Five for Friday - Feb. 6, 2015

For today's post, I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for her Five for Friday linky party.

Here are five photos from this week:

This is a game I made back in 2012 to have my kinders practice identifying the syllables in different words. I used it with one of my groups of struggling readers this week during Daily 5. You can download this game for free by clicking here: 

Valentines Syllable Sort

We have been working hard on guided reading during Daily 5. Most of my kinders are really making good progress with their reading, but there are a few I am still concerned about.

My kinders are really LOVING our writer's workshop right now. They are so excited to be able to put their thoughts down on paper and I am so proud of the progress they are making!

Read to Self has become a favorite activity for my kinders during Daily 5. This kinder was so excited today when he got to read in my rocking chair! It is a favorite spot for all of them!

This was one of my kinder's writing from earlier in the week. She wrote this in her journal during Work on Writing. It made me smile when she chose to share it with the class today!

Now head on over to Doodle Bugs Teaching blog to see all the other random photos from this week! 

It's a Winter Wonderland! (Part 2)

This week we have continued to learn about winter and all the things associated with the season.

For writing, we wrote about what we can do, like and see in winter. I made this writing paper and it is a freebie, so please download it if you would like to use it. Please leave me some comment love if you download it.

In Winter writing paper

Here are some of my kinders writing on this paper. They were able to use a list of winter words to help them spell those words correctly. 

They are doing very well in my opinion with their writing at this point in the school year. 

I thought it was really cute how they saw snow and snowmen in winter but we rarely ever have snow in SC!! Kinders have such great imaginations!

We also read The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. It is such a sweet and beautiful book. After we read the story, we practiced retelling the story with a beginning, middle and ending which is so difficult for so many of my kinders. Then they wrote and drew the beginning, middle, and end of the story. These were two of my best and these kinders worked so hard to sound out all of their words. I am so proud!!

We also pretended it had snowed and they wrote about what they would do if there was snow. These were cute too but I only got a picture of this one.

I would build a snowman with my friends.

She did such a good job sounding out her words! I am so proud of the improvement she has made this year!

As a fun activity, we made these cute winter hats to wear to lunch. My kinders loved decorating them. They are free download by clicking the link below. The pictures are two to a page. Each child colored and cut out their circle. Then we stapled them to a construction paper strip to make the hat. 

Winter Is Here hats

I hope you are having a wonderful winter wherever you are!! 

Operation S-Elf-less - Week #1

So Krista Wallden who makes the fabulous Creative Clips clipart has created Operation ELF and the S-ELF-less Challenge. I have decided to join in the fun too! This challenges us to do random acts of kindness for others and this is the perfect time of year to do this. Here is her list for this week:

Here are my RAK for this week!

#3 - A Fun Freebie:

Here is a fun freebie for you using the free clipart from Krista this week. I know this isn't classroom related but it is something fun for Christmas. I used her gift tag clipart to create these tags for your Christmas presents. You can print them out on cardstock or regular paper using a color printer and just cut them out. Merry Christmas to you!

Christmas Tags

#4 - Postive Post-Its:

I left these Post-Its for my teacher assistant and 2 of my fellow teachers! I hope they brightened their day as much I had fun writing them!

#5 - Free Choice:

For my free choice, I decided to fill a shoe box for an adult working at the children's home our church supports in Mexico. This will be mailed to the missionaries down there and given to the kids and adults for Christmas. I forgot to snap a picture of the box before I took it to be mailed...

Apples, Apples!

Ok I have been a busy and very bad blogger lately but this week I remembered to take pictures so I could post this LONG blog post!

Fall is officially here! I love this time of year - the leaves changing colors, the pumpkins, the apples, the cooler mornings, etc.! This week I am teaching our apples unit. This is always a fun one and one I look forward to. Of course here near the coast of SC we don't have apple orchards but my kinders still love learning all about them.

This week we have been doing all sorts of fun things with apples. Here are some sneak peeks into what has been going on in my classroom.

To begin our unit we wrote an a rebus about apples. The word/picture cards are from kidssoup.com. I had these from a subscription a few years ago. This activity really helps my kinders learn some vocabulary and they love that they can read this rebus over and over again!

We have been working on labeling our pictures so I created this label the apple kid sheet. I helped my kids to stretch out the words as a class and they wrote the sounds they heard. I was very pleased with the amount of sounds they were able to hear and write.

 

 

Here is a link to the label the apple kid sheet if you would like to download it!

Label the Apple Kid sheet

We also practiced labeling the parts of an apple. They practiced sounding out the words and writing them before I gave them the printed labels to put on their papers.

