Sunday, November 29, 2015

Peek at my Week: Gingerbread fun and a Sale!

Happy Sunday friends!  I am so excited for December!  December is everything Gingerbread and Holidays in my room.  I love it!  The best part (besides all the fun we will be having) is that we only have 12 instructional days- yes 12!  The last 3 days of school before break are always reserved for our Holiday Rotations.  More on that a different day.

Gingerbread Books!  We will be reading so many different gingerbread books over the next 2 weeks.  This year I will be straying a little more from the traditional Gingerbread Man because we are talking about Problem and Solution.  So I'm going to read books that aren't necesarrily about the cookie being eaten.  One book that is a staple in my room is :
 It's so cute!  The pirates even meet Santa, who of course loves to eat cookies...  

In other news, I;m sure you've heard about the Cyber Sale on TPT by now!!
I may have a couple things in my cart already...  Looking for some goodies??  My best seller is a game called Spell It!  It's a spelling game that requires students to not only spell, but also has the possibility of reading, CVC words (depending on how to play).  My kids LOVE it every time!  Here are 2 holiday versions:

You can check out all my versions HERE.

Here are the plans:



Hope it's a great week for you and you get some goodies in the sale!  Have I mentioned it smells like Christmas Tree in my place <3   Happy Teaching!!

Sunday, November 8, 2015

Peek at my Week- Differentiating like WOH!

Happy Sunday friends!  I'm linking up with Deedee from Mrs. Will's Kindergarten for a Peek at my Week!

We are still talking turkey in my class this week.  Which is great because we are also having our introduction to Nonfiction.  I'm going to begin talking about Thanksgiving also.  We will be reading this gem on Tuesday:
 Pete is in a school play all about the first Thanksgiving in this book.  It's really cute AND it has officially become my script for our 2nd annual The Land of I Can's Thanksgiving Play!  Last year's play was a blast to put on and a huge success for the other kindergarten classes and parents who got to come and watch.  I saved all the props (that right, props!!) and we will be doing it again this year!  I am so excited.  Play practice will start on Thursday :-)  Can't wait to show you pictures of the final result.

Other than that excitement this week brings on some heavy differentiation.  I always differentiate but this year I have soooo many kiddos who are very very low.  They aren't learning many letters and sounds and are really struggling with beginning to understand Concept of Word at all...  So we are going to kick the letter instruction into high gear and I'm going to get it into their heads even if it kills me! This book will be helping out:
It has fabulous phonics lessons for kinders of all levels!  I'm taking some of the easier ones and using them as small groups plans instead of whole group because I'm sure some of my other kiddos are sick of the letter work by now.  

Here are the plans:




WHEW! It's going to be a busy one.  Hope your plans are looking good too.  Happy Teaching!

Sunday, November 1, 2015

Peek at my Week: Turkey Time

Happy Sunday friends!  I'm linking up with Deedee from Mrs. Will's Kindergarten for a Peek at my Week!



 This will be a weird, short week for me.  I'm currently in Michigan visiting my parents.  My dad had a bone marrow transplant right before school started and is recovering in a rental house close to the hospital and my mom is working from home because someone has to be with my dad 24/7.  So, needless to say they needed a little time away from one another ;-)  I'm home to help out, cook, add another voice to the conversation.  Luckily my dad is doing well and getting stronger all the time!  

All that being said, I am taking off Monday and Tuesday.  Luckily Tuesday is a PD/work day so there are no kids.  Then I'll have 2 1/2 days with the kids because Friday is a 1/2 day for the other half of our teacher work day (grading day).  Weird.

This week we start our turkey theme, which will be a little less about turkeys than usual because we are also going to start our unit on magnets.  I LOVE teaching magnets!  On Thursday I'll set magnets and a bunch of materials that attract to them on the tables and simply let the kids explore, listening to conversations to see what they already know.  It's so fun! Here are some pics from last year:

 (yes, we were wearing our coats... It was 60 degrees in the room and 40's outside.  My babies were cold!!)

Here are the plans:




 Hope you have a great week.  Happy Teaching!

Sunday, October 25, 2015

Peek at my Halloween Week

Happy Halloween Week friends!  I'm linking up with Deedee from Mrs. Will's Kindergarten for a Peek at my Week!




 I am a big fan of Halloween and I love celebrating this spooky week at school!  This week is a mixture of bats and pumpkins (this whole starting school really late this year thing was not good for my themes...).  Pumpkins will be the main focus for the first 4 days, including opening them up and pulling out the seeds and guts!!! I always love seeing the kids' reactions to it!  Unfortunately, I have testing to do this week as well...  I'll be sitting in the hallway all day Tuesday and half of Wednesday doing our Phonological Awareness Test- blah.

