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,

 

Not your normal blog post!

Well hello there!! I am full into Christmas mode at school! We're doing reindeer and gingerbread in my class. I cannot wait to show you some of amazing crafts that the kids are doing. It's going to be amazing. 

Anywho, I'm here to remind everyone that TPT is having its annual cyber sale!! Go shop till you drop and enter the code TPTCYBER at checkout and receive 10% off instantly! To go along with the amazing discounts, I am having a sale as well! 10% off everything in  my store. Exciting!

I am also here to promote some good friends and fellow bloggers! My friend Kristen from Easy Teaching Tools has released an UH-MA-ZING writing product for Christmas!! It contains 27 pages of amazing writing prompts and pages for little writers to write their hearts out! Check it out!!

She is a fantabulous blogger and if you want to see what she's doing in the classroom as well as what is going on with her creative and fun products go follow her on her blog here! She really is amazing!

If you're looking for some fun math activities that go along with all the holiday fun, check out Jamie Huerta's (from Laughloveteachlearn.blogspot.com) Common Core Holiday Math Pack for First Grade! This pack is 30 pages of student-friendly math sheets that get your student's brain a tingling! 

This pack contains concepts like: Number Bonds (Numbers 1-15), Word Problems (solve using number bonds & pictures), Creating number sentences using number bonds, Fact families, Solve it making a ten, Doubles plus one facts, Find the missing addend (cut & paste), Is it true? Is it false? Prove it!, and Find the missing number (addition & subtraction)! 

Swing by to pick up your copy before the sale runs out!! Follow Jamie on her blog here!

So, I'm off to go prep for more fun Christmas activities for tomorrow's festivities (OooooO! I rhymed!) and I hope everyone had an amazing break!

And never forget! Every moment can be a learning moment.

Sincerely from TK,
Nichole

"Gobble" up the learning centers!!

I have officially posted BOTH my turkey math center {0-20} and my turkey beginning phonics center {A-Z}. The phonics center is free for a limited time! (New products are free for the first 24 hours, then they must be purchased!)

Please swing by to take a look and as always, feedback is greatly appreciated!

Always remember: Every moment can be a learning moment!

Sincerely from TK,

Nichole

Spiders and bats and ghosts! OH MY!

So, I don't know if you realized it or not, but it was Halloween yesterday! (I was very adamantly reminded by 17 bright scholars, so I thought I would share the message.) We had a blast with our pumpkin Olympics, but before I share any of that I want to rewind to the beginning of this week. I felt bad for not having introduced many informational texts. I know they have to have some exposure in kindergarten, but I had been dreading it since I unpacked my library back in September. This week I finally pulled out some of my science readers to read to the kids. These are scholastic leveled science readers and they kept the kids entertained while still teaching them all about their respective animals! 

 

With it being Halloween I planned on a bunch of different crafts for the kiddos. I figured bats, spiders and ghosts were pretty Halloween-y and, with my science readers I found a way to tie it in with an actual learning concept (double score!) Our song of the week is "Itsy Bitsy Spider" so I figured we'd do our spider craft first. I found some cheap black plates (Hello Halloween sale!) and decided on a craft. Armed with my trusty scissors, white yarn and my newly purchased black plates I got to work prepping and creating my example. 

The next day after we all sang Itsy Bitsy Spider I sat down on the rug with them and asked them, in a very serious voice, "Boys and girls...that poor spider has been crawling up the water spout all week, and he just keeps getting washed away. What can we do to help him?" Now I got many interesting answers, but one quiet little guy raised his hand and said "Ms. P...spiders live in webs. Maybe we could make him a web to live in." I could have cried because it was the most perfect answer. After we all praised him for such a thoughtful and awesome answer, we all got up and went to our desks. I passed out our plates, and the white yarn. I showed them my example and then I showed them how to lace the string through the cuts in the plates. The kiddos had a blast, and now our spider has a comfy dry place to live!

