Our First Few Weeks

We now have 2 1/2 weeks under our belt! The kids are doing awesome and we're starting to settle into a routine! Here's what we've been up to....

Daily 5
Love, Love, love, how this has been going! We've worked our way up to six minutes during read to self and on Monday I will introduce Work on Writing. We learned all about Independence during Read to Self and also how to choose good fit books, with the Two Sister's lesson on shoes. In the beginning my kids were just choosing books out of our community book buckets and then finding a seat around the room. My one rule is that they must choose a new seat each time so that their muscle memory isn't tied to any one spot. They have been practicing the three ways to read a book - read the words, read the pictures, and retell the story. Then our Donors Choose project came in and each kid got their own book box! We filled them with little books we've worked on in class ( from my pack and from Deanna Jump). After our lesson on good fit books the kids went through the book shelf and picked out a book or two that interest them to add to their box. 

Writer's Workshop
Our school uses Lucy Caulkins and we started by talking about writer's and all the things writer's write. Then we made it into an anchor chart to hang up. We read the book "The Best Story" which is an AWESOME book about writing from your heart. That lead to us making our heart maps. The kids drew all the things, people, places they love. This stays in their folder and they can always look back at it if they need inspiration for writing topics. We introduced the writing process and taught that brainstorming ideas like we did on our Heart maps is called Pre-Writing. We gave each child a clip with their name on it and let them stick it on the top of our writing clip chart on "Pre-Writing" as we move through the different stages, the kids will move their clips to stay accountable. I forgot to take pictures of the kids heart maps, but you can see my modeled example here. 

Names
We did several activities to practice our names, including Rainbow names, and graphing the letters in our names. We also made our A my name is Alice portraits. These are all from Deanna Jump's Fun with Names pack. 

Calendar
We've been using Kathleen Pedersen's Calendar pack and I am so in love with it! My projector was stolen over the summer so I am forced to use an old dinosaur overhead projector, but I will still rave about it!! Love how it covers so many math & Social Studies concepts all at once in an efficient way!

Science & Social Studies:
We've been learning about families, and also our five senses. Next week we'll be doing a fun five senses project with popcorn! :)

Math:
We've started numbers 0-5 which fall under Counting and Cardinality on the Common core. I don't have pictures since I don't teach math. (I teach two classes writing and my next door neighbor teaches two classes math)

Common Core:
Our district has officially switched over both Kindergarten and 1st Grade to the new common core standards, as well as a new report card. We were told we now need to have every single standard listed in our grade book with room to document four attempts at mastery. We knew there was no way that was all going to fit into our rinky-dink blue covered grade books they gave us, so my co-team leader and I set about making a grade book that would have space for the whole class, all the standards, and four attempts each. You can check out our Kindergarten pack here:

And our 1st Grade pack here: 

We'll soon be uploading 2nd - 5th grade as well since they'll be switching over in the coming years too. 

We also made a Kindergarten (1st grade on the way!) version that is about twice as long. This one has only one standard per page, and room for five attempts. (4 regular attempts, and an exceeds expectations assignment) You can check that one out HERE.

If your district does common core I would love to hear how you go about recording what is taught when, who master's what, and how it is reflected on your report card!!

Free Days of the Week Cards

I'd like to start off this post by saying that there may not be anyone who is able to use these. They've been made to match my color scheme {blue and green} and my theme {puppies}. But I still want to offer them up to everyone. If you have a puppy theme or a blue and green theme...these are for you! Or maybe you don't have a theme and like cute stuff.... these are for you too! The set includes three posters and seven cards to go along with your calendar board.

You can get them for free HERE. Drop me a note if you grab them!

Calendar Time

Guess what I spent my Friday night doing? Making calendar folders! I know, I know... I need a life. I have been thinking for a while now of how I can make our calendar time more engaging and meaningful. I saw this great idea from Heather at Kindergarten Days. Each child will have a calendar folder to keep at their seat. In the morning when we line up for our arts classes they will take their folder to their spot on the carpet before getting in line. This way it is there waiting for them when we return to do calendar. Here is what is in each folder:
A calendar. As we add days to our class calendar the students will trace the number on their own calendar. At the beginning of the month they will also trace the month and year. We will use this page to work on things like days of the week, first day of the month, last day of the month, how many saturdays, etc.

A weather graph. As we put up the weather each day the students will color in a corresponding box to graph the weather. At the end of the month we will count up the groups and mark more and less.

A 100s chart. Each day we add a number to our 100s bug on our wall. As we add the number the students will write it on their chart.

A Birthday Chart. At the beginning of each month the students will color in the cake for that month.  Each day that we have a birthday we will add that friends name under the correct month.

A tooth chart. As students loose teeth we will add tally marks to that months tooth. At the end of the month we will total them up.

Sight Word Practice. Each day we will choose one sight word to practice writing.

Tally Chart. Each day we will add one tally to practice making four tallys then crossing the fifth. On the line next to each row we will write the total number to practice counting by 5s.

Number Practice. For the month of October we will work on one number each day. Tracing, learning the number rhyme to go with it and coloring in that many objects.

Math Page. On this page we will graph our favorite animals. I will ask one or two children each day to pick their favorite and we will color in the corresponding boxes. Then we will practice counting dots on the dominoes and tracing the corresponding number.

I will update in a few weeks to let you know how our new calendar time is going!

Most of these pages can be found at Heathers Blog Kindergarten Days.