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Winter Olympics Math 2014

Do you have Olympic fever?  I do.  I have always loved watching the Olympics since I can remember.  When I was younger, my cousins and my sister and I would pretend we were figure skaters with our socks on linoleum flooring.  I thought it would be fun to incorporate the Olympic fever into some math activities for my classroom this year.  Below are some samples:





Currently in my classroom, we just finished celebrating 100 days of school and have started a unit on skip counting in our math curriculum.  Also, I added in some common core skills with some algebraic operations in creating ten with addition.  I know that these are skills in math for most kindergarten classrooms at this time of year.  As much as I wanted to add some things in about Sochi, Russia or add some USA pride in it, I tried to make it as neutral as possible to provide usability again in four years and for other kindergarten teachers worldwide to use it.  I think it is a fun way to incorporate the excitement children may have watching the Olympics and dreaming about it into the classroom, especially in math, which can be hard to make interesting for everyone.  I also have included a graph activity so the class can find out their favorite winter sport!  You can find it at Miss Amy's Schoolhouse on TeachersPayTeachers or at: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Winter-Olympics-Kindergarten-Math-Activites-1105849.  

Enjoy and be blessed!!

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Whew! That Was Busy!




      Hello friends! I can't believe the first nine weeks is already over! It seems like I was trying to stay updated and suddenly it is now the end of October!  I wanted to share with you some beginning of the year activities that might be helpful for intervention or supplement.
     The beginning of the year can be difficult for teachers as we lesson plan. For me, I like to lesson plan with my students and their abilities in mind, but obviously that is hard when you don't know your students.  This year we are starting off with a quick alphabet letter review.  Wedid two letters a day, focusing on letter identification and some beginning sound work.
      My favorite thing to use to work on beginning letter skills are these two books I bought a few years ago from The Mailbox Publishing Company.  I love the simple black and white pictures because they are clear and easy to figure out what the object is.  They are also very up-to-date with the words they use, using items that the children of the 2000s know, i.e. no records or record players on the R booklet or activities.  (Not that I am against record players.  It just makes practicing letter sounds difficult by having to stop and explain what a record is.  Better to save that for a music appreciation lesson!  :-)  )  Anyway, here are some samples from the books below:



   As you can see the pictures are clear and the activities provide great practice with letters and following directions.  The D page on the right shows me that this student can identify capital D, but may struggle with auditory directions since they were supposed to draw a line instead of circling the letter.  This student wasn't the only one to do that, so we have worked on quite a few activities where we follow directions when they are given out loud. It is fun to make the ABC booklets because at the end, the kiddos will each have a whole alphabet set!

The D and F page are from the Big Book of Beginning Sounds.  The activities provide great practice with identifying beginning sounds as well as increasing vocabulary of the students.  The students not only love the accomplished feeling with the cut and paste, but they love coloring the pictures.  As we build our word wall throughout the year, I am very impressed as they suggest words to add that come from these activities.


Both things provide such good practice with fine motor skills using coloring, cutting, and pasting, I can't imagine starting off the year any other way!  It sets a great foundation as we move into reusable items such as puzzles, games, and flash cards.












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Sequencing Cards

Happy Tuesday everyone!  Today I wanted to share with you a brand-new activity  for sequencing.  For early readers, putting things in the right order of events can be difficult.  I created eight sets of sequencing cards to use as a center in the classroom!  My goal in creating these cards was to pick everyday life events in order so that students would be able to successfully put the cards in order.  I based them off of some sequencing cards a reading specialist let me borrow.  I don't know where she got them, but I have never been able to find any quite like them.  I loved them because of that everyday life  feature.  For example, I have a set about doing laundry and washing hands.  I find that if they can make the real life connections to what they are doing in the classroom, the students are more confident about their abilities to understand a skill.  Once they have mastered the skill, it is then easier for them to transition to putting it in use when we read stories or even later in the year as they begin to write their own stories!  Here is a sample below:



Don't delay, go download these for your classroom today! you can find them at Miss Amy's Schoolhouse Store.  Happy Sequencing!! 



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Daily 5: Read to Self

What literacy center method do you use in kindergarten?   This is my 3rd year to use the Daily 5 method, and I wouldn't have it any other way to do literacy centers.  

The Daily 5 consists of five literacy centers that are considered the anchor centers.  Each center is designed to function the same, but the activities change.  The centers are:  Read to Self,  Read with a Buddy, Word Work, Writing, and Listening.  The Sisters that created this method outline a day-by-day, week-by-week method of teaching the centers to the class to get started.  These past two weeks we have worked on the basics of a Read-to-Self center.

When I first start teaching the students about how to do Read to Self, we talk about how we can read a book in three ways.  You can imagine the responses from the kindergartners.  They all look at me like I am crazy.  Many of them will start to mutter that they cannot read.  I then tell them that we can read a book in three ways:  read the pictures, retell a story, or read the words.  I stress that we don't need to worry about reading the words right now.  A blessing of the reading series we use at my school is that they come with these really great decodable readers:

Did you notice something?  Yup.  There are no words!  I will pull these books out and we will practice reading the pictures of the books.  It helps the students then make that transition over to the books in the Read to Self area.

Just like every year, this class has its own personality, so we actually spent two weeks breaking down the Read to Self center and what it entails, including on how to pick a "just right" book.  They are doing a fantastic job and I can't wait to see how next week goes when we learn how to Read with a Buddy next week!  As the weeks progress, and I begin to really see who my readers are, I will fill the Read to Self center with books on their levels.  Right now though, I encourage them to bring their readers to the center or look though the books I have place there.  I have chosen books that go with our themes of going to school and all about me right now.  I also make sure that any book I read aloud goes in the center so they can retell it.  And of course, the class books we have made!

