Superhero Fun

Hello friends! I just wanted to share some fun we have had this week. You might have read about my morning messages on another post. I really like them, so maybe just maybe I talk about them a lot. My kinders have grown tremendously from them, and I usually have a funny story or two from the conversations they generate. 

Usually our morning messages go along with our theme for the week. This week is a crazy week with a field trip and state testing in 3rd-5th. So our schedule is a little cray-cray.
I decided to share some of my favorite books with my kinders in ELA, so I don't have a set theme this week.  I figured it would be the perfect week to do my Superhero Morning Messages. 

Here's a little peek into our morning time and, of course, a funny story to go with it. ;)

 Each morning, I go through our message. It is a prime time to hit specific sight words, or in the very beginning, letters. 

We discuss the message. Sometimes we graph our answers. Sometimes we make a bubble map together. It all depends on the message and the conversations we have from it. Sometimes I let each student that wants to share what they think and we move on. 

Here is an example of our bubble map to go along with the message above.

After our discussion, my students will go to their table to write and draw their response to our message. 

I seriously forgot to take a picture of their journals. Maybe one day I'll remember...

Now, for the story...

Yesterday we discussed what superpower they would want if they were a superhero. I had all kinds of good answers. I had one tell me their power would be "mind division". This student went on to tell me exactly how they would use and how they use it, now, everyday. I LOVE the conversations we have from these messages. Though, sometimes, it's hard to keep a straight face. 

I would love to give a couple away!

The first TWO followers to leave a comment with their email will get it for free!

Dr. Seuss...Part 2

Shew, today was a nutty day. But I guess that's par for the course for Read Across America Week!

Here's a little peek at our day:

 We worked on our silly sentences from my Silly Sentences packet. We had fun making our sentences. After we did this whole group, students went back to their desk and worked on their emergent reader with these sentences.

While they were working and as we had time throughout the day, I had them read the sentence sheet to me. This is a great way to check for fluency and sight word knowledge. We use them each week with whichever sentence pack we are working on. 

They are loving their morning messages this week! Today we made up silly sentences.

 "My dog can wear a shirt."

 "My cow can wear socks."

 "My horse can pick up a chair."

"My cat can ride a horse!"

Tomorrow will be rhyming with "Hop on Pop"!

All Set for Valentine's Day {with a freebie!}

Hello friends! Shew, I have been busy getting everything ready for Valentine's Day! Students only have a 4 day week {only teachers go on Valentine's Day this year}AND they are calling for snow Monday and Tuesday. I guess we shall see how much Valentine's I can cram in to a few days!

To see any of these in my store, just click the picture. :) 

Here's what we have going on this week:

Of course, the Old Lady! We will be working on using sequencing to retell.

Then, one of my favorites, "Happy Valentine's Day, Mouse!". I've only been able to find the little board book. But, this book is totally adorable! With this book we will be focusing on my Mouse gave each of his friends a card.

My favorite pocket chart station! My students are working hard on building sentences. This helps them practice in a fun meaningful way. After we practice, they will read the emergent reader {to the right}. Then, I will pull them one on one to read the passage below. I mark words to work on if needed and stamp it homework. If the student does well reading it, I stamp it with "Awesome job reading! -Mrs. Lindsey". Either way they get to pick their favorite one and write it on the bottom. There they have the chance to get my "I *heart* your handwriting!" stamp. Whatever it takes to motivate! 

We will be using our Valentine's Morning Messages each morning for our journal time.

We will be using my Kindergarten Valentine Math Tubs for our beginning addition.

To practice skip counting. 

And to practice numerical order.

We will be using these to decorate our Valentine bags. In my kinder class, students will only write their name on the valentine on the "from" part. Students will have their decorated bag at their desk. Students, a few at a time, will walk around and place one valentine in each bag. PTL to the wonderful colleague who came up with this idea. This way students don't have to figure out which valentine goes where. 

For our bags, students will get to decorate a white paper lunch bag with hearts and stickers however they want to. We try to keep things simple back in the kindergarten building. ;)

I have a little Valentine's freebie for you! It is from my Kinder Valentine's Math Tubs . It will help your kiddos with numbers 1-10. Just click on the picture to snag it!

