Book Recommendation

This week's theme in my classroom was snow.  We read fiction books in the morning like The Snow Globe Family and The Perfect Snowman and in the afternoon we read non-fiction books about snow and winter. 

My absolute favorite was The Story of Snow: The Science of Winter's Wonder by Jon Nelson.  It is this amazing book full of pictures of real snowflakes and facts about how snowflakes form.  You can find it here on Amazon.

My kids were in awe of this book.  The pictures are amazing and it is full of fascinating facts.  I highly recommend adding it to your library.  I can see Kindergartners through 3rd graders loving it.

An Easy Sight Word Center

One of my go to centers is this Roll a Word Center.  It is one of my kids favorite centers and they never get tired of it.  Every couple weeks I change the dice to add our newest sight words and put it back in our center bin.  The kids know what to do so I don't have to spend time explaining how to play.  I also love it because it also has a graphing component to it as well. 

The directions are simple.  The students roll the dice and color in a box above the word they rolled.  They keep rolling and graphing until one word gets all the way to the top. Whichever word reaches the top first is the winner and the center is over.  You may need to watch this center out of the corner of your eye.  (There is always one kid that rolls 3 or 4 times and then just colors their favorite word all the way to the top.)  The roll a word sheet was made in Microsoft Word.  I simply created a table and wrote in the sight words I wanted.   Once you have the template it is super easy to change out the words and reprint them with little prep.

I purchased write these dice with my scholastic book club points.  You can also find the dice at Dollar Tree (though they will barely last the year) or here on Amazon.  I recommend writing on them with permanent marker as the expo markers come off with all the rolling.  You can easily remove the permanent marker by drawing over it with an expo marker and then rubbing it off with a paper towel.  It will make the dice a little smudgy but it is worth it.

What sight word activities do you do in you classroom?

Adding to 10 with Dr. Seuss

My first unit of the new year is Addition and Subtraction.  I once saw a teacher that combined literacy and math with the reading aloud of a book to introduce a concept or to tie in with a lesson and I love it.  I now try to incorporate as many math picture books as I can during the year.  So for this day I used the story One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss.

We then practiced adding to ten by coloring fish in a bowl.  We start off by coloring some red and the rest are colored blue.  We then created an addition sentence to go with it.  I love this activity because it includes reading, coloring, cutting, gluing and addition.  It also makes for some great art work in the classroom.

This craftivity is great for an addition unit or to go with Read Across America Week.  This example is for adding to ten but there is also an option to add how many fish you want into the bowl.

Be sure to check it out here in my TPT store.

ABC Snowball Sensory Bin

This literacy centers is perfect for a sensory bin or for a matching center. This product includes snowballs that have uppercase letters, snowballs with lower case letters and snowballs with pictures from A-Z to identify beginning sounds.


Here you can match the letters to the picture it begins with.

Or match uppercase to lowercase letters.

You can find this product here at my TPT store.

Kindergarten Halloween Centers

So I have a love/hate relationship with Halloween.  I love that I get to dress up and how excited my kids are to see my costume, but I hate that the weeks before Halloween are crazy.  I love pumpkins and candy corn and cute fall decorations, but I hate anything scary.  Honestly in years passed I ignored  Halloween until the day of.  But this year I found and made some cute centers that I love and I've been excited to use.

In Math I have a roll to 20 game the kids love playing.  It allows them to practice 1 to 1 counting and it is a game so they don't even realize they are doing math.  Each player rolls the dice and adds the correct number of candy to the board.  I use the candy erasers from Target but you can also use candy corn or pom poms or anything.

You can find it here in my Teacher's Pay Teacher store.  It comes with Candy ten frames and a roll to 20, 50 or 100 game.  It also come in color and black and white.

Another math center I love is my One More and One Less Frankenstein Center.  I just love these little Frankensteins.   Students must write the numbers that are one more and one less of the number given. This math center covers numbers 1-20. A number line is provided for additional support. 18 cards are provided. Simply print, laminate and cut out the cards. Place in a bin with an expo number and optional number line. It can be used as morning work or as a math center.

I also have a Frankenstein Missing Letter Center if you are looking for an activity to practice ABC order.

What do you do in your classroom for Halloween?

Calendar

Do you have your kids make calendars each month?  Our math curriculum is slightly shorter then the school year so my solution to that was to make a calendar each month.  It allows the children to trace the numbers, learn the months of the year and see how a calendar works.  Bonus for me, I no longer have 2 weeks at the end of the year with no math curriculum left.

I love these free calendars from Miss Kindergarten Love.  She includes a traceable and a blank calendar for each month and it is free.  She also updates it each year.

Last year I used these coloring pages from Classroom Doodles each month as the top of the calendar.

They have a page for each month.

This year I decided to start doing a little art project to go with each calendar and my kids are loving it.  Though they are far more creative then me and wanted to do other things besides a cat.  Maybe next month I'll give choices.

Kids Say the Darndest Things

So I had great plans to post all these things the first few weeks of school, I however forgot that the first few weeks are exhausting and involve me coming up and laying on my sofa and going to bed early.  So instead I'm going to share some of the funny things my kids have said so far.

Quote 1:  I am beautiful.  I am wearing a skirt today!

Quote 2: I am jealous of my mom's lipstick.

Quote 3:  Your wedding pictures is very handsome...and whats that word...disgusting.

Quote 4:  My dad is 10 and my mom is 6. (referring to their ages.)

Quote 5:  Student 1: I am 6 inches.  Student 2 not wanting to seem shorter:  I am 7 inches.

What are some funny things your kids have said?  Add them to the comments below.