Welcome to week 15 of kindergarten, the week before a much-needed Thanksgiving Break! This week is all about balloons, soup, and number bonds! Keep reading to see our kindergarten lesson plan ideas for Thanksgiving week!
Kindergarten Lesson Plan Ideas: Lesson Plans
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You can get our lesson plan templates here:
Kindergarten Learning Activities: Word Family BOOTCAMP
This week, we’re continuing to work with CVC words using our Word Family Bootcamp, along with our required foundational skills curriculum. This week, we’re doing CVC words with a focus on middle vowels. We do circle charts, word chaining, and word writing, and we’re using decodable texts! Throughout the lessons, we’re saying the word, segmenting the sounds, mapping the sounds, spelling the words, decoding the words, and we’re writing the words.
One of the tools we’re using in small groups are these word mapping mats. These are so effective at helping students read and write words. They also promote the mental process of orthographic mapping.
This week we’re also using our Digital Word Building tool! This is such a great way to word chaining and the kids LOVE it!
Weekly Lesson Plans For Kindergarten: Phonemic Awareness Bootcamp
This week, we also continue Phonemic Awareness Bootcamp! Phonemic Awareness Bootcamp is all about hearing the sounds and the oral language. This research-based resource is designed for each lesson to take about 10 minutes. Then we move to Word Family BOOTCAMP, which has explicit phonics instruction focused on blending, decoding, spelling, and writing CVC Words.
This week in Phonemic Awareness Bootcamp, we’re starting on skill 5, which is middle sounds. This is such a difficult skill for students and I’ve seen noticeable improvement in their ability to hear and spell the correct middle sounds! This week we’re continuing the focus on middle sounds with a roller coaster ride! The students have roller coaster cars on popsicle sticks. We say a word and then the roller coaster goes up the hill while we say the first sound, at the top we stop and shake the car while saying the middle sound and down the hill for the final sound!
Kindergarten Lesson Plan Ideas: Sight Words
This week, we’re continuing sight words in our classroom using our science of reading-aligned resource: Sight Word 60! And yes, you can still teach sight words as long as you teach students to decode, spell, write, and read the words in context! We’re not teaching them to memorize words anymore.
Here’s the routine:
Monday: I will introduce the words by segmenting the sounds, decoding the words, spelling them, and using the word in a sentence.
Tuesday and Wednesday-review the words with segmenting and decoding the words; kids use the words in a sentence
Thursday-sight word: Students find and color the word!
Friday-we play a game to practice the words!
Kindergarten Lesson Plan Ideas: Balloons Over Broadway
This week, we are doing both of my favorite November read alouds: Balloons Over Broadway and Stone Soup. Balloons Over Broadway is a fascinating story about the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and how it began. It’s a powerful story about immigrants and creativity! And it’s just fun!
We read the book and work on comprehension skills. We make predictions and then use a story map to retell the story.
Of course, we design and create our own balloons for our own parade! For this fun activity, we want authentic creations, so we use real balloons and construction paper—no patterns, no templates. No pre-made pieces. The students come up with their ideas. We chat about what they could make for their balloon, and then make it.
We also use our green screen to put ourselves in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade!
Kindergarten Lesson Plan Ideas: Stone Soup
This week, we’re also reading Stone Soup and celebrating our Friendsviging with our annual Stone Soup feast!
We read various versions of the story. We focus our discussions on friendship, kindness, sharing and helping others. It’s such a necessary lesson for us and our kids, now more than ever! After we read each version, we add the details to our story map! Yes, the story map is a giant pot! Of course it is!
The kids also do a fun art project and make their own pot of soup!
We end our week of celebrating Thanksgiving with a feast of Stone Soup. Our stone soup is vegetable soup with one special ingredient: a stone. Just like the stories, we work together to make our soup. When the soup is ready, the soup chooses on special student to receive the stone. Let me tell you. This moment is always powerful. After the student receives the stone, I explain why they were chosen and we celebrate our friend. If you don’t do this, trust me, Do it. It’s one of those moments each year that changes the entire class.
As part of our feast, we make our own butter! Yep. And here’s the secret: play Shake It Off by Taylor Swift while shaking the cream! Yep. We make butter with Tay!
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Kindergarten Lesson Plan Ideas: Decomposing Numbers And Number Bonds
This week, we’re continuing to learn about decomposing numbers. Our curriculum moves a little slowly with this, focusing on decomposing a single number for two days. We’ve decomposed numbers to 10 and now we’re ready to use number bonds to decompose numbers!
Introducing number bonds mean we use our giant floor number bond. It’s a tradition in our classroom and one that freaks people out because we draw on the floor with a permanent marker. True story. And everyone take a deep breath! It’s really ok!
The students get in the number bond and we move to the smaller circles to decompose the number. The kids are writing the equations on their whiteboards.
The next day the students work independently with number bonds. These are just made with copy paper and laminated! And to make it more fun this year, we’re using popcorn as our manipulatives! Yep. The students will put popcorn on the number bond and decompose with popcorn! (And probably eat most of it!)
Later in the week, we’re going to take a break from decomposing numbers (because you’ll, they get it. Like for real. The curriculum drags on and on, and it’s like, OK! We got this…), and measure ourselves using turkeys!
First, we estimate how many turkeys we might have; then we measure with turkeys. We record our data and Mr. Greg snaps a picture. We print the picture and it to our measurement book!
Kindergarten Lesson Plan Ideas: Thanksgiving Food And Needs And Wants
This week, we’re focusing on the foods we eat for Thanksgiving! We vote for our favorite food and analyze the data!
And then we use grocery store sale papers to create our own feast! Yep. Walk into Kroger and grab a stack of those papers and walk out! True story.
We also work on needs and wants this week! We learn what a need is and what a want is. Then we use magazines to find needs and wants and create posters. As we find the items, the kids identify it as a need or want and then explain their thinking!
Kindergarten Lesson Plan Ideas: FREEBIES
WEEKLY RESOURCES
Click below for the resources we are using in our classroom this week:
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