A Kindergarten Smorgasboard Saturday Kindergarten Post!

Holy. Long. Week. Super Teacher! Let me just tell you about this week…had to finish moving everything from the old house. Had to move said stuff to our friend’s garage. Had to scrub old house for final walk through. Closed on old house. Mister’s birthday. Yep. At 9:30 last night we went to bed. And slept for 10 hours. No waking up. No tossing and turning. I was out. And boy did it feel good.

Of course, on top of all of that I did some teaching this week! hehe OK, a lot of teaching. OK, some teaching…if you count the time the monsters were talking I did no teaching. Seriously, they will not be quiet. All day. Talking. Talking. Talking. Talking. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! But I love them!

So, here is our Presidential Week of learning and fun! (HEY, President Obama, come see the monsters! THANKS!)

Each day we researched and learned about a different president. We made a tree map about the president and these super fun craftivities! Thanks to my friend Katie at Teacher To The Core for the super awesome projects!

We displayed some of the craftivities on the bulletin board! And the rest have taken over our hallway! It’s like the Disney Hall of Presidents…but with glitter!

Friday we wrapped our learning by comparing and contrasting the presidents using double bubble thinking maps! Story time! Thinking Maps always end with a frame around the map to tell you where/how you learned the information. I have a monster who always says “TEN FRAME!” whenever I ask what goes around the thinking map. I keep telling you we are obsesses with ten frames!

We took all of our research and information about the presidents and did some writing. Yep. Common Core Aligned research and writing. We did it.

This picture is one of my proud proud proud shout it from the rooftop teacher moments. This is a student with an IEP. He generated the sentence for our predictable chart and then he wrote the sentence on his paper. By. Himself. HAPPY DAY!!!!!!!!

The finished product for our bulletin board. Art. Writing. Common Core. CHECK! CHECK CHECK! CHECK CHECK CHECK!

Of course, after we spend Friday writing about the presidents, we had to celebrate them with a snack! It was Foodie Fun Friday after all!

We built log cabins using bananas, graham crackers and chocolate syrup!

This week we also worked on our addition skills. This week we worked on using pictures to solve problems and write equations. I finally got to break out my cherished white board paddles! Such a simple little tool yet so powerful. The monsters worked their little fingers off adding and problem solving with these things!

I mean, come on, look at that picture and the engagement in those kids! YEAH! Monsters rock!

We also worked on word problems this week. We used unicorns this week! They were just as popular and engaging as the dinosaurs!!! The monsters rocked the word problems again!

And of course, no week in the kindergarten smorgasboard is complete without silly hats!

This week we did not celebrate or focus on the letters X and V. V for veggies and X for x-ray!

This week we also had a visit from the CEO of The Kindergarten Smorgasboard! He came on Monday (teacher workday) to check things out. I think he was pleased!

Check out what I’ve been working on!

My new March Ten and Twenty Frame Cards! The basketball set is FREE! Head over to TPT and download the preview of the March set to get your freebie!

My new St. Patty’s day unit is GLITTERIFIC! We started using the centers this week and the monsters are loving it!

And here is the Adding Unicorns pack that includes the word problems we used this week!

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Greg Smedley-Warren

Howdy, I am Mr. Greg. I have been teaching for 11 years. I spent a year teaching fifth grade, two years in second grade and am now in my 9th year in Kindergarten. Kindergarten is my passion and my calling but honestly, that wasn’t how it started. Read the whole story >

A Kindergarten Smorgasboard of Presidential Learning!

5 comments

Jessica Fredrickson February 23, 2013 at 9:42 pm

Greg, I want to know how you do so much. Every week you make great plans, have awesome activities in your classroom, and blog lots. You are like Superman! I think you should finish my 13 page progress reports for me while you're at it. 🙂

Anywho, love what your class has been up to! Looks like you had a great week. Love the log cabin snack!

~Jessica
Fun in PreK-1

Melissa Machan February 23, 2013 at 10:24 pm

Congrats on a new house! It's exciting but stressful at the same time. Hope you are able to relax this weekend 🙂

Melissa
First Grade Smiles

Haley February 23, 2013 at 11:04 pm

Doodles make the BEST CEOS! My sweet Tucker comes up to school with me too! So glad I found your amazing blog.

