Earth Day Extravaganza!

Earth Day is one of my all time favorite holidays. I get really into it every year and go overboard on the crafts and recycled projects. 

This year, I have decided to theme my entire week around Dr. Seuss's The Lorax and Earth Day! 

Our first project was a Lorax themed writing. We read the Lorax and then did this adorable writing paper that I found on The Learning Tree's website. 

We will hang these in the hallway with our directed draws of the Lorax! 

We have a lot of discussions about why it is important to save our planet and how we can make it a better place to live.

We then made these cute crafts to go with our writing. We first used crayons to create the lines and then we used water colors to paint the background. Our next step was to color and cut out the truffula trees. These were fun and we added a little pizzazz with tissue paper. I'm not sure who to credit this idea with, but thank you to whomever it was! 

We will be creating bookmarks to give out to the school from our recycled scrap paper as well. My kids are really enjoying learning how to recycle and what it means to help the earth! 

We also attempted to melt crayons, but it ended up in melted silicone baking containers, let's not talk about that. 

In math, we did these great Earth Day Problem Solving books with a variety of math word problems. We are at the point in the year where the kids are starting to get tired of word problems, so I try to theme them around the holidays! They are a freebie in my store! 


Click here for the books above! 
Happy Earth day to you all! 

Planning and Sorting Curriculum

Blogging is a lot of work! I've been trying to create my own products for my classroom, but I am one of those teachers that falls completely in love with teacherspayteachers products and then lose sight of what I was planning on doing. 

At this point, I've done some revamping of our school's curriculum and my own way of planning for the year. I started planning for next year (eek!)! This will make my life so much easier. It is like my own personal bible of curricula. 

I've also been working on being more organized about the way I organize all of the products that I've found or other teachers have shared with me. I not only made my curriculum timeline, but I tore apart our regular curriculum (which is extremely confusing) and made a list of the main ideas that we will be teaching and the activities that I have to go along with each. 

I am so excited to begin using this for my planning that I've already started to use it for this year. I am amazed that I've had the time to put this all together during the school year and then I actually get to use it! I feel like sometimes I make things and then forget about them or I just lose track and don't ever get to it. 

Luckily, I have a great team of 7 other kinder superwomen to help me out! They are simply amazing. We get the chance to meet once a month for an entire day and hash out the kinks and work on developing new assessments. We are a town that comes up with pretty much all of its own stuff. By stuff I mean, schedules, curriculum, books, guided reading materials, math activities... You get the picture, we do it all! It seems overwhelming at times, but I really do enjoy having some control over what I get to do with my students. I've found that there are many schools that don't get that opportunity and they are told what to do for every second of everyday. I could NEVER teach like that, it just isn't who I am. I like to dive in, make a mess and then clean it up later. 

That is all for tonight, I have a very excited puppy who needs to go for a walk! 

Christmas Thoughts...

Every time that I start thinking about Christmas time, I start to worry. I worry that I'll have some babies that won't get exactly what they want for Christmas. I worry that I'll have some friends who get too much for Christmas and become ungrateful. I worry that I'll get so full of holiday cheer that I forget to feed my dog. I worry a lot and about everything. One big thing that I have learned that I am not worried about is spreading the cheer, whether it is through Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa. I love every second of all of it. 

I wanted to share some of the things that I am doing during the month of December. 

Each day, I let my kids have some fun and practice all of their skills through centers. In these centers, there is a mix of literacy and math related games. This month, I purchased a December Math and Literacy Packet from the Printable Princess and I am LOVING it! There are so many great games that you can simply print and laminate. Each game offers a recording sheet and answer key, but I like the kids to work together and to answer the questions as a group. I have used some of the answer sheets, but have found that these games are great practice with or without them. 

Find this pack here!

In Reader's Workshop, we use a variety of easy readers and just right books to practice our reading strategies. Each week, we get one new book to practice and take home. I generally like to use paper books so that they can circle sight words, color in the pictures and sometimes even add their own sentences. This month, I've created an easy reader that the kids LOVED! We have been reading and retelling the polar express and they wanted so badly to be able to read the entire story. It got my mind turning and out popped this easy reader that includes many of our sight words! 

Find this book here!

In Math, we have been playing a game that my kids can not get enough of! Snowball toss is a great way for my kids to practice combinations of 10 as well as adding fluently. This is one of my whole group lessons as well as a center for the month. It is free in my store!! 

Find this game here!

I'm loving the learning going on in my classroom and I'd love to hear what is going on in yours! 

Traveling Principal!

I really quickly wanted to share this great thing that my principal is doing! She shared with me a story of how her office is a revolving door of teachers and students and she wanted a way to take her office with her. She is so great about coming to our classrooms to see what our kids are learning and how our teachers are teaching. I think that this cart is going to make this so much easier for her!

LOOK AT THIS CART!

Isn't this so nifty! She will have everything she needs right here! This is sort of like a rolling bag of assessment materials that I find myself taking home with me a few times a month. I use a scrapbooking bag to house all of my assessment portfolios on each child. My bag has everything I need to do assessments on the go! We are fortunate enough to have a computer lab for our students to use, so this bag travels with me each time that we go. I have learned to throw my data binder in here as well. Whenever I need data on a student, voila! 

This was a really quick post, but I wanted to share the traveling principal story and how I take all of my assessment materials with me. 

Sorting and Classifying

So this week is all about sorting and classifying! My little kinder kids began to learn this when we started learning about shapes. I found that they were easily able to differentiate the shapes, so now it time to do it with real life items! 

I found this great chart from First Grade Blue Skies Soaring Into Kindergarten! 

We will make this chart and discuss the ways to sort different items. From what I've seen, it is easier to start with the manipulatives that you have in your classroom and then work on random items. A friend of mine said that she collects a bin of all the things that the kids want to touch from her desk and she lets them sort by their use! It is a great way to keep them engaged because they want so badly to play with all of those items that are just sitting their taunting them. 

We are also going to use a product that I've created to sort shapes, size and type (letters vs. numbers). There are pages with the pieces to cut included as well. 
 

Click on this link to find it in my TPT store! 

We are going to use a song from The First Grade Parade


I am so excited to use these ideas and get to sorting! Check back next week to see pictures of our learning!