Swirls Swirls Everywhere

This week we have been reading Swirl by Swirl Spirals in Nature by Joyce Sidman. The students loved our writing activities this week!

     I chose this activity to help my pumpkins understand the vocabulary word spiral. We created a rose by cutting a spiral out of colored paper and rolling it around a pencil. The students drew pictures
showing patterns in leaves. Then they glued the rose to their picture.  I asked them to write what they know about this spiral in nature and showed them page 47 in the story.

Although this friend is not my strongest writer, I love the details in the leaves. 

Then we moved on to the words coil and expand. 

Students recreated a picture of the snake from the book.
They were asked to write to tell me about the snake.

We only glued the tail down so students can show the meaning of coiled and expand.

I found the Snake Pattern at Art Projects for kids . You can click here for the free snake pattern.

IRLA POWER WORDS practice

In my District, we use a program called IRLA. The students need to learn "Power Words".  They are pretty much sight words however there are a few differences.  I made some Power word practice books to use with  my students this past year.  I did not finish all 60 of the 1G power words. However, I decided to sell them in sets on Teachers Pay Teachers.  For some reason I can not download more than twelve books. So I will be selling them in sets of 12.

 

I only posted the first set, which include the power words: 

a, all, am, an, and, are, at, be, big, can, can't, come. 

Click here to visit my TPT store to try the "at" book for free by downloading the preview. 

My students really enjoyed these books. I hope you do too!

Summer Vacation ?

 I feel like I blinked my eyes and it is summer. Our school is getting an new air conditioner this summer SO we literally had to pack up EVERYTHING!   My shed is full... my husband's man cave is full a fact he is not thrilled about. I am hoping to ORGANIZE  everything this summer...  Not going to lie.. it is not my strong suit.  What do you spend your spare time in the summer doing? 

   I am SUPER excited about the upcoming year.  I'm trying something NEW! YAY! I will be co-teaching with  Mrs.P.  AAAHHHHH!  I am SUPER excited about this because she is very organized and I can not wait to learn her tricks. We are both excited about this. We both have strong suits... and are super excited to learn from one another.
   So far this summer,  My family and I visited Orlando-( yes sadly the same week as these horrible tragedies. ) My most heart felt sympathies go out to the families of  Christina Grimmie, all the families from the Pulse Night Club victims, and the family of Lane Graves.
  We spent a lot of time at the resort swimming and reading by the pool. This allowed me the time to read Mindset by Carol S. Dweck.  I started reading it because Kindergarten Smorgasboard is doing a book study on it. If you haven't read it... Get it and follow along with Smorgie! I just love him!
   I am not sure if I have mentioned this.. But I am a HUGE BOOK WORM!  I am also reading 1-2-3 Magic for Teachers by Thomas W. Phelan and Sarah Jane Schonour.  

What are you reading? Any suggestions of Great Summer Reads? Educational or not..

3D Shapes

This week we have been learning about 3D shapes. We made super cute hats of the solid shapes.  My students love making things they can wear. I really like the 3D hats. The packet includes two of each hat depending on how you teach it. one hat asks for how many faces, edges and vertices. The other hat asks for curved surfaces, flat surfaces and vertices. It has a spot for students to draw a sample of the shape. and identify if it is a solid or plane shape.

                 If you print the preview it has a sample of the cylinder hat, like the ones below. You can purchase this here. 

We did this great Walk the Room center. Students match the object on the ship to the similar 3D shape on the worksheet. I had 3D shapes available in case anyone struggled, for instance this little one struggled and colored in both shapes. So I gave here both shapes and we looked at the picture together to see which one it resembled the most.

We also compared and contrasted the shapes to tell how they area like and how they are different.

  I like it when they can think it through and write out their thinking. It shows me evidence of their learning. I usually try to correct just the subject at hand, however, this little pumpkin forgot to start with a capital letter so I would be sure to mention that to her when I conference with her.

We sorted shaped by flat surfaces and curved surfaces and objects that had both.  I passed out one object to each student and had them sort it into the correct category. I later put this in a center for them to do as a group. It was quite cute to hear their thoughts about why each shape went where as they explain it to their peers.

Then they did this worksheet. Sorting shapes into categories based on curved or flat surfaces.

We worked on other attributes such as can shapes, roll, stack or slide. I passed out solid shapes and had students try to roll them, stack them and slide them. This brought up GREAT conversations in class. Do cubes roll? Dice are cubes and we "roll Dice" which made us look at what the definition of roll means for this activity.

