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!!

Markdown Monday

Happy Monday!!  I know that many of you educators out there are enjoying this last day of holiday break before heading back to school for your first day tomorrow!  I also have friends who have already been back to school for an entire month!!  Not to mention the blogging friends I've made from Australia, who are getting read to wrap up their year in just a few short months!!  Makes your head spin a bit, doesn't it?

As for my, tomorrow marks my 4th day with students.  We had a three-day week last week and a four-day week this upcoming week, which is a good start at getting our kiddos used to the rules and routines of the classroom.  One of the main concepts we're introducing this week is Rhyming.  Since today is the Markdown Monday linky party hosted by Kelly and Kim's Kindergarten Kreations, I decided to markdown ALL of the rhyming activities in my TPT store by AT LEAST $1.00.  Not too shabby, eh??  

This activity full of practice pages has been marked down to just $2.00!!!

A Write the Room Rhyming marked down to $1.00!!!

This St. Patrick's Day-themed rhyming activity is also just $1.00!!  Grab it now to use in March!!

This fun rhyming activity is available for just $1.00 this week!!

My newest activity, which I am going to be putting at my Pocket Chart Center, is marked down this week to just $1.00!!!

I am also in the midst of several more rhyming activities, and I hope to get them added to my TPT store by mid-week.  They will also be marked down $1.00 off until next Monday!!  Don't forget to hop over to Kelly and Kim's Kindergarten Kreations to see who else has linked up for Markdown Monday and put some of their products on sale for the week!

Five for Friday on a Saturday CLASSROOM REVEAL Pt. 1

Hey everyone!!  So sorry I couldn't post yesterday, but I was knocked down flat by a migraine.  I had to lie down as soon as I got home from work, and I slept until this morning.  Luckily I woke up migraine-free today, thank goodness!!  Those things are THE WORST!!!!

Since I couldn't yesterday, today I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for her Five for Friday linky party.  I am going to share some of my Classroom Reveal with you!!

These numbers are a creation of Krista Wallden.  She's awesome.  Go check her out on TPT!!!

Here is my Dragon Alphabet Line.  I know it's hard to see, what wit the glare of the lights and the fact that my phone doesn't have the greatest camera.

I tried to crop it so it would give you a closer view, but it's not all that much better, sorry!!  I have all of the vowels in red and the consonants in black, and each vowel poster has a picture for the long and short sounds.  Plus, 'C' and 'G' have a pic for the hard and soft sounds. I placed the alphabet line on the cork strip that is attached to the overhang part of the ceiling.  This overhang marks the spot where the floor of my classroom turns from carpet to tile, and my kiddos walk underneath of it every time the line up at the doo. My kinders are getting a kick out of how many dragons I have around the classroom!!

I also created a Dragon Number line this summer.

Here is a zoomed in picture of part of the number line.

I have Lil Dragon holding the numerals, and each is rainbow-colored.  I also have rainbow-colored letters to match the numbers, and used the letters to spell out the number words.  I also have a ten-frame (or double-ten frame) on each poster, and inside the frames are different gems and jewels.  We all know that dragons LOVE all things shiny and sparkly.  I have a poster for numbers 0-20, and they are in a line along the top of the wall above where my SMART Board is located.

Something else that I completely changed in my room is where I keep my word wall and schedule board.  For the past three years, I've used the chalkboard at the back of my room to display my calendar, schedule, and objectives for the day.  My Word Wall was displayed on the bulletin board attached to the right side of the chalkboard.  This year I decided to swap the two.

Here is the bulletin board that used to hold my Word Wall.  Now, it has my calendar, schedule tags, and objectives.  This calendar is really for display only, as all of my calendar activities occur on the SMART Board.  I use a Wikki Stix to create a circle and show them what day of the month it is.  My schedule tags have a dragon theme (of course) and are labeled with the name of our activity as well as a picture to go with it.  For example, the 'Lunch' tag has a picture of the cafeteria and our 'Music' tag has a picture of our Music teacher.  The black frames are going to be where I write my daily objectives.  Oh, and on the left side of the schedule tags is a rainbow ribbon with Lil Dragon at the top and a Castle at the bottom.  I move the dragon down the rainbow as we get to each part of our day.  My kinders can 'see' how much of the day is left by looking to see how much rainbow the dragon has to travel until he gets home.  This system has really helped answer the 'when are we going....' questions.

The new schedule board was relatively easy to create.  The most time-consuming part was putting black construction paper inside the frames and hanging them with ribbon.  Now, the new Word Wall was a bit trickier to create.  First, I wanted to give it a border.  I used painter's tape and hot glue to attach the border.

This part was tricky because I had to make sure I got the border attached to the hot glue before it cooled, while at the same time not getting any hot glue on the chalkboard.  It took a while, but I like how it turned out!

I used a rainbow border, since it fits in with my room's theme and I sort my sight words into groups that I label with colors.  I also created headers with rainbow letters and a rainbow border, and attached a magnet to the back so I could put them on the chalkboard and easily move them around.

Our district is currently working on choosing 150 sight words and arranging them into groups/levels.  I am so grateful for this idea, since we will ALL be teaching THE SAME WORDS AND IN THE SAME ORDER!!!  How helpful for kinders who switch schools mid-year, and how super to have it already organized for me.  Once the final decision is made and the lists are given to teachers, I will be adding the words to the wall.

I am lucky enough to have several bulletin boards in my room that are 'real' bulletin boards, attached to the walls of my room.  There are two large ones on each side of the two chalkboards in my room, as well as three long, thin boards.  I use each one for something different, and am very grateful to have them!!  However, I quickly realized I would need even more.  So, I decided to make some.  The yellow board in the picture is one of the large bulletin boards that are attached to the walls of my room.  The blue board is one I made myself, by using painter's tape, hot glue, bulletin board paper, and borders.  I have, so far, made four of these types of boards in my room.  In this picture, the large yellow board will be my ELA board, and the large blue board will be for Math.

