Beginning of the Year

Hey all! See below for two emergent reader printables..."School Tools" and "Silly Shapes". I. am. so. tired! You forget how much training Kindys need!! The bathroom, lunch, bus dismissal, recess line ups. We are 3 days in and doing ok. I've already started getting the kids used to rotations for literacy time. We made this cute Clifford and that's about it. Add to it I'm moving into my new house in about a month. We are planning on camping this weekend but the hurricane may drown us out. Our school is doing a Daily Five book study this year and many of our teachers are doing it in their classrooms this year. I'm on the fence. I've decided to do the book study and observe a couple of my Kinder and First Grade colleagues to see the Daily Five in action but right now I like what I do!!! Anyone else feel this way or is struggling with this? Do you do the Daily Five? If not, why not? My neighbor teacher started it and she already loves loves loves it.

Second Week Stuff

Color mixing with fingerpaint after reading "Mouse Paint"

I found these cute mice with puddles and such on a website  a long time ago. I can't remember the website but I don't think it is around anymore. 

Tracing with pattern block templates.

Play Doh numbers

We read many Clifford books and talked about the color red, things that are red, etc. I also threw in some word work with Popcorn Words a and I 

Matching days of the week with events from "Cookie's Week".

Simple color/shape dice game/graph.

Name mix/fix

My kids are loving this!! We've read a couple of the "bucket" books and brainstormed tons of dipper and filler behaviors.

Working with numbers and 1 to 1 correspondence.

counting out beads for numerals

Making simple shapes and letters and numbers with pretzel sticks.

We came up with lots of good bucket fillers !

I'm doing this big book for shared reading tomorrow. I call this "rip and read". I wrap the book  in paper then rip of bits at a time to revel the cover. After each rip the kids give input as to what they think the book is about, etc. They always say Mr. Grump is grumpy because of the cat and really the cat isn't even in the story...just on the front cover. I like Mr. Grump because the text is really repetitive and the kids are constantly pulling it out of the big book center.

Week 1

I have been neglectful of this blog! Week 1 and the weeks leading up to school is just so overwhelming! 

This is a chalk drawing from Ben Glenn. He was our Opening Meeting motivational speaker. He was wonderful! He talked about the challenges of being Learning Disabled and having ADHD. Here is his website: Ben Glenn

Simple pattern block shape gluing.

Square Bear

After reading "A Color Of His Own" and talking about differences and tolerance we colored our own chameleon.

After reading "Mouse Count" I had my strugglers practice putting the numbered mice in jars 0-10. I think I got these mice cards from makinglearningfun.com

Simple shape file folder game.

This year we are doing "How Full is Your Bucket". Our guidance counselor is leading us through it ....school wide. So our first intro lesson was determining 'good' versus 'bad' character traits.

Simple graph activity for the first day.