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!!!

Fall Math and Literacy Centers

These are centers that we worked on last week and the week before! I guess I am a bit behind!  These are all from my Fantastically Fun Fall pack!

We LOVE to count and write the room! I ALWAYS have these centers each week – kids love to get up and move around and it separates the children a bit more.  More separation = less talking!

I differentiated this center for each kiddo – those that were ready to write number words did that, and those that weren’t quite ready just wrote the number.

I always have some sort of patterning center as well.  There are two different spinner for the children to choose from – AB, and ABB – some kiddos aren’t quite ready to move on from AB patterns yet :)

This center was a bit challenging for some kids, but I think once they get the hang of the multiple steps it will be a bit easier!

This was our first time playing “Flip Five” - -the children LOVED it.  There are NO numbers in this version – just pictures to count.  I have a few other versions of Flip Five in my TpT store if you’re looking for number versions.  Again, for the kiddos that were ready, they wrote their equations on the response sheet.

We’ve been practicing adding 1 more during our calendar time, so this game was perfect for some independent practice!  Dice + candy corn = FUN!

I love incorporating fine motor skills during centers whenever I can.  At this center, the children used a clothes pin to clip the beginning sound and flipped it over to check it (the answer is designated by a sticker!).

Ooh! This was SO fun!  The kiddos wrote the beginning sound of each picture to figure out the scarecrow secret code!

This game is GREAT for beginning sound practice! We spun the spinner and moved the candy corn piece down one leaf.  The first candy corn to the bottom is the winning letter!

Fun with rhymes!  The children rolled two dice – when they rolled two words that rhyme, they covered up a crow with a candy corn.  HINT – If you own this center, print two copies of each rhyme.  Choose 3 rhymes to focus on. The children will be more successful rolling two words that rhyme!

This was a pocket chart activity – sorry I forgot to snap a pic of the pocket chart.  The children put the words in the correct order to make a sentence that makes sense.

This center is one of my favorite ones – I’ve been doing it for years! It’s from my It’s Fall Y’all pack.  I die cut different color leaves and sort them into baggies. The children then sort them and graph them and complete the graph.  Each kiddo gets their own set.  It’s so fun seeing the gigantic graphs on the floor!

Here is the response sheet for our acorn count the room (the photo is above!)

At our listening center, we listened to Firefighter Ted!

We are working on pumpkins this week and next (and maybe the following week too!)  Let me know if you have any questions!

Better Late than Never, Right?

Sorry for the delay on my lesson plans this week! 

I have been loving this lately…

The days are cooler and shorter, and I love the crisp smell in the air! But…in the back of my mind, I know that this is right around the corner…

So, I’ll enjoy fall while it lasts with some fun fall centers and lots of time outside!

Most of my activities for the next couple of weeks are coming from these two packs.  Just click on the images if you’re interested!

We also play a lot of the pocket chart games in this pack – the kids go nuts over them!

Here are my plans for the week!  As always, plans may change! I don’t always get to everything in my plans and some things I just decide not to do!  We have to be flexible as Kindergarten teachers, right?!  I would love to hear your thoughts about these plans – are they helpful to you? Or do they not make any sense at all?!

Have a great remainder of the week.  I’m not sure how my internet access will be over the next few days, so be patient with me if you have any questions!!