Does your classroom have bulletin boards and/or cork strips?  Did they 'come with the room' or did you have to buy/make some of your own??

Don't forget to hop back over to Doodle Bugs Teaching to see who else has linked up for her Five for Friday linky.  There are some really great tips and tricks being shared, plus some great pictures and stores!!  :-)

First Week FABULOUS!!

Happy Friday!!  Well, technically it is Thursday, but it is MY Friday.  We have a county-wide teacher inservice day tomorrow, so no kiddos.  We also have off for Labor Day, so the littles have a four-day weekend to relax and recuperate from the first week of kindergarten.

When my kinders came for Entry Conferences I let them pick a Dragon to get their picture taken with.  I used the pictures for their locker labels.

Since we started on Tuesday and there is no school tomorrow, our first week of school was actually only three days.  Oh, and one of those is our county-wide 'early dismissal' day.  Next week is a four-day week, so we won't have our first full five-day week of kindergarten until the second week of September.

Even though it was only a three-day week, I can't believe how HECTIC it was!!  It's amazing how, every year, I seem to forget just how little my kiddos are when they first start kindergarten.  Everything is so new and big and strange to them, and they need you so much more at the beginning of the year than at the end, when they are becoming more independent.  I am very lucky in that most of my kiddos this year were in a pre-k class last year, so most of them are comfortable with using pencils, scissors, glue, and other 'tools of the trade'.  Many of them can write their name, and most of them are able to recognize their name.  Plus, most of them can count to 20 and recognize the numbers 1-10 AND are able to use one-to-one correspondence.  Attendance at pre-kindergarten is not mandatory in my state and there are requirements that must be met before a student can be enrolled into a pre-k class (at a public school).  I wish that we had mandatory pre-kindergarten.  Not only would it provide more jobs for more teachers, but so many more students would be able to receive the building blocks of education that participating in pre-k provides.  Ask any kindergarten teacher out there if they can tell a difference between students who attended a form of pre-k and those had no type of school-setting, and I highly doubt any of them would tell you no.  Oops, I'm headed off into a tangent...  :-)

I am happy to say that we have already packed a whole lot of learning into this first week!  We have practiced having a fire drill, how to eat breakfast in the classroom, how to eat lunch in the cafeteria, how to walk in the hall, how to behave in special classes, and how to handle dismissal.  That's only SOME of what we've done this week!!  :-)

This weekend I'll be posting my Classroom Reveal Part 1.  I've decided to do this in 'parts' since I quickly realized my goal of Extreme Classroom Makeover is going to be more of a year-long process, instead of the few days I had originally thought it would take.  Silly me, dunno what I was thinking!!  :-)  I hope you enjoy this holiday weekend and take some time to rest and relax with family and friends.  Use this time to re-energize for the coming weeks ahead!!  :-)

First Day of K!

Holy Moly, today was our first day of kindergarten!!!!!  Can I just say that I. Am. Exhausted.  I think that my kinders had a good day today!!  I snapped this picture right before I went to get them all from the buses/cars and bring them down to the classroom.

Everybody had a carpet square waiting from them, and the SMART Board was up and running (thank goodness, since I had a few last minute issues!!)  They are responsible for moving their names into an empty box every morning to let me know if they are here or absent.  Plus, it gives us an opportunity to practice identifying our names, which I quickly realized that some of my kinders could do and some could not!  Our day kind of flew by, which is awesome for the first day!  I made sure that the classroom door was ready to welcome my newest Dragons!

It's a bit hard to see in this picture, sorry!  I've been taking pictures with my phone since my camera went ka-put, and I have a new camera on my wish list, but for now I'm glad I have a phone that can take pics!!  It is a bit hard to see, but each of my kinders has a dragon holding a crayon, with their name on the crayons.  The sign at the top of the door says 'Kindergarten Dragons', and below the window says 'Where Learning is Magical' and is decorated with different dragon and sparkly stickers.  My kiddos got such a kick looking for their name on the door!

Today we organized supplies, learned about the many rules, and got to take a tour of the school! We also ate breakfast in the classroom and lunch in the cafeteria, which is a HUGE change for them.  I think some of them were overwhelmed with the noise and bright lights, but they did a GREAT job!!!!  We also got to play on the playground, even though it was so hot the little darlings kept asking to go back inside!!  We learned that we can't have a drink whenever we want, and that mulch is not okay to throw at our friends.  We also go to have our very first special of the year, Art!  They were able to learn about primary and secondary colors as well as show how they can color in a picture.  I can see we are going to have to work on staying in the lines as well as using more than just one color.  To finish up the day, I had a kinder whose birthday was today and her grown-ups brought us cupcakes to celebrate!  Nothing like having cupcakes on the first day of kindergarten to make it even more awesome!  Dismissal was a bit hectic, so I can see that is something we will need to work on.  All in all, I think we had a fabulous first day!!

I know that today is a Book Talk Tuesday day, but it was the first day of kindergarten and I am EXHAUSTED!!!  Also, this is the first time in my life that my mom wasn't here to ask me how my first day of school went.  So, I'm trying to deal with that bit of sadness at the moment and am not handling it as well as I thought I would!!  So, I'm going to shed a few more tears over how much I miss that incredible lady, and I will ask you to stay tuned this week as I try to iron things out and keep up with blogging as well as everything else!!  I'm gonna go spend some time remembering my mom.  I hope all of you have had an amazing time at school so far!!!