Spring Has Sprung... And A Personal Note

Spring has sprung in our classroom (literally)! Every once in a while I like to turn my "kitchen" center into something new. I usually gear it towards some sort of theme that we are learning about or a holiday that is coming up. This center is really important, because it is not only play time, but also builds social development, and vocabulary about the world and the community. 

Previously, this year, I have turned the kitchen center into Santa's Workshop at Christmas and Cupid's Post Office at Valentine's Day.

Now our center has turned into a garden! Students can sort flowers and seeds here. They can also act out planting a garden, watering it and raking dirt. Some students in my class have also taken it upon themselves to play "flower shop". 

On a more personal note, my son turned 1 recently! I went a little crazy with his party which was "sock-monkey" themed. Here are the pics from his birthday:

2 Presidents That Made a Difference... In Our Classroom!

We just got finished with a 2 week long unit on presidents in my class. It's amazing how interested these kids get over people who lived hundreds of years ago. I've been doing foldables throughout the year, but decided to do one on a bigger scale for this unit. For more on foldables, click here.

We learned about Abraham Lincoln for the first week and George Washington the second week. We did many compare and contrast activities, such as a Venn diagram to gain more understanding about each president. We made "pretend" money with the presidents faces on them. We even practiced drawing their faces, in a teacher-led, step-by-step, directed art project. We used these pictures for the outside covers on our foldable "books". 

Here is an example of what one looked like:

In the inside of each cover, I had students draw or label a fact about each president.

The middle section took us the longest to accomplish. I really worked hard on reminding them of the High Five Chart and the editing process. Yes, even kinders can edit their work! In fact, it really helped them to gain some ownership of the writing that they were doing. For more on the High Five process that I created, read my earlier post here.

I was so proud of how they came out. They wrote a lot about each president and really developed an interest in them with the more that each of them wrote!

Here are a few examples of a few writing pieces that we placed in the middle section of our foldable:

Although there are still misspellings after the editing process was complete, I knew that each student had given me their best work. Can you believe that kinder kids are capable of writing so many coherent sentences?! We had a great time with this unit and I will continue to do it in years to come.

Have Fun Teaching

I wanted to share this website that I use everyday!

http://havefunteaching.com/


There are many cute counting songs, like count by 10's, 5's and 1's. They are often a fun rap song or some other type of cute song.

We sing these everyday and the kids memorize the different ways to count!

There is also a song for every letter of the alphabet. We do one a day, according to the letter that we are learning that week! It really helps ingrain the letter sound, and also goes over which letters are vowels or consonants.

This is great for kinders!

Eek!

This week in preparation for Halloween, we will be learning about spiders. I use the terms arachnid and exoskeleton a lot throughout the week, and the parents are super impressed when the kids go home and use these vocabulary words. 

When we do a great science unit like this, I like to use many kinds of graphic organizers.

I also make a spider word wall in front of them by writing important words and drawing pictures to go with them on chart paper. We keep this up in the room all week, so that the kids can write about spiders in their journals. I put out lined paper for the writing center of 3 different ability levels and the kids can choose which one best suits them. 

Check out my Eek! Spiders! packet at my Teachers Pay Teachers store:

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Mrs-Proffitt

Fire Truck... Fire Truck...

Every year, I read this book to my class called Fire Truck by Ivan Ulz. The book came with a cd that sings a song as the pages go along. The kids absolutely LOVE this song and end up singing it all week, and sometimes for the rest of the year. :)

I've been doing this every year, and didn't realize that it's on youtube with the pictures from the book and the song! I'm so excited to use this in my class!

Fire Truck Song

I also created another sound box lesson to go with the last one I posted. This time, the kids have to look at Halloween picture cards and move candy corn pieces into the spots as they hear the sounds. 

Here are the directions:

1.          Print the sound boxes into strips (5 boxes per strip) and laminate.

2.          Print the candy corn pieces and cut into individual pieces (each piece only containing 1 candy corn). Laminate pieces.

3.          Print the picture cards and laminate.

4.          Each child will get a baggie with a sound box strip and five candy corn pieces.

5.          The teacher will hold up the picture cards.

6.          Each child will move a candy corn piece into each spot for every sound that they hear, starting from the left. (Ex. cat has three sounds/phonemes= /c//a//t/, so the child will put three candy corn pieces in starting from the left side and filling in each spot next to it until three spots have been filled.

7.          Show each picture card and have the students listen for the sound and fill in the appropriate number of boxes.

8.          This can be used in small group, as a whole group lesson in a pocket chart and then placed in a center!