Jackie and Danielle February 24, 2013 at 3:01 pm

Congrats on your new house!! =) I sooo wish you could be my daughter's Kindergarten teacher next year! Your kids always look like they're having a BLAST and learning SOOO much at the same time!! That balance is so hard in K and you rock it!! =)
-Jackie-
Sister Teachers

Ms.M February 28, 2013 at 6:46 pm

Those presidents are precious!!!
Melissa

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Holy tired, Batman! What a week. It is my humble opinion that the day after Valentine’s Day (and Halloween) should be a mandated no school day. Just sayin…

Well, I know you’ve all missed me because I didn’t post anything yesterday….terrible awful I know…and I am CRAZY late posting today. But I have an excuse. We moved our house into storage today. Yep. Our life is in a 10×20 storage space. And there was a whole lotta life to cram into the space. And it’s crammed. To the ceiling and all the way to the door! The Kindergarten Smorgasboard World Headquarters has temporarily relocated to a new location courtesy of a friend! And on March 25, we will move into our shiny new digs! WOOHOO!

And since I’ve made you wait so long to hear (read!?!) my random and mindless chatter, here is The Saturday Kindergarten Post!

Our week kicked off with a celebration of the Chinese New Year. I showed to monsters where China was located using Google Earth. Best. Idea. Ever. They thought that was the most amazing thing ever. We will definitely be using that toy some more!

I read the book Ruby’s Wish to my class and we talked about Ruby’s Wish to go to university and how we all wanted to go to college! YES! This is huge for the population of students that I serve! I was so glad that they already had that idea planted. We also compared and contrasted Ruby and her school to us and our school. I highly recommend this book for comparing and contrasting, women’s history month or even for a book about equality.

Of course, we don’t just party in the kindergarten smorgasboard (no really, it only looks like that…I promise that we learn stuff and it’s researched based. And common core aligned. True story.) so we did this awesome addition project to help us kick off the year of the snake (snake, really?! Why not a panda bear, China?!). The monsters loved this project and they did so well. If you want to do this project you can get your free copy on the freebies page!

We also did a super fun art project with paper and paint! I gave the monsters a piece of paper and told them to wad it up. Then I gave them some red and yellow paint and modeled how to dip the paper in the paint. We then painted our snakes with our paper wad! And of course we added glitter! These turned out super cute! Paper wad painting. Glitter. I am thinking this will happen many more times in Monsters, Inc.

Chopsticks and Ramen Noodles. A Chinese new year FEAST! There is nothing better than 5 years olds eating with chopsticks! I do love that this snack cost me a whopping $2. Thank you Ramen Noodles and the nice Chinese restaurant for the free chop sticks!

And people, don’t panic! You know that not a holiday (or even semi-quasi holiday…or even a regular day..) goes by without a silly hat! This adorable hat is being modeled by “Oprah” and “Gayle!”

And yes, my kids are always, 100% of the time, that calm and that engaged. Always. No, really. Always. OK, not always. But sometimes they’re engaged! Usually…

This week we also introduced word problems! People, this went so well I might or might not have hypothetically jumped on the table and did a dance. We used my Dino-Myte addition pack and little rubber dinosaurs I found at Wal-Mart way back at Halloween (I tell the mister I am not a teacher hoarder…these things actually are inspirations for my crazy genius…and they get used…) so they were perfect! We used these work mats and the word problems were projected on the Smart Board. We read through the problem and the monsters were off and running. They very quickly picked up on the numbers in the problem and were solving problems before I could finish reading. I totally think it’s because ~~they’re teacher ROCKS~~ of the dinosaurs. Next week, we will do the same thing but with unicorns. You know. for the boys who don’t like dinosaurs, but love unicorns.

I have had tons of questions about the work mat, so I am sharing it with you! It’s included in my Lego Addition Freebie! Head to the freebies page to grab your copy! (You can also get some free dinosaur and unicorn ten frame cards to go with the dinosaur and unicorn adding packs!)

CLICK ME! CLICK ME!!

After we addressed those Common Core standards with our word problem magic, we went back to partying…er..more learning. Who says you can’t learn while partying?!

So, let’s address the big pink elephant in the week. The dreaded V day. Why is this day so crazy for kindergarteners!? I am glad it’s over. Here are a few snapshots from our V day celebration!

We love common core standards!

We love tree maps!

We love sequencing! And we love the old lady books! This cute There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Rose activity is from Primary Graffiti! And yes, she swallows glitter! Oh, if only…

We love sugar before we go home!

We love our love bugs hat!

And it’s true. My monsters knock my socks off EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

We ended our week of LOVE with some puppy love! How cute are these?! I found them on Pinterest of course. The monsters loved that every piece was a heart! And I love them because they’re doggies!

And that’s our week! Lots of fun. Lots of learning. And one exhausted Mr. Greg

Be sure to check back tomorrow for some super freebies that I’m working on to go with my presidential writing creation!