This week we were also working with our letter Gg so naturally...we made ghosts!! Another fine motor activity that the kiddos loved to do. I gave each of them a Styrofoam plate (this would work A LOT better with paper plates but I had Styrofoam on hand) and had them flip the plates upside down so the part you would eat off was face down and I put glue along the rim of the plate. Each kiddo got a square of white tissue paper that they had to rip into strips and then glue on the rim of the plate. I drew eyes, a mouth and the letter Gg on the front. Next year I will do this with paper plates and the students will draw/write everything on their own. Here is the finished product for this year:

The last craft we did was for our bat. I read our little science mini reader and we did our big can-have-are page as a class. Then we started out bat-lacing project. I prepped this project by cutting out a bat shape out of a manilla folder and tracing each bat individually before cutting them out. Then I hole punched each hole onto the bat. There may be easier ways to do this, but I couldn't think of any. (Please share if you have any ideas on how to speed up this process and not kill my arm/wrist with hole punching!) I cut orange yarn and laced it through the holes. 

I did not expect this craft to be so difficult for the kiddos but A LOT of them struggled with the up-down in-out of the lacing. As a perfectionist, I have had to learn to embrace and love the imperfections. They are adorable and my students are so proud of how they turned out. I can't NOT love them. Just to see their faces and how excited they are to show me makes me so in love with the product. 

We did do pumpkin Olympics on Friday. Each student got their own mini pumpkins, courtesy of one of my parents. We did a science experiment where we guessed, or predicted, whether our pumpkin would sink or float, and then we tossed (ok, placed gently) our pumpkins into a big tub full of water. The kids were SO surprised to see my big pumpkin floating right along side their little ones! I think every single one told their mom or dad about it when they were getting picked up. We also did Jack-o-lantern bean bag toss, decorated our pumpkins with stickers and markers, and did five frames with pumpkin seeds. 

Overall, a great week. I had a blast and I know my kiddos had a blast. I can't wait for weeks to come. That's all I have for now. I'm off to go finish some products for the classroom. 

Always remember: every moment can be a learning moment. 

Sincerely from TK,

Nichole

The pumpkins are coming! The pumpkins are coming!

Ok, so I think I may be the only person on the planet that gets THIS excited about pumpkins. I know, I'm silly, but for me...it's the little things in life you just gotta enjoy and for me it's PUMPKINS! (Really I love all my units of study from now until the end of the year, but this is the start of it and I'm just SO EXCITED I COULD BURST!)

My kiddos covered the life cycle of a pumpkin for this past week and boy did they do GREAT at it! I have to put a disclaimer out there...I HAVE THE BEST BUNCH OF KIDDOS EVER and they make my job super easy and fun. We started off with the plant unit last week to kind of lead into this unit (I totally planned it that way! No really, I did!) and that helped when we got to the different stages of the pumpkin life cycle.

We started the week with a big chart paper and some pictures from a pumpkin mini unit I downloaded from Mrs. Ricca's TPT store here! For my advanced students (who are working on blending and reading) they helped me spell out different words as we worked through our chart.

After we put the life cycle in order and filled in our chart, I taught the kiddos our life cycle song with the motions. (I wish I had video but alas...I did not think ahead!) It's to the tune of The Farmer in the Dell.

The seed becomes a sprout.
The seed becomes a sprout.
Hi ho did you know...
The seed becomes a sprout!

(repeat tune with each life stage)

The sprout becomes the vine.
The vine becomes a flower.
The flower becomes a pumpkin.

Hand motions:
Seed = fist with all fingers curled into palm
sprout = pointer finger extended like counting the number 1
vine = make a flat "shelf" with arm and hand all straight and parallel to the ground
flower = extend fingers like counting 5 or giving a high five
pumpkin = both hands in front of you pretending to hold a pumpkin (or a ball)

My motions were all created on the spot last year, but they worked for me so I reused them. If you have better ideas I would LOVE to hear them. I'm all for cute motions to help the kiddos learn.

