Valentine's 5 for Friday

It has been a fun week of learning about penguins and getting in the Valentine's spirit! Here are my top 5 of the week.

1.

I asked our cafeteria ladies to save some large cans for me so my kinderkids could make some penguin tins for their Valentine's containers.

Here is one holding his with some Valentines in his penguin tin.

2.

I used my Papertrey Ink stamps and crafting supplies to make some Valentine covers for lollipops.

 3.

These yummy homemade sweets made by my room mom made our day more festive!

 4.

In the afternoon, my Valentine, Mr. Brinn, came to help out with our Valentine Math Centers. He helped my kinderkids measure with nonstandard measurement with these Valentine Cards we made for our families. This one shows the outside, before Happy Heart Day was written on the outside arms.

On the inside, we used Kim Adsit's activity to measure the arm span in nonstandard units: pennies, cubes, paperclips, and hearts.

5.

Here is another math activity we did. It is an old one using candy hearts for addition. We also practiced subtraction using hearts with my freebie offered on TPT.

 I hope you had a happy Valentines. Enjoy the 3 day weekend!

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Squirrels



I think little furry squirrels are just the cutest! I am using squirrel books to help my students learn more about the season of fall. One of my favorite squirrel songs is on an old tape. I haven't been able to find it the past few years when searching for a digital version. I was absolutely thrilled to find one online for FREE! I found it on NAEYC's song and activities list. Scroll down to The Furry Squirrel Song. I use it for a fun morning meeting song as we do silly actions with it.

 

My students observed squirrels on youtube videos. This one is great.

 

They kept track of their observations in their squirrel journals.



Squirrels play. Squirrels climb trees.

 They also added notes from what they learned from books read in class.



Some people eat squirrels. Squirrels can be red.



Here are the covers to their journals.

In math, we worked in groups of threes or twos to make ten with an assortment of brown cubes. Typically I use real nuts to sort, count, and use as manipulatives, but I have one peanut/tree nut allergy. No nuts this year!

Previous years, I have made number lines and my students show the amounts using peanuts.

Before the Thanksgiving holidays, after reading The Squirrels' Thanksgiving, my students wrote text-to-self connections.

I have just completed my Furry Furry Squirrels unit. It is on sale now. You can check it out by visiting my TPT store: just click the first picture below.

 

 



Click above picture to get a Fantasy/Real Quiz-Quiz-Trade activity for FREE.

 

 

I am excited about getting my shop on for tomorrow's TPT sale!

Thank you Krista Wallden for sharing this sale button!

I am adding a couple of the Teachers Helping Tornado Victims into my shopping cart. Looks like lots of great units for a great cause. What will you be adding to your TPT shopping cart?



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Turkey Trouble Freebie

Just a quick post to share a little freebie with you for Thanksgiving. One of my favorite stories for Thanksgiving is Turkey Trouble. It is a sweet story about a turkey disguising himself as different animals. It has a fun ending for young children to enjoy.



I will be using this book to help practice retelling the story and working on numerals 11-20 with my students before the Thanksgiving holidays. I also like to use this book as a prelude to making our own classbook about how the turkey disguises himself. I will update on TPT once I get the photos taken.

 

Click on any of the pictures below to get it free on TPT. Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

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Ghostmallows Graph, Count, & Add

Yesterday was a teacher workday filled with a variety of activities: conferencing, waffle making, putting skills into the gradebook for the team, lesson planning, creating buddy activities with my 3rd grade buddy, remembering a previous co-worker with a plaque/tree presentation, helping with paperwork for the new running club, and organizing my clutter. It was a great day! So tonight I finished grading some paperwork and created a Ghostmallows sheet that my kinders will do with their big buddies. We'll have an intern read the story, We're Going on a Ghost Hunt, and have our students sort and graph their ghostmallows. Afterwards they will add different combinations of their ghostmallows. Click below to get it if you want it!

 

 

 

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Five for Saturday!

 

I meant to post earlier, but it is now Saturday. As they sometimes say, "better late, than never." Here are my top 5 for the past 2 weeks.

 

1. My county has started to use Reading Street this school year. It really limits what we can use, especially when we are suppose to follow it with fidelity. Last week, we were working with the We Are So Proud unit. In the afternoons, I used Pete the Cat stories with math. Here is one tying in the words (red, white, and blue) with number sense. I found the tracers from Hooray for Kindergarten and I created my own I have ___ blue buttons writing prompt. Click on the picture below to go to Google Docs to get the writing math template.

 



 

 

2. For our writing craftivity, my students copied the words: I am so proud. Then each child drew a picture of himself being proud of something he accomplished. Then we added a head, hand, and legs to our writing to make it look like ourselves.

 

 

3. This past week, we made paper bag platypuses to go along with Reading Street's Plaidypus Lost unit. My kinderkids loved this story. The pattern for the paperbag platypus came from Danielle's Place.

 

4. I am really excited how my Rate Your Understanding is coming together in my classroom. I introduced the scale to my students during the second week of school. During the following weeks, we began rating ourselves on how they well they can tell the sounds that each letter makes.

 



 

Then each child graphed where they felt they were at. On top of the quarter page, I created a label stating, "I can say the sounds for each letter." This was printed on file folder labels. The graph has room for a beginning, middle, and ending date. This graph allows me to help my students track their various learning goals in the different subject areas.