And then Friday will be Bat Day for us.  Bat Day will include all things Bats, a little bit of pumpkins, and our costume parade!!  We also won our Boxtop Competition and will be getting a movie and popcorn at some point that day- we brought in 197! YEAH!! 

Here are the plans:





 Hope you have some Halloween fun this week! Happy Teaching!

Sunday, October 18, 2015

Peek at my Week- Week 7

Happy Sunday friends!  I missed last week because I was here:




 I mean, I was sick... very very sick (right principal?!?!) ;-)  I DID get sick while snorkeling... That's a whole other story that most of you probably don't want to hear, SO on to the main point of this post.  I'm linking up with Deedee from Mrs. Will's Kindergarten for a Peek at my Week!




This week is a little bit of catchup with our apple science and moving on to pumpkins, with a bit of fall thrown in.  Ha!  It's going to be great though and I feel like I will actually get through everything because I am done with the ridiculous new math test that we had to give that was sucking up every free minute of my day!! Even my non free minutes... 

This week I am FINALLY introducing my students to Marsha McGuire's (from A Differentiated Kindergarten)letter and sight word systems: Top Bananas and Ball Words!!! I LOVE both of these and so do my students!  You can read Marsha's post all about her system HERE.


 Last year I had 2 kiddos get all the way to the end of all 12 lists.  Amazing!  I have yet to have a baseball party... We were very close last year but couldn't make it in time.  Maybe this year is the year?!?!  (side note- I teach in a school where 85% of the kids get free and reduced lunch and 60% of the kids are English Language Learners.  This year I have 5 kids who are a level 1 or 2, which means they either speak no English or very little. So learning to read 20 sight words is a BIG deal!) 


 I'm also introducing my students to a new paper organizational system for our center work (because things are getting to be a hot mess!!) and my Top Table Points system.  Hopefully more to come on this later in the week.  I know I always say that I never post again... Maybe this week is the week!

Here are the plans:





Hope you have a great week.  Happy Teaching!

Monday, October 5, 2015

Peek at my Week- Farm Field Trip!

Hello friends!  I was not able to get on the computer yesterday so a quick post today to link up with Deedee from Mrs. Will's Kindergarten for a Peek at my Week!

This will be our first fall themed week.  Fall and Apples and fun with a field trip to the farm!  It's going to be great! (and since I'm done with Monday I can say that it is off to a great start) 

Here are the plans:






 Hope your Monday was great too.  Happy Teaching!

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Peek at my Week- Five Senses

Happy Sunday friends!  The plans are ready and I'm linking up with Deedee from Mrs. Will's Kindergarten for a Peek at my Week!

 This week is all about the senses in our room.  I've seen this book floating around on some blogs and I found it at the library!!!
It's fabulous!  It's gives such great pictures of so many different things for each sense which is great for all my English Language Learners.  We are going to read it over 3 days.  Tuesday/Wednesday we will do sight and hearing and then practice each and add examples of each to these giant sense posters that I have.  Wednesday/Thursday we will do touch and smell and practice each and add ideas to the posters.  Friday is taste test day!!  I love the taste test!  It's something we do every year and I never get over the bitter baker's chocolate because the kids get so excited for chocolate and then all spit it out!  HAHA!

Here are the plans:




I'm planning on doing 5 days of literacy centers, BUT that all depends on how early I can get to school to make the copies I need :-/   Happy Teaching!!

Sunday, September 20, 2015

Peek at my Colorful Week

Happy Sunday friends!  I'm linking up with Deedee from Mrs. Will's Kindergarten for a Peek at my Week!



 This week is all about colors in my classroom!  Which means we also start Science this week- WOOT!  The kids always love science, and I do too.  We will be making our rainbow water bottles this week for our window.  I can't seem to find a picture from previous years... SOOOO check back on Friday I guess :-)

We are going to be catching up on our Letter Raindrop projects that were on the plans for last week.  A Monday morning accidental fire drill pushed everything back a little for the whole week so we are going to get to it this week.  You can read more about it HERE on the Peek post from last week.  I'll be posting all about them later in the week as well.  I was inspired by some art we saw in Venice last summer :-)


We will be reviewing Respect and reading this book this week:
It's so cute! The monsters reek havoc on the town until something finally asks them to PLEASE stop.  It's all about saying please and listening when someone asks you to stop.  What a great lesson.

Here are the plans:




I hope YOU have something fun planned this week.  Happy Teaching!