January Poetry Journals

I'm back! My computer crashed a couple weeks ago and my hubby had to rebuild it completely. In the process I lost a bunch of files, apparently I wasn't backing it up properly. Thankfully, I saved my January poetry journals on my school laptop. I'm in the process of redoing February and March poems so they should be posted soon!

Click here to download the January Poetry Journal
January Poetry Journal SMARTboard

Elf Yourself!

I love Christmas! Every year I have so much that I want to get done that my last week at school is so hectic that I don't have time to enjoy it. This year I started my Christmas activities right after Thanksgiving break and I've gotten almost everything finished! Next week we'll be doing Christmas Around the World! Here are a couple things we did last week-

I was inspired by Elf Yourself and Mrs. Marrow's Kindergarten blog to transform my kids into super-cute elves! I ♥ them! We did the elves whole group so it was a lot of work for 36 kids, but we spread out the steps over a couple days and the kids did great! The elves are so cute, they make me laugh!

We used Christmas shapes to practice estimating and measuring. I printed the items on construction paper and laminated them. I gave each table 2 of each shape to share for measuring. I also created a sheet with the shapes all on 2 pages. If you don't have time to print and cut out the shapes on colored paper, you can print out this sheet on the front and back for students to measure with.

Click here to download Christmas Measuring Activity

We also made cute Christmas Trees with circle and star shaped ornaments. I modified this Jazzy Journal page by Mrs. Shehan to include only stars and circles. We counted how many of each ornament we had on our trees. This was great practice for 1:1 counting.

Calendar Math Journals

Here are my calendar math journals for December and January! :) I'm sorry they're a little late. I've been having too much fun this Thanksgiving Break to have time to think about school! I'm thinking that it's a good thing, because now I'm all refreshed and ready to finish 2011!

In January we start making simple addition stories (I have 1 red cupcake and 1 blue cupcake, I have 2 cupcakes) It's really cute to see what they come up with. We also graph favorite foods. In my class we have a child of the day. That child picks which food is his/her favorite and the whole class graphs it.
Click here to download the December Calendar Math Journal


In January we continue to make simple addition stories. We also graph favorite winter animals and start to make tally marks for our daily depositor.
Click here to download the January Calendar Math Journal

I got the idea for my calendars from Ms. Gonzalez' Classroom Website. The clipart was purchased from DJ Inkers. If you haven't already, go check out her website. She has a lot of cute free downloads and her calendars are cuter! =)

Turkey Time!

This week has been crazy!! Observations, progress report testing and of course, lots of Thanksgiving related activities! Yesterday we made turkey hats just because we wanted to! I planned on making them for our Thanksgiving luncheon on Tuesday, but I was too focused on my observation to get them completed on time. I felt a little guilty because I had no academic reason for making the hats. but i decided, if you can't make a turkey hat in kindergarten, when CAN you make a turkey hat? The kids loved the hats and loved singing their nw favorite song while wearing them. Click here to download the pattern.

**Warning, this song is slightly annoying and will get stuck in your head for days! =)**

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Favorite Thanksgiving Book Linky Party

Teaching Blog Addict is having a Favorite Thanksgiving Book Linky Party. I cannot believe that Thanksgiving is almost here! It seems like school JUST started!

One of my favorite Thanksgiving books is Run, Turkey, Run! I'm reading it tomorrow for my observation (fingers crossed that all goes well!) If you haven't read this book before, it's super-cute! The turkey doesn't want to be eaten for Thanksgiving so he hides from the farmer in the pigpen, duck pond, horse barn, and trees. Students love to join in and say, "Run, Turkey, Run!"

I made a sequencing activity and a SMARTboard file to go with the book. I hope someone can use them! ♥

I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie

Marlana from Lil' Country Kindergarten created an awesome group of freebies for the story I Know and Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie. If you haven't seen them yet, then you should head on over and check it out!

I created a SMARTboard sequencing activity using the same clipart by Scrappin Doodles. Click here to download the SMARTboard file

Run, Turkey, Run!

