It’s week 3 of school for us! We are settling into some routines and procedures! Week 3 means we are continuing ABC BOOTCAMP, introduce write the room and our sensory bin, continue with Number Bootcamp, germs and five senses, our district-mandated requirements, and our foundational skills curriculum. This year, my goal is to show you that you can use our TKS resources along with required curriculums so you’ll see that happening throughout the school year!
District Guidelines
- We are required to wear masks indoors but not at recess.
- We can have shared supplies and centers while maintaining 3 feet of distance when possible.
- We are keeping our enhanced cleaning procedures (wipe down surfaces throughout the day, steam sanitize the room daily, hand sanitizer/hand washing throughout the day, steam mop the floors daily, etc)
Lesson Plans
As always, you can download our weekly lesson plans by clicking on the image!
You can get our EDITABLE lesson plan template by clicking on the image below:
ABC BOOTCAMP
We continue off ABC BOOTCAMP this week and I am so excited to do it in-person this year! This year, our district is mandating a foundational skills curriculum. We are completing our district-required skills curriculum and doing ABC BOOTCAMP. We have a 45-minute block for foundational skills. We have found that these lessons are taking about 25-30 minutes. That leaves 15-20 minutes for ABC BOOTCAMP. The circle charts take 10-15 minutes so that will be perfect for that block. Handwriting and hats will be done in our afternoon PLT block which is 45 minutes.
ABC BOOTCAMP is research-based and aligned to best practices. ABC BOOTCAMP is aligned to the science of reading and has been since it was created! After 26 days, we have 80% mastery of all letters and sounds! And it’s fun and developmentally appropriate!
For each sound and letter, we make a circle chart. We introduce the sound first and then we introduce the letter as how we spell the sound. Once we introduce the sound, students generate the words and I draw the picture. YES! YOU HAVE TO DRAW THE PICTURES! It’s more fun than using clipart and it makes for a personal experience that activates the brain’s emotional areas, which improves learning! This year we are following the order of our foundational skills curriculum. This week is C-G-I-N-H!
After we complete the circle charts, we make our famous silly hats. These hats are great for vocabulary and language development and reviewing the sound of the day. Also, making the hats gives us 26 days of dedicated fine motor practice! This week our hats are: noodles, hamburger, castle, iguana, and grapes!
For all of the details and information on how we do ABC BOOTCAMP, visit the post linked at the end of this blog post!
Sight Word 60!
This week we are also starting Sight Word 60! (We planned to start last week but things are moving slower than expected so we’re starting this week for sure!) After spending the summer learning more about the science of reading, we are continuing with Sight Word 60. We have always had decoding and encoding (writing) of the words as part of Sight Word 60 so we will continue that and will increase the amount of decoding and writing. We will also use orthographic mapping and we’re changing our order of sight words to align to the 109 most frequent words (even though we do 100 words…). You can learn all the details of how Sight Word 60 works on the linked blog post and you can get everything you need for Sight Word 60 in our Sight Word 60 creation!
Research Projects: Five Senses
This year our district has adopted a new curriculum. We are being required to use the curriculum, but we will continue to add in our own fun, creative lesson plans, ideas, and resources. And we will continue to bring the FUN to kindergarten!
We will read the book, My Five Senses We will do I notice/I wonder charts, think pair share using sensory cards, I know/I can chart, analyze a painting, generate questions using a wonder wheel, and more!
Germs Research Project
This will be our third week of school but our second full week so we’re going to learn all about germs and how masks and hand washing keep us safe! My kids have been amazing with masks and all of our protocols. I want them to understand the WHY of wearing the masks and I know how much of an impact our Germs Research Project has on them because when we did this last year my kids talked about it all year. Plus it’s so much fun to learn about germs (germs have gas…ya’ll!)
After learning how to wash our hands, we do a fun science experiment using glow soap! This lesson shows kids how germs are all over our hands and shows them if they get their hands clean when they wash them! The directions for this activity (and links to materials) are included in the research project!
We also do a directed drawing of ourselves in a mask!
Math
We are continuing with NUMBER BOOTCAMP! I’ve seen great growth in their one-to-one correspondence, number recognition, and answering how many!
As part of our Number Bootcamp, we learn to explicitly write the numbers!
This week we’re working on counting, one-to-one correspondence, and using ten frames to count. We’re using tasks from our district and adding our own spin and fun to them. I’m excited to try some new activities while also using some of our favorite games and lessons!
For our ten frames lesson, we’re going to count cookies and eat cookies! We are using our Cookie Counting resource to count and answer how many cookies!
We’re also going to build towers of cubes to show how many!
Foodie Fun Friday
This week our Foodie Fun Friday is pencil cookies! Super easy and super yummy!
For all your back to school/first week needs, check out these resources:
SIGHT WORD READER FREEBIE!
For more information, check out these posts:
