Five for Friday {12/4/15}

I'm linking up again with Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching to share our exciting week.

We started making our calendars for 2016 that students will give their parents for Christmas. Each month has a different picture that the students make.  I haven't made these in a couple of years and every year, I wished I had. So they are back!  Stay tuned to see the final product!

Here's one of our newest math stations. Remember these old school overhead projectors?  I have tons of math manipulatives that we can use with it. Our shapes unit started this week and the kiddos have loved sorting and talking about the shapes this week. 

Here is my  Sight Word No Prep w/ Fundations Trick Words in action. I am already seeing a difference in the retention of sight words since I made and used this pack in my room. Even my students who are lower readers are starting to build their sight word knowledge. 

We added many new math stations this week.  The kids are enjoying the smart board station to practice tracing shapes. My  December On/Off Pack is a hit this week too. I love hearing my students say, "oh so 6 and 4 make 10." Or " wow, 3 and 7 make 10."  

Each year, I make a Christmas ornament to give my students during the holidays. In the last few years, I have also made them for my husband's fifth graders. So...yup...that's 45 ornaments.   I was busy this week getting the supplies together and will work on them this weekend!  I used a cardboard copy box and the Ellison press to make these stockings. I plan to paint them, write the kids names at the top and add their picture to the back. 

Now head over to see what everyone else is up to!  Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching

Five for Saturday. 1/29/16

Wel... I have debated hard as to whether I would even post this week. I live in central Virginia and was off of school Monday-Wednesday this week so there isn't a lot to share. We played catch up and talked about what we did in the snow!  We had a 2 hour delay Thursday and an early release on Friday. So there really wasn't much teaching time!

Here's some pictures from this week!

1.  We started working on word families in our sort journal. 

2.  We are experimenting with the idea of choice during literacy time. Students can choose where to work (desk or floor) and what to sit on (carpet square, yoga ball or chair).  

3. I took the opportunity to introduce some word work games the students could use as an "extra" center when they finished their work.

3.  I love watching how is listening center evolves over the year. Students are asked to write about their favorite part. Obviously in September, that looks more like a picture with no words. In November, we start to see the picture labeled and attempts at some words. But now, they are spelling sight words correctly and stretching out the other words to complete their sentence. It's so rewarding!!!

5. We were spending a lot of time this week (well 2 short days) working with numbers 11-20. Our next math unit is fractions so I felt like I needed to spend a good deal of time on these numbers first. 

Head over to see what everyone else did this week!

Assessments in Kindergarten

I wanted to share with you all what my assessments look like in kindergarten.  I was drafting this post and Carla from Comprehension Connection invited me to join the Virginia is for Teachers blog and post in January.  So, I saved this post for there!   Head over to see how we do our assessing in my kindergarten classroom.  It usually takes about 2 weeks to assess all taught skills to check off the report card.  

Show & Tell Linky 1/2016

I'm so happy to be joining Stephanie for the first monthly show and tell Linky!  Take a look below!

We began report card assessments today in kindergarten.  It is a very long process since everything is done 1-1 with each child. These are all the materials I need. 

We wrapped up our celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. today while making this fun craft. It's great for fine motor practice and listening skills!

This is a throw-back post to a few years ago but we have some of these projects on display now. I love to see the facts they remember about cardinals. And the ideas they have about being fair are great!  We ran out of time this year to do the New Years picture.  It's one of my favorites though.  Click the picture to see the whole post!

We're having a sale!  So everything in my store is 20% off plus you use the code START16 for an extra 8% off!  Doesn't get better than that!  Here's my 2 newest products!  Click the picture to see them!

Head over to TpT and see what you'd like!

Hibernation/Migration Unit Ideas & a FREEBIE!

Hi!  I wanted to share with you some of the things I plan to do over the next few weeks with my kiddos!  My team plans units every 2 weeks.  We like to talk about the birds during winter after reading this book: The After Christmas Tree (click the picture to find it at Amazon). We read this book and talk about winter birds that do no migrate and how we can help feed them in the winter time when the snow covers the ground.  
The next resource we have used almost everyday this week.  It is called PebbleGo and my school has purchased it for everyone to use (I actually think my district purchases it).   But I have taken some snapshots to show you the benefit of this resource.  If you don't use it and are able to share this information with the staff who purchases things for your school/district, I HIGHLY recommend this site for our beginning readers.  The "research" is simplistic and the program reads the articles to the students.  During this unit, we have used this program whole group using our BrightLink.  However, I did use this with my first and second graders for them to gather information on a given topic we were studying.  I would make recording pages to go along with the articles they were reading (or listening to).  

Here's an example of the activity I would have my first and second graders work on while researching independently during the computer center.

Here is a FREEBIE!!! My students did research and answered these questions.
What are some of your hibernation/migration ideas that you use in your classroom?  Does your school or county purchase access to PebbleGo?  Leave a comment below sharing your ideas!