Here is a activity I created for the book Run, Turkey, Run! If you haven't read this book before, it's super-cute! . The turkey doesn't want to be eaten for Thanksgiving so he hides from the farmer in the pigpen, duck pond, horse barn, and trees. Students love to join in and say, "Run, Turkey, Run!" I think it's a great book for talking about settings and sequencing. In this activity students will color the pictures, cut out sequencing cards and glue onto the sequencing mat. Enjoy!

Click here to download

Pumpkin Letters and Sight Words

I found this cute pumpkin in my Carson Dellosa clipart collection and I knew I had to make something out of it! I decided to make letter and sight word cards.

Click here to download Pumpkin Letter and Word Cards

For the letter cards, I am going to put them in a basket and let students play BOO! in centers. I got the idea for this game from Kelly's Kindergarten.

To play BOO!, students take turns taking a card out of a basket or pocket chart and saying the letter/word on the card. If they can say the letter/word. they get to keep the card. If they can't say the word, I encourage classmates to help! =) The game ends when someone gets a BOO! card.

For the sight word cards, I put them inside a photo cube and created a roll a word sight word game.

Click here to download a blank graph
Click here to download Pumpkin Sight Word Graph

Another Favorite YouTube Video!

One of my co-workers has a special talent, she always finds the best videos on YouTube! Our latest favorite is the Big Numbers Song by KidsTV. The kids love when it gets to the big numbers at the end of the video. I love how mellow and calm it is. It's a magical quiet song.

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Does your class have a favorite YouTube video? How about a magical quiet song? I can never have too many quiet songs! Leave me a comment below! ♥

Fall!

Fall is here! I love October because it means pumpkins, bats, monsters and slightly cooler weather! Here are a couple things that we are doing in class-

Pumpkin Letter Recognition- students pick a letter or sound card and color the letter on their sheet.

Click here to download Pumpkin Letter Recognition
Click here to download Pumpkin Sounds

Calendar Math Monsters- this year I decided I didn't want to use the calendar math numbers that come out of our Everyday Counts kit, so I made cute monster cards. I love these cards because we can use them to discuss different patterns (purple/orange/green, girl/boy/boy, 1 eye/2 eyes/3 eyes). The graphics are by KPM Doodles.

Click here to download Monster Numbers

**Update** Oops! I accidentally uploaded a version that was missing 25 & 26. The updated link should have the corrected version. Sorry! =)

Pumpkin Happy- students color and draw faces on the pumpkins so they match the words. We practice reading together while pointing to the words. When we're done, students put these books in their independent reading bags.

Click here to download Pumpkin Happy
Click here to download Pumpkin Happy (with dots to help pointing to the words)

Freebies!

Three weeks into school and I'm loving my class! We're down to 36 kids and they're amazing! They all have such personality, they all make me laugh! I can already tell we're in for an awesome year! Here are some things that we have been using in class. :)

Uppercase and lowercase letter recognition activity- Kids pick an apple card and color the letter on their sheet. I start out doing this with small groups and then eventually make it a center.

Click to download Apple Letter Recognition

Learning Letter Sounds little book- The kids loved coloring and reading their Sounds Like Fun Book so much that we're going to make a new one this week. This song is by Jack Hartmann. I'm also going to use the school poster maker to make a Learning Letter Sounds ABC Chart so the child of the day can point to the letters as we listen to the song.

Click here to download the chart

Click here to download the book
Click here to download the book cover

Counting Jar book- this book is a place for students to record how many items they see in the counting jar. Click here to download the Counting Jar Book

Color Monster book- every year the kids LOVE this color monster book. It's really old-school in a wonderful, classic way! I've been looking for an updated version and I can't find one. A co-worker copied these pictures back when you had to turn a crank to make copies on a copy machine! This year I re-created the book by scanning her drawings and typing the poems.Click Here to download Color Monster

Chasing Away the Wiggles!

Sorry I have been MIA! School started on August 22nd and it's been crazy! Every year I seem to blackout how it is in the beginning of the year. So far my co-teacher and I have 39 students! Our school is moving another teacher to kindergarten so a couple will go to her class, but I think we'll stay at 36. Luckily the kids are really sweet and we don't have any real behavior problems, just a bunch of lovely active boys (26!). They're already learning so fast, and each day gets better!

So far we try to keep everything super simple and short since their attention span lasts about 10 minutes. We've been doing a lot of Simon Says and fun movement songs to chase away the wiggles! My favorite is called Ants in your Pants by Eric Herman. I found it on Pinterest. I love the graphics in this video!

