Happy New Year, and welcome to the first Schedulin’ Sunday of 2025! It’s week 19 of Kindergarten, it’s short, and the week back after a long break, so we’re going to focus on routines, procedures, and expectations! And we’re celebrating the new year with Squirrel’s New Year’s Resolution and a party!
Squirrel’s New Year’s Resolutions: Lesson Plans
You can download our weekly lesson plans by clicking on the image!
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Phonics And Phonemic Awareness
This week is a 3 day week so we’re doing a lot of review with CVC words and phonics. We’re going to focus on writing and spelling CVC words and decodable text. Of course, we’re going to be decoding words too and having some fun!
We’re going to bust out our Olaf the snowman trashcan and play: Do You Wanna Build A Snowman? I took a white Dollar Tree trash can, drew some features, and added a carrot nose to make Olaf. On white paper, we write CVC words. Students choose a paper and decode the word. The rest of the class writes the word on their white boards. The student then crumples up the paper and tries to get the snowball into Olaf! Easy. Fun. And yes, we play the song to kick off the game! And yes, we sing super loud!
For phonemic awareness, we’re moving on to skill 6 of our Phonemic Awareness Bootcamp. Skill 6 is syllables. We will be stomping syllables, using sticky notes to count syllables and sorting words by the number of syllables!
Squirrel’s New Year’s Resolution: Comprehension And Writing
This week, we’re celebrating the new year with the book Squirrel’s New Year’s Resolutions. I love this book because it makes understanding resolutions easy for the kids. I also love that the book focuses so much on helping others!
Before reading the book, we make predictions. After reading, we compare our predictions to what actually happens in the story!
Then we focus on our resolutions. The kids make resolutions for anything they want to do better and how they want to help others. All of their resolutions are included on our circle chart. Yep. All of them. No matter how wild they might be! I mean, what could possibly go wrong with a 5-year-old learning to drive?!
Then we write and illustrate our resolutions. The good news is that one of us wants to learn to drive and one wants to fix cars so we can definitely help each other out!
We will also sequence the story and do a graph on who was able to make it to midnight!
Of course, we’re also doing a green screen picture to put the kids in Times Square!
Squirrel’s New Year’s Resolution: Host A Class New Year’s Party
On our first day back, we celebrate the new year with a class New Year’s Party! We do a countdown and watch the ball drop. We toast the new year with sparkling grape juice and even do our balloon drop!
We’re also making a disco ball. I mean, no New Year celebration is complete without a disco ball. We use aluminum foil to make a torn paper disco ball! I draw the circle on black construction paper and students tear aluminum foil to make their disco ball!
Math: Numbers And Counting
Since we have a short week, we’re spending the week reviewing numbers, counting and mostly writing numbers! I will also be using these three days to pull small groups to work with kids on counting to 20.
Mad Science Thursday-Make Your Own Bouncy Ball
It’s a new year and we’re going to bounce into the new year and make our own bouncy balls! True story. This is one of our most challenging science experiments. It’s not HARD but sometimes it just doesn’t work for some kids. But it’s a lot of fun when they get to bounce the balls they made! The directions and materials are included in our Student Scientists resource!
Foodie Fun Friday-Squirrel’s New Years Resolution
Our Foodie Fun Friday Snack is a ball drop snack! And yes, the donut hole actually slides down the straw just like the ball on New Year’s Eve!
Kindergarten Morning Meeting
This week, our greeting is a disco ball greeting. The student’s name and picture are printed on disco balls. You choose a disco ball and greet that friend!
WEEKLY RESOURCES
Click below for the resources we are using in our classroom this week:
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