It’s that time again. Already. It’s Schedulin’ Sunday! I actually got a bit of a head start on lesson planning last week so my plans are created! I am going to work on plans for the next week so I can try to stay ahead of the game a bit! Let’s see how long that lasts!
This is our first full week of school with our first full 8 hour (yes, people, our day is 8 hours and that’s with kids!) days! Wish us luck! Anyone want to guess how many of the ‘staches fall asleep before the end of the day Tuesday?!
Here we go with our common core week of fun!
click the picture to download my weekly lesson plans!
Monday
Today is a half day and since we have special areas classes today, I will only see my ‘staches for about an hour and a half! But I do have a ton planned! We will read Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready For Kindergarten. We will talk about all of the things Miss Bindergarten does to get ready and we will share all the things we did to get ready for kindergarten. We will make our first class chart to list all of our ideas!
We will read the story The Day A Monster Came To School by Kathleen Pederson (click the link for a free copy of the story!) and then take a school tour to look for the monsters (hopefully! This might happen Tuesday!) and when we return we will find that the monster has left us an art project to complete. We will be learning how to safely use scissors and we will be using the glue sponges for the very first time!
Our monster craftivity comes from this great Monsters! Back To School resource from Kindergarten Smiles!
If you want the monster tour, click the picture! You can edit it to fit your school tour needs!
We will also read the story Who Will Be My Teacher and we will create a chart about Mr. Greg!
Of course there will be name writing practice, procedure practice and lots of singing and fun!
Tuesday
Today is our first full day of school. 8 hours.
We will start off our day with the book Chrysanthemum! After reading the book and discussing what happens to Chrysanthemum, we will make a circle map of our names. Each child will tell us their name and I will add it to the circle. Then the whole group will spell each name. We will graph the letters in our name and then each child will get to use foam letter stickers to make their name!
For math we will read Brown Bear Brown Bear and discuss colors. After reading the story we will play a little game of I Spy to find things in the classroom that are certain colors. I will also be introducing counting bears to the class. After we talk about how to use counters and our procedures for manipulatives I allow 10-20 minutes of free play (exploration!) with the bears. Then we will sort our bears by colors. After the bears are sorted, we will do a quick color matching activity. Each child will get a set of colored dot stickers and a page with 6 boxes that are colored. The ‘staches will have to stick the colored dots in the right boxes! This sill be color assessment for the class! After we finish we will color the animals from the story!
We will read No David! and make a chart of good and bad choices. We will also do a sort in the pocket chart of good choices and bad choices.
We will also make this super cute pencil craftivity! We will just be making the pencil without the all about me stuff!
We will also be working on name writing, rules, procedures and a whole lot of singing!
Wednesday
Today we will start our 2 week letter frenzy! I will read the big book Animal Park ABC (this came with our reading series a few years ago and is a great ABC book because of the animals and bright colors!) and we will discuss letters. What are they? What do we use them for? Where are they? Then we will go on a letter hunt! I will post letter cards around the room and each ‘stache will locate one letter and return to the carpet. We will then use our ABC chart to name the letters and put them in order.
We will also do the same thing for math but instead of letters we will go on a number hunt. We will read Chicka Chicka 123 and discuss numbers and what we do with numbers. We will do our number hunt and put the numbers in order!
We will also be introduced to another math manipulative! Each child will get 10-20 minutes to explore with our counting tiles. Then we will practice counting to 5. This is just so I can get a quick idea of where each child is with their counting! I will say a number and see if the ‘staches can count that many tiles!
We will read Officer Buckle and Gloria and discuss being safe at school. We will make safety rules for our class and Mr. Greg will write them on stars!
Of course, more name practice, more rules and procedures and more singing and more fun!
Thursday
We will read Rainbow Fish and talk about sharing. This is when I make a big deal about the classroom belongs to all of us. I am adamant that this is our class, our stuff and we share everything. We then discuss ways to be a good friend in our class. After our discussion we make our circle of friendship.
Each child will get to paint their hand with white paint and put their hand print in the circle! This circle of friendship is displayed all year to remind us of our commitment to our friends.
We will also work on letters with our discovery bottles! The discovery bottles are simply empty Gatorade bottles filled with colored rice and letters. The ‘staches shake them up until the find a letter. They say the letter and color the letter on their paper! I let them work in pairs on this activity so we also talk about working together and sharing!
For more on these bottles, check out my article at Hameray Publishing!
click the picture to get your free recording sheet!
In math we will be working on more numbers and counting. We will be doing a little Finger Dancing! I play a CD that plays music and every 10-20 seconds it says a number. When it says a number the students point to that number on their work mat!
After we have practiced our numbers, we get 10-20 minutes of time to explore our snap cubes! After snap cube exploration we will practice counting. Mr. Greg says a number and we put that many cubes together in a train!
We will read First Day Jitters and make our very first predictable chart about how we felt on the first day of school.
We will read How Will I Get To School and make a class graph of how we get to school and home each day! This ties in to our Foodie Fun Friday activity very well!
Friday!
I wonder if we’ll make it…..
We will read The Crayon Box That Talked and talk about why we all need each other! We will make a tree map about friends! Friends can, are and have!
We will continue working on our names by making our bean names! Beans, beans, the more you….uh, make names, the better for you! Yeah…that’s the song!
I write each child’s name on construction paper using a black Sharpie. I model for them how to glue the beans on without leaving space between the beans. I trace one letter at a time with glue and allow them put the beans on. When they’re ready for the next letter, I trace that letter with glue! This is much less messy and less stressful than letting them have glue bottles! These make a great classroom display!
We will do a letter/number sort in the pocket chart and then each child will do their own letter and number sort! This is another quick way for me to get a grasp on where we are at the beginning of the year!
We will get 10-20 minutes of exploration with tiles and then we will practice counting to 5!
And finally our long week ends with Foodie Fun Friday!
Our first snack experience is a school bus cookie! I don’t have a picture for some reason…but they’re simple.
You need graham crackers, white frosting, yellow food coloring, mini Oreos.
Give each child some white frosting and a drop of yellow food coloring and let them mix the icing. Model how to spread the icing onto the graham cracker being careful not to break the cracker.
Use the mini Oreos for wheels!
EAT!
Many of the resources I am using this week come from these common core aligned creations:
