Well the day has arrived. Tomorrow is the day that i return to school. I am excited to see the monsters but that early morning alarm is not going to be pretty. Neither is no nap, my achy feet and limited bathroom time. How long will it take you to get behind?! I will be behind by Monday at 9:04!
It’s Sunday so it’s time for my weekly Sunday feature: Schedulin Sunday! I know you’re all excited to see the kindergarten smorgasboard of ideas and chaos that is to occur this week! And since I aim to please….here ya go!
Here are my plans for the week! Click the picture to download a copy!
Monday
As this will be our first day back from a long break, we will be doing lots of practice on procedures and routines! Practice, practice, practice! I am hopeful that the routines and procedures will come back quickly and easily! We shall see! We will be kicking off our new year with a week long New Year’s Celebration! We are going to read the book “Squirrel’s New Year’s Resolution” and discuss what a resolution is (making a goal for doing better at something!) and we will brainstorm all of the things we want to get better at! We will use our list of resolutions to complete our own tree maps!
We will also begin focused practice on writing our first and last names. Many of my monsters have taken to this venture on their own so we’re going to spend some time practicing the next few weeks! I am confident it will go much more smoothly than when we had to learn to write our names at the beginning of the year. Can you believe I still have a monster who doesn’t write her whole name?! Seriously. She writes three or four letters and stops. Yeah. She see’s others are done writing so she stops. She stops on everything. AHHHH We will beat this. We will.
Of course, I know you’ve all been having withdrawls from silly hats so we will HAVE to make a silly hat. Thanks to my friend Maggie at Maggie’s KinderKorner for this super cute and super simple hat!
Math will be a little fun for the next few days as we review our numbers and counting to 20. Since no new year’s celebration is complete without a countdown, we will practice counting backwards from 20 to 0 as a whole group. After we do some whole group, we will do some independent practice that is differentiated. The monsters will be cutting numbers and pasting them in order (backwards) to countdown!
We will also kick off our new year with, what else, but a craftivity! We’re going to make our New Year craftivity that will be displayed on our bulletin board with our new year’s resolutions.
Tuesday
Our New Year’s celebration continues! We move our focus from celebrating a new year to building our community and getting ourselves ready for a wild ride at Monster’s Inc! Today, we’re going to read Maybe A Bear Ate It and talking about what it means to be a good student! We are going to create an anchor chart that we will display the rest of the year to remind us what we can do to be a good student. And this is going to make Mr. Greg’s job easier. Yes. Easier.
We will use our tree map of resolutions from yesterday to complete a predictable chart. “My new year’s resolution is…..” Even Mr. Greg will share his resolution. (Anytime we do anything, the monsters insist that I do it too!) And of course more practice writing first and last names!
Math is more practice counting down. We will do whole group practice again and then the monsters will have a chance to do some indpendent practice. Yesterday they did some cut and paste so today we will be practicing writing from 20 to 0. Breathe Mr. Greg. Breathe. They can do it!
And of course we will end our day with a craftivity! Today the monsters will get to make a party hat! I am giving them the pattern for the hat and a variety of craft supplies! I am going to let them create their own hats! Yes. Free use of the craft supplies. It’s gonna be messy, but you know my philosophy: the messier it is, the more successful day it is!
Wednesday
Today we will continue learning how to be the best monsters possible! We will read the story I Wanna New Room and discuss being responsible and taking care of our things (ESPECIALLY CENTERS)! After our discussion, we will make a promise chart. Each monster will share a promise that they want to keep in our classroom. I will write each promise on our chart in different colors. Each child continues sharing until the paper is full This will be laminated and displayed for the rest of the year.
Today each monster will publish their new year’s resolution. They will write their resolution on their writng paper and it will be added to our hallway display. After they finish writing their resolution, they will work on writing first and last names again!
Math will shift from counting down to counting. We’re going to spend some time reviewing numbers and counting to 20. Today’s fun will involve our SmartBoard spinner. I will spin the spinner on the Smart Board and the students will find the number card and then count the correct number of manipulatives. The number cards are over on my freebie page for free if you want a set.
Today’s craftivity comes from Peace Love Learning! We’re going to make a baby new year! How cute is this?! I am excited to see these finished!
Thursday
We will read David Goes To School and have a serious discussion about things we can do at school and things we cannot do at school (even though our mommy says we can…we still can’t do it cuz Mr. Greg is the boss of the applesauce!) I will attempt to draw David on chart paper to make an anchor chart for our Do’s and Don’t’s. Do you sense a theme? Yeah, we’re going to really pound the behavior thing this week. Yeah. Pound it and eliminate all behavior problems for the rest of year. It’s that easy, right?!?!
We will finish up our resolution writing and work on those names. First and last. And yes we have to write our whole name little monsters.
I ran across this adorable craftivity on Facebook and I had to do it. We do live in Music City after all. And we do love us some country music ( ok, we tolerate it…honestly!) This is from the blog Dots-N-Spots!
(click on picture to see the original pin!)
We will be combining this craftivity with another idea I saw on Pinterest We will combine a 2013 collage with the guitar and create a mobile to hang from the ceiling! I will post pictures as soon as possible! In my mind (yeah, that scary place where I live in my special reality!) this is going to be so cool! I hope reality meets my mind’s picture!
Friday
Did we make it!? Have we survived the first week back?! Am I walking around in the afternoons in a haze because I am not getting my naps in?!
Today we will read The Rainbow Fish and spend some time talking about being friends. We will spend the day working on a great community building activity! Each monster will get a turn to come to the SmartBoard and have their friends say something nice about them. I will write down all of these nice things on the Smart Board and take a picture for each child!
The highlight of the day will be our science experiment! We will be making our own bouncy balls! That’s right! We are making our own bouncy balls! Click over to my freebies page to get the free pack for this experiment!
And for our foodie Friday fun, we will attempt to make countdown cupcakes!
I can’t find the specific directions for these, so if you have some tips on how to do this (any bakers/cooks?!) please share!
This week we will also be writing numbers to 20…we will be using our new Smart Board calendar that has been drowned in glitter…we will be learning how to use our Center Wheel (stay tuned for a post on that later this week!)….and we’re going to learn how to return books in our classroom library!
It’s going to be a busy week! SHEW! Get ready monsters, I am gonna rock your world!
What are your plans for the first week back?
All of my new year activities are available here!
Also, be sure to check out my newest creation! 165 pages of sight word activities!
