New Center Wheel!

Earlier in the year I saw a post from Mr. Greg at the Kindergarten Smorgasboard where he shared his center wheel. I saw it and thought it was a great idea but have been trying to figure out how exactly to make something like that work in my own classroom. I so desperately want to be in control and tell me kids "this is what center you do today" or "lets go to this word work center first and then the iPad's next." I did that for the first two months of school.

Originally, I had four groups of 3-4 kids in each group. I take a group, my assistant keeps a group, one group is on the computers and another is at word work. I would trade out word work with listening to reading periodically to mix it up and make sure they had a chance to do both of those things. But then some days, I'd switch groups or a kid would be out so they would have to play catch up. My assistant may get called to cover a class...what do I do with her group then? Sometimes, I have to do benchmark testing. My group is stuck with busy work while I test a child. I knew something had to change!

So here is what I did....

I kept my four groups but removed myself and my assistant from the rotation. I have so many center options and not all of my kids like the same things each day so I wanted them to have an option but not have chaos. So, I created a wheel.



I put my kids' names on circles (very simple, laminated construction paper) with a visa-vis pen. If I need to change names/groups I can easily do it.

Next I divided a large paper plate and small paper plate into four sections. The small paper plate is colored to match the colors on my spots. I laid the small plate on top of the large and attached them with a brad/spinner. The large paper plate has two pictures in each section. These are the options my kids have for that day/center time. They choose one of the two in that section that is beside their color group.

If I need to test I can pull kids from their center to work with them. I can pull kids based on skills they need to work on to my small group table and then send them back to their group when they are finished.

Here is the finished product. I put it on my bulletin board "Incredible Readers" with their chart that tracks who has turned in their reading log (thank you Pizza Hut). 

On Friday's any work my kids have not completed in centers must be done after lunch. We have about an hour between lunch and snack/recess time. During this time they finish up work from the week and then they get to play with the blocks, puzzles, on the iPads or computers. Two weeks ago all of my kids finished early and I pulled up Team Umizoomi on Amazon Prime. Fun Friday is a grea t incentive for them to finish their work on time through the week.

Whisper Phones

When you can hear yourself say a word or sound it out it wills tick much better than just saying out loud. With a "whisper phone" or the finger trick your kids can hear themselves sounding out words and be able to blend words much better. I am excited that our class was gifted a set of whisper phones and sound changing flip books from Donors Choose.

The whisper phone is a gadget that looks like a telephone. It is hollow and my kids hold it up to their ears and read and/or sound out CVC words. As they say them the sounds go directly back to their ear and is amplified because of the tunnel. I love them and my kids do too! They are so excited to read and use them.  You can order a set from Lakeshore Learning or you can create your own using PVC pipes:
1. Cut your PVC pipe approximately 3 1/2 - 4 inches long.
2. Attach an "elbow" pipe to each end.
3. If you like you can wrap the long piece with washi tape or duct tape to make them colorful.

Whew! Spring forward!

This weekend the time SPRANG forward! Most of us were dragging the next day I am sure, but my kids were ready to go! I got the idea from Greg Smedley-Warren at the Kindergarten Smorgasboard's leap year activities. At leap year he did stories about animals that would leap and jump. So I modified it a bit and we discussed animals that could SPRING! It was SO MUCH FUN! We are working on non standard measurement this week also so we had a jumping competition and measured our jumps. My kids and I read books about bunnies and frogs. One of our favorite springing character is Froggy so naturally we read several Froggy books! We made a graphic organizer naming different springing animals. Last week we visited African grasslands and one of my kids recalled a gazelle as an animal that could spring. ( I was proud!) We made bunny ear hats to wear and my kids absolutely loved them. They swore they could jump further and higher with them, I guess they were channeling their inner bunny. Haha!

Valentine Love Pox

Before we sent the kids home today for their Valentine weekend we gave them lots of hugs and they caught the LOVE POX! I used a red expo marker to give my babies these heart shaped spots all over their face! We even sent them home with a RX reciept.

 

 

 

And here is a copy of the prescription/doctors note we sent home! 

Goldilocks and the Three Bears

This week we read Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I love doing fairy tales because they are so much fun and my kids love them too! Fairy tales get overlooked so many times because we assume that our kids know them already but it is necessary to do them I beleive because so many kids still don't know them. It makes retell easy and extension activities easy too.

Here are a few ways we integrated it in my classroom.

We turned our classroom into a "cottage" and acted out the story.

We retold the story with a foldable and sorted things by size.

We made a list of words that were synonyms to large, medium and small.

We are building a new chair for baby bear this Friday and I am really excited to see what my kids come up with.

Sight words when we line up!

The more my kids see sight words, the more they will practice reading those sight words. I try and put them in different places around the room so that they are always available for my kids to see. I have a file called "Sight words" on my desktop that we review every day so that my kids can practice reading them. As we learn more words I add them to new slides to practice. We sing the sight word song on YouTube EVERY DAY to practice spelling and reading their sight words. Just search for "Sight word rap" and you will see two different versions.

The more they see them the more they will practice and read them! So, one thing I have done is put down dry erase tape where my kids line up. I put one strip in each block all the way up to fifteen blocks. When my kids line up they see the sight words while they stand in line. I hear them saying "I'm standing on 'with'" or "You're standing on the color word 'orange'" as we line up to go somewhere. It's just another way to give them a little more exposure to their sight words. I can change them to words we are working on that week or words they are having trouble with.

No chairs, no tables update!

So for those of you who are wonderingn how my year without tables and chairs is going---it's great! 

I have considered taking away one of the tables I have because we don't even use it that much. However, I think I kind of need to keep it because I have just enough space for my kids to sit in a chair to eat breakfast in the mornings. If I get rid of it then four kids will be on the floor at the carpet... 

Anywho, here is a quick picture of my kids hard at work :) 

American flags!

On 9-11 we read aloud "the man who walked between two towers" aloud. It is a story about a Frenchman name Phillipe who was a street performer and walked a right rope between the twin towers. Wit my kindergarteners we talk about patriotism and the American flag then we make flags.  They did a really good job with these!

Veterans Day is coming up in a few weeks and this is something really simple and works on fine motor skills. 

Halloween Goodies in Math Centers.

October has come and almost gone! This month we practiced making numbers up to ten, shapes and started sorting! 

Family dollar and dollar tree always have little plastic goodies like rings and suh for Halloween and last year, right after Halloween I stocked up. I use these pieces in my math centers as manipulatives. They easily turn a routine math activity into a Halloween themed one! Bam! 

Here are a few pictures of my kiddos sorting. I asked them to first sort by color, very basic and they do this one easily. Next, I asked them to pick one color group and sort the items in that group. 

For some of the kids, we used the whole pile and sorted in other ways (size or shape). 

I even use these for patterns! My kids make AB and ABB patterns too. 

I found some awesome Halloween erasers and my kids use those to count out objects in ten frames. 

(I don't have pictures of these two right now but I will post a few later). 

Study Jams! Science and Math

This post is geared more toward the upper elementary teachers (3-6 ish)...

Scholastic has an awesome website called Study Jams.  It has science and math based learning activities for upper elementary.

When you go to the main screen you will see a bunch of billboards with topics on them. When you click on it a list will show up of skills that are related to the main topic. All you have to do is click on the topic and skill. I have used it in the past to introduce a skill.

Each section/lesson has a video and real life problem to help the kids understand the topic. There is a list of vocabulary words that will also be listed at the bottom of each lesson to review. I do not use it in my kindergarten class but I used it a lot with my third graders. They absolutely loved it!

Visit the website by clicking on the picture below: