This past week seemed so fast and furious. The weekend went by even faster. It’s 6:00 on Sunday night and in a few hours I’ll be starting another week with my littles. Why does it take so long to get to Friday, but Monday gets here so darn quick?! I spent my weekend decorating for Halloween. Yes. It’s early. But I LOVE Halloween and decorating isn’t hurting anybody so that’s just what I did. If you wanna see it all, you can take a little Halloween house tour on my other blog HERE. I have another full week planned…parent/teacher conferences included…and I’m excited to take you back through our week {in rewind} while it’s still fresh on my mind. The theme of the week was COLORS!!! Specifically, color words. I think these words are SO important to identify and spell because we see them so much in text. We will be reviewing color words ALL year long, but I love spending a week at the beginning of the year totally focusing on color words. All of our literacy activities came from my True Colors packet and Abby’s Color Me Kindergarten unit. The kids did such an AWESOME job using their resources to help them identify color words in their work!!!! Aaaahhhh!! Makes this teacher heart so very happy!!! Our poem of the week was all about colors, too… I ended up finding the same poem {with the exception of a few words} in my favorite poetry resource…. We added this to our poetry journals as well as our print out with illustrations. My kids are seriously LOVING poetry. Speaking of colors, our predictable chart this week was all about our favorites. I loved that this week’s chart helped us review and practice identifying “my” and “is”. I was also able to introduce quotation marks and review that concept throughout the week as well. I like to use the word “said” in our charts whenever I get the chance because that’s such a tricky words for the kids to remember to identify and spell. I’ll take any chance I can get to work with it! We were also able to practice identifying our friends’ names. Of course, we turned this chart into a big book for our library. I had the kids vote on titles as they do every week and this week’s title submissions made me laugh out loud. This was a great time to review the concept of main idea. Baby steps. Speaking of baby steps, our Writer’s Workshop is going really well. I forget how dependent they are at the beginning of the year!! I remember last year’s babies and what AMAZING writer’s they were at the end of the year and it’s hard for me to remember that there was a time they weren’t able to stretch out their sounds or get thoughts on paper. We had a little mini-lesson about writing topics this week and it couldn’t have come at a better time. We made this little “heart chart” together and I went back in and colored it after school. This resource is now hanging on our walls and will be for the remainder of the year. Our shape of the week was the triangle and I seriously look forward to Fridays just so we can make these Shape Monsters {from Cheryl at Primary Graffiti}. These are just SO stinkin’ cute! And a great hands-on way to reinforce the attributes of each shape! And just like my kids, there are no two alike!! LOVE that! Since the focus of the week was all about colors, we did a fun little Walking Water science experiment in class. We used words like OBSERVE and HYPOTHESIS and my kids were so quiet you could’ve heard a pin drop. This is one of those experiments that’s best done at the beginning of the day so the kids can see observable differences by the end of the day. If you’re interested in doing this experiment in class, you can check it out HERE on Pinterest You can download this little science journal sheet, too. Just click on the pic! Now I’m getting ready for a new week. I’ll be sitting down to watch the Emmy’s as I cut out all these goodies from my Apple Antics packet! Can you tell what our theme is?!?!? Speaking of theme, here are my visual plans for the week!! Jam packed. Full of fun. And learning. And more learning. I can’t wait! As usual, you will need to download the PDF to access the clickable links {if you’re interested in learning more about the activities I’m using this week!} Wanna see more visual plans?! Head on over to Deedee’s blog!! And link up with your own, too! Hope you all have a GREAT week! I’m off to watch the Emmy’s while I finished prepping for the week ahead!
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Rebekah says
I will never understand how you have time for it all?!! You amaze me. I hope to be as great of a teacher as you are some day! 🙂
Cara Carroll says
No, no…seriously. You give me way too much credit! I don't have time for it all!! You're just seeing the "highlight reel" 🙂 It looks more impressive than it really is!!
