Five for Friday 9/25

I'm Hi!  I can't believe it, but I am back for another week of Five for Friday!  

We have actually had a pretty good week.  Our students and staff were off on Wednesday due to the UCI Bike Championships that are happening in Richmond, VA.  But here's what we did the rest of the week: 
We have been very busy with reading centers this week. We are learning how to understand the centers chart and rotate through each job. Here is our stamping center this week. 

This week, we started our following directions activities. These are called TLC Activities - though I'm not sure what their real name is. Here is the bus we did this week.

We started the stamping center today. I only give them the letters they need for the words they are stamping. I learned this from a teacher friend last year. It's brilliant!  Here, I just had them stamp a name to get used to using the center. You can see the little containers there that I put the sets of stamps in. 

 We have to do a beginning of the year writing assessment. We did that on Monday. And now that it is finished, we can start writer'so workshop Monday! Yay!  It's one of my favorite times of the day. I love seeing their writing grow!

Now...brace yourself...this is the math assessment that came with our newly adopted series. After 15 minutes for just 3 students, I put the whole stack in the recycling bin!  I couldn't handle it anymore!  Instead, we did the old school sorting of shapes that were different size and color. Everyone passed and it is a far better age appropriate assessment. 

It's so sad, this is what we get as an assessment now. Do you ever feel like you have to pitch something and go with your gut on what's age appropriate??  I'd love to hear how your centers are going too. 

Now head over and see what everyone else was up to this week. Have a great weekend!  Cheers!

Five for Friday {Sept. 18, 2015}

Hi!  I'm here to link up for the first time in a very long time. Check out our week!

It was our second week of school in kindergarten.  The training is going great!

We have been very busy learning expectations for reading center time but they are doing a great job!

We have also been busy learning the exact way to cut, sort and glue. This week was only a shape sort. Next week, we will start letters and letter sounds in this sort activity. 

Our math work stations are off to a tremendous start. We have added our first academic games this week. Here's a few.

We also started this game with the iPads. 

Our final project today was our Chicka trees. I love seeing how well they can do with tearing using the fine motor skills.  Here they are working. 

Now head on over to see what everyone else has been doing this week. 

Back to School 2015

Hello again!  So I have taken the biggest hiatus from blogging one could imagine.  Last years bunch was a lot of work and fitting in this blog just didn't work.  But here I am ready to try it out again.  We have started our second week of school and whew is it crazy to think I keep doing this year after year with these kinders.  I am absolutely exhausted everyday by 10:50 when we go to lunch - as are they.   Anyway, I did want to tell you a little about what we have been up to.  As you know, in kindergarten our first month or so is all about routines and expectations.  My class has done a pretty good job grasping all of those things so far.  We started week one with our classroom rules book as our main academic focus.  I thought I took a picture but it looks like I didn't. 

This is the second week and I introduced the concept of reading centers. Each day, I model how to read our center chart t and where to go. The students work at a center about 15 mins, my timer has been woderful, then we all color in the center on our chart to track the things we have finished. Now, I introduce and practice this way because eventually, I release the children to complete all 4 centers on their own while I do guided reading. This is one less things to have to teach later because they have been trained to color their center chart after completing the center. 

    

  

Here is the poetry center at work. Students read the poem from the previous week to themselves, read it to a friend and listen to a friend. Then they glue and illustrate in their poetry journal. 

This activity is at the ABC center where the students are recognizing their letters to color and make a picture. These students are working independently so I can teach the groups at the poetry center. 

Of course, there is always teaching kids how to use the computer. Here they are working on www.starfall.com. Next week, they will start on our reading program. 

This was one of our opening work activities from this week. 

Right now at math stations, the kids are just exploring the manipulatives. Here's some pictures. 

Well hope your school year is off to a great start. I'm hoping to be back Friday with my Five for Friday pics.  Cheers!