Morning Work

For our schedule, my students come in at 7:30- we have announcements at 7:55 and we leave for our specials/ pull outs at 8:10, so we have time to do nice morning work. This year, I am going to do something a little different on Friday. In our morning meeting, we will cover a sight word a day. I will put it up on the word wall and we will have different activities for it. At the end of the week, I am going to give them a sheet called “sight words of the week” where students will have to write their sight words of the week with their name and the date. Then it will get sent home that evening so parents can keep up with what sight words we are learning. I hope they will use this time to work with their children on their sight words and spelling but you never know! If you would live a copy of the sheet, visit my TPT store. Its free :)

My first Pinterest DIY

My teacher friend and I decided to do a DIY project today! We LOVED the crates with the seats and thought, why not give it a go? Now, of course, I probably would have never made them without Jenna cause I wouldn’t have know where to start but 2 heads are better than one, right????

First, we took the advice of going to the grocery stores to see if we could get milk cartons for free. That would be a big NOPE. Apparently they only use cardboard or recycle the milk crates so that was a bust. We decided to go to Target to get our crates. We each got 4 which were about 3.48 or so a piece.

Then it was off to Home Depot! We took the advice of some others and took our crates in. The best idea we had all day. We didn’t have a clue where to go or what we needed. A nice older man found and us and whisked us off to the Wooden Wonderland. Then we met the magician in our wonderland. He knew exactly what we needed, did it and kept a smile on his face the entire time! WOW! We left home depot and had our wood part all complete!

Then we went to Hobby Lobby. We looked at several options for the fabric: table clothes, vinyl table clothes, curtains, sheets etc. It was much cheaper to do the regular fabric. Now, Jenna and I may or may not be terrible at measurement and bought lots of extra batting for the cushion. Anyways, we got really cute fabric, lots of batting and ribbons!

All that was from 11:00-3:00 (lunch was included). Then from 3:00-6:00 we made eight fantastic crates. The first one was the hardest because we had NO idea what we were doing but we got them done!

After a long day, with an awesome teacher friend, I’m exhausted but have 4 really really cute crate! YAY!!!

Mine are the red Mickey Mouse ones- Jenna has the state ones :)

Math Vocabulary

In my morning message/ calendar/ smart board lesson, I am going to introduce a math vocabulary word each day. I will have a math word wall in which these will go up on. I will not put any vocabulary cards up that have not been discussed. I took Debbie Diller’s math vocabulary on page 105 of her workstation book and made my own math vocabulary. This way, I can show the student the word and place it on the board when we talk about it. These vocabulary words are addition and subtraction. They are on my TPT!

What’s in a name?

If you know me, you know that I LOVE Kevin Henkes books and love to do an author study! This year, I am going to spread out the books instead of do one large author study to help students keep them apart. They also fit with out curriculum much better this way.

To start the school year, I read Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes. If you have never read it, it is about a little “girl” mouse that loves her name until she gets to Kindergarten and the other students make fun of her for it. This is always a great way to help students understand that we are all different.

I did an all about me project last year which was great but since its a new year, I decided to  change it.

This project goes with the book. It has students make a web about themselves. I got the idea Babbling Abby and her web.

It’s on my TPT account for free :)

Roll the Dice

One of my beginning math stations is to practice numbers. I created a sheet for the students to work with and turn in. Students will roll the dice. They will write the number, then they will stamp the number (from the REALLY cute stamps I got from Target), then they will illustrate the number however they want. This is a quick and easy workstation but will help students.

For differentiated learning, you can place two dice in their and have students write the 2 digit numbers, stamp and illustrate.

It will be on the TPT account (for free) once they having posting up.

If you want it before then, leave your email and I will send it!

 

First week of math

Like I said, I was very busy on vacation and planned several weeks of math. I created my first week of math plans. I think it is very important for students to learn how to use manipulatives which is the basis of the first week of plans. It also has students really review numbers 0-10 and how to write each number correctly. The first week, I do start with splitting them into small groups, but I do not introduce math workstations. I want them to get used to how math will run and my expectations. Here is my first week of math:

First week of Math

Morning Meeting

I just got back from a wonderful week long vacation at the beach where I had no internet and no computer! On top of that there was NO target. I really had a great time though. I took my Math Workstations book and did a lot of planning and creating! I also decided it was time to redo my morning meeting!

I was lucky enough to get a smartboard last year and started doing my morning meeting on it. HOWEVER, it was NEVER exactly what I wanted. So, I created my own but cutting and pasting the slides on others that I liked.

I will not be posting this, because I did not create it all and can’t even begin to give credit since they all came from Smart Exchange. I will list the new parts I have added:

1. Morning Message to the kids. This will become a grammar activity but for the start its just sweet messages for us to read.

2. Calendar- Usual stuff- today is, tomorrow will be, yesterday was. It also included the season.

3. Weather Graph- it includes a bar graph for the variety of weather and a temp. gauge!

4. Math Number of the day- which will be the school day number. I have it represented in numerical form, tallies, place value and money! The place value is very interactive and so is the piggy bank!

5. Math Mind- This is where I will introduce a new math word wall a day and place it on the math word wall. For the first few days they will be the number words. So day one will be the number “one”.

6. Sight word of the day- We do 5 sight words a week, which is one a day. We will place it on the board and they will have white boards to practice writing our words. :) I also included line paper on a slide to show how students would write the word!

If you have anymore neat ideas to add, please share! If you want to see my Smartboard lesson, please leave a comment with your e-mail. I will be happy to share but I DO NOT take credit for creating all the slides.