It’s here! The Saturday Kindergarten Post! It’s the weekly wrap up of all things common core at the Kindergarten Smorgasboard! Sadly, you will not see our groundhog day fun because we had a SNOW DAY on Friday! Hooray for a 3 day weekend but sad we missed out on our big groundhog plans. No worries, we’re still going to do it all on Monday! HEHE!
This week we had a Super Bowl week of learning! The monsters were thrilled when I announced that we had new centers and they were football centers! They were so engaged and having a blast. Darn those monsters…having fun and learning AGAIN! How dare we?! Note to self: make more sports themed centers.
Counting helmets!
Writing CVC words!
Yep. That darn I and E is tricky. Gets ya everytime!
More CVC words!
Football player craftivity!
This week we were also going to spend the week working on greater than and less than. On Monday I introduced the concept (we have been doing it daily during calendar time) and WHOOP! (Does anyone get the reference from the show, The Middle?!) they mastered it on day one. We did spend another day on the skill just to be sure but the monsters are experts at which number that alligator wants to eat!
The cute greater than/less than cards came from A Cupcake For The Teacher!
I used this activity with my 3 students who needed a bit more reinforcement in greater than/less than. They loved it! They also used a recording sheet with these work mats! You can find the recording sheet on the freebies page!
We had a blast using our large heart dice from Target for greater than and less than practice!
This week we also spent some more time on numbers to 20. We will spend even more time on numbers to 20 next week. I want them to have an unbreakable foundation with numbers. For math review (we use balanced math, so we have mental math, math review, mini lesson, independent practice, groups and closure) we introduced the All About Number poster! We will do this every day for 21 days (for numbers 0-20). I choose a random monster to give us the number and we do the chart together. It’s a quick and easy way to review numbers.
We read The Mitten this week so we used mittens to practice number ordering. I was VERY pleased with the progress we made on this skill. I am seeing HUGE gains in this area, especially from my students who are still working hard on numbers. I think we will be doing this a bit more frequently to get them more practice!
We also had fun working on our new number puzzle centers! One of my monsters said, “this is hard!” and another monster yelled back (from across the room, because that’s how we roll!) and said “No it’s not!” I like when they do my job for me!
We also practiced measuring with my Wintry Mix of Measurement Unit! The monsters love measuring things! And this time they did a fantastic job of measuring from the bottom of the ruler and the bottom of the picture. We have done 3 of these measuring units and they’ve been frustrating (Mr. Greg might have curled up under a table and cried….) because they were really struggling with the idea of the bottom of the ruler going on the bottom of the picture. But this time they got it!!! I was so excited!! I will definitely be creating more of these units because the progress I have seen in our measuring skills is powerful! (You’re welcome 1st grade teachers!)
Story: As we were going over our recording sheet, one of the monsters, (“Oprah” of the duo of “Oprah” and “Gayle”) said, “Hey ya’ll Mr. Greg’s name is on this paper!” They finally discovered the copyright on something I created. I am now even more of a rock star to them. They are now convinced that everything in our classroom was made by me.
This week we read The Mitten by Jan Brett. We did a flow map (sorry forgot to take pictures!), we wrote about what would go in our mitten! We also made tissue paper mittens. We also read The Hat and did a flow map. (Picture? Nope.) And we created a double bubble map to compare and contrast the stories. We will be working on this skill much more. About half the monsters totally get it and the other half get it a little. What are your favorite stories to compare and contrast?!
We started our groundhog fun on Thursday with some crafts and stories. To be continued Monday!
The monsters thought it was HILARIOUS that we turned a toilet paper roll into a groundhog. Or as we learned, a whistle pig!
This cute groundhog craftivity is from Just Wild About Teaching!
And of course, no week in the Kindergarten Smorgasboard is complete without silly hats! This week we did not celebrate the letter U. (Does anyone else’s students struggle with u and y sounds?! Shew…) So we made an umbrella hat! Who doesn’t love a good umbrella hat?!
If you can get my adorable face, notice how engaged the monsters are. They don’t even care that Mr. Greg is snapping a picture of himself. (TRUTH: They’re so used to me doing weird things, that they just ignore me. “What’s the big grownup weirdo doing over there NOW?!”)
And that is our week!
I heard something about a football game this week?! Men hitting each other and fighting over a ball? True story. Yep, it’s Super Bowl weekend and that’s great news for everyone! It’s a reason to be grownups and throw a party. AND THROW A SALE!
My Teachers Pay Teachers shop and all of my common core aligned creations are on sale Sunday and Monday! Everything is 20% off and if you use the code SUPER you get an extra 10% off!!! Fill those carts!