 

 

Each child's book is kept on a hook for reference when needed. This is a great way to help differentiate activities at our independent or small group activities.

 

 

For example, at the word work centers, my students use their learning goals books to help them focus on the letters they need to work on. For example, they make the specific letters out of playdough or cubes. Some find matching magnetic letters. They do this by looking at their learning goal books. Behind the graph sheet are specific pages about which letters and sounds they know. Each letter highlighted is one they have shown that they already know. The ones not highlighted are the ones they work on at centers.

 

 

 

We will move on to working with words once letters are mastered. I already have 2 children starting to work with words. I will soon be including these tracking learning goal sheets into my Rate Your Understanding. Check it out for a cheaper price, as it will increase with the new addition. I plan to add them later on today or tomorrow morning.

 

5. I am also excited about my new math station bins. I tried 4 of the bins out last year. I really like them. So I bought more and finally numbered them. I will be working on making a math stations chart for my students. I think my new bunch of kinderkids will love playing math games with their partners. I am really enjoying this new bunch of kinderkids. They are full of personality and fun!

 

 

 





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Elevator Magic Math Mentor Text

I am not sure if this particular book has been introduced through the Math Mentor text linky yet. I know that Stuart J. Murphy has written many books that teachers love to incorporate into their math lessons. This one is called Elevator Magic. It is about a little boy who uses real world math to figure out which button he needs to push to go down to a certain floor. He has a vivid imagination. He sees farm animals at the bank, cars and trucks at the delivery place, and a rock band at the candy store.

 

 

 

I use this book to show vertical subtraction and addition problems to my students. I saw that Sharing Kindergarten wrote about using number lines today! I saw a great idea there to make a number line using a pipe cleaner, bead, and vertical  number line. I created one quickly to use. I plan to print on cardstock, punch holes, and use string and a bead instead. Following are some numbers to use to make a small floor number line and a math writing page for a classbook. Just click on the below picture to get it free from Google Docs.

 

 

 

 

I found that I have 2 copies of this book. I have been downsizing my books... to make room for new titles of course! If you would like a chance to win a gently used copy of Elevator Magic, please leave a comment and an email address. I'll pick a winner tomorrow. Otherwise, you could get it at a bookstore or online somewhere.

 

Source: Amazon

Join Stacia and Amanda for their weekly mentor text on Sundays. It's math today! Click below to visit them, and to read other mentor texts.

 

 

 



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Ten Pen Linky- Math!

I am joining Just Reed in her Ten Pin Linky- Math Idea Pins. In the past couple years, I have worked on improving the format of my math block in kindergarten. Before at the beginning of my math block, I would teach whole group math lessons. Afterwards, my students would practice independently while I worked with students in small groups or one-on-one. When completed, my students would go to math games. With that format, I was focusing on students who needed extra support. Now, after reading some great math books, I am moving towards teaching my students in small groups more often in math.

This past year, I started my math block with numeracy building routines during calendar. Afterwards, my students were split into 3 groups. One group worked with me on a lesson. Another group worked with a parent helper on reviewing a skill or working on their math journals. The third group worked independently with the support of the small group. Sometimes, they also played math games. This occurred about 3-4 times a week. On Wednesdays, I did a whole group lesson. On every other Thursday, my students played math games or worked with me.

I recently pinned some great math ideas from teachers that I love to visit often for their great inventive ideas!

1. Mrs. Wills inspired me to read the book, Math Work Stations. This book was great in helping me to think about how to reorganize my math materials and how to use my resources. There are quite a few free math ideas on Mrs. Wills Kindergarten blog. I currently have my math manipulatives on 2 shelving items. They are in tubs. I want to switch over to bins with covers.

 

 

2. Kindergarten Kindergarten continues to be an inspiration for math ideas! I love her journal ideas for geometry and shapes for her kinderkids. I went back to look for those ideas, and came across this measurement packet. Each time I visit I find some great ideas- lots of freebies there too!

 



 

3. I have been updating some of my math games, as they were created over many years ago. Mrs. Ricca's Kindergarten is another place that has many freebies. Some of the games were ones that I was already familiar with, so updating was easy for me!

 





 

4.  Vicky from Mrs. Plant's Press made an awesome math unit about penguins. Her post using her IWB captivated me and made me buy her penguin unit on TPT. I loved it! More importantly, my kinderkids had fun learning their common core math standards with this unit.

 

 



5. Through Vicky, I learned about one of her teammates, The Golden Gang Kindergarten. Love her math ideas too!

 

 

 

6. I love to use cooperative learning in my classroom, and Mingle is a game I want to play with my kinderkids. This is a video that shows how a teacher does this in her classroom.

 

 

7. Talking about cooperative learning, I also pinned my Cooperative Learning with Kindergarten Math unit.

 

 

 

8. Jazzy Journals- Love how Kim from Kinder by Kim incorporates art into math.

 





 

9. I am keeping my eye out for the Daily 5 Math information. This is one second grade teacher's way of doing it. Got to have at least one owl post!!

 



 

10. Collaboration Cutie's Mentor Text- love using picture books throughout the day for different areas, especially math!! Great ideas from various grade levels here.

 







 

 

 

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