Spring Is Here!

Spring was in full force last week; actually, it felt like summer!  We were in the 80s everyday last week.  This week his been more spring-like, so we are into spring in our room.  Below you will see a couple spring math ideas from our math center. 

The cute chick is from the WalMart Easter section (97 cents).  I wrote numbers 10-21 in the egg sections.  The little eggs they are counting are from Hobby Lobby (60 in a pack).

 

The addition/subtraction cards are in my "Math In Bloom" packet on TpT.  The flowers are from Dollar Tree (10 in a pack for $1).  They are "planted" in a small mound of air-dry clay.  These are their manipulatives.

I have 8 students who are having a difficult time differentiating between "b" and "d".  We started doing a sorting activity on the SMARTboard today to help.  Students were instructed to sort the letters while naming each letter as they sorted it.  Any other suggestions?

Sorting "b" and "d"

Leprechauns, Rainbows and...Cows?

We have had a busy couple days in kindergarten!  On Friday we had a visit from the sneaky little leprechaun.  He left us little leprechaun hats, gold coins and leprechaun punch (green sherbet and Sprite). We started off our day with a rainbow of fruit. During breakfast, students graphed the marshmallows in their Lucky Charms.

Leprechaun punch and hats (gold coins under hats)

Fruit rainbow

Graphing Lucky Charms

Today we had a visit from the Chick-Fil-A cow to go with our farm unit.  My students LOVED her!  Prior to her visit this morning, they wrote about what they would do if a cow came to our classroom.  Thanks to my creative student teacher for this idea!  I apologize for the pictures turned sideways...no help from blogger on rotating them.  They are vertical in my iPhoto.

"If a cow came into the classroom, rid (ride) on the cow."

"If a cow came into the classroom, I'd ressle (wrestle) it out."

"If a cow came into the classroom I wud (would) hid (hide) it in the cllosit (closet)."

Farm Frenzy

My students are very excited about our current farm theme.  Some pictures of our current activities (mostly during centers) are below.   The wooden barn was found at a party store about four years ago.  All other materials are from my TpT Farm packets.

Measuring with chicks

Sorting words by word family

Reading "Where is Pig?" emergent reader with a "pointer stick" (drink stirrer from Target Dollar Spot)

Number sequencing puzzle (counting by 10s)

Playing with our wooden barn and animals

TpT Newbie

I'm still pretty new at this blogging thing and have now decided to tackle Teachers Pay Teachers too.  The clip art out there is awesome; I can't keep it all to myself!  Thanks to Scrappin Doodles, DigiWeb, and My Cute Graphics for great clip art that my students love!  All the blogs out there with new and creative ideas, keep the ideas coming!  We are currently working on a Farm unit and will be going into a unit about Spring in a couple weeks.  My Farm packets (2 for reading and 1 for math) as well as a reading packet and a math packet for Spring are now in my TpT store.  A few preview pictures are below.  Photos my students using the materials to come as we use them in class.  You can visit by store by clicking here. 

sight word cards (Learning with Barnyard Friends)

Cover of Emergent Reader (Learning with Barnyard Friends)

Number fill in (Barnyard Math)

Number puzzle (Barnyard Math)

Base 10 Cards (Spring Into Math)

Word Family Sorting (Buggy About Reading)

Cover of Emergent Reader (Buggy About Reading)

Making Words with Spring Flowers

On my way home from school today, my car said it was 65 degrees, and I am thinking spring!  We'll just skip those 30 degree temperatures later this week.  Another great idea from the Kindergarten Conference I attended last month is this flower word building activity.  On the center of the flower (flower spinner purchased from the Target Dollar Spot; flower pot from the Dollar Tree) is the -og rime and on each petal is an onset.  Children spin the flower and read the word made by the petal that stops in front of the rime.  In the picture below, they would read "hog".

My students have not used this yet, but inquiring minds wanted to know what it was and "when can we play with it?".  I think it will be a hit!  I made a recording sheet for students to use this activity at our word work station. You can download it by clicking on the picture below.

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

Yesterday we had Dr. Seuss celebration.  I have never done anything big in terms of a Dr. Seuss unit, but this year, pinterest and all its great ideas changed that.  A few highlights are below.

Students were invited to dress up like their favorite characters.  We had a Green Eggs and Ham shirt, 2 Cat in the Hat characters, 2 Dr. Seuss hats and Cindy-Lou Who.  So cute!

Cat in the Hat snack

"Cat in the Hat" showing off his Cat in the Hat art.

Oh the Places They'll Go (hot air balloons)

Our Truffula forest

I think this is my favorite project! 

All of our ideas for these projects were found on Pinterest, but these pictures were of the projects completed in our classroom.