100th Day!! {and freebie}

Hello friends! Today was our 100th day! I LOVE 100th day, but this one was more chaotic than usual. We were on a 1 hour delay and it was 2 degrees outside when I got to school this morning. That is like, crazy cold for East Tennessee. Anyway, here are some pictures from our day!

We worked throughout the day on writing 100 words. 

 Students were asked to bring 100 things in to count.

We used counting mats to sort them into groups of 10 and then count by 10. 

 They had fun "checking" to see if they really had brought 100 things!

The counting mats idea came from Erica Boher's blog.

We have morning messages for all occasions, so of course we spent all week on 100th day morning messages. 

 This morning we brainstormed things we have learned in the past 100 days. The first little one that wanted to share what she had learned said she learned how to do good deeds and be kind to others. Talk about feeling like you are making a difference. :)

 Here are some journal entries about what they have learned. 

 We also have pocket chart sentences. These help my kinders build and read sentences.

Here's a little freebie from this packet: 

Just click the picture to get it from Google Docs. 

 And last but not least is my 100th day shirt. Sorry, this is the picture from last year. I kind of forgot to take one this year. My kinders loved it! {But I got some weird looks from the older kids today, lol.} I think there are still 100 wiggle eyes on there, but after crazy today, I'm not so sure.

What do you do to celebrate 100th day?

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.

Plans & Pics of the Upcoming Week {with a freebie}

Hello friends! I know you've seen others do visual plans of their week and I thought I'd give it a try with a little bit different format. We have to do our lesson plans in OnCourse. OnCourse is an online program where we enter our lesson plans and tag the standards we are working on each day. It's not my favorite way to do lesson plans, but once you create a template it becomes pretty quick.

So here are pictures of what I'm doing this week: 

New Year's Morning Messages

I love how  much my kinders have grown by doing these messages every morning. It has also helped my ELL students with vocabulary. 

 There is a new message each morning with the same theme. 

For our phonics we are working with blends. Blends are not in our frameworks, at all. And really I had to stretch to figure out which common core standard they go with. Have you had that problem fitting in blends with kindergarten CCSS? 

We teach because we know they need it and I'm pretty much just going from that. :)

These will be great for station and partner work. 

I will send the blend poster home with my January newsletter for my kiddos to practice at home. I will use the checklist as my ongoing portfolio assessment. Each of my students have a data notebook and it will be kept in there. 

 We will be using these for our independent practice and assessment.

And we'll play this I have...Who has? game if we have any extra time. 

You know how I love the old lady books!

 This week we are working on key details and retelling through writing. 

My old lady pack comes with 3 emergent readers. You can try one of them out with this freebie! 

We have Pearson for our math series. I really don't have to make too much to supplement for it, with the exception of learning numbers. 

Each lesson has it's own video that works with my SmartBoard and our system bought the color worksheets AND regular workbooks that go along with it. 

All that I'm doing this week and next to supplement comparing numbers is the mitten activity above. Our series doesn't introduce the greater than/less than sign. We've been working on that sign in our morning meeting when we do the lunch count and compare lunch boxes to cafeteria lunches. 

I'll be using all 3 stages of this mitten station.

Numbers 1-10 for my few students still working on number sense

Numbers 11-20 for my on level students

Numbers 21-100 for the students I want to challenge

Here is a peek at what is in my sensory table right now.

It's from my CVC Sensory Tub Pack with leftover tinsel from a student gift. 

Students will pull a card and then take the card to the magnetic dry erase board beside the table.

They stick the card on the board and then write the word beside the picture. 

This is a great station for my kinders. They get to move a lot and finally touch what is in the sensory table. :)

So be on the lookout each week for my plans & pics with a freebie! 

I'm hoping that next time I'll have more pictures from my classroom. 

If you do a blog post with your plans, please leave a link in the comments. I'd love to check it out!

And I'm linked up with Nancy for her weekly freebies. :)