Pockets!

I needed chair pockets but didn't want to spend $200 out of my budget for them. I found a pattern online to make them. My sweet sister-in-law offered to make them for me. They turned out great! The pockets are sturdy enough for lots of use and they are roomy enough for all the things my students put in them. Now I have some clear bookshelf space and they can save time by having supplies right there!

Fact Families for Halloween

For Halloween, I found a cute idea. My class needed help and practice writing fact families. One way to do this is to have them make candy corns. They drew the number bond on the top layer, then the addition and subtraction problems on the other layers. I made a mummy using toilet paper for the bulletin. To show how the activity correlates with the CCSS (which are posted in my room), I wrote the standard on a sentence strip.

I had parent volunteers which made this project easier and allowed the kids to do more than they would have done with just me. I had them fill out a fact family worksheet first, then have it looked at by me. For each correct fact family, they could make 1 candy corn. For my high kids, I assigned fact families (up to 20 and beyond). The others chose an addition fact from an addition chart (up to 10). It worked out really well for differentiating and all of my students felt successful. It also helped them on their test.

Ahoy! Treasure Ahead!

A fun way to end a social studies unit on maps! I dressed as a pirate and my principal came in as my captain. I made a treasure map of the playground and my principal led the kids on a treasure hunt. They did a great job of reading the map, finding the symbols, and knowing the 4 cardinal directions.

Welcome new year!

Made it through the first week of school (well, 1/2 week as we started on Wed). It was fun. I have a great bunch of first graders and know we will have fun. Just need to keep on top of it with planning and all. I'm hoping for a parent volunteer to help out in my room as I have lots of stuff to do. I miss having an aide (only kinder teachers get aides). I am excited for this new school year.

Shadows for Mothers

Happy Mother's Day!!

My class made larger than life silhouettes for Mother's Day. I used my projector for a light, then traced their shadows with a white crayon. My aide helped me get each student's hand prints then we used this poem: "This is to remind you When I have grown so tall, That once I was quite little And my hands were very small."

They turned out so great!

Bunnies!

This is late coming. I have been very busy lately. We did a great Easter/Spring writing project. All about bunnies. We did a plan which I got off of Teachers Pay Teachers to tell what they know about bunnies. Then they wrote a bunny paper and we put it together with bunny parts. So cute!

Flower Power!

One of the standards for kindergarten is using technology to publish and print writing. We have been learning about the parts of a flower. Each student wrote a paper based on a group plan of the parts of a flower. We then went to the computer lab where they typed up their papers. They did the typing (mostly hunt and peck) and I went in and added spacing. I left their phonemic spelling as it shows where they are (sight words and the flower parts were expected to be spelled correctly). My aide showed us how to make flowers out of tissue paper. It was a great project and they turned out great. Now they are hanging in my classroom. Something to show parents when they come for Data Night on the 25th!

It's hard to see in the pictures, but my students labeled their flowers. I attached their typed papers to their flowers.