Week 8 of kindergarten means we have finished ABC BOOTCAMP and we’re celebrating with a week of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom! This blog post is packed with everything I have done in my classroom during week 8 of school. These lesson plans span years of kindergarten!
This year is a little different for me because I get to be a stay-at-home dad, so I can spend more time with our daughter and prepare for our second daughter, due on December 21!! So, each week for Schedulin’ Sunday, I will post ideas and resources that I use in my classroom for that week in the school year. Each post will also contain links to previous years’ lesson plans!
Kindergarten Lesson Plans: Week 8
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Week 8 means we have completed ABC BOOTCAMP! After ABC BOOTCAMP we do a review week where we spend the week practicing and reviewing all sounds and letters. And what better way to do this than with Chicka Chicka Boom Boom?
Kindergarten Lesson Plans: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
Now, I know we all love CCBB at the beginning of the year…but this is when our curriculum uses the book. Hear me out…I was always a CCBB at the beginning of the year, teacher. When our curriculum made us wait until now, I was annoyed. Stick my tongue out at the curriculum, annoyed. But it makes so much sense to use the book AFTER we have learned our sounds and letters, because we can really dive into sounds and letters!
Our required curriculum has using the book to work on notice and wonder, asking and answering questions and writing and drawing about what we see and hear. So we do those skills…My favorite are having the kids draw what they see in the story and what they hear!
And we use Chicka Chicka for a lot of fun letters and sounds ideas!
First, we go on a letter hunt. I hide our Everything Blocks around the room. We find them and put them in order by identifying the sound and how to spell the sound!
Each day, we do a predictable chart to practice sounds, letters, and names! As we read the chart, I put a sticky note on it. The sticky note has an uppercase letter, a lowercase letter or a name. We say the letter and practice our sounds!
We use our five senses to explore a coconut, including tasting the coconut water and coconut meat!
Finally, we transform our classroom into a GIANT coconut tree! We climb the tree to practice sounds and letters! Make the giant tree. Play the game. Make learning fun! We spin the spinner, they count the spaces, and everyone practices the letter, sound, and writing the letter!
Phonemic Awareness Bootcamp
Phonemic Awareness Bootcamp continues. This week, we are on skill two: identifying onset sounds. Here’s what makes Phonemic Awareness Bootcamp unique. We do our phonemic awareness circle chart to determine the beginning sound by attaching the sound to pictures (no letters), so we can focus on hearing the sound.
Teaching Sight Words
Here’s what I want us to remember: don’t memorize words. We segment the sounds, blend the sounds, decode the word, spell the word, write the word, and use the word in context, all to help our brains map the word so we actually learn it!
Each week, we learn four words. We learn the word on Monday, and on Tuesday and Wednesday, we use the words in sentences. On Thursday, we do a sight word grid, and on Friday, we play a game to practice the word!
Kindergarten Math Lesson Plans: Practicing Addition And Subtraction
Yes, believe it or not, our district scope and sequence has us doing addition and subtraction. We have done this for years, and it’s FINE! I promise! Hehe. Last week we introduced addition and subtraction so this week we’re practicing with ducks and cereal! What better combination is there for teaching math!?
To practice addition we use the book Quack And Count and work on addition with ducks. After reading the book, we use a giant duck inflatable to practice adding. Kids stand on each side of the duck, then climb on the duck to add.
The next day we use large rubber ducks to practice addition by putting the ducks in the pond.
Then we do the same activity as an independent activity. We’re doing the gradual release model each day with explicit instruction because the research says this is how kids learn best…but we already knew that, didn’t we?!
We are also practicing addition with ten frames and mini ducks!
To practice subtraction, we eat cereal! Cookie Crisp cereal to be exact! This is a zero-prep, hands-on, concrete activity that helps our kids grasp the concept of subtraction! How it works: I tell a story, and we use the cereal to act it out. “Mr. Greg has four cookies. Mr. Greg is a cookie monster and ate 3 cookies. How many are left?” As I tell the story, the kids put cookies on their plate and take them off!
Kindergarten Lesson Plans: Apples And Apple Activities
This week, we continue learning about apples and Johnny Appleseed! Johnny Appleseed Day is September 26th! This week, we finish our schema map, build apple towers, read The Seasons Of Arnold’s Apple Tree, and have an apple party where we eat all kinds of apple foods and graph our favorite!
We celebrate the end of our apple week by learning about Johnny Appleseed on Johnny Appleseed Day!
We read The Seasons of Arnold’s Apple Tree and focus on the seasons and life cycle of an apple!
Finally, we wrap up our Apples unit with an apple party! We eat/taste different apple foods and graph our favorite!
Apple Phonics Project
We finish our apple phonics project. This is our first phonics project of the year! We do one phonics project a month to practice and assess our phonics skills. And these make cute and meaningful bulletin board displays or hallway displays!
I assess the kids one-on-one. For each apple they get correct, they color that apple and add it to their basket. For this project, we focus on letters and sounds!
Kindergarten Lesson Plans: Social Studies: Hispanic Heritage Month
Week 8 means our celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month continues. We don’t celebrate every day, but what we do is learn about 18 different Hispanic heroes over the course of the month. For each hero, we read a book, watch a video (or listen to their music, look at their art, etc), and create a graphic organizer about what we learned. Then, we do a self-portrait that is focused on the lesson the hero taught us. The idea here is that this makes the impact of the people more concrete for our kids.
For example, when we learn about Sonia Sotomayor, we talk about what we want to be when we grow up, and our self-portrait is what we will be when we grow up. When we learn about Laurie Hernandez, we talk about how we have to practice to get good at things, so our self-portrait is us with a gold medal!
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WEEK 8 RESOURCES
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