October Calendar Book

Well, the month is over, and I guess I’m SUPER slow in getting up pictures of my October Calendar book.

So, here goes!

Our October song:

We sing this song too:

 

Then our monthly page… it’s difficult to see, but we crossed out one penny for every day of the week and then sang our penny song.

And our weather tracker….the children LOVE this page.  Before we do this page, we check the temperature and draw it on the thermometer on our IWB (if you are an Everyday Math user, you’ll know about this thermometer!) The kids cheer when we reach another color.

Our digital date is always right about our daily schedule.  Writing it every day in our calendar binders have really helped the kids notice it and also write it on their daily writing, and some are even writing it on their daily work!

We choose a “number of the day” and tally it…

Write it in ten frames….

and write about what comes before and after.  We use our growing number line for this as well.  This has also helped the kiddos be more aware of the resources around them.

EVERYDAY we count up to the day of school we are on.  The kids never tire of this!  (Psst…our 50th day is on MONDAY! yippee!)

We also add one dot to our 10 frame for counting days in school. 

We had ZERO birthdays in October!

I do  my daily calendar on my Interactive White Board.  I pretty much just insert the calendar pages into a flipchart and then add a bit of interactivity to it.  One day, I’ll try to take pictures of the flipchart for you!  If you have an IWB and don’t know how to make flipcharts, I HIGHLY suggest finding a class you can take! In the meantime, you can check out Promethean Planet for some great tutorials.

If you have any questions about my calendar routine, post away and I’ll try to answer them!

Good luck today in your crazy classroom!

Fun with Shapes with Roger Hargreaves

We are about finished with our shape study (introduction/review).  Most of my kiddos come in knowing their colors and shapes, but it’s fun to do a bit of a review, just to be certain.

One of my awesome Kindergarten colleagues uses the Roger Hargreaves books to review shapes.  She even has the most AMAZING puppets that another colleague made for her.  I wish I had a picture, but you have to trust me that they are adorable.  They are on my summer to-do list!

So each week, we read one of the Roger Hargreaves books.  (These were some of my favorites as a child, and when my oldest was little, I started scooping them up again!)

After we read the book (which have great character ed lessons), I drew the character and brainstormed other things that have the same shape.

Here are some of our charts:

I’m missing a few of my charts, but I’ll add them as soon as I snap pictures!

I LOVE seeing the kiddos refer to these anchor charts and I LOVE seeing them trying to draw the characters! They are so stinkin’ cute!!

Pumpkin Centers

Here is what we have been working on during centers!

They LOVE using spinners!  This one is from Julie Lee.

Practicing some patterns!

Still working on numbers and number words.

This is a great activity to introduce the complete 100s grid.  It is a free app called Counting Board.  The children simply tap a square, find the corresponding number on their number grid and color it in.  This keeps them SO engaged!!

A little bit of non-standard measuring.

This is a game that I adapted from my daughter’s Kindergarten teacher last year.  The children roll the dice and create towers with with the correct number of cubes.  When they have created all 6 towers, they get to color in one pumpkin.

This kids are writing the room with this fun activity from Julie.

Last year, I used the Promethean board for this center.  This year, I used an old fashioned pocket chart!

This page from Julie’s unit was originally intended to be used in a different way.  I adapted it to use my beginning sound stamps from Lakeshore.  I love how we can use each other’s units and make them fit our needs in our classroom!

This is from Julie’s pumpkin unit as well.  This is one of my most challenging centers this week! I love making them THINK!

This activity is from my It’s Fall Y’all pack.  I’ve recently updated some of the pages in this unit, so if you’ve purchased it, go back and download the updates!

Last year, I did this activity with this particular recording sheet.

This year, I wanted to incorporate my IWB with this sheet. I found this super simple flipchart on Promethean planet (if you search for it, you’ll find it!). 

The children simply count the pumpkins on the page, circle it (they love to choose the color!) and then fill in the ten frame on their recording sheet.

If you head back to {this post} you’ll be able to find a few of these in a free download!

Predictable Charts

I love  making predictable charts with kids, but they often get pushed to the back burner, because they take so much time!

In the past, I’ve done it this way:

I just made a table in word, and typed what the children said.  I projected it on my IWB so the children could follow along.  I can obviously type faster than I can write, so I was able to get a whole bunch done each day we did it.

Later in the week, we would come back, ad put the sentences together.  The children would have to cut apart their sentence and then re-assemble and illustrate their sentence.

 

I would them assemble them into books and place them in our classroom library for the children to read. 

I like this method, but I also thought, there must be another way.

So, I came up with this:

This is a PDF that you can project onto a screen using a projector and just type right on it.  It is programmable, so that you can add the text as the children say it. I always use my mouse to point to the words as we read, stop, and then add the text that they give me.  At the end of the week (or sooner, if I can get all of the children done), I will print out the pages and the children will illustrate them.

Now, here is something VERY important to keep in mind.  You CAN NOT SAVE a programmable PDF.  So, DO NOT close the program if you are not finished typing everyone’s work.  OR, you can simply print as you go.  But, just remember my warning! It doesn’t save

Do you want to try this in your classroom?  I would love your feedback.  If you find it successful, I may make a pack of these little predictable books. 

You can try it for FREE by clicking {here!}

Fall Fun, Lesson Plans, and Morning Baskets

A few weeks back, I posted a question on my Growing Kinders Facebook page about morning work.  I wanted to go away from a worksheet type thing every morning.  I felt like I was sending WAY too  many papers home, and the morning papers were simply busy work.  I needed something for the children to work on just for a few minutes while everyone was getting their jobs done. 

Worksheets were OK, but kids felt like they NEEDED to finish them, and I kind of did too.  While, really, the kids just needed something to work on until everyone was finished.  I don’t like to waste a lot of time – especially in the morning – so the worksheets were gone.  In place of them?

Morning Baskets.  Inside of these baskets are FUN activities for the kids to work on to get their brains ready for learning.  The kids are getting their morning jobs done a whole lot faster because they want to “play” with what is inside the morning baskets.  Now, these might evolve as the year goes on, but here is what they looked like last week and for a little bit this week (until I can change them!)

  

Simple, right? Fun, right?  I challenge you this week to ditch the morning work worksheets and try something like this! Keep it developmental and fun in Kindergarten!

On to lesson plans…

You can download them by clicking {here}

These are some of the units that I am working from this week:

           

My family was able to break away for a bit this weekend for a little bit of fall fun….my husband is working on his MBA, so life has been nothing but busy.  With two girls in dance, and an active middle schooler,  I’m rarely home.   It was nice to have a little quality family time together! Here’s a little glimpse into our day:

 

  

Have a great week!!!