Spring Senses

We are starting to get a taste of  Spring here in NJ so we jumped right into the season using our senses! To start us off I found an awesome pack from Kate at Teacher to the Core. She has so many engaging ideas to spark our little learners interest!

You can read all about her unit and how she incorporated it in her classroom here. 
 We used our senses to explore gummy worms and my kids ate it up (literally!). I was amazed of all the wonderful adjectives they came up with when using their senses.

After reading several poems about Spring and taking a "Spring Walk, " we made these cute little Spring Senses Rainbows.

They were so proud of their work I displayed them in our hallway-we get complements daily on them! 

If you would like to make Spring Senses Rainbows, I have added a little FREEBIE below. 

Have a great week!

Hop Hop Hop!!

I am currently enjoying my Spring Break down in sunny Myrtle Beach! Before I get back to relaxing I wanted to share a little bunny fun we had last week! We read some great fiction and non-fiction books books on rabbits. A few of my favorites are below :)

 

Before reading our non fiction book we discussed what we already knew about rabbits, I was impressed with what my kids knew!

After reading a few non-fiction books we built up our schema and used our information to help us create a 3 way map on rabbits.

You can grab this freebie here! To wrap up our rabbit week we did some directed drawing from First Grade Blue Skies. My students really enjoy directed drawing and I love it too!

 Rummor has it that she will be creating a directed drawing for every week of the school year, so be sure to follow her for future updates!


Enjoy the rest of your week!

Five for Frunday!

 I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching to share 5 random (but fun!) things about my week! Yes, I am a few days behind but better late then never!!

We have been working on our 5 senses this week and I found a great unit from Teacher to the Core! We started off the week eating worms! Gummy worms that is! We explored our gummy worms with our 5 scenes and then wrote about it :)

Our class  made some adorable pigs in a tub to wrap up or -ig family. I found the craft at From the Pond!

In science we just started our frog unit. We made a trip to a local aquarium (we are lucky enough to have one minutes away from our school!) and the kids were obsessed with the frogs they had. I found some great non-fiction books and we started building our schema about frogs.

Outside of the classroom. I made a shopping trip to Trader Joes and discovered they most delicious stuff found in a jar, COOKIE BUTTER. I am not sure how they did it but I would highly recommend getting some. I have already started looking around Pintrest for some cookie butter recipes.

Last but not least I have officially begun my countdown to Spring Break. Thursday afternoon can notcome soon enough! Then I get to spend a whole week with these guys!

Let's Visualize

We just wrapped up a fun filled week on visualizing in Kindergarten! I was a bit worried my kids would have trouble with this literacy skill but I found some great poems by Jeff Foxworthy that they really connected to. I know what you are thinking, Jeff Foxworthy?!? Children's Poems?!? But, Yes!! I found two great books full of poems that had my kids begging for more!

Both Hide!! and Dirt on My Shirt books have a variety of poems that kids can really connect to and it helps students easily make mental images while they are reading the poem.

I chose the poem Dirt On My Shirt for the first day of visualizing and read the poem to my students without showing them the illustration.








I asked them to draw a picture and write about what they visualized. I LOVED seeing the variety of images my Kinders came up with. Some of their drawings had more details than the illustrator had!



To go along with our unit I created a pack of differentiated graphic organizers that your students can use while learning how to visualize. If you click HERE it will bring you to the pack in my Teachers Pay Teachers Store.

I hope you have as much fun visualizing as we did!

A Bad Case of Stripes

I am coming off of a 4 day weekend (double snow days) and feel charged and ready to take on the week! We are going to start the reading skill of visualizing tomorrow so I am going to begin with a lesson on found on Deanna Jump's blog that you can find HERE! I can't wait to see the images my kiddos come up with! What poetry do you like to use for visualizing? I'm sure I'll post later about the fun we have BUT let me share what I did last week.

We have been working hard on problem and solution within stories and it took us a bit but, they finally got it! I used a wonderful book by David Shannon called "A Bad Case of Stripes"

This book is awesome! You could here a pin drop while I read the story. As an added bonus you can find the story read aloud on STORY ONLINE. This will come in handy because your students will want to hear it over and over!

After we read the book. Students shared what they thought the problem and solution in small groups. They then filled in this graphic organizer:

Grab your copy HERE!

Hope you have a wonderful week!

Sight Words!

Happy first week of March! I'm not sure about you but I am counting down the days until Spring! I have been taking down all the snowmen and penguins in my room and started to prepare for the rainbows and flowers!

 I have been changing up some of my word work centers and my newest creation is all the buzz! My Rainbow Sight Words center helps my Kinders practice their sight words while making a colorful rainbow!

I created two versions for you, one in color and one you can print in black and white on colored paper. 

 

Best of all this is FREE! You can find it in my Teachers Pay Teachers store here. Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think!

Enjoy!

Centers

Thought I would share how I run my centers today! It took me a few years to figure out my centers  (yes, I said YEARS!) but now I love the way they work! Some of my centers are based off of Daily 5. SO I have 4 groups of students and they do four 20 minute rotations. This way I can see every group every day. Every day students will visit four places:
1) Guided Reading -with ME!
2) Phonics Phun- with my awesome assistant( I create activities for her groups or I find them on TPT)
3) Read! students will read to self, read to a buddy, shop the library, use the smart board or use e-readers.
4) Word Work or Work on Writing  5different colored shelves with many activities (I will do another post about these!)

After much cutting, laminating, clip art hunting I found the easiest way to display my centers, In a shoe holder-crazy right?! Pretty sure it cost me  $2.99 at Walmart. I am still on the hunt for a colorful one.

I pair students up and they work with each other for READ! and Word Work and Work on Writing. The students rotate in order of their card for the day. For example the top left group would follow this schedule: 1) Guided Reading 2)Phonics Fun 3) Orange- Word Work Work on Writing 4) Library visit.
I get my cute, FREE clip art here!

Each morning I rotate the cards down, I have 5 total cards in each set. Every week each group will visit all centers.

The colored pencils on the cards represent the word work and work on writing center. I have a whole shelf of centers.

Students may do what ever bin they like as long as they stay in their color.
I hope you found this helpful! How do you run your centers?