Back to School 2014

Well, it's that time of year again, I can almost smell the Elmer's glue in the air and the thought of brand new crayons almost makes me giddy.  I love the promise of a new school year.  I have already thought of a million things that I will do differently this year to help my...wait for it...fifteen, that's right, fifteen, new kinderbabies be successful little learners.  With such a tiny class I feel the possibilities are endless!

Today I took Avery and Spencer to school with me and worked on getting August centers set out and ready.  At the beginning of the year, we work A LOT on rules and routines, as well as getting to know one another.  For centers, August has always been dedicated to learning color words.  Color words are one of those things that I like them to master early on since they will see them in print throughout the year.  I try to incorporate a lot of meaningful play in the beginning because they have a hard time staying in one spot for too long.  Here are a few pictures of color centers for August.

Dramatic Play Area

Supermarket

Lots of opportunity for sorting!

Farmer's Market sorting tubs from Learning Resources.

Art Center

Color Bump from Cara Carroll's "I See Your True Colors" pack.

Color Pal from Cara Carroll.  She offers it for free here.

Color Sorting Cans from Learning Resources

Pieces from the color sorting cans.

Predictable Sentences activity from Cara Carroll's "I See Your True Colors" pack.  I will also use a recording sheet with this one.

"Crazy for Colors" from Cara Carroll's "I See Your True Colors" pack.

Puzzle/Book Center
The Color Mazes are from Lakeshore...Spencer worked on these for about an hour :)

Math Center

Color Sorting Crayons from Learning Resources

Color Words from Cara Carroll "I See Your True Colors" pack.

Writing Center

Color Books from Cara Carroll's "I See Your True Colors" pack.

Mystery Box Colors from Cara Carroll's "I See Your True Colors" pack.

Label it! from DeeDee Wills August/September writing pack.

Write the color words activity from Cara Carroll's "I See Your True Colors" pack.

I'll end with a little classroom sneak peek.  It's not completely ready, but getting close!

Whole group meeting area and student tables.

Guided Reading table and resources

Dramatic play and art centers

Focus Wall and Story of the Week (I still need to put up our focus skills.)

 Hope everyone enjoys their last few weeks of summer bliss.  As for me, I plan to sleep late, drink coffee till eleven a.m. and maybe be out of my jammies by noon ;)

January Centers

It's hard to believe that it is already January.  Seriously, where did the first semester go?  I had wonderful intentions of having January centers and the first two weeks lesson plans finished before I walked out for Christmas vacation, but I can tell you that didn't happen. Not. at. all.  Oh, well.  I did manage to go into school a couple of days with three kids in tow and get January centers ready to go.  I have to say that these might be one of my favorite little products that Cup of K has created so far.  Something about the hot chocolate theme just melts my heart.

Here are the activities that my kinders will be working on when they return...

Math

Number recognition from 1-30 in numeral, tallies and ten frames.

Coin sorting with pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters.

Determining numbers that are less than or greater than a given number.  I used the little to go coffee cups for manipulative storage. Love how cute it looks!

Adding groups by counting a given set and rolling a die to get the other number.  The recording sheet for this activity is on the top black divider.  The other sheets are recording sheets for the four other math activities.

Telling time to the hour and matching the analog clock to the digital time.

Literacy

 Sorting noun picture cards by person, place, or thing.  I used velcro to attach the little pieces to this activity.  With 15 small picture cards I thought this would be easier to keep track of for the kiddos.

Students will read the sight words and then practice stamping and writing them.

Real or Nonsense partner word game.  Students will roll a die move that many spaces and then draw a card.  Some of the cards are word family cards and some are cards that tell the student to move ahead, move back, or lose a turn.  If the student draws a word family card they will blend it with the consonant they land on and determine if it is a real or nonsense word.  Students use a recording sheet to show their work.

Write the room with s-blends!  My kinders LOVE write the room!  Since word work tends to be a lot of sitting, I thought this would be perfect.  We have been working hard on blends so this should be engaging and great review! (BTW...those are sneakers.  Does anyone call them that anymore?)

Sorting picture cards by medial vowel sounds.  This is still great review for them.

This is the little recording sheet that goes with the vowel sort.

Writing

This is something I have always done in my writing center.  This is just a little magnetic board divided with painting tape.  The picture cards are from the fabulous DeeDee Wills January writing packet.  Stinkin' LOVE those packs!  The students practice building words.

 These are also from DeeDee Wills January writing pack.  My kids do these every month, so there is very little training involved.

Dramatic Play

As you probably know if you read this little ole blog, we have added play back into kindergarten.  I had one sweet mom tell me that when her son was sick he was devastated because he was supposed to be at the dramatic play center that day.  How cute is that!?  

This month we are introducing "The Chocolate Shop" where hot chocolates, lattes, doughnuts and pies will be served daily from 9:00-10:00.  I loved the way this turned out.  

Why do they say tape is invisible when it's clearly not??

Art

This little cocoa cutie was created by my AMAZING teaching partner Mrs. Barnett.  She is so talented it isn't even funny.  This will be a project in our art center this month along with a coloring page and a color by number. 

If you are interested in any of these activities you can purchase our January center pack in our TPT shop.

And...I will pick one lucky winner to receive our new January center pack for free!  Just don't forget to leave a comment and your email address!  

Happy Teaching!

-Mrs. Gordon

Play to Learn, Learn to Play

Dramatic play where have you gone??? That is a question that I am sure so many kindergarten teachers have been wondering. Kids are in such need now days to learn to play, take turns, pretend, and defiantly share. This is something that Mrs. Gordon and I really wanted to see in our kindergarten classrooms this year. So we did it. We added a dramatic play center that will change out every two months or so with something else for the kids to play with. We started our year with a grocery store. We got very resourceful and changed our puppet stand into a checkout counter. We added a little paper and transformed it. We kept that up for August and September. For October and November we turned it into a pizza palace. We created a sign, menu, and an order sheet that the students use to help the imagination take off. The kids really are loving this center.

 








The Pizza Palace

Here is a free printable of our menu and the open and closed sign. Stay tuned to our blog and TPT store for more of our Dramatic play units.



Click on picture for the free download







Holy Cow!

I am sure you have been wondering where we have been. We had such high goals on our blog when we started it at the end of last year. But wow was our summer busy! We attended the Missouri Kindergarten Conference in St. Louis and gathered so many new ideas and walked away with that feeling that you are going to be great teacher this year. You know that feeling that we all walk away from conferences with. Then August came and the reality of getting the room ready begins. Mrs. Gordon and I had spent most of summer last year getting our rooms cleaned and arranged, then we got the school newsletter and our building was going with a building wide western theme. I don’t know about most people but news like that sent her and I into panic. How in the world would we incorporate western in our bright and colorful kindergarten rooms. We were not required to have much, but we did have to dress up the halls for back to school night. So we went shopping. I don’t think we did too bad! Here are a few pictures of some of our hallway decorations and bulletin boards. I just added a little cow print to my polka dot room and felt it worked.