When I taught first grade, I remember my kids had a little difficulty understanding that the greater number had to come first in a number sentence when subtracting. I know that kids can memorize like nobody’s business, so I think it’s EXTREMELY important to get them to understand WHY so they know how to apply as the skill progressively becomes more challenging {how’s that for a long, grammatically incorrect sentence?!?!} We’ve talked about the symbol we use for subtraction and lots of key words, so it was time for some hands-on fun. To introduce the concept, we started with a fun…SUPER simple…hands-on, whole group activity that my kids ... Read More
Rewind. Just a Little.
Who else thinks Valentine’s Day rivals the craziness of Halloween?!?! The chaos would explain my absence from the blog last week. I needed a little break! Here are a few things that kept us busy last week… Y’all might remember this little probability activity I did with my firsties a couple of years ago. My kinderbabies LOVED it!!! And they loved eating the candy afterward, too! Found this PRECIOUS Valentine idea from Polka Dots & Puppies and decided it would be the perfect little *sweet treat* for my kids this year. They were SO excited! I mean seriously…who doesn’t love bubbles?!?! ... Read More
100th Day & Counting…and a couple of Freebies
I’m still in a little *shock* that the 100th day of school has come and gone. My kids were SO excited about the monumentous milestone that they just couldn’t contain themselves. My own little man talked about it for DAYS before it was time to celebrate! Just take a look at this little 100th day cutie and that insanely interesting pose… We started planning for the big day weeks in advance. First up…planning our 100th day t-shirts. Thanks to Pinterest, we had our mother/son idea in about 2.5 seconds. And let me just say that we weren’t the only ones who went for this look! HA! AND…let me tell ... Read More
Walruses & Groundhogs…It Was That Kind of Week :)
It was a busy week in Kindergarten, so I won’t stall any longer :) Here’s a look at what we were up to this week! We were knee deep learning about all things Arctic…animals, that is! My kids were SO into it. It was really quite precious, actually. I can honestly say that I’m pretty sure they’re *obsessed* with walruses. They couldn’t get enough!!!! We started out our learning with a little tree map to organize our thinking. After we did a little research and gathered lots of info about these 2 ton mammals, we transferred all of our knowledge into writing. As important as it is to write about ... Read More
The Penguin Who Wanted to Fly
This *might* be one of my favorite penguin books… The Penguin Who Wanted to fly {by Catherine Vase} is PRECIOUS. The story is adorable, but the illustrations are downright ADORABLE! We did A LOT of non-fiction penguin related activities, but we had to stop it down for a bit and use this book to make some text to self connections…along with a little craftivity, of course! Making connections is a HUGE piece in our reading assessments and we try to seize every opportunity to get our kids to make those connections! We made text to self connections with this writing prompt… {click the pic to download!} I love, love, ... Read More
Five for Friday…on a Saturday
I’m linking up with sweet Kacey over at Doodle Bugs Teaching for a little Five for Friday fun. Except, today is Saturday and I’m a day late. Story of my life :) But I have a really GREAT reason…. 1. My sweet sister had a BABY!!! My nephew is finally HERE! And I am head over heels IN.LOVE. He is precious. Absolutely PERFECT. She was induced on Wednesday and finally had him on Friday {my half birthday ;)} I LOVE this kid!!!!! God is SO good!!!!! 2. Speaking of my half birthday, my sweet babies at school threw me a surprise half birthday party…cupcakes and ... Read More
Why I LOVE This Time of Year in Kindergarten {Writing}
I LOVE this time of year for SO many reasons, but one of my **favorite** things to reflect on this time of year is my kids’ writing and all the progress they’ve made since the beginning. I know that writing is an area I’d LOVE to improve…I hope that as long as I’m teaching, I’ll want to improve the way I’m doing things to make them better for the kids. I’ve taken bits and pieces of writing training I’ve had over the past 10 years and combined them altogether into how I teach writing today. In my classroom, we write EVERY.SINGLE.DAY. We write in response to our guided readers {this is during small group…4-5 kids at a ... Read More
Digging Through the Snow
After looking through my Facebook feed, I think it’s safe to say that MANY of you are digging your way through the snow this week! Well aren’t you lucky?! I was chipping away at the frost on my windshield this morning, but then it warmed up to the high 50’s and all was *almost* right in the world :) I’ve been a little MIA this week because we’re testing our Kbabies! Have I told y’all how much I LOVE mid-year testing?!?! Because I honestly really DO!! I LOVE seeing all the progress my kids are making!!! Sure…it’s definitely time consuming…but I LOVE the results! I’m SO unbelievably proud of my ... Read More
Make SNOW Mistake About It…We LOVE Winter!
I can’t really say we love “winter” here in Texas…specifically, south Texas. There’s not much winter here to speak of. We have a few cold snaps here and there, but at this very moment, my 5-year-old is chasing our new dog outside…in his shorts…and nothing else ;) Now that’s MY kind of winter!!!!!! We’re bringing as much winter as we can to the classroom and we started our first week back after break with some snowman related activities. We definitely kept ourselves busy and had SNOW much fun in the process {sorry…I couldn’t help myself ;)} I loved teaching symmetry this time of year. I introduced Mr. ... Read More
Extra! Extra!
HAPPY NEW YEAR, sweet friends!!!! I took a little blogging hiatus during the break so that I could just ENJOY my sweet little family…and ohmiword…it was AMAZING!!! Hope your new year is off to a great start!!! I think one of my favorite times of the day has become “Daily Dish”. You might know this better as ‘daily news’ or ‘morning meeting’. As the year progresses, I like this time even more. I just wanted to share with y’all a little something we’ve been doing during this little block of time to reinforce phonemic awareness and writing. About 2-3 days a week, I choose the topic for our ... Read More
