I have been super busy today….shew! That extra hour of sleep should really be an extra day…or two…or six!
First of all, after church today, I got to meet a blog friend in real life! I had the pleasure…and the privilege ..to meet Staci from Going Nutty In Miss Squirrel’s First Grade! We had a freaking blast! We laughed til we snorted! Staci is as fun and sweet in person as she is in real life. And she bought my lunch and gave me an awesome gift of about 100 centers from the Florida Center For Reading Research Yeah…cut, colored, laminated, labeled…in envelopes! READY TO USE! Seriously, this is why I love blogging. Every person I have met online or in person is beyond amazing. You guys have no idea what you mean to this dude of a teacher. Seriously.
Thank you for an awesome day Staci! LOVE YA!
Here we are! How cute are we?!
OK, here it comes. The reason you log onto blogger on Sunday! The reason you come to the Kindergarten Smorgasboard! It’s Smedley’s Smorgasboard of Kindergarten’s smorgasboard of ideas and plans for the week! IT’S SCHEDULING SUNDAY!!!!!!!!
I have a short week! Tuesday is (Xanax! day) parent conferences! Yes. 8:00 a.m. until 3:00 pm. Sadly, (honestly), I will have 4 or 5 parents show up. And you know it’s never the ones you really need to see. It saddens me but at least I get to be a grown up professional and leave for lunch. And I get a lot of work done. My two big projects Tuesday are: doing a bit of rearranging so I can use my 3rd computer and organizing my teaching area (kidney table…two printers…and Mt. Paper-taubo) All. That. Paper.
Monday
This week we will not be focusing on the letter and sound of H! This means we will be making a hippo hat! You know it’s what makes your Monday! And working on all things H including a picture sort. Ya know, THE KING OF PICTURE SORTS and all! We are also kicking off our introduction to addition this week! That means putting together fingers and legos! Hmmm, how convenient that I have a great lego pack! Today we will spend a lot of time putting together fingers. Hold up 2 fingers. Hold 1 finger. Put them together. How many fingers do we have all together? After we practice with fingers, we will do a roll and color game with two dice for some independent practice! And a quick informal assessment to see if we’re getting it. Because you know, if you teach it and they don’t master it immediately, you’re a failure. True story. Any guesses who said that?! And I am working on more lego activities We spend two weeks building a foundation that adding means “putting together!” We work with fingers and manipulatives all week. This foundation makes it so much easier to do equations and story problems later! It also leads to a somewhat easier transition into subtraction which is “breaking apart!” Subtraction…so hard for Mr. Greg and his monsters. True story: my first “F” came in second grade. We were learning to “borrow” when we subtracted and for the life of me I could not grasp the concept. And there it was on my paper. The big red F. That still sticks with me and helps guide me as a teacher even today. That F made me HATE math. And made me feel stupid. I vow to never do that to a student. Anyways, back to our Monday madness!
Monday is the day we get to vote for President! We will read the book, If I Were President. And the kids will write what they would do if they were President! This writing activity always makes me smile! My kids have been so excited learning about the election! I can’t wait for them to register to vote and cast a ballot! They even get “I Voted” stickers! Check out our voting booth made by an awesome colleague! I still need to do a ballot box! We are also going to make my election poster craftivity! I am so excited for our election themed day!
Wednesday
We will read the book There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie and complete a bubble map about the story. This will be important later in the week. For writing we will complete the predictable chart: There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A ….!
The adding adventure continues with legos!!! We are keeping it simple still! I will tell them to count 3 red legos and 3 blue legos and we will put them together and count to find the answer! After we finish, we will complete another roll and color sheet to get some independent practice (and Mr. Greg can sit down…assess our learning!)
Today we also start discussing Veteran’s Day and what veterans are and what they have done for us. I always start off with a picture of my sister in her Navy uniform (I AM A VERY PROUD BIG BROTHER!) and I ask the students to share what they think she is or does. After we brainstorm, I talk about people who are in the military (all branches!) protecting us and keeping us free! After our discussion we will make our Veteran’s day craftivity! This craftivity is courtesy of my friend, Hadar at Miss Kindergarten! Be sure to visit her!
Thursday
Today we will read the story There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves. We will complete a bubble map about the story. Then we will compare this bubble map and the bubble map from There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Pie. We will talk about things that are the same and different. We will use our predictable chart to publish our class book about the old lady who swallows random objects. I can’t wait to see what we come up with! Last year, the old lady swallowed Justin Bieber! So this should be a good year! I predict that poor woman will swallow at least one iPad! (We are OBSESSED with our iPad!)Adding continues. Today we will have a work mat (that I have yet to create!). Students will be asked to count the correct number of legos into each box. Then we will “put together” all the legos in the bigger box to find the answer. Of course, before we do any learning we have a few minutes to play with explore our legos!Today we will continue discussing Veteran’s by reading The Wall by Eve Bunting. We will get a little abstract with some marbles and paint! We will use marbles, red paint, white paint, and blue paint to crate a patriotic art piece!
Friday
We will review our old lady stories and the bubble maps we created. Then we will introduce the double bubble map! We will talk about things that are different and go with each story. Things that are the same and happen in both stories go in the middle. After we work with our double bubble map, the students will use pictures from each story to complete their own double bubble map (hello comprehension assessment!)
We will assess our addition skills today with a shape adding assessment. HMMMM should be interesting!
We will wrap up our short week with our Friday Foodie Treat…what else? PIE! Pumpkin pie and cherry pie and apple pie! And we will graph our favorites! Look at me…food and academics…SMARTER NOT HARDER!
Of course this week we will work on our math journals, handwriting and we’re going to work on syllables! I don’t clap syllables because the clapping and counting can be confusing. We count up our arms! Fingertips=1 Wrist=2 Elbow=3 Shoulder=4 syllables! I will get a video to share with you this week!
And of course we will have lots of GOBBLE GOBBLE going in with our centers! Need some fun Thanksgiving activities? Check this out!
And I have to share this with you! I now have a font that was inspired by ME! And no it’s not glittery fabulous, but it is Mr. Greg fabulous! Jennifer and Hello Literacy created the Hello Smores font because I wouldn’t stop pestering her! I love it! I used to make this cute little sign for your classroom doors! Thanks for the font Jennifer!!!!! Your fonts and borders are awesome!
Click the picture to download your copy!
My mustache! Supporting the Mr. in his Mo-vember endeavor!
A little inspiration for my Kinder teacher friends!
