Ah, another Schedulin Sunday at The Kindergarten Smorgasboard. I am at the desk hard at work on a nother mind blowing, Earth moving, Gangnam style week of learning, chaos and fun at Monsters Inc., and the CEO of The Kindergarten Smorgasboard and our director of marketing are sound asleep! A nap might be in my future!
I finally get a full week with the monsters….ALMOST! I have a balanced math training tomorrow afternoon which I have high hopes for! Hopefully I will have lots of awesomemess to share with you! So 4.5 days with the monsters means Mr. Greg is going to work them HARD! Plus, we really didn’t do much last week with me being out and a visit from Debbie Clement, so we have to make it up this week! And make it up we will!!
Click here to download my lesson plans!
This is one of my favorite weeks because it’s RAINBOW week which leads us into St. Patrick’s Day next week and then TWO YES TWO weeks for spring break! I love rainbows (um, for obvious reasons) and I love the transition to spring. The rainbow art and craftivities add so much color and cheer to our classroom! And we use this week to re-visit our friendships and teamwork. It’s that time again and Mr. Greg is tired of the snarky, catty drama in Room 114! Rainbows= beauty =friendship=beauty So, let’s get to it, shall we?!
Monday
We kick off our rainbow week with The Mixed Up Chameleon by Eric Carle (who doesn’t love Mr. Carle!) After reading the story we will start or KWL chart about rainbows (Mr. Greg is so excited about this week that he treated himself to new Mr. Sketch markers!!!!) After we read and work on our KWL chart, we will brainstorm about what a rainbow is using adjectives and describing words! We will not be focusing on, nor celebrating the letter J and all things J. (Do your students get the /j/ and /dr/ sound confused like my monsters?!) Which means, of course a picture sort (which of course is differentiated and common core aligned) and a silly hat. Always a silly hat! We will be making a jelly fish hat using rainbow colored streamers! True story (Mr. Greg’s first time in the ocean as a kid and who got stung by a jelly fish?! YEP! Me.)
We will also work on a cute ROY G BIV craft to help us remember the colors of the rainbow. Do you know that I learned ROY G BIV in middle school and I still use it today. Roy is a famous famous man!
Thanks to my friend Caitlin at Kindergarten Smiles for the idea! (Click Roy to visit Caitlin!)
Math today will be a sub so they will be practicing addition using practice pages (not worksheets!) hehe
Tuesday
Our rainbow week continues to sparkle on with the book My Many Colored Days! After reading the book, we will make a chart about feelings and colors. The monsters will relate their feelings to colors! (Should be interesting!) We will be working on ending sounds in words this week. Today will be trying to hear the sounds when Mr. Greg says the word followed by a picture sort. And we will use our brainstorming ideas to write about rainbows. We will use our predictable chart A rainbow is…..and…..! (We’re working on making our sentences more complex!)
In math, we will be working on decomposing numbers. We have worked on this before so I am confident this will be something that the monsters do well. We will start off today with decomposing Legos. We will practice finding the ways to make 5 using red and blue Legos. As we find the ways to make 5, we will write our addition sentences on our dry erase boards.
To learn more about rainbows, we will watch a Magic School Bus video about rainbows! After we add to our KWL chart, we will do a fruity loopy rainbow craftivity!
Wednesday
Hump Day!! It’s half way over!!!! Guesses on how frazzled we will be?!?! Here’ s a hint: today is my observation and evaluation!!!
Today we will read the story Frederick by Leo Leoni and make a problem/solution chart to see how Frederick handles his problems! We will publish our rainbow sentences from yesterday and illustrate them with a rainbow drawing.
In math our decomposing numbers continues. Today we will decompose the number 4 with our red and blue Legos and record our answers on our white board (all while being observed…can you tell I’m nervous!). After our hands on practice, we will be completing a practice page from my friend Maria at Kindercraze. The monsters will use paper squares to decompose the number 3. (Fingers crossed it goes well while being observed!)
Our rainbow craftivity today is a fun one! We will use water colors (made from food coloring and Kool Aid) to paint rainbows! After they are dry, we will hang streamers from the rainbows. These will replace the snowmen that are hanging from our ceiling (which my friend, “Growler” asks to take home every.single.day! People, he growls at me daily! Nuff said.)
Thursday
Hopefully I survived my evaluation and we can continue on with rainbow week!
Today we will read one of my favorites, The Crayon Box That Talked. This book is great for friendship diversity and why we all matter. After reading the book and discussing what happens if we don’t have all of the colors (all of our friends!) we will make a chart of how to be a good friend. This will be displayed in our room for the monsters to refer to until the end of school (Can you tell we’re having some issues? 11 girls=drama!)
We will also be working on blending with a focus on the final sound. We will get to use the smart board! The monsters will fill in the final sound and then we will blend the sounds into words!
In math, we will continue decomposing numbers. Today we will use our Legos to decompose the number 6 and record our answers on our white boards. After we practice with our hands on manipulatives, the monsters will complete a practice page to decompose the number 5!
And of course, a rainbow art project! Today’s project ties in perfectly to our book (amazing huh?! Art connected to reading…connected to social skills…I’m good.)
Today the monsters will be working together to create a rainbow from paper chains. They will work in teams to make a set of chains for each color. Then we come together as a family to complete the rainbow. The rainbow is displayed on our ceiling as a reminder that we can do beautiful things if we work together!
Friday
YAY! FRIDAY! We made it through another week!
Rainbow week wraps up with the story, Seven Blind Mice. The mice are different colors and are trying to figure out what they’re climbing on! Before reading the story, we will make a prediction chart of what we think the mice climb on. After reading, we will check out predictions. Then we will use a flowmap to sequence the story (put the mice in order by color!)
Math will be more decomposing! Today we take a break from the Legos and switch to decomposing doggies! We will practice decomposing with doggies and then the monsters will complete a decomposing assessment page!
We wrap our week with another rainbow team building project! Today the monsters will work together to complete a giant torn paper rainbow! Again, the theme that if we work together we create beautiful things!!
And we will enjoy Foodie Fun Friday with rainbows!
We will enjoy rainbow cake and we will make rainbow toast!
Stay tuned for a blog post all about Mr. Greg making rainbow cake…and the disaster that follows!
Apparently, we’re going to need tons of streamers and construction paper! Shopping time!!
And now for your freebies! Click the picture to go to the freebies page to download your freebies!
Of course, there will be centers and word study and picture sorts and number charts and calendar time this week too! We roll out our March ten frames (Monster excitement!) and St. Patrick’s Day centers (even more monster excitement!). You can check them all out by clicking on the pictures!
