Recap of last week and Peek at my week 3!

Hey there!!!  So excited to have my fingers typing to fill you in with all the fun we had this first full week of Kinder!


The following pictures and details are from my week two plans!  Week one was only 2 days 🙂  You can click to view those below!

Up first… Daily 5!  This week we tackled our first week of Daily 5 by building our reading stamina!   We made our I-chart and practiced, modeled, talked, and repeated that each and every day!  I don’t mind the modeling part at all….it’s actually really fun ha!  I run over to get by book tub, knock a few on the floors, sit down and get up several times, read really loud, and shout, “DONE!”  The kids think it is beyond hilarious.  I like to remind them that even though that seems so silly I’ve seen kids do each of those things so we have to make sure we doing the right thing!  Each day we up-ed our stamina by 1-2 minutes!

To keep the kiddos engaged I started with 2 books in their tubs and rotated them each night before I left.  I then added a third book towards the end of the week to help conquer the “I’m done.”  Next week we will continue with read to self and add in work on writing…2 rounds of Daily 5!  Woohooo!
Here are some snapshots of us reading to self….

We are not quite at an independent level yet so we used my whole-group guided reading packet and I AM IN LOVE!  It’s easy to have a lot of favorites when you create, but this packet is so practical and why do I love it most???  These activities let students know right away that they ARE readers!  Nothing makes me happier then to see kids faces light up when they realize they can read!  I don’t like to wait until I introduce sight words, etc.  We jump right in with one to one tracking and reading predictable books! The kiddos are now building easy readers in the book tubs…books that they CAN read!

Here are some photos of our one to one tracking practice….

 The above mentioned activities can be found in THIS packet…

Our intervention block, Tiger Time, is where the kiddos switch classrooms to get the instruction to fit the level they are currently on. These groups are fluid and change quite a bit throughout the year!  We will start the switching of students in a few weeks…until then we work on not only literacy skills, but classroom necessities like scissors practice!
I’m sure you’ve noticed in your own classroom that scissor usage seems to be one of those you either got it or not skills!  I wanted to help support those that struggle with this skill be getting the class down on the floor on our first day with scissors.  Students are able to cut easier when their elbows are down.  For this introduction lesson we did a fringed “place mat.”  The students made small cuts around the paper.

We also worked on our coloring skills…

All of my beginning of the year skill {coloring, gluing, cutting} practice sheets can be found in this packet…

Before starting KinderPhonics we wanted to spend a week building upon the foundation of letter structure….strokes!  We get the kids up and moving and doing more then just paper/pencil practice!

Here we are on the first day practicing straight lines…I placed large butcher paper across my whiteboards.  The kids got to choose a marker and have their space to practice lines.

And the aftermath….

 Along with standing and modeling the stroke we also found a fun way to practice each stroke… On this day we practiced slants with paint bags!

We practiced circles with marker and butcher paper at our tables!

On Friday we had a “review” day of all strokes practicing on these handy-dandy stroke cards!  I have mine laminated so we can use our dry-erase markers!  These cards are a freebie and can be downloaded below!

Up next is our close read for the week!!!!  I stumbled upon Little Smudge before I started teaching and knew it would be a staple in my classroom every year!  Little Smudge is a great story to teach students what it feels like when you are different from others, but when you realize you have something amazing to offer them!  The kids are always stunned to hear the not so nice words the characters are shouting, but they are always very happy to see the happy ending!  I also pulled out a couple of oldies but goodies…A Children’s Book About Teasing and We are the Same We are Different!


We worked on our vocabulary for the book and mastered an “action” for each word.

Here I displayed our essential question for the week and our friend bubble map!

With Little Smudge we talked a lot about how we are different, yet we are all the same!  With this inspiration we made this adorable crayon box for our classroom door!

You can download the freebie crayon template below!

Okay how about some math tubs?!  So, I was a little ummm scared to introduce full rotations of math tubs this week…but like always the kids prove me WRONG and do great!  I wanted to make sure to provide fun, engaging, and meaningful for my centers!  I do have paper/pencil tasks for most of these math tubs but I have removed those for now so we can focus on the hands-on part!  I have 2 kids per tub and there is one complete “fun” exploration tub in the rotation which is teddy bears…a favorite of course!

This first week my focus was circulating the rooms making sure the students knew how to play the activity correctly and taking on some informal assessments.  I asked students to count out a certain number or to tell me how something was the same/different.  You’ll notice almost all of these activities require some degree of fine motor development…clothes pins are a must! 😉

Use clothes pin to place the correct number of apples in the tree…

 Use clothes pin to place the correct number seeds on the apple…
 Yep, get those pinchers pinching!

Having a little fun with cars while practicing number maths of movement…

 

The above mentioned math tubs can be found HERE.

Now for some shape fun….  Pattern block mats!  They are a freebie HERE!

Play dough shape fun! Find this freebie here!

These number sense sorts are from Oriental Trading!  They are a lot of fun too!

 More find motor practice with Dollar Tree finds!

And the fun exploration math tubs..teddy bears!

And lastly a few more pictures from our week!  We worked on Deanna Jump’s Chicka Boom trees!

And a couple of shots from calendar math!  Pattern of the month and our counting tape!

We are also building our number sense!  You can read all about being a number sense guru here!

And one last happening of the week……Well I had to switch out my chevron rug for a traditional “squared” rug!  We tried REALLY hard, but staying in our rows was really a challenge, it’s okay I’m going for practical over cute 😉  I drug this puppy up to school about 10:30 at night and it was SO worth it lol!!!

Alright…..here are my plans for next week!  I am also officially linking up with DeeDee Wills because I am making myself promise to keep these weekly plans up! Here’s to hoping!!!! 😀

Click below to download my plans for next week with “clickable” links!

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7 Comments

  4. Thanks for sharing your plans. I wish I had your schedule and be self-contained; that way we can spend so much more time with our own class. I had half of my class for 2 days last week and the other half for the other 2 days (staggered start). All 18 come on Wednesday into my very tiny room, and I am going to have to be on my toes. I have many boys who will push the limits and try my patience when doing Daily 5. I also have a student who does not understand English. I have my work cut out for me this year! We have a PD on Tuesday, too. Have a good week!

  5. Okay, I see teachers using clothespins with their students all over the internet…HOW do you keep the clothespins from falling apart? Do I just have cheap clothespins? Or is there a trick I don't know about?

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