The other BIG question was do pyramids stack? As you can see here our friends said YES. but only sometimes, if they are on their sides.

The Best Part of Me Opinion Writing

 I am super excited about my little pumpkins writing yesterday.  One of my coworkers found this great opinion writing lesson on the blog  Lessons with Laughter.  Although this lesson was originally for 3-5th graders, we made it simple enough for our kinders. We read the book The Best Part of Me by Wendy Ewald.  We brainstormed different parts of our bodies. Then, each child thought really hard about which part was the best part of them.

"I like my teeth be cause my teeth go fhrough my food. I like strawberries because the taas is yumee. "

           This one tickled me because  of the vowel pairs.  This little guy knew he heard a long vowel sound and made it by adding vowel pairs. I also love how he spells what he hears himself saying, notice the f instead of t for through.

                                           "I like my feet because they can take me places."

This was an easy peasie lesson. I took the photos with my cellphone, printed them on the black and white printer, and then used black construction paper as a base. How stinkin' cute did they turn out?

Last week, we read What if I had Animal Teeth by Sandra Markle. My coworker suggested a great lesson by Oceans of Firsts.  Students wrote their opinion about which animal teeth they would prefer to have.

If I Had Animal Teeth

   I printed out the teeth choices provide by Oceans of Firsts but also gave my kiddos blank white paper to freestyle their teeth.   I didn't use the face template, instead I took pictures of the students and had them glue the teeth on their pictures.  How stinkin' cute did they turn out?


  We  also practiced counting on.  Most of my pumpkins can count to 100. 

We counted to 100 on our 100 poster.  I put post it notes over random numbers and asked the students to tell me the missing number. I asked how they knew which number was missing. Most said they looked at the number before and counted up. Most of my pumpkins can count to 100.  I strategically gave numbers out. For example, When I had my pumpkins orally count to 100 to me. I wrote down the numbers they struggled with. So lets say little Bobby counted 38, 39...60... He got number 39 and a 100s chart. So .. I gave them a number, a fish and five 1 inch circles... they wrote the number on the fish and counted on putting each number after on the air bubbles.

Next, time I need to do a few things differently, cut 1 inch white circles for the bubbles.. not blue it was too close to the water color and I would have them write their thought process of how they were able to know which number came next.

Yesterday, my little pumpkins had a half day sub.  I was shocked by the behavior of my students with the sub.  Seriously, I saw them running down the hall, screaming. Not acceptable behavior.  So today, I dressed up like Viola Swamp from Miss Nelson is Missing.  I wore a wig...a bad, mullet wig...it is the only one I had.  I changed my necklace, rings and earrings. I raided my moms closet for some clothes to wear.  I painted my nails a different color.  I took the cover off my computer and cellphone. I changed out my teacher bag and lunch bag.  I put a pillow in my clothing to make me a little thicker. I spoke in a stern voice. I did not yell. I spoke calmly and firm. 

You can watch it by clicking here

 I explained that I was Mrs. Hann's sister, and I was filling in for her today. I pretended that I didn't know their names, or how to use the Apple T.V.. They asked a few question like why we looked so much a like. We did not sing or dance today. We did discuss appropriate behavior for when a substitute is there. It was actually really good conversations about how they should behave. I asked them why they were behaving for me but not the sub yesterday. One little pumpkin answered," Because you are so serious."  We discussed why the other sub was not so "serious".  My little pumpkins thought maybe she was a new sub, maybe she didn't know our class rules. Which led to conversations about even if the sub doesn't know the rules, we know the rules.  I asked if they learned anything yesterday and they said, "No". We discussed their job at school is to learn. So, because they did not complete the assignments yesterday we needed to do it all today. ( We did not really do two days worth of work, but I promise there was no down time today.)
   My little pumpkins worked very hard today, but surprisingly at the end of the day, they said they would miss me. I did not let on today that it was really me. Tomorrow, I will read Miss Nelson is Missing. 

 On another note,  our school is encouraging Number Talks with our students.  So I made version of their dots Images for my team to use. I am including Dot Images with the Number 6 Set 8 here.
I really enjoy the conversations that happen. It helps them to see that its okay to see numbers different, and helps them to see it different ways. 

You show students this and ask" How many dots do you see? How do you see it? "