I have started creating different colored boxes for the labels to help my kinders find the right box to write in. This seems to really help them with labeling.

We also wrote about the lifecycle of the apple from seeds to tree to blossom to apple. They love that they were able to find the words to write in the rebus we created earlier in the week.

 

 

We taste tested all 3 colors of apples - Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, and Granny Smith. After we graphed which was our favorite we made tissue paper apples of each child's favorite color apple.

I'm sure you can see how much fun we had with our apples unit. I hope you are having a great start to your fall too!

Gingerbread Family Projects

Last week, I sent home a project with my kinders for them to decorate a gingerbread boy or girl with their family. They had to bring them back and we decorated our hallway with them. They turned out to be absolutely adorable. You can tell they put a lot of thought and effort into their projects.

Of course I wanted to share them with you. Here are a few:

If you would like to do this project with your class, you can download the letter I sent home here. I also traced a large gingerbread stencil onto brown construction paper to send home with the letter.

Gingerbread Family Project Letter

Five For Friday

I am linking up with Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching for her Five for Friday.

1 - This week we have been assessing the math standards for our 3rd nine weeks report cards. One of the standards was comparing 2D and 3D shapes so here are the shapes we are using to compare.

2 - These adorable little vistors came to our classroom on Thursday. They belong to a fellow kindergarten teacher who brought them to share with our entire grade level. My kinders loved seeing them.
 

3 - This was one of my literacy stations this week for my kinders. My kinders enjoyed finding the rhymes and it was very interesting to see how they spelled some of them.
 

4 - My kinders wrote after we read The Easter Egg by Jan Brett. I was amazed at this little fellow's writing. He worked so hard on decorating his egg and his story to match.
 

5 - This is a color by sight words sheet I made for my kinders to use this week. It is pretty simple but it practices some of the harder words from the Journeys reading series. I am posting it as a freebie for you too. I know it may be too late to use it this year but you could always use it for spring.
 

Bunny Color by Sight Words Activity Sheet

Writing Wednesday: Who Do You Love?

Who do you love? Everytime I read my kinders' writing from today I can't help but think about this song! Since this is the week before Valentines Day we have been talking about why Valentines day is important and who we celebrate on Valentines Day.

Today my kinders wrote about who they loved and why. It was interesting to see their reasoning. Here are just a few of their final products:

I love my dad because he is nice to me.

I love my mom because her (she) colors.

I love my mom because she cooks me dinner.

I remade this sheet so that it can be photocopied and have uploaded it as a Google Doc if you would like a copy of it to use tomorrow or next Valentines Day.

Who Do You Love? writing sheet

If you download this sheet, I would appreciate getting some "love" from you! :)

Teaching Sight Words (Journeys Units 4 & 5)

My kinders have been practicing these sight words for months but many of them are still not fluently reading them and finding them in books so I made a concentration game for my assistant to use in small groups as extra practice. My kinders love playing these kinds of games and they don't even realize they are learning through the game.

Journeys Units 4 & 5 Concentration Game

I am sure many of you teach these same sight words even if you don't use the Journeys reading series so this may be something you can use too.

If you download this game, please leave me some feedback. If you have another suggestions for ways to practice sight words with my kinders, I would love to hear them too!

Teaching Sight Words (Journeys units 1, 2, & 3)

This week I am on unit 4 lesson 17 in my Journeys reading series. This year my kinders seem to be having more trouble than usual learning their sight words. I have also had to adjust some of the words I teach since the sight words are not the same in Journeys as they were in our old reading series.

I have created a sight word bingo game to use with my small groups next week to review the sight words from units 1, 2, and 3 of Journeys. I hope you can use it too. If this goes well, I plan to make one for units 4, 5, and 6.

I am sure many of you teach these same sight words even if you don't use the Journeys reading series so this may be something you can use too.

Journeys Sight Word Bingo - Units 1, 2, & 3

 

If you download this bingo game, I would love to hear from you. I always love to hear your suggestions.

Friday Freebie: Ending Sounds Activity Sheet

Happy Friday everyone! I am exhausted after a very busy week, but I am excited for the long weekend ahead! Yah for 3 day weekends!! I do have to finish my students' report cards before Wednesday so I guess I will be working on those at some point this weekend.

I created this simple activity sheet for my students to practice ending sounds. I hope you can use it as well. The students just fill in the missing ending sound for each of the pictures. 

Ending Sounds Activity Sheet

If you download this activity, I would love to hear from you. Thanks for your support!