Peek at My Week (Week 3): Lesson Plans and Activities

Tomorrow is Monday...the weekend is over.  <sad face>  I start my third week of teaching tomorrow, but it is my first five-day week of the year.  Tomorrow marks Day 8 of kindergarten for us, and I have to admit that things are going REALLY WELL so far!!!  <knock on wood!!>  I'm excited to link up with the ever-amazing Deedee Wills for her Peek at My Week linky party.  It's so much fun to see what other educators and bloggers are doing with their lesson plans and how they spend their week!  Make sure to click on the picture at the end of my post to hop on over to see who else has linked up!!

This is the third week of linking up with Peek at My Week, but it is the first week I've been able to share lesson plans.  At my school there are 4 kindergarten teachers, and we all split up the workload. I am SO VERY GRATEFUL to be able to do this!!  We take turns typing up the weekly plans and creating the daily SMART Board routines.  Isn't it just fabulous to be part of a team??  I haven't been able to watch DeeDee's fabulous video tutorial on how to display one's plans with links to activities, so I'm just going to have to settle for showing you a screen shot of the plans and then providing links to any activities that were used.

This first page shows our morning plans for the week.  During the morning is when we work on calendar and ELA activities, including word study, whole group reading, and guided reading.  As per our contract, our plans must include a daily objective taken from the Common Core, an activity, and how we are going to assess that activity.  The style/format we use is up to us.  My team types them up in a Word template.  We have used the same one for many years, and it works just fine for us!!  :-)

The second page of our weekly plans shows what we do for math, including whole group, guided math groups, number of the day, and number talks.  During the afternoon is also when we attend special and when we have our science/social studies block.  We do two days of science and two days of social studies, since every Wednesday is 2:00 dismissal for all elementary schools in our county.  The students leave at 2, but teachers remain until the end of their duty day.  We use this time for professional development, staff meetings, team meetings, and working in our rooms.  Every Wednesday of the month is designated for something different.

Here are the activities I'm using this week that can be found on TPT.

This activity pack created by Caitlin Clabby of Kindergarten Smiles is AMAZING!!!  We have already used several of the many, many activities provided!  This week we will be working on creating the 'Monster School Rules' book.  Last week we worked on coloring the cover and assembling the pages for the rules of 'Whispering Mouths' and 'Walking Feet'.  This week we will work on the rules 'Listening Ears' and 'Boss of ME!'  That last one is, hands-down, my favorite go-to rule for the entire year.  Whenever one of my kinders runs up to me to tell me what so and so just did/said/etc, I say 'Who are you the boss of?  That's right, you are the boss of YOU and no one else."  Love.

All these week during ELA guided reading groups, we will be working with this little easy reader I made.  It focuses on VERY SIMPLE shapes, color words, number words (for the number of sides of the shapes discussed), and some simple sight words.  We are going to work on reading this book all week, as well as identifying the shapes by their name and number of sides and understanding that a shape's name doesn't change regardless of it's size or orientation on the page.  If you'd like to use it, click on the picture above to download the reader FOR FREE!!!!!

On Friday during our guided math groups we will be teaching our kinders how to play this simple game I created for the partners of five (some folks call them combinations or fact families).  Our kinders will work in pairs and use a cup of 5 double-sided counters to spill out and sort onto five-frames.  They will then search for that number sentence on their game board and color in the square.  When all the squares are colored in, they count up their color to see who had the most.  Oh year, this one is FREE TOO!!!!  I'm just feeling generous this weekend.  ;-)

This week we will also be reading MANY wonderful stories, including David Goes to School by David Shannon and Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes, just to name a few.  We are also going to be working on rhyming skills as well as introducing the letters 'P' and 'B'.  In our district we follow Linda Almarode's LiPS program.  We will also be having lots of number talks for the numbers 3,4, & 5.  It's going to be a super busy week in Room 130!!!

I hope everyone has a fabulous week.  Don't forget to hop on over and see who else has linked up for Peek at My Week linky party!!

Oh, quick question!!  How do you introduce the letters of the alphabet to your littles?

Five for Friday, Late Again

What would Saturday be without my Five for Friday post!!  I'm linking up, late, with Doodle Bugs Teaching for her Five for Friday linky party.  Here are 5 things from my week!!

These fabulous numbers are a creation of Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah Designs!!

One of the ways I am trying to handle supplies this year is to have my kinders keep their crayons inside these little plastic snack containers.  I found them three for a dollar at The Dollar Tree, and they fit a 24 box of crayons perfectly.  My kinders who had a 16 count box are also able to keep their glue sticks inside.  I wasn't sure how individual supplies were going to work, but so far so good!!

I'm having them keep all of their supplies in these pouches I picked up at The Dollar Tree.  As long as my kinders are gentle with them, they seem to hold up okay.  I labeled each one to match their locker number, since they are keeping these pouches inside their lockers when they are not using them.

Besides the crayon box pictured above, I have them keep several other supplies inside as well.

Each of them have a pair of scissors, a pencil, a glue stick, and their crayon box in the largest part of the pouch.

In the smaller part of the pouch, they are keeping a dry erase marker and a felt scrap that we use as an eraser for our white boards.  I have a class set of student-sized white boards, but those all stay on a shelf in my closet until we need them.

I am still working on getting this mess organized.  Don't judge.  ;-)

I don't know about you all, but music is my Happy Place.  Whenever I'm listening to music I can let my mind fly far, far away!!  I love to slip on a pair of headphones and decompress from a long day by listening to my favorite songs.  Well, recently I decided to treat myself to  a new stereo system.

This little cutie is my new best friend!  I got a beats by Dre Pill, which is a Bluetooth music player that can play music from my phone and other electronic devices.  The speaker itself sits inside the little guy's mouth, and the sound is AMAZING!!!  I'm loving being able to listen to music that is so crisp and clear.  LOVE!!!

This upcoming week our kindergarten team is going to be focusing on some of the basic 2D shapes that we need to cover this year.  We decided to start out SLOWLY and then work up towards those tricky multi-sided shapes.  This week we are going to introduce the circle, oval, triangle, square, rectangle, and MAYBE rhombus.  We will focus on identifying the shapes by the number of sides they have, as well as learning that their shape remains the same no matter what size it is or how you turn it around.  One of the resources we're going to use during our small group reading rotations is an EZ Reader I created that focuses on those simple shapes as well as color words, number words, and some very basic sight words.  I've decided to offer this little book, as well as the assessment sheet I made to go with it, as a FREEBIE in my TPT store!!  Please come grab a copy for yourself if you are going to be teaching these shapes any time soon!!

Click on the image above to head over to my TPT store to grab a copy for yourself!!  Please remember to rate it and leave me some feedback, I'd love to hear how you use it in your classroom!!


Don't forget to head on over to Doodle Bugs Teaching to see who else has linked up with her Five for Friday linky party!!