A Short Week of Fun!

Learning about letters and sounds at the reading table!

Students are making flashcards of the popcorn words they have learned.  The will be coming home soon where they can continue to practice at home.

In math, we were used linking cubes to measure items found in our classroom.  At home, students could use paper clips, pasta, or marshmallows to measure.

Have a great Thanksgiving!

Tricky Teen Numbers

I have been gone for the past couple of days due to eye surgery.  Today was my first day back after 5 days without seeing the kiddos, literally!  It was great to be back, but I must admit, the mountain of work waiting for me was a bit CrAzY!!!!  I think I felt all of these emotions at some point today!

I was wondering if my new eyes were deceiving me!  Alas, back to school I go!

We have been learning about teen numbers!  They are very tricky for kindergarten students!  Some of the things we have been working on is building towers made of linking cubes. This shows the concept of adding one more.  At home, you could use Lego's or blocks.

Here are a couple of video's from YouTube.  The first one helps explain place value and how each teen number has a group of ten.  The last video stresses that all teen numbers begin with one.  The tunes are catchy and the kids really enjoy them!

This is another activity we did with teen numbers!  You can get a copy at Amy Crockett's TPT store.

Alpha Friends

One of the most frequent questions I get from parents is how can I help my child at home with learning letters and sounds.  Our school recently adopted a new reading curriculum called Journeys from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and one of the great features of this program is "Alpha Friends."  Students learn about characters who are associated with each letter and sound.  Use this video to practice at home.

Parents can also print this sheet that has all the characters and letters.  When they recite the sheet, they should say the letter name, the picture, and then the sound.  It should sound like this, "a, apple, aaaa."  Students can also cut them apart and use as flashcards.  Click here to get a copy.

Small Groups

Welcome to all our new followers this week!  This blog is a place to share ideas with other teachers and for parents to see what we're are learning at school.  My plan is to post at least once a week.  Sometimes I will do more, sometimes it might be too busy of a week.  

Today is all about small groups.  During this part of our day, students work in small groups which then allows the teacher to better assist students at their individual level.  It is my FAVORITE part of the day!  At the art center, students are creating a turkey page using feathers to make turkey's and google eyes.  Who doesn't love google eyes?  Tomorrow, kids will add a writing piece to their art work.

These students are working on iPads and using math and language apps to enhance their learning.  This center is a favorite!

Here is our math center.  Students are working on number sense as they have to match the number with the amount of cookies.  Students are also estimating cookies and seeing if they made a reasonable estimate. 

At the reading center, this student used bingo markers to find  the letter Tt.

After they finished, they learned how to read a new book.  When reading, one student is the "pointer" and the other student is the "reader."

After reading the book, students had to use their knowledge of the book and write who was in the story.

Just another great day in Kindergarten!