The end of the school year is always so bittersweet. While I always loved anticipating the freedom summer would bring, I was always really sad to say goodbye to the kids who spent the year growing and maturing right before my eyes. As I've said before, I always loved spending the last few weeks of school reflecting on our year. It's also such a great time to look ahead to summer. I love implementing writing activities and crafts at the end of the year to give me an opportunity to do both. I created a set of four different hand-drawn craft templates to accompany writing prompts. These prompts are pretty straightforward and simple … [Read more...] about End of Year Writing Activities
Writing
Printable Valentine GIft Tag & Writing Craftivity – FREEBIES!
Can y'all believe it's almost already Valentine's Day? Does it seem someone pressed fast forward on February? Or nah? Well...that's what it feels like to me. Moving on. Since Valentine's Day is just a few short days away, I wanted to share a writing activity & a printable treat tag that you might be able to put to use in your classroom this coming week. First up, let's talk tags. I absolutely LOVE Valentine's Day and love gifting different treats to students, co-workers, friends, and family. There's just something my Kindergarten heart loves about the holiday (as commercial as it may … [Read more...] about Printable Valentine GIft Tag & Writing Craftivity – FREEBIES!
Fractions, Editing, Compound Words, & Freebies
Since this is a post of a bunch of random things, I’m calling it my “potpourri”. {Does anyone dislike that word as much as I do?!?! Mark it under one of my most not-favorite things to say} Is anyone else BARELY getting to fractions?! We started our fraction unit this week and started by discussing equal & unequal parts. I folded a bunch pieces of construction paper {even & uneven} and passed them out to the kids after a little fraction introduction on the SmartBoard. The kids had to go back to their desks and cut the construction paper on the creases and then determine whether or not they had equal or unequal parts. Then we … [Read more...] about Fractions, Editing, Compound Words, & Freebies
Celebrating St. Pat’s Day!
The Irish in me is ALL.OVER St. Patty’s Day!! I LOVE IT!!! I especially love celebrating it with the kids! I don’t have many pictures to show you, but with St. Pat’s right around the corner, I just wanted to share a few things I’ve done in the past to make it fun for the kids! Here’s a fun little writing we did today. This is one of my favorites!! You can download the Loopy Leprechaun craft patterns HERE. First we read this book… Then we talked about luck and feeling lucky. Afterwards, I had the kids write about what makes them feel lucky using the prompt, “I feel lucky when…”. I got some darling responses! After they were … [Read more...] about Celebrating St. Pat’s Day!
Tooth Fairies, Teeth, & Money/Coins
Have you ever wondered what the Tooth Fairy does with all those teeth?!?! We asked ourselves that same question and the kids came up with some pretty clever answers! First, we read a little book… And for a little reader’s response, the kids wrote about what they thought the tooth fairies did with their teeth! And they made some cute little scrapbook tooth fairies to go along with their writing. This is probably my favorite thing we’ve done to date! I LOVE how they turned out! The kids did pretty much ALL of the work themselves. I showed them an example, but told them they could make their fairies look … [Read more...] about Tooth Fairies, Teeth, & Money/Coins
Groundhogs & Their Burrows
The kids have loved learning about burrows and how groundhogs dig tunnels. Did you know they dig up to 700 lbs. of dirt when digging their burrows?! WHOA! We talked about burrows and other places animals calls home…dens, lairs, nests, caves, etc. Then I had the kids pretend like they were groundhogs and do a little descriptive writing. First they had to draw their little burrows. CRACKING up that this one has a TV & a bed! HA! Then they had to write a few sentences describing their burrow as if they were a groundhog. Finally, they made a little groundhog. I LOVE this little art piece. It takes all of about 5 seconds to put … [Read more...] about Groundhogs & Their Burrows
Penguin Fun!
Oh how I LOVE learning about penguins!! They are just the dang cutest things, aren’t they?! I’ve tried to get my boys into Happy Feet, but they aren’t big fans just yet. Boo. Anyway, we had a lot of penguin fun this week and I can’t wait to continue with more in the week to come! First off, if you haven’t had a chance to purchase Deanna Jump’s Penguin Unit, GO.NOW. It’s FULL of awesome ideas and activities which is one of the reasons I’ve extended our penguin learning for another week. AND…you need to check out Babbling Abby’s post about her week of Penguin fun! She has some DARLING ideas too and a 5-day lesson plan to download. LOVE … [Read more...] about Penguin Fun!
