Friday, January 24, 2014

Captain Invincible and the Space Shapes

Solid Shapes is up next on our agenda for math.  Here are somethings we did....

Anchor Chart

videos
Harry Kindergarten had a great video that helped all of my kiddos learn the 3D shapes.  He has recently taken the video down. He promises that he will post it again soon.

trade book
I love tying literature into math any way that I can.  This book is no exception.

Bingo
By far this was my kiddos favorite part of our whole solid shape unit. You can purchase it by clicking on the picture below.

We spent two weeks learning about solid shapes. By the end I have to say that all 18 of my kiddos knew their solid shapes.



Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Snowmen at Night

This week we are focusing on Snowmen. Normally when we get to this unit we have not seen much snow. This year is much different, many of my kiddos have already made 2 or 3 snowmen this year. 

After reading Snowmen at Night we made identified the setting and the characters. Tomorrow we will read Snowmen All Year and compare the two stories. We are crossing our fingers for more snow! We aren't tired of the white stuff yet. 

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Snowman Glyph

As part of our snowman unit we created these cute snowmen glyphs.  (sorry for the bad picture the sun was not on my side).  You can get the blackline for the glyph on my TpT site. Enjoy!

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Carnival of Animals, Elephants

So it looks like mother nature is not on our side and we wont be getting all of the animals done in two weeks. We are going to have to cut out a few animals in order to get everything done we need to.

Our next animals from the Carnival of Animals that we are going to look at is the Elephant. Again we are going to read another Pebble Plus book about Elephants. I love these books they are perfect for kindergartners and have loads of resources at the back for those who want to learn more.

When we are done reading we will create a tree map and write a class book.  This class really likes class books. I bind them and add them to our class library, they are always the first ones picked when we change our books for Daily 5.

We will also read Elmer by David McKee (Don't have the book you can watch it here on youtube). After reading we discussed the books using text dependent questions.

As a crafty project we created patchwork elephants. Students covered a predrawn elephant with squares of brightly colored tissue paper.  They then cut out the elephant and glued him on to a larger piece of construction paper that they drew the setting on.  These were so cute and such a great addition to my classroom during this cold and gray weather.

Monday, January 13, 2014

Carnival of Animals, Lions

We started off our Animals unit by reading The Carnival of Animals by Jack Prelutsky.  The plan is to spend a couple of days on each animal for the next two weeks that is unless mother nature has other plans.

The first animal we looked at was the lion. Our plan was to read Were Going On a Lion Hunt by Margery Cuyler but I couldn't get the book in time so I found this adorable book on youtube.  I think the kids liked it more than they would have liked the book.


After watching the video we sequenced the events that the kids took on their lion hunt. To spice things up we created our own lion hunt around the classroom the kids. It was interesting to see what they came up.

We also read this great informational text about Lions. If you have not seen these books you really need to check them out.  They have them for just about everything. Once my reading teacher showed me this book I got on amazon and filled my cart with about 20 more. :-) The text is simple yet informative.  It is perfect for Kindergarten students. As a bonus at the end they give a list of other resources to learn more about Lions.

After reading the story we created a tree map about Lions. Which we will then use to write a class book. Get your copy of the tree map here.


Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Making 16

Today we worked on making the number 16 using number bonds. Yesterday I introduced the number and we counted sets. 

To practice making 16 students worked with their table groups to come up with as many combinations as they could. Each group had a recorder, counters, and large number bond mats. 

When we were done we shared all the ways we could make 16. We used the pattern to fill in the missing combinations.

Monday, January 6, 2014

We want snow...

Last week we really wanted snow so we read Snowflake Bentley. 
We talked about how we knew Snowflake Bentley liked snow more than any more else. We also talked about why Snowflake Bentley wanted a camera with a microscope.

We also made fake snow.

Then students wrote down words to describe snow. We used the words to create a class bubble map. The plan was to create a class book using the bubble map but we actually got snow and didn't have school. So here is a picture of Ruben in the snow instead.

Sunday, January 5, 2014

Snowy Literacy Centers

Here are a few of the winter themed literacy centers I have out this week.  All of these can be purchased on my Teacher pay Teachers site.

Snowflake Fun! Read the Room

Snowflake Ending Sounds

Falling from the Sky Ending Sounds

Family Snowman Fun

For Thanksgiving we had students take home a paper turkey and they had to work with there families to disguise the turkey so he wouldn't be eaten for Thanksgiving.  Playing on that same theme we are sending home snowmen that students will disguise to that they won't melt when spring come.  Check back at the end of the week to see how we disguise our snowmen.  If you would like to do this project with your class you can download the parent letter and pattern here.