Transportation

I had this entire blog post written once – Windows Live Writer crashed on me and I had to start all over again!  I hear my husband saying, “Did you save?” Yep, he’s right again. Next time, I’ll save.

We did our unit on transportation a couple of weeks ago.  I was gone for a 2 days that week for curriculum meetings and IEP/Transition meetings, so needless to say, it was a wild week!  I am so behind on blog posts too – seeds and plants, April Fool’s….I hope to squeeze them in sometime, but my plate is overflowing right now while I am finishing up my last 3 weeks of grad school.  I can NOT wait until May, when I do not have to write any more papers!

So, here is our unit:

We started off the week reading this book:

In this book, the mom wants to go to the beach, but her car breaks down.  She needs to find another way to get to the beach, but with each way that she finds, she has to leave 1 of 5 things behind.  The children have to guess which thing she has to leave behind.  We made a flow map to sequence the events {and cause and effect} of the story.  I forgot to take a picture of this – sorry!
The kids loved this fun rhyming book! The teacher (whose car breaks down!) is late for school – he has a rule to NEVER, EVER be late for school.  He tries many different ways to get to school.  Of course, he ends up being late, and has to change his rule.  Super cute.

We read two books for our Scott Foresman reading series.  These were the days that I was gone, so nothing to exciting to report with these books! The children wrote about different types of transportation and the ways they come to school.

Our last book of the week was my favorite!

The kids loved this book, and the illustrations are fantastic!

When we finished reading, we brainstormed a list of all of the items that the boy put on or in his car.  Then the creativity happened – the children got to dream up their own car!  I loved their creativity!

LOVE the fairy car! You can download this sheet here.

We also read Hot Air Henry and wrote about a balloon adventure we might have. I got the balloon idea from a friend a few years ago, and it’s one of my favorite ideas!  The kids love designing their balloon, and their writing is so fun to read! At this point in the year, they are such amazing writers, some kids will write 3-4 pages!!{It might be hard to see from the picture, but the kids’ pictures are inside of the baskets!

We also made a fantastic transportation mural!  We brainstormed a big list of all the different types of transportation – on land, on water, and on air, and then put it on a tree map.  The kids chose the type of transportation that they wanted to make for our mural and they made it all on their own.  No patterns.  I love this kind of art! So fun!  They also made pipe cleaner people and glued their pictures on as well as labels for their vehicle.

These are some fun stoplights that our head start class made.  They used caro syrup to make the stoplight colors! They always look so pretty hanging up, but I’m afraid to attempt this in Kindergarten – not enough helpers! I can just imagine the mess!

{Math and Literacy Centers}

I love Julie Lee over at Mrs. Lee’s Kindergarten!  Some of these centers came from her – make sure you head on over and check out her blog!

This idea came from Julie – I added a few more steps on it to meet the needs of my class – the kids love it!

The kids matched trains and wagons to find the correct time and write it on their recording sheet.

This center was challenging for some of my kiddos.  For the harder coin combinations, I added money stickers to the back of the airplane so they could take a peek if they needed to.

In this center the kids measured with standard and non-standard units.

This idea came from Julie – the kids pick a car, listen for the sound that is on the car, and write it on the correct traffic light.  I also had them stretch out the words and write them.

Boating for Blends – the kids wrote the word with the correct blend.

They stamped the missing letters.

Practice with silent e.

At this center the kids matched the sight word truck with the color word and then stamped the sight word.

You can download these centers {here}, {here}, {here}, {here}, and {here}.  If you choose to download these documents, please leave a note to let me know that you did as well as publicly follow my blog.  Thanks for your support!