Another weekend comes and goes. Teachers everywhere start to look forward to another week of supportive administrators, happy parents, well behaved children, perfect lessons and perfect centers. And then we wake up on Monday morning! And I am pretty sure that this is my evaluation week! And I am pretty sure I will be scored a 2 (below expectations) so I don’t plan to change anything or do anything special!
It has been a very productive weekend around the ole homestead! Just look at how cute we are! We did Trunk or Treat at our church this morning! The scarecrow…in the corn…and if you look closely there are crows flying behind us! And it was COLD! To all of the 50 Shades of Grey fans out there…who needs that when I have 50 Shades of Green!
Monday
We will read one of my favorite Halloween stories: Even Monsters Need A Haircut. This week we are focusing on comprehension so we will complete a story map after reading. We will also use this book as our predictable chart. Every child will complete the sentence Every monster needs a…! Of course we will make our F for fish hat because we will not be celebrating the letter F this week! In math we will be working with numbers 6-15, with a focus on writing 6-10 and counting to 15. And what better way to learn to write numbers than to use paint?! We will use paint and q-tips to practice writing our numbers! I saw the idea on Pinterest so I am excited to try it in my classroom! We will also work on making numbers 6-10 this week! The Story of 6…will be told by President Obama and Governor Romney! I made this cute little set to use this week as we start to shift our focus to the election! I can’t wait to use this…I think it’s going to be super cute! We will also be making a Frankenstein craftivity to go with our Monster book! Check out the craftivity here!
And we have Red Cross vision screenings today…happy Monday!
Tuesday
Today we will read the story Skeleton Hiccups and complete a story map! This story is so much fun to read and the kids LOVE it! We laughed so much at this story last year! It’s also great for higher order questioning (hello evaluations!)! It is also superb for problem/solution! We will create a chart of the problem (hiccups) and the solution! We will also brainstorm our own solutions for the hiccups! The students will publish their writing from yesterday. They will copy their sentence from our predictable chart and we will display it with our Frankenstein craftivity. See how I did that?! A craftivity for writing!! Yeah, everything we do is educational and standards based! YEAH! We will be working on our numbers 6-15 today by playing Halloween Bump! You can download a free copy here! The students will find the number of objects to go with the number I call out. After we play the students will cut out numbers and match them to the correct amount! Hello assessments! Two in one baby! Smarter….not harder! As part of our not Halloween celebration we will make a witch craftivity (would it be wrong to name them after people?! Just sayin…)!
Wednesday
Hump day is also HALLOWEEN! It’s every teacher’s night before the nightmare. We all know that the DAY AFTER Halloween is bad news. Candy…sugar…late night…stories…WE CAN DO THIS! We are bigger than them. We will read the book Trick or Treat Smell My Feet and discuss Halloween, especially safety! And we will write about what we are going to be for Halloween!
During math we will get to have some fun with measurement and candy corn! We will use candy corn to measure Halloween pictures! Click here to get some Haunted Measuring fun! And we will be making Mr. Greg’s favorite project: A HAT! That’s right! We’re making a spider hat! This craftivity is courtesy of my friend Robin at Sweet Tea Classroom! Go visit her and say hi and tell her Mr. Greg sent ya. And start counting down the days until you see Mr. Greg in a spider hat. Wow, I just realized that you get to see me in a hat TWO DAYS in one week!! How lucky are you!? And of course we will be celebrating “fall-oween” with light snacks since we were told no parties! light snacks is open to intrepetation, right?!
Thursday
The Day of the Dead! The day after Halloween. We can do this people! We’re bigger than them! We will start the day by sharing during morning meeting and we will share about our adventures trick or treating. We will actually spend a few extra minutes sharing so we can hopefully eliminate some of the chatter throughout the day! We will read a favorite book Go Away Big Green Monster and complete a predictable chart. “Go away big…monster!” Each child will fill in a color for their monster! Later in the afternoon we will get to paint our monster. I will squirt the paint color they chose onto their paper, we will fold it and smash it! When we open the paper, we have our monster! We will cut out eyes, a nose and a mouth to finish our monsters!
In math we will work on counting and numbers to 15 by counting candy corn onto our counting mats! Each child will have a work mat with candy corns that are numbered. They will count the correct amount of candy corn onto their mats. Hello assessment! Smarter…not harder!
Friday
And we made it to Friday! We survived the week! Today we will shift our focus onto the election! We kick off our campaign with the book Duck For President! We will discuss what an election is and that there is an election for president. We will also discuss who the two candidates are! We will do a cut and paste activity (oh, I miss the paste we used to have in school!) to match numbers and quantities from 1-15 and we will put the numbers in order! See how we are assessing more skills than one at a time! Smarter!
And we will end our week with some pumpkin pie!
Of course, we will read our poem and emergent reader every day, we will work on our sight words (even though those don’t make good readers…or so we’ve been told!!!!), we will do our math journals, and picture sorts! Oh, I love picture sorts! Mr. Greg is the KING of picture sorts!
If you’re looking for a great election resource, check out my Kindergarten Votes pack!
CLOSE THE DOOR AND TEACH ON!
