It’s time for another hilarious and glitter filled edition of The Saturday Kindergarten Post. The weekly round up of all things Common Core that we accomplished this week!
I have to start this edition of the post out with a couple of hilarious stories from one of my ‘staches. This friend has quickly become one of my favorites (not that I have those!) simply because she needs a little extra from Mr. Greg. Well, Thursday was our first fire drill of the year. I read Miss Mingo And The Fire Drill and we spent a long time talking about the fire drill, modeling and practicing what to do. We’re all set. As we’re going to art, the art teacher meets me and says the drill is about to happen so she takes the class to the door to wait. I head to the office and when the alarm sounds, I go out the front. A moment later my class comes down the sidewalk in a glorious straight quiet line. Proud teacher moment!!!! And then…racing down the sidewalk with her arms flailing wildly in the air and yelling “IT’S A FIRE! IT’S A FIRE!” is my little friend. Yes, she was frantically alerting the world that there was a fire. The added accent of the flailing arms made the scene priceless. Proud teacher moment. But there’s more…
Fast forward to recess. My friend is spending her 5 minutes sitting out becuase of a non fire drill related incident. My teammate says “Your friend is raisng her hand!” People, she was sitting on her bottom, criss cross applesauce with her hand silently in the air. SUCCESS! She had yet to raise her hand ALL YEAR! This was the first time she had followed the hand raising rule. Proud teacher moment. I asked her what she needed….wait for it…..and this my friends, is a direct quote…
“MY BUTT IS ON FIRE!”
My response: “What?!” Her response: “My butt is hot!”
And that my friends, is why I teach kindergarten. For the arm flailing, butt on fire fun that only happens with 5 year olds!
So now, here’s what we learned this week!
This week was Chicka Chicka Boom Boom week! We read the story. We echo read the story. We went on letter hunts in the sand. We played pass the letters. We sang our interactive chart. We did our letter PowerPoint. We painted coconut trees. We counted coconuts. We ate coconut and drank coconut water. We made a coconut tree snack! And of course, we made silly Chicka Chicka Boom Boom hats! You know hats are a requirement in the kindergarten smorgasboard!
I love the snack for this week! The ‘staches were most mesmerized by the apple slicer. I have a feeling their parents are probably being pressured to buy an apple slicer as we speak!
And of course, no learning is complete in the kindergarten smorgasboard without a hat! Click the picture to check out my post about the CCBB hat and get your free hat pieces to make your own CCBB hat!
This year I finally brought in real coconuts for the class to explore! We had so much fun hitting the coconuts, smelling them, listening to them and eating them! As your can see from our graph most of us liked the coconut. I loved that the ‘staches decided to put the coconuts to their ears to see if they made noise. They also did a magnificent job describing the coconuts: “rough”, “hairy”, “smells like grass”, “tastes like sugar water”, “makes a thump when you hit it”! They were so insightful. And of course, everyone likes to see Mr. Greg smack a coconut with a hammer until it pops open and splashes coconut milk all over him! (PS You know it’s coconut day in kindergarten when you can hear SMACK SMACK SMACK SMACK SMACK coming from all 3 kindergarten rooms…)
We even incorporated some Chicka Chicka Boom Boom into our math this week!
This week we worked hard on learning how to play Roll and Color! This is one of our go to activities for the year! We use it all the time so I spend the week making sure we have a firm understanding of how to play! This week we did some CCBB roll and color pages! You can click here to get your free set if you’d like them!
We also counted coconuts! This was my assessment piece for the week. We used dot stickers to practice counting to 5! Simple! Fun!
We also had open house this week so we had to do Mr. Greg’s most favorite art project of the year! Self portraits!!! I seriously love how these turn out every single year! I mean, come on, the jack-o-lantern face at the top is beyond precious!!!!!!
I’ve been asked for the templates for this project every since I shared these on Instagram….so here ya go! Just click on the self portraits picture to download your templates!!!
These amazing graphics are from my friend Krista at Creative Clips!
click the picture to see the blog post to get your free magazine match up sheet!
We worked on our letters this week since it was CCBB week! This was a simplified version of our magazine match up! I was very very very excited at how well the ‘staches did with their letters!!! This is also great for cutting practice and practice with the glue sponges!
We worked on letter writing this week too. Every year I spend a week practicing letter writing with the ‘staches. Of course, we focus on the individual letters throughout the year, but this week is all about practicing together. I show them how to write the letter, we write it together and then they show me they can do it! I love love love love these chalkboards my dad made for me! What I hate is the sound of the eraser erasing on the board. It makes me cringe every time! BUT, this is a great tool for handwriting because the friction helps the students gain some muscle memory for each letter. We also used our whiteboards this week so we could learn our whiteboard rules and procedures!
We also worked on our center procedures this week! By the end of the week things were running very smoothly! We have three centers open: tubs, library and write the room! Starting next week we will be learning our center groups and learning that our center has a color and that color tells us what centers we may do!
We made sticker names this week. This is a great activity for fine motor skills and name recognition! The ‘staches simply filled in their letters with stickers! These are then used as our name-tags for our student work displays! It’s such a fun and cute way to identify student work!
This wee we made all about me books for open house! Thsese were my favorite career choices! I love the details in the drawings too! If you look very closely at the nurses they have on nurse’s hats AND they have crosses on their hat and shirt!!! And honestly, how awesome are those karate teacher ninjas??
And finally, no week is complete without Mr. Greg in a silly hat!
CHICKA CHICKA BOOM BOOM!
How was your week?
Many of our centers and activities this week came from my ABC and 123 creation! Add some serious sparkle to your CCBB fun!
Don’t forget that the big TPT Back to School sale starts at midnight and lasts through Monday! My cart is FULL! Now is the time to stock up for the beginning of the year!
Click the picture to check out my common core creations! Starting tomorrow everything is 20% off PLUS an additional 10% off thanks to TPT!