Tuesday we did our pumpkin craft. OH MAN! Be prepared for the cuteness that my kiddos created!! (I think I'm biased, but meh I'm allowed.) I cut 6 pumpkin shapes for each kid in my class out ff orange construction paper. I then passed out a sheet with all the stages on it so the kids could cut them out. Before we did anything, we sang the song again so the kids could remember what we had focused on the day before. I hung the completed big poster up on my white board and then we began the craft. Now, I was VERY specific with my kids. Even down to asking them to find specific colored crayons and hold them up, so I could keep everyone on the same step and the same page. Once we colored everything I had them cut them out and glue each step on to the middle of one of their pumpkins.

From here, I planned to have the kiddos glue the pumpkins together...but we were using liquid glue which takes FOREVER to dry so instead I had the kiddos fold their pumpkins in half and I went around and stapled them to make our 3-D pumpkin!

 Adorable right!? Well I hole punched them and hung them from the ceiling above each kiddo.

 Tuesday we "read" through the pumpkin life cycle book that came with this mini unit and the kids got to color the pictures and take the book home. Thursday I planned on giving the kids a sentence strip and the stages again and then we would put the whole project together step by step, to really help them understand the stages...but on a hunch...I handed them all the materials and said "Ok guys...I wanna see what you know. Can you color these the correct colors and then put them in the right order??" I did leave the big poster up on the white board, but all I did was walk around and monitor to see if they really understood everything. I am proud to say...ALL BUT 2 OF MY KIDDOS DID THE PROJECT 100% ON THEIR OWN AND 100% CORRECTLY!!

I nearly squealed when I looked at them to see if there were enough of them correct to put up on the board. Out of 17 kiddos 15 did it perfect (granted some put them in order from right to left instead of left to right, or the pictures are upside down...but hey THEY'RE 4! That's really good for that age, with little to no direction!)

Here are the finished products!

What a great way to end! Like I said, I had planned on doing this activity together and then having them do it on their own on Friday, but rather than go back and rehash I let them come up with their own way to tell me about the pumpkin life cycles. A lot of them just sang the song I taught them, but one little boy (a little guy that is working on reading and blending already) actually came up with full body motions for the song. He curled up fetal position on the floor for seed, stuck his arm up into the air for sprout, Stuck both arms in front of him for vine, stood in star position for flower and tried to make himself a big ball by touching his toes for pumpkin. Oh my goodness, it was adorable. (Again, I wish I had video, but alas...not thinking ahead again!)

I can't wait to start our "Halloween" unit with our Pumpkin Olympics on Friday! We have some pumpkin math planned and some pumpkin science! Oh man. I'm so excited!!!

I hope everyone is having a blast in their class as well. 

And always remember: Every moment can be a learning moment!

Sincerely from TK,

Nichole

All about plants!

As a preview to lead us into out pumpkin life cycle unit I did a plant unit. I actually had a science workbook that has a chapter all about plants so I was lucky enough not to have to create my own! The kids had such a blast with this little mini-unit we did all week. 

Monday we started off with a BIG poster that we did together during our carpet time.

Yes, I know 'leaf' is easier than 'leaves' but I made the thing pointing to more than one, so when the kids said "Those are leaves!" I couldn't argue with them! Smart little kiddos! I introduced the concept of phonetic spelling (my kids are still trying to learn all their alphabet letters so this was more for my advanced students who know the sounds and letters already) and we spelled plants and stem together. I also worked on color identification by holding up the marker and having them tell me what color that particular part was. Apparently, light colors are called "baby" colors. So light blue is baby blue, baby pink, and in our case it was baby green. Adorable! 

After we did the poster together they stood up and we did little motions to help us learn what each part does. We would echo each other for the chant but here it is with motions (as best I can describe):

My roots hold me to the ground (point to feet and make a strong grabby motion with hands.)

My stem makes me stand up tall! (Hands on hips in superhero pose.)

My leaves give me food! ( jazz hands out to the side and make a sweeping motion to the mouth.)

It's so stinking cute when they do it. I just look like a fool but they rock it during carpet time!

Tuesday we did our science notebook page where they had to color their plant parts the correct colors. (Mrs. P didn't read directions very well the day before and her big chart example was backwards!) The did an awesome job with it ALL ON THEIR OWN!