Place Value, MLK, and Snowmen!
Here's a fun little place value activity I made for my kids to do in their math tubs last week. It’s a snowman place value spinner! Graphics courtesy of Digi Web Studio Last week we were working on place value with teen numbers, so that’s what this particular activity reinforces. The kids spin the spinner on the middle portion of the snowman and collect that amount of ones cubes...or whatever kind of counter you want! Then they spin the spinner on the bottom portion of the snowman and collect the same amount of ones cubes as well. Then they count their cubes and see if they can make a set of ten. I always tell them, “If you can … [Read more...] about Place Value, MLK, and Snowmen!
Skeleton Hiccups
For a little reader’s response fun, we read this book… SO darling! And then we got to problem solving. The kids had to write using the prompt, “I would get rid of a skeleton’s hiccups by…”. Their answers were pretty dang cute! I drew the skeleton face & hips and had a mom cut them out. Then the kids decided how the rest of the skeleton would look! LOVE IT!! My favorite part is how different each of them look. Too dang cute! This might be one of my most favorite writing activities of the year…I’m just sayin’. I’ve done this for the last 7 years and I always look forward to it!! And the kids love it, too!! … [Read more...] about Skeleton Hiccups
Where’s My Mummy?
We had our annual Fall Book Fair a couple of weeks ago and there was the most darling little book on the shelves… Now, this book has probably been around for a while, but it’s the first time I saw it. One of my sweeties from class bought it for me and I fell.in.love! SUCH a cute story! {And it’s since become a favorite of my two boys, too!} I immediately knew I wanted to use this story for a writing activity and here’s what we did… For a reader’s response, I had the kids use the sentence prompt, “When I get scared, my mummy…”, and they had to write about something that their Mommy does to help them when … [Read more...] about Where’s My Mummy?
Spidey Writing
We started out our spider themed week reading a few non-fiction books and filling out a KWL. Not gonna lie…I learned A LOT of things about spiders this week! It was amazing to hear my kids recalling facts of everything they had learned, too! They were SO into it! I set up a labeling activity for the kids to visit during transition time or when they were finished with their other station activities. They also labeled a spider template I found on abcteach.com. This little labeling activity includes a lot more words to use for labeling…not sure what happened to them?! At the end of the week, we talked … [Read more...] about Spidey Writing
The Very Busy Spider
I love starting the month of October learning about spiders. We read several non-fiction books that the kids adored, but they also LOVED this Eric Carle classic…The Very Busy Spider. After we read the story, I gave the kids a writing prompt to complete… “I am very busy____________________________________ in First Grade!” Their responses were cute and some of them were downright hilarious!! Apparently we spend our time running away from girls and coloring all day?! Hmmmm… I cut out a class set of large black circles and a class set of smaller white circles to fit on top of the black {for a spider body}. I also … [Read more...] about The Very Busy Spider
Draft Book Publishing
My kids write in their draft books almost every day during our Writer’s Workshop block. Every Tuesday, I have publishing moms that come in and take the kids one-by-one to help them publish one of their writing pieces into a little book they can keep in their book baskets to read at different times. Hopefully by the end of the year the kids will have quite a collection of published books to take home and read to their families. The kids look forward to Tuesday because they absolutely LOVE having their hard work published! The publishing basket contains pencils, markers, a stapler, plain white paper {cut}, construction paper … [Read more...] about Draft Book Publishing
Reader’s Response
Every kid in our classroom has a Reading Response Journal. Depending on the entry, we’ll usually work our Reader’s Response into the writing station OR we’ll etch out a little time during Writer’s Workshop to add to our journals. I usually complete an entry under my ELMO so that they can watch the process. I talk my way through it as well. This is a great opportunity to reinforce various writing/reading skills…neat handwriting, use of capital letters at the beginning of every word in the title, underlining the title, author/illustrator, two-finger spaces, punctuation, etc. This is an awesome way to document their … [Read more...] about Reader’s Response