Bridget S says
I love the fall decorations 🙂 You've given me so many great decorating ideas 🙂 THANK YOU!!! I'm super excited to get started! There is no way I can wait until Oct. 1st!!!
Bridget
Literacy Without Worksheets
Sarah Cooley says
Your house looks like it came out of Southern Living magazine! All of that decorating, with those rocking plans…You are awesome sweet friend!!!
Erika says
I love your decorations! I started decorating this weekend too!
Erika
My Crazy Life
The Kinder Garden says
I just got that Sight Word Poetry book from Scholastic for $1 last week… I was so excited! Love using those poems for our interactive notebooks. 🙂
PS: Could your home look any more professional and amazing? You need to get on another HGTV show, stat! 😉
–Caitlin
thekindergarden.blogspot.com
Kelli says
I LOVE your blog and your lesson plans are amazing! This might sound like a strange question, but your shape monsters look so neat and trim…did your kinders cut them out?? Just curious. 🙂
Cara Carroll says
Heck no, girl!! That would take FOREVER and we just don't have the time to spend on that!!! They get lots of other opportunities to cut, so I take on that responsibility and pre-cut everything for them 🙂 I don't like wasting instructional time!!
Ashley S. says
Hello! Thank you for sharing your weekly lesson plans! How to you rotate in your dessert tubs? Are they for early finishers or are they a part of the weekly center rotations?
Ashley Shelton
Cara Carroll says
They're for my early finishers 🙂 Nothing new goes inside. They just revisit activities previously introduced! THey LOVE dessert tubs!!!
Julie Stowe says
Fantastic week…inspirational sharing. Thanks
Julie
Mrs Stowe's Kinder Cottage
Cindy Calenti says
Amazing activities and plans… you are a real inspiration!
Cindy
Granny Goes to School
TheElementary MathManiac says
You must be the most productive person ever!
Tara
The Math Maniacc
Southern Ladye says
I LOVE the monsters! We have "Fun Friday" every week for students with good behavior and I have been looking for some activities that are would be incentives for students to work toward doing on Friday afternoon. Extra recess gets boring after a while so I really want to do some art type activities that won't take more than 30 minutes and these little darlings look like they just might get put into the Fun Friday activity box! Thanks for sharing such good ideas!
Southern Ladye says
Oops! I forgot to proofread and I fuss at the kiddos all the time for that! I am looking for some activities that would be incentives!
maria says
WoW! Seriously! How do you find the time? Someone has a lot of support! I am still trying to catch up with the heart journal 🙂 You are an inspiration to teachers everywhere- and I've been teaching a long, long time.
Laura says
Cara,
Are you getting ready to visit Nashville? You DEFINITELY should do the NashTrash tour! e-mail me at lauraroberts.ces@gmail.com if you want some other suggestions!
madhu says
The blog is really nice about kids learning laptop.Well done!
Maria Vazquez says
Love your ideas! So creative.
Donna Szymkowski says
I have used the poem Orange Is A Carrot for over 30 years. I write each sentence on a sentence strip but write the color words on separate pieces.. I also glue the pictures on separate cards. I put the sentence strips in a pocket chart which allows the activity to become interactive. I take out the color word cards and have the kids put them back where they belong (do the same for the pictures) I have the kids close their eyes and mix the whole poem up and then they unscramble it. Once we have practiced reading the color words I have identical cards with the color words but they are no longer written in their matching color. First job I pass out both the colored color words and the words printed in black…the children find the student holding the same color word. Finally I take away the colorful words and have the children use the words printed in black back in the poem. Final lesson I cut construction paper (orange, yellow, green, purple, blue, black, etc) into strips 81/2 wide by 2 I run off the poem written in individual strips the children cut the poem apart and glue the correct sentence to the color strip. I have pictures from the poem that they color, cut and paste to the strip matching the correct color. We staple the booklets together and practice reading.
****I changed the line "Black is a witches hat" to fluffy cat because of the word witch being offensive to some