they're growing up and doing things they've never done before. It was exciting to see the kids and their parents so proud of everything they've been doing. 

It makes my job so enjoyable.

Well I'm off to prepare for tomorrow! I hope you enjoyed!

Always remember: Every moment can be a learning moment!

Sincerely,
Nichole

Ho Ho Ho! A classroom full of fun!

Wow, has it really been over a week since I posted last?! I'm so sorry!! 

Well, to catch you up on all the fun things we've been doing and are doing this week! We have been having so much fun doing all the different parts of my gingerbread unit. The kids have been working on our sight words, and our gingerbread ten frames. They love helping the gingerbread man across the river by following the special number. We are having a blast. 

our Gingerbread writing

We have also done a bunch of winter/Christmas crafts. The first one we did was a thumbprint reindeer ornament for our moms and dads. The kids got an ornament and a tray with brown paint. We all went step by step dipping our thumb in the paint and placing it on the ornament. My recommendation, HAVE VOLUNTEERS! I did this by myself and ended up having to wipe the paint off half of them and redo them with the kids because they were blurry, or too close together. If you REALLY want to keep a secret for the moms and dads and don't want them helping, then I would recommend dedicating a good 30 minutes (I did mine during universal access time) and call the kids over one at a time or maybe in groups no bigger than 3 or 4. Something small that you can handle and keep the kids following the directions so they turn out properly. 

I used paint pens from Michael's to draw on the nose, eyes and antlers. I felt extra crafty and drew on holly because I had the colors and the time. Here is how they came out. 

We also did a directed a art lesson, much like our turkeys, where we made reindeer using our hand prints as antlers!! They came out super cute! I forgot to snap extra pictures of the kids' reindeer, so you only have my lovely teacher sample to see for an example of the final product. Again...YOU WILL NEED VOLUNTEERS! Have your volunteers trace all the kids' hands on the light brown and then do the art lesson bit by bit. If you don't have volunteers or want to keep this as a surprise, take time during independent time and trace the kids hands one by one...OR you could use a hand cut out and just trace that instead of the kids' actual hands. It is completely up to you. 

Here is what they look like completed (at least my teacher sample.)

Another craft we did (that worked with fine motor skills) was our paper plate Christmas tree. This was a 2 day craft that took some prep work from the teacher. I had the kids paint their plate green and then after it dried I cut them into thirds and glued them into the tree shape. I placed them under books to be pressed flat while they dried. On day two I gave the kids their plate tree and some pom poms. They needed to glue the pom poms to create a decorated Christmas tree. I think they turned out adorable. Don't you?

The last craft we've done (so far) is a hand print reindeer. I painted both of their hands brown and placed them down one at a time. Some of the kids didn't let me place their hand and they ended up right on top of each other rather than next to each other to create the head and the body. The kids glued a red pom pom down for the nose and then the fuzzy pom poms for the collar.  I took a sharpie and drew on the eyes and the mouth. These are hanging above our desks and the kids love them! (The parents can't wait to take these home either.)

I have two more crafts (at least) planned but they are simple foam crafts from Michael's. These crafts help the kids work on their fine motor (the peeling of the paper off the backs of small pieces.) These are fine motor activities...that's my story and I'm sticking to it! Once I do these crafts I'll get pictures of them too. 

Ahh so many fun things crammed into 2 weeks. My count down has already started! 4 days left!

I hope everyone is having a great holiday season!

Always remember, every moment can be a learning moment!

Sincerely from TK,

Nichole

Our fall crafts {better late than never!}

After many complications, a new hard drive, reinstalled windows 8 and $200 I HAVE MY COMPUTER BACK!! So, here is what I was planning on posting Monday night. 

We did some fun fall activities last week. We did some fall color thumb print trees that came out awesome! My kiddos are really still working on mixing up where their leave are, but a lot of them realized leaves FALL in fall and started putting some leaves on the "ground"! Super adorable!

 So these were a little difficult to get good pictures of. They are hanging from my ceiling, by ribbon, and the AC was on...so they were moving around a lot. I took about 50 shots of each of these...these were the best. Don't judge me!

We also did some fun watercolor resistant painting. The kids had no idea that crayon would keep the watercolors from painting through. It was a really fun lesson! Some of them really focused on coloring in their leaves all the way and others really focused on painting everything a deep green. They came out awesome and I am so proud or my kiddos for doing such a great job. Take a look at their watercolor painting!

This week we are working on Thanksgiving and turkeys! We did a scarecrow today (that I will have pictures of on Friday) and tomorrow we do foam turkeys! Thursday we are doing a directed art lesson to create a turkey from scraps of paper (this is going to be great, I am so excited!) and Friday we are making turkey hats! Cannot wait to show you these!

I hope you have had a great start of your week, and I thank you so much for being so patient with me and my sporadic posting. 

As always, happy learning! And remember, every moment can be a learning moment!

Sincerely from TK,

Nichole