 I think they did a GREAT job coloring inside the lines! Our coloring rules are REALLY starting to work!

Silly I know...but this little guy finally wrote his name ON HIS OWN!!

I posted the finished papers on our science board and the kids were so excited to show mom and dad when they came in the next morning. 

Wednesday (you can't see it) they had to draw their own plant on the back of their science notebook pages. It REALLY gave me a clear idea of who understood the different parts and who didn't. We did our dance/chant again to finish off the lesson. 

Thursday we did a nature walk and they got to find all the plants on campus and point to the different parts. The roots of most plants were a bit of a challenge because they wanted to rip up the plants to actually SEE the roots, but I can proudly say not a single plant was harmed in the making and learning of this unit!

Friday was our craft day. Now I was nervous about this part because it was complicated and a bit tedious but I plugged along and they turned out really cute! We made plants from straws pipe cleaners and paper leaves!

I got Starbucks straws and cut them in half to use for stems. Everyone received a straw, some brown pipe clearners and 4 leaves. The first thing we did was push the pipe cleaners up into the bottom of our straw. Then we filled our straw with glue to hold the pipe cleaners in. The kids rolled and pushed some green tissue paper into the other end to "cork up" the other end so glue wouldn't spill out everywhere. From there I used a glue stick to put glue on their straw and they had to stick their leaves on their straws ( I went back with white glue and glued the leaves on after school because they kept popping off!) Here is the finished product!

My students will be taking these home on Monday to show their moms and dads. They are really excited to start our pumpkin unit! Hopefully I'll have more pictures for that unit than I did for this unit. It's a lot more involved. We do a science experiment to see if pumpkins sink or float, we do ten frames from the seeds, we stick letters to individual pumpkins, we count how many cubes tall our pumpkin is, we even do a sequence of the pumpkin life cycle on a 3-D paper pumpkin. So much fun and all in time for Halloween! I can't wait to show you our Pumpkin Olympics! Anywho, that's another blog post for another day.

I hope your classes are having as much fun as we are and your kids are enjoying the season too! 

Always remember: any moment can be a learning moment!

Sincerely from TK,

Nichole

Busy Little Life

I know, I know! I haven't blogged or posted in a while (I think I'm going on 2 weeks now??) A lot has happened: I had a surprise trip to NV for a "Celebration of Life" for my husband's aunt, formal observations from my principal, and my dad gets married next Saturday-I found out Wednesday that I needed to make the table overlays and center pieces for the wedding. I've been a very busy bee! Lol.

But I am back! Table cloths are made, centerpieces are crafted and I'm halfway through my new alphabet tracer packet that I'm going to be posting here.

 

For the past couple of weeks I have been focusing on a number a week, my "Magic Number" and the kids have been loving it. I created a Magic Number poster that hangs on my learning wall and we fill it in each day (it's the same answers all week so the kids get repeated exposure to the facts all week.)

 

I got the idea for each section from talking to my kinder team and finding out what they would like the kids to know when they get to kindergarten. They really wanted the kids to know one less than, one more than, tally marks and ten frames. I threw in odd and even and the number word, just because. 

I was also asked to work on penmanship. Not just recognizing the letters and knowing their sounds, but also how to PROPERLY form the letter. We were working on Aa the same week as the number 1 so I took some pictures of student work. As we get further into the alphabet the students will be expected to write the letters on their own. For now, I'm writing it in highlighter and the kids are tracing them.

I did a super fun lesson with the kids about coloring and following our "coloring rules" so our pictures come out really pretty for everything we do. I wrote the rules down and then drew three of the same pictures. I colored them in three different ways, progressively getting better, and I let the kids rank them and tell me which kind of face to put underneath it. Before every lesson we remind ourselves that "We are working for big smiles!" This poster is put up on the wall and they can look at it any time they want. So far it's been really helpful.

 

I have many more fun lessons I've done, and I can't wait to share them with you!

Sincerely,

Your TK teacher

Nichole