Tooth Fairy Week {with freebies!}

Hello friends! We are finally ready to work on our Tooth Fairy/Dental Health unit. I'm so excited! I LOVE this one! Here's a little peek at what we are working on this week:

On the first day we are going to read "You Think It's Easy Being the Tooth Fairy?" and write in our Tooth Fairy booklets. I love this book for telling the "practical hard-working" side of the Tooth Fairy.

Then, on to another favorite, "Moose's Loose Tooth". This would be great for sequencing, however this year I'm using it for comprehension. After we read the book, we are going to graph who has and has not lost a tooth. Then I will reread the book and students will take a comprehension test on it. 

Our last book of the week will be "Tooth Trouble". After reading and discussing that the dentist is not so scary after all, we will write about what the main idea of the story is. Any time we write, we are highly encouraged to use a rubric in grading and checking mechanics. To makes things simple, the rubric on on the paper.

 You can snag this for FREE from my store by clicking here or on the picture. I usually run about 100 of these at a time and use my big binder clip on them. Then, I have them when we do our writing.

On Friday, my little ones will get to bring a stuffed animal to school. We will practice the art of brushing teeth with our construction paper toothbrushes and stuffed animals.
Below is a quick tutorial on how to make those toothbrushes. {This is from one of the awesome teachers on our K team.}

We will be working on a lot of activities from my Tooth Fairy {No Prep Writing} packet.

 AND you can get a little freebie when you click on it in my store and download the preview.

This is the little freebie that you can get when you download the preview. Just click on the picture to get there. :) 

Here are some more activities from this little packet:

 Write the Room

Tooth Fairy Booklet

Hope you all have an awesome week!!

Penguin Fun {Lots of Writing and a Freebie!}

Hello friends! We just finished up our week working on penguins and polar animals. My kinders loved it and we had so much fun! I love incorporating Science and Social Studies into my ELA. It doesn't happen every week, but it does happen often.
Each morning our message was about penguins. After a discussion, and sometimes brainstorming, students wrote about the topic in their journals.

On this day, our message was to inform my students that penguins hatch from eggs. We brainstormed what other animals hatched from eggs. They did awesome thinking of animals that hatched from eggs! 

We read several books about penguins and polar animals and discussed that we were learning facts. We talked about the difference between fact and opinion. To help with that concept we did a fact/opinion sort on penguins.

 All you have to do is print, cut out and sort on a pocket chart! And the best part...you can get them free from my store! {I'd love to have your feedback!}

On our last day we read a National Geographic about puffins.

We made a bubble map. After the lesson, I took the bubble map down. I decided to put it in my treasure box instead of trashing it like normal. The kids were excited and it was the first item taken from the treasure box that day. Score for me because it was free! 

 After our brainstorming, students go to work with their writing. I used a brace map with the words "The puffin" already there for them with each sentence. I wanted them to write 3 sentences about what they have learned. Our focus was more on retelling and writing what you have learned than correct sentence structure. So having the starter there already helped them with their writing. 

The writing came from my Polar Animals {No Prep Writing}

We just happened to earn a compliment party on Thursday. I let my kinders vote between doing a special surprise craft or a special surprise snack. Of course they chose snack! 

We made penguins out of bow-tie pretzels, big marshmallows and chocolate frosting. Very easy and yummy! 

 The finished product was cute. It doesn't exactly look like a penguin and we had chocolate frosting everywhere. But it was fun and that's what counts!

I'm so thankful we can now use YouTube at school on teacher computers. Just watch out for some crazy/inappropriate advertisement sometimes.

Here are some of the penguin videos we watched this week. 

This one is a documentary. My kinders loved seeing the penguins slide.

We LOVED this one!!

Now, I'm prepping for next week. We will be working on "The Mitten", celebrating 100th day and complete our unit on comparing numbers!

I'm linked up with A Classroom Full of Smiles for her lesson plan linky.

And I'm linked up with Classroom Freebies.

