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!

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.

SUPER SIMPLE Themed ABC Practice

Alphabetic Principal. That is the term used to describe kids understanding of letter shapes, the names of letters and the sounds each letter makes. I used the die cut machine at our school to make fun shaped flashcards with the letters of the alphabet on them. They were super simple to make and a lot cuter than plain index cards. I can pick whichever shape I want and make them correlate with a holiday that month or a unit we are working on.

This month is October and we celebrate halloween at the end of the month so I cut out ghosts and wrote all of the lower case letters on them. I only did the lower case letters on the ghosts as these are the form they will see these letters most of the time (lowercase). I am going to make pumpkins with CAPITAL letters on them and my kids who know most of the letters will match the upper and lower case... Match the capital A on the pumpkin to the lower case a on the ghost.

It is super simple and easy to make. The kids catch on quickly and if they finish something early they can do it independently by putting the letters in order or they can do it with a partner. Kids that already know all of the letters in the alphabet will use the SAME CARDS to practice letter sounds. These cards really are versatile and so easy to make and use.

Here is a picture of the ghost letters I made earlier today.

Thematic word charts

Writing is something that is really encouraged at my school and I am always trying to find things that can help facilitate that, even in my kindergarten classroom. well over at the Busy Teacher's Cafe I found a list of thematic word charts. They are sorted by month and best of all...they are FREE!!

Click here to visit the page and download your own set!  There are also links there to download pre-writing activities and venn diagrams too!

Nonsense words

In our state we have a new reading assessment for K-3 students called Reading 3D. One of the goals students must complete is to read "nonsense words." The idea behind it is that if a student can read a "nonsense word" with a CVC pattern they will be able to sound out larger words and break them down into chunks easier. One way I have helped my kids do this is use paint strips with word families and letters on them.

FIRST you take the regular paint strips and write one consonant on each square in the strip. You will need about 5-6 strips, depending on how many squares there are on a strip.

I use colors from the same family for this part and colors from another family for the second so my kids can identify which batch they go with easily.

SECOND you will need paint strips with holes in one end. Beside the hole you will write word family endings such as "ack" or "ag" or "eb"  or "ug" on them. You can write as many or as little as you want on these.

NOW you will take the long paint strips with the consonants on them and slide them under the holes to make new words. Students will read the nonsense words as they slide the cards!

I got this idea from Pink and Green Mama (http://pinkandgreenmama.blogspot.com/2009/11/preschool-first-grade-at-home-paint.html).

Sight word search in real text

Putting your sight words to use is one of the greatest things you can do for your kids. Flash cards and repetition can be good but kindergarteners get tired of it. Honestly, I do too. We receive these magazines at our school each month. They are themed and tell about events at schools in the area. We reviewed some words today and then I had my kids find them in the newspaper and circle them! So simple. So awesome!