They also really like Workout to the Letter Sounds by Jack Hartmann. Some days we'll even break out the 10 minute Rainy Day Recess clip from United Streaming to wear them out a little. Do you have a favorite song that will keep away the wiggles? Leave me a comment!

Calendar Math Journals

In my school we start our day with Every Day Counts Calendar Math. A couple years ago I started to include calendar math journals in my mornings and the kids really loved them! If we have to skip them for a day they are disappointed. When I had a regular sized class, my students would bring the journals to the carpet and complete them as we reviewed the calendar. Now that I have 36 students we review the calendar and complete a class journal together. Then they go back to their seats to complete their own journal. After they have completed the journal, we count to 30 (or 31) while pointing to the numbers.

To create the journals I staple the papers to the inside of a file folder. Last year I found the calendars on Mrs. Gonzalez's Website. This year I recreated her calendars but now her website is updated with the 2011-2012 calendars. She also has a bunch of other great stuff so check it out! Later in the year I staple a 100s chart to the outside. I've seen the calendar binders and I think they're awesome, I just don't have enough binders for my class.

In September we keep it simple and trace numbers and practice counting. I introduce the tricky teen chants on the teen days. 6 times during the month students make numbers in different ways (2 yellow buses and 3 orange buses=5 buses)
Click here to download the September Calendar Math Journal

In October we start a class graph of their favorite animals. The child of the day picks which animal he/she likes best and we graph it. We also start talking about dominoes.
Click here to download the October Calendar Math Journal

In November we graph the weather, start a daily depositor and continue to talk about dominoes. We add to our daily depositor every day (on Mondays we add for Saturday and Sunday too). I like to use 10 frames so we can practice counting on.

Click here to download the November Calendar Math Journal

I'll post the rest of the journals later in the year! =)

Orientation Treasure Map

Tomorrow I will finally be able to enter my classroom and begin organizing for the new year! This might be dorky, but I'm really excited! I'm determined not to spend my whole last week of summer break at school, but I know I have a LOT of work ahead of me. My co-teacher and I put everything we could into boxes and shoved it in the closet before we left for summer break. To be honest, I'm not looking forward to opening the closet door!

Here is a treasure map I made for our orientation. After we give our introduction talk, I plan on passing out treasure maps for students to do with parents. LittleKinderWarriors created a great treasure map that I loved so much, I recreated it so it would fit my classroom. Check out her blog!

Click here to download treasure map

After they find everything they can get a prize from the treasure box! I'm going to make a kindergarten survival kit for the treasure box prize.

Click here to download Survival Kit

Transportation Forms

Here are transportation information forms that I created for my class. Feel free to use it if you would like! =)

Click here to download these forms in pdf
Click here to download these forms in Microsoft Publisher
***I used the font Kinderdots to create this form***

Shape Poems

I just found these shape poems that I did last year with my class. They really helped my kids remember their shape attributes. The kids loved decorating the shapes to make them into little people. Most of these poems are really old, so I don't know who wrote them. If you know, send me a message and I'll make sure to give proper credit! My super-fabulous co-teacher wrote the poems for Tammy Trapezoid and Honey Hexagon. I ♥ collaboration!

Click here to download the poems

Poetry Journals

For the past couple years I've used poetry journals in my classroom. Shannon from Kindergarten Hoppenings has an amazing post that explains how she uses them and how you can make them matter in your classroom. She also shares the poems she uses in her classroom. I love her idea of putting the poems on a poster board for students to read. I plan on using a lot of her ideas this year!

I introduce one poem a week. We read the poem on the SMARTboard, practice pointing to words and highlight letters and sight words. Students read and illustrate the poem in their poetry journals.

Usually, I use a 3 prong folder that I add to all year, but with 34 kids, that gets to be time consuming. This year I plan on stapling all the poems for the month together, making a cover out of construction paper and letting them take them home at the end of the month.

Here are some of the poems I used last year. Enjoy! ♥

September Poems
September Poems SMARTboard

October Poems
October Poem SMARTboard

November Poems

November Poems SMARTboard

December Poems

December Poems SMARTboard