Pumpkins! {and a freebie!}

Hello friends! We just finished up our week with pumpkins!! I might have said this before, but I love fall! The thematic units for fall are so much fun! Ok, anyway, here is  my week in pictures. {some are seriously blurry, I really need to bring my real camera instead of using my phone...} 

Here is our fall tree. The week we worked on -at words each student wrote as many as they could on their leaf and we added it to the tree. I meant to do the same with pumpkins this week and our word family. It didn't happen so we will do it and add to the tree Monday. I *think* the plan will be to keep the tree up all year and add seasonal die cuts to it with whatever we are working on. 

Here is our pumpkin exploration. I let each student dive in and grab what they could from our pumpkin. They got to put it in a zippy bag and take home (I know my parents just love that, lol).

 During recess, I brought the pumpkin outside for them to really clean it out and have fun.

Love their hearts, they planted the seeds!

 This is our thematic word wall with all the words we need for writing. The glove is for telling "5 Little Pumpkins"

The word wall cards and everything for the life cycle of a pumpkin can be found in my little store. Just click on the picture.

 

Here we wrote down our pumpkin investigation. Here is the link to the original idea.

Our song to sing about pumpkins. Here is the link to the original idea.

I love 5 Little Pumpkins. I changed the wording around a little to leave out witches (the only thing "Halloweeny" we can't use).

Our KWL chart. I love seeing what they already know and what they are curious about!

Here is some journal writing (and the perfect example of why I need to bring my actual camera). We have a thematic morning message and the students write and draw a response in their journal. 

You can check out the morning messages by clicking on the picture below.

 

We make class books for almost everything. They stay in our library for students to read. At the end of the year we draw names and everyone gets to take one home.

 I have no clue where this writing paper came from, but I love it! If you know, please let me know so I can give that wonderful person credit! 

Now, for the freebie. If  you would like to try out the morning messages you can try the one on bats for free! Just click the picture to download.

Thanks for hanging in on this long post! I hope you are having fun with fall festivities! 

Scarecrows, Apples & Fall!

Hello friends! We sure have been busy this past week! Do you ever feel like you don't have enough time to fit in all of the thematic studies you want to? Last week I crammed apples, scarecrows and fall all together. It was a lot and I didn't get to do everything I had wanted to do with my kinders. But, they at least got to experience a little of it.

For apples, we read "Up, Up, Up, It's Apple-Picking Time" (click on the picture for the Amazon link). This is a great story about picking apples in an orchard.

We brainstormed ideas for apples uses:

.

We got all of our  fun apple activities from here:

For fall we read "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves". My kinders love these old lady books!

We made these adorable scarecrows and wrote about them:

All of our "Old Lady" activities came from the packet below (including the adorable scarecrows!)

This week we are working on pumpkins! I LOVE fall!!

Writing Rubrics (freebies and mini giveaway!!!)

Hello friends! How much writing do you do in kindergarten? When do they begin writing sentences and really writing on their own? Of everything that we teach in kinder, I enjoy teaching writing, but I feel that it can be the most frustrating (especially at the beginning of the year). So this year we started on day one and I feel like we have already made HUGE progress. 

One of my teaching partners decided to have her kids practicing their name each morning during announcements and bathroom time. I decided to do the same. Each child has their name practice paper in a plastic sleeve protector. While they are "listening" announcements and while they are going to the bathroom (one toilet for boys and one for girls to share between 2 classes) they are tracing and writing their name. When they are done they can write our words for the week or ANYTHING they want that they see around the room. One of the best things is that they use dry erase markers for this and there is no prep for this anymore. 

Another thing that has helped our writing is our morning messages and then putting the response in our journals. Each morning we have a morning message. I read it to the kids, we discuss, I write the key word on  my dry erase board and they go to their journal, write the key word and draw their response. The best thing....I already have kids trying to write sentences!!

Here's a link to my morning messages:

 They are available in  yearly and quarterly bundles and individually.

 I'm also going to give away my newest addition, Colors with Brown Bear and Friends to 2 lucky followers. 

Go to the bottom to enter through rafflecopter.

Now at my school, I am the kindergarten member of our writing team. We were asked to create rubrics for writing. Here is what I have come up with:

The best part?....they are free!! Just click on the picture to snag them!

a Rafflecopter giveaway