Syllable Picnic

I originally learned of syllable picnic from Kelly Thompson at her Phonemic Awareness workshop. She has soooo many great ideas! But I threw my own little twist into it. I looked & looked for a picnic basket & my sister-in-law had the perfect one she was kind enough to give me. My kids love this center & it is never forgotten for long!

There are three plates inside the basket. I used clip art & word art to create plate 1-3 with corresponding ant numbers. 

The kids simply clap & count syllables & place the food on the corresponding plate. This is also great practice for one to one correspondence & number recognition.  

Daily 5 Centers

The girl is practicing handwriting & the boy is acting out Eric Carle's From Head to Toe. They have a lot of fun doing this! :) 

A Few AWESOME garage sale finds

Okay so someone posted a garage sale on the local Buy Sale Trade Group....I drooled for at least over the pictures of some of the things!!! I was actually able to make it to the garage sale...and the goodies I wanted were still THERE!!! I got this awesome shelf- perfect for storing Daily 5 centers in an organized way. The awesome colors are just a bonus!

At a separate garage sale I found this little contraption! It is actually a candle holder! But at first glance, I knew I had finally found the home for my puppets! It works great & was only $3!!! 

Cute cute cute! 

Here are some of our math centers...we are still working on keeping these neat. 

Here was the motherload!!!!!!! This awesome Lakeshore Sight Word rug was originally priced at $175 and promised to someone at the end of the day for that price if it didn't sell.......Late that afternoon I found out it did not sell & I got it for a whopping $100!!!!!!!! Which is a lot for a teacher but this rug is in MINT condition & NO LONGER SOLD!!!!!!! I am absolutely in love! Can you picture all the games we can make out of this?????? It is much bigger than the rug I had here so we are not nearly as cramped. :) 

Here is one group about to use it for jumping w/ their dice math center. :)  

More Classroom Pics and Homecoming

Daily 5 Wall

Various Daily 4 Materials- Word Detectives, ABC Noodle Books, ABC Geobards, Pokey Penmanship, Dry Erase handwriting books, etc...

College Bulletin Board in the hall- coordinates with Accelerated Reader program.

My door sign. :) 

Welcome sign outside my door. I love it! Found it online. :)

Little sweeties w/ mums we made. :)  

5 Minute Mums :) Sweet little girls! :)

Mr. Handsome leading us through our counting this morning. He was all spiffed up for homecoming.

My kids & I  Homecoming 2012 Don't they look nice?!

Come Learn With Us

Here are few pictures (from different days) of our day! Enjoy!

Measuring with linking cubes in Science

 

Measuring using rulers and tape measures in Science

More measurement using linking cubes

Measuring using inchworms

Measuring using a tape measure to measure a ruler. Love these kids! :)

Sweet smiles!

 

Word Work---dotting letters with stamp markers- they love this!

The font is Janda Polka dot- I downloaded it from Dafont.com and then used it in word with word art to make it hollow. :) I also use this font for Pokey Penmanship---they use a thumbtack to poke holes in the letters to learn the shape of them.

Geoboard ABCs you can print the cards here: http://makinglearningfun.com/GeoboardLetterCards.html

Work on Writing

The opposite side of the chalkboard easel is a dry erase board. They are so smart- when practicing writing their ABCs they go back & forth & check each other. Excellent cooperative learning! :)

Work on Writing- Word Detectives- they use a clipboard w/ handwriting paper & wear their detective glasses & walk around the room writing words they see.

More Geoboard ABCs 

Listen to Reading-Leapfrog Tags- they love these. We only have 4 and they are ALWAYS in use!

Homework & Behavior notebooks we take home daily.

Each student's notebook has a title page. Boys are black & white zebra print. Girls are pink leopard print.

This is the note home explaing our behavior chart, classroom rules & expectations. Parents sign & return a separate copy. This one is kept in the notebook for future reference. Aside from a few tweaks, this came from KinderGals.

 

This is their weekly behavior chart. I simply circle the animal they ended up on each day. Parents are asked to initial it each day so that I KNOW they saw the animal their child ended the day on.

Each notebook alsos contains 3 study pages. The first is an alphabet chart & hundreds board.

Then, days of the week & months of the year.

Third, colors & shapes.

This year our school is implementing a Tuesday folder. Folders go home on Tuesdays with important papers to be returned & papers to keep at home. Parents are asked to sign the back of the folder & date it. Students who return Wednesday with a signed folder receive a token for our PBIS store. I think it is a great idea! :)

Here is what it looks like inside:

This is the kindergarten newsletter. Our school is also implementing a newsletter. Each Tuesday, grade newsletters go out in the folders. Here is our Kindergarten Longhorn newsletter. It was fun to make! Unfortunately, the printer would NOT cooperate with my borders!!! Any suggestions?

This is our handwriting journal. We do this each day after we learn a new letter in SFA. Students color uppercase letters blue & lowercase letters red. Then they trace & write. So much better than giving them a blank sheet of paper where they feel like there is no end in sight. I downloaded this from TPT here: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Handwriting-Galore

It is free! Be sure to check out her Numbers Galore also! We use this for our number of the day DAILY in math. Such a lifesaver! :)

We bound these little books before school started. It is so awesome. I can put this under the document camera & the kids just go get them & get started!!! Love it!

More word work- each side contains letters of the alphabet- one side is lowercase, the other is uppercase. They are simply ordering the letters. :) But they love it because they are with someone else.

Word work- just sorting upper & lowercase letters into pockets. They love this one too! :)