Gingerbread Throwback

This year in first has been quite an adjustment for me!  I really hope to be back with some new content for you, but for now, here is some fun activities that we did in Kindergarten for Gingerbread week!

All of these activities are from my Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice Gingerbread unit. 

 

I am almost finished with my first grade December math centers – I HOPE to have them finished by tonight! Stay tuned!

This however, is done:

 

 

 

 

I keep these scrambled sentences in my writing center for my kiddos, and they LOVE them!

50th Day of School–Throwback!

I know that some of you are approaching your 50th day of school soon! Ours is a little bit later this year because we started school after Labor Day.  Even though I’ve switched grade levels, I still plan on incorporating all of these fun things into our 50th day celebration!! I am so excited!!  I thought I would post a little throwback to last year’s 50th day celebration tonight!  Take a peek:

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The 50th day is one of my all-time favorite days of school!  My mom even made me a poodle skirt about 6 years ago! I love it so much!

One of the first things we do in the day is get our room ready by making these fun records.  Sometimes I have the children just round the edges, sometimes I will trace the circles and have them cut them out.

I like to have them cut them out completely too because I can really see how their cutting skills are coming along.

We make self-portraits for our portfolios…here’s mine ;)
We try to write 50 words!

We play a fun sight word game where the children choose a card and read the word.  If they get the Jukebox (or juicebox as the kids like to call it!) we all get up and dance!

We sort things from the 50s and now.  I’ve done this with my IWB

and the old fashioned way too!  You can download this pocket chart sort from Eberhart’s Explorer’s!

We watch how kids dance in the 50s.  The kids get a kick out of watching the guys throw the girls up! “We can’t do THAT in school",” they say!

We dance and listen to 50s music as much as we can! The music just makes me happy!
We play this super fun pocket chart game where we try to find the cherry for our “brown cows!”

At the end of the day, we dance in the gym, hula-hoop, do the limbo, chew bubble gum and TRY to blow some big bubbles! And of course, we end our fun day with ROOTBEER floats!

The 50th day of school is THE BEST.  I love when we walk by older classes and they say “I remember when we celebrated the 50th day!”
…and I LOVE being able to celebrate with my OWN sweeties.  I made this poodle skirt for my oldest when she was in Kindergarten, and I was happy to learn that my 1st grader got to wear it AGAIN this year.

I have a little packet of fun 50th day stuff if you’re interested! Just click on the image to head over to my little shop.

Phonics Fun! Short e

Something new for me in my first grade curriculum is spelling tests.  I’m slowly figuring out the best way to practice our spelling words in a way that is meaningful, hands-on and fun for my kiddos. I think I’ve found what works for my kiddos -- So far, so good.

Here’s what we do..

Each week we have a new list of words – we are currently working through the short vowels as a review from Kindergarten.  I am following the Scott Foresman Reading Street spelling curriculum for the whole class (but I will begin to differentiate with our word sorts next week).

Monday:

We start off the week by introducing our spelling pattern and brainstorming words that follow that pattern. We hang this anchor chart up for the children to refer to the entire week.

On Tuesday we will read the corresponding Phonics Poem and look for our spelling pattern.  I use the poems from this book:

On Wednesday we read the poem again and get our own copy to add to our poetry notebook. He highlight the spelling pattern and practice reading the poem for fluency. We also play some sort of word game – just depends on time!

On Thursday, we will practice our words on our dry erase paddles. 

Friday is our spelling test!

Throughout the week, the children work on various activities during their word work time for Daily 5.  I’m slowly putting these together in packets – so far, only Short e is finished.  I have a lot of bits and pieces, but everything isn’t assembled into one spot.  Someday when life slows down….

But, here’s what I have so far…

My kiddos loved using these activities during Daily 5.  There is a good mix of center based materials, easy print and go sheets, and whole group games. 

I also used a lot of activities from these units:

Our Daily 5 rounds last for about 15 minutes, so the games and activities are perfect – just enough time to keep them engaged!  I have also been working on some fun word work sheets for ANY spelling or sight word!  I’ve been working on these since last spring and slowly adding to them.  I can’t wait to share the finished product with you!

Have a wonderful, wonderful week!

Fantastically Fun Fall!

I wanted to share with you some of the centers and games we did in my Kindergarten classroom last year.  Maybe you’ll find some fun ideas!

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 had 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!

If you’re interested in these centers, I have them in my Fantastically Fun Fall pack!