Very CUte Blog

I just came across some cute Brown Bear activities that would've gone great with my lessons last week. Oh well, I'm sure we'll come across Brown Bear again sometime this year! Check out her blog Cole's Little Pups. Also, we had "Bb" week last week and had a lesson on blowing bubbles with bubble gum. My sweeties forgot to throw their bubble gum away before they got on the bus so "you know who" got in trouble, but it was ok. I loved seeing them try to blow bubbles. We made a graph with small faces, but I just saw Mrs. Lee's pictures and I just might have to go back and make these. I'll post pictures of my graph tomorrow. Have a great week.

Word Family Sorts

I grabbed these 2 sorts from A Teeny Tiny Tearcher. I made a flipchart to do whole group before I send my kiddiesto their seats to try it on their own. I am not sure how to upload the flipcart, but just leave a comment if you'd like it emailed and I will try that. I am looking at Promethean Planet to open an account, but until then, I will be glad to just email the flipcharts. Happy Teaching!!

Help with Google docs

As you can tell by my earlier post - I can't figure out how to put a picture of the google doc. into my posts. I have forgotten :(. Any help???

Sight Words Mania

I have been working on sight words for my NEW "Word Wall" - yay. I took the idea from Kim Adsit's website and tweeked it to work for my classroom. She has a free download explaining to use several different color cardstock to print the words on so that you have different colored words under each letter. For example, when a student asks for a certain waord you can tell them to look at the "red" word under letter "a". I think this will be great for my kinders. I made my own sheets to print out using the words we introduce at our school. We really don't have a "program" that we have to use, but we have used Cindy Cupp in the past and these are the words that follow her "Hop-n-Pop" portion. I have these in word and would be glad to email them if anyone wants to change the words. I printed 2 sets so that I can use them in my "Working on Words" or "Working on Writing" stations. I am hoping tom implement Daily 5 this year but that is a whole new post :) Enjoy!


https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B7CRey0nKEuOODRmMDU0MDMtM2JkZC00YWY5LWIzYjktYzY3NDI3MmQ3OTNk&hl=en_US


https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B7CRey0nKEuOZjJlNDRjMGQtNDIzNi00OTAzLTkzZjYtMDZmMWQ5Mjk0YWYy&hl=en_US

Calendar Time

I love my flipchart calendar. I would love to add a "question of the day" or a "math talk" page to the flipchart so that we not only do our calendar and calendar binders but also review something different during our calendar time each week. The kids LOVE the calendar binders and really surprised me this year when we started them. I had tried calendar binders the year before and threw them out because they were SO time consuming at first. But this year, I created a flipchart with each page of the calendar binder in it and the kids were able to follow along EASILY. It was wonderful. The flipchart made all the difference in the world with my calendar binders. I used Jessica Meacham's calendar pages and saved them as a word doc. Then I went back and copy and pasted each page into a flipchart. Some of the pages had to be adjusted once they were pasted into the flipchart but they all worked. I love her calendar pages but this year I am mixing hers and Kim Adsit's calendar pages together. (I tried linking you to Kim's TpT site but the website is acting crazy. Just click on her TpT link and look for her calendar book stuff.) Her stuff is great. I wouldn't mind posting my flipchart from last year to Promethean Planet for anyone who wants it. I am assuming since Jessica Meacham's pages are posted on her website she wouldn't mind me using them in a flipchart. I will find out for sure before I upload it if anyone shows an interest. I also hung my old calendar on my board beside my activboard along with the with the straws so my sweeties could do calendar whenever I had a sub or if I was ever having trouble with technology - imagine that - right? Our calendar helper for the week filled in the old calendar with date and "today, tommorow, and yesterday" cards while the activboard calendar was done together with different kids each day. I also had a basket of manipulatives, number cards, tens frames, and so on for time fillers or math talks. Calendar time can get too long if you try to do too much though. The binders kept the kids attention and also allowed for a lot of "math talk" amoong their peers as they helped the neighbors with the binders. I had my coins, days of the week, and months of the year hung on the wall right beside the old calendar as a simple math word wall for the kids. I wish I had pictures but it is really a very simple set up.

Lesson learned...

It's been a while. I'm new at this blogging stuff and I keep forgeting to take pictures but I am trying to remember to snap more. I love seeing pictures on blogs. So helpful!! Anyway, my kinders have been working hard for the last couple of weeks and time has just flown by.
In trying to explain my tiltle - "lesson learned", I need to tell you that we have been trying to hatch chicken eggs for about 2 weeks now in my classroom and my kids are growing very fond of the egg in our room. Well, on Friday morning - yes we had school on Good Friday because of make-up snow days :(, my precious, lilttle, innocent students walked into homeroom and saw me placing some eggs into a pot which was right next to our incubator full of chicken eggs. They didn't say a lot, just asked a few questions about what I was doing. As they unpacked and got settled in, I explained that we were going to boil the eggs ("boil": a new vocabulary word for most my kid) and dye the eggs ("dye": another new vocabulary words for most my kids). Realizing that they did not know what "boil" or "dye" meant, I explained to them that we would first cook, or boil, the eggs and then we would dye, or color, the eggs. I also told them that we would crack the eggs open at the end of the day and eat the egg. Instead of a great roar of excitement (like I had anticipated), coming from the mouths of my 6 year olds - all I got was silence - literally. As I put the last egg into the now boiling water, one brave little boy raised his hands and said to me "But Mrs. Richards, why are we killing our chickens?" I then realized that they thought I was using our baby chicken eggs for Easter. The lesson learned - "Don't hatch eggs the same week as boiling eggs. I am positive that some of my kinders still think we cooked and ate some of our chicken eggs. Poor kids!!
Here are a few things we did. We wrote about Peter Rabbit and what we would do if we were him - I think the idea came forom Mrs. Lee's bog. (Wonderful bog!!)










We also wrote about our "Blooming Friendships" in our classroom.(from anoter blog but a mixture of several). I think "Luv to Teach K" blog was where the writing idea came
from.

Here is our Easter egg hunt and a picture of my kids dying eggs. Over 1/2 my class had never dyed eggs before. It was nice spending Good Friday with my kids. We really enjoyed our day.

Butterfly Math

Some activities to use with Spring.....