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First Day Fun!

Today was our first day of kindergarten for the 2013-2014! It was so much fun!  The children were all sweet and excited to be here.  Today they were strangers, but I know by the end of the year we will be family.

For me, the first day of school is always unique every year.  I try to follow the same plan every year, but I always find something new and different to do.  Like a new management system for lunches or a new way to line up.  Today it was a new way to start off the year writing.

The school that I teach at has very strong academic expectations, especially in writing, which  fits well with the new Common Core emphasis on writing.  This year in my Back-To-School packet I created, I added a writing activity, which now turned into our first class book!  I love doing the class books and especially love at the end of the year when I raffle off the different ones to the students.  What a precious keepsake to have for your lifetime!  Anyway, back to the class book.  I am sharing it with you all, because it was so easy to do and the results were fantastic!

We read the book, Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready For Kindergarten.  It is a great first day of school book to read!  I love it because the pictures are so detailed about all the different things people do to get ready for school!  Plus, the author uses alphabet order for each character, which is really fun as well. After we read the story, I had the class go to free play centers which consisted of legos, books, puzzles, and a special color sheet on which they traced the lines using markers, practicing the fine motor skills.  While the free play centers were happening, I called small groups over to work on the writing page.  I had them draw the pictures describing step by step their own getting ready for kindergarten process.  Then I wrote the caption underneath as they dictated to me what happened.

The results are below!  They did a great job drawing pictures to describe how they got ready for kindergarten that morning.  There were lots of teeth being brushed, lots of pancakes eaten, lots of new backpacks, and lots of car rides to school!  They loved connecting their real-life experience with the book!  Here are the pictures:







I hope you enjoyed seeing their work as much as I did!  I am so excited for this year! Go try this activity with your students!  Happy Writing!


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Am I worried about school starting? Goodness, No! I wear my school shoes, I wear my school shoes....

Happy Thursday y'all!

Today's theme that I uploaded to Miss Amy's Schoolhouse Store is based upon one of my favorite series of books: Pete the Cat!  I love Pete because he tackles fears and worries.  He doesn't let the small stuff get to him because he knows in the end, it will all be good.  It is a great series!  Check out the author's website! Watch this video below:




Because of how awesome Pete is, I just had to create some math and language arts activities based on this book!  Every year, I always have a few kids that love Pete.  Last year, I had a little boy love Pete so much that was all he would listen to in the listening center.  In fact, his friends stop going with him there because they couldn't listen to Pete one more time.  :-)  Here are a sample of the activities:


 


   I created a math activity that orders Pete's guitars from biggest smallest, a mystery picture about the number 4, and in the bottom picture, you can see the parts to make a book report puppet.  I saw the idea for the book report puppet many year ago when I did an author study on Kevin Henkes with my 2nd graders.  I never thought the idea would work well with kindergarten until I started reading more about the Common Core skills.  Here are the directions for assembling the puppet:

Directions:
1.  Have the children complete the “My Favorite Place Pete Rocked His School Shoes Was…”  They can draw the picture of the story and then have an adult write the caption.
2.  (It helps if you can precut all the pieces before giving them to the children.)  Hold the bag like a puppet.  Have them glue the head to the flap created by the bottom of the sack.  
3.  Glue the arms and legs to the bag, followed by gluing on the hands and shoes.
4.  Glue the tail on the back.
5.  Now glue “My Favorite Place Pete Rocked His School Shoes…” paper to Pete’s Belly.
6.  Have the children each stand up in the circle with their puppet on their hand and then tell the class what  about their favorite part of the story

What makes this great for kindergarten is the element of allowing them to DRAW about the book.  When reading the beginning expectations for writing according to Common Core, a light bulb went off.  Of course they can do the book report puppet!  Have them draw and then dictate to the teacher about the picture.  Then they can use the puppet to build those speaking and listening skills by telling the class about their favorite part of the book.  Perfect!  Sometimes the simplest solutions are often complicated by over thinking!

Anyway, I hope that you will check out my theme!  I would love your feedback!  AND I hope that you take time to read to your class Pete the Cat: Rocking In My School Shoes this year as school starts!

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It is Back to School with Common Core!

I finally finished my whole TpT Back-to School theme using the Common Core Skills.  What is a really neat feature just added to TpT is that you can now find items by the exact common core skill!  Makes searching for that perfect lesson or activity that much quicker!  Here are some previews from the theme:



This theme was a lot of fun to make!  I've included all the math activities that I posted about last week, and added several language art activities.  My favorite things in the unit are a Back-To-School version of "I Have, Who Has" and a 4-Square writing activity sorting out school items.   If you have never played "I Have, Who Has," it is a great way to build those speaking and listening skills that not only are required by Common Core, but are also important as a life skill.  Plus, since this version relies heavily on pictures, it is great for emergent readers! Each child is given a card and they say, "I have a____," filling in with the 1st picture on the card.  The child then says, "Who has a ______?" asking the class for the card with the 2nd picture.  Play continues until the end of the cards.  I love using the 4-Square writing method to teach my kindergarteners how to become awesome writers.  The first step is sorting out pictures around a topic.  Since this will be the first one they will do, I've kept it very simple to build confidence and also understanding of the task.  You can visit my store here:  http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Miss-Amys-Schoolhouse

Today we also find out what little friends we will have in our classrooms this year!  I'm excited to get a brand new crop of eager boys and girls!  School starts on August 14th with an information day, followed by the first full day of school on August 15th! It is coming soon!  When does school start for you?


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