Shark Activities for Kindergarten and First Grade. Check out the book ideas for reader's workshop and writers workshop. You can find a free file towards the end of this blog post too! Shark Activities Mentor Texts Surprising Sharks by Nicola Davies Surprising Sharks by Nicola Davies is such a great book! This book contains a ton information about sharks! I love the illustrations and so will your class! We ...
Math
Kindergarten Math Groups Made Easy PLUS a FREE file!!!
Kindergarten Math Groups Made Easy and a FREE file? You got it! In this blog post, you will read how I organize my math groups, assess, differentiate, and teach students with hands-on math activities that are sure to engage your kindergarten classroom. NOTE: This blog post contains affiliate links but the opinions are my own. Why do we incorporate kindergarten small group math? Why do we incorporate kindergarten ...
12 Math Center Activities That Will Engage Your Class ALL Year! (Free File)
Kindergarten Math Center Activities and a freebie file too! These ideas will engage your class all year long. Why do math centers? Why do we even do math centers? First of all... they are fun! The bonus is the learning and practice that takes place. We, as teachers, also need moments in the day when students work independently so we can work with small groups. Let me show you 12 kindergarten math center activities ...
Independent Student Centers made SIMPLE! (Free file)
Independent kindergarten center games can be easy! Let me show you how! The Secret Sauce! As you probably know, I am a HUGE fan of building student independence! We have important work to do in our small groups... right? So we need center activities that students can do independently. My secret ingredient for success has been using predictable activities. Games are the "secret sauce: of student engagement! This math ...
Comparing Numbers Throughout the Day
Comparing numbers in whole group math, small group math, math journals, and math stations...feeling overwhelmed? Hopefully, this post will help you see how I fit it all in. You can view a daily schedule HERE. Let's start with the different components. Whole Group Math (SIDENOTE: I have been asked about my spiral binding machine. You can see it HERE (Affiliate link). Whole group math is the time of day ...
Math Work Stations Throwback! (Tons of FREE Goodies)
Here is a Math Work Stations Throwback for a book study I completed with some blogging friends back in 2011! It is crazy to think that it has been close to 6 years. The other day, as I was looking at some of my old blog posts, I decided to update a few of them... okay... I updated ALL of the posts in this book study. I also updated a bunch of the free files, so you can download them through the post links I will ...
Building Math Fluency with Games (Free File)
I love playing games so creating math fluency games was a no-brainer for my classroom. So what is math fluency? I used to think math fluency was memorization. Insert mental image of endless flashcards with drill and kill type activities. Yes, we want students to have fact recall, but it is more than just that. Now I know I want to teach for automaticity. What does that mean? It means I want students ...
Use Wooden Blocks to Teach Number Sense!
Use wooden blocks to build number sense! Looking for a way to incorporate open-ended and fun activities while also building your students' number sense? Solution found! I want to introduce you to SumBlox! I had actually heard about this company about 3+ years ago. A parent had mentioned seeing these at a conference and said how much she loved them. At the time, they were still in ...
Secrets to Instant Planning… Just PRINT and TEACH
Here are a few things we know about teachers. 1. They want the absolute BEST for their students. 2. They want to employ "Best Practices" in their classrooms. 3. They. Are. Overwhelmed! 4. Occasionally, they want to go home before 5 pm after school AND they would like to spend their weekends with their families instead of planning. Does that sound like you? We have heard from teachers all over the world who ...
Starting Kindergarten Math Journals… It’s EASY!!!!
Starting kindergarten math journals can be EASY! Let me give you a peek at to how I introduce math journals to my kindergarteners! Setting up your journals If you are like me, you have a few journals going in your classroom. I usually have 3: Math Journals Poetry Notebooks Thinking (or Learning Journal) I used to be that crazy woman you saw sitting on the floor of WalMart around mid-August. I was desperate to find 3 different sets ...
Hello from a First Grade Classroom!
Last year I was presenting at the New Jersey Kindergarten Association. I had the privilege of meeting Mr. Chappelear at that conference. Tim is a first grade teacher (and he became my tech support for the day he was designated volunteer). I could not have been more thrilled than when I received this hello from first-grade email from him last week. With Tim's permission, I would like to share his words. (I have linked images with ...
It’s my Birthday… how about a little FREE file?
It's my birthday so it is time for me to celebrate with you! Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. ~Samuel Ullman Remember how excited you are when you turn 5 years old. You should be 10 times that excited. Happy 50th birthday!-Unknown Well, I am sort of excited about this big day! So I made a little gift from me to ...
Hands On Math! Linky!
I love academic rigor... I really do! So when it comes to math, there is nothing like hands on math learning! The other day I was listening to Adam Pederson's vlog at www.TeachersLearn2.com . I just met Adam for the first time in Chicago this year and I loved how down to earth he is. No showboating... just a teacher who loves teaching!I always enjoy his vlog's but this particular one stood out for me. I loved what he had to ...
My Favorite Things: Math Work Stations with a free file
I am going to share a few of my favorite kindergarten math center ideas. I hope these math work station ideas work for your classroom too! Why do math stations? Math stations or centers are an opportunity for students to practice and apply math skills independently. These are activities we want them to over-learn. This provides an opportunity for the teacher to observe while conducting formative assessments on ...
Valentine’s Day Lesson Plans ~ Peek at my Week
Happy Valentine's Day WEEK! What a great week to focus on LOVE! I think this might be my classroom's favorite poem! Perhaps because it is downright silly! You can find all of my original poems HERE. You can find the recorded music that goes with them HERE. You can read the original blog post about this image and how I use it for early finishers by clicking HERE. These Read, Trace, Glue, and Draw activities are what we typically ...
Pictures from YOU!
It has been fun to view the pictures from you this week! I started the week in Seattle! I was able to spend two whole days with teachers who were passionate about children! Perfect! Then I flew to San Diego to spend a few days with my besties from high school. There were five of us who moved through high school together. Where one went, the other 4 would follow. Sadly, one of the our crew had passed away and we gathered ...
Games for Kindergarten
Games for kindergarten! As you know, I love to include games in my daily instruction and share my downloadable kindergarten learning games. Math and Literacy Games for Kindergarten A while back I created resources to go with the Differentiated Instruction Cubes and my class pretty much flipped over them. In this activity, the students roll both dice and create an equation! Then they solve it! Someone asked me if I would go ...
Best Math & Literacy Activities of the Year
Thank you for another fantastic year! I have been seeing so many "Best of" segments in magazines and on T.V. that I decided to host my own "Best of" where I will highlight some of the best math and literacy activities EVER (or at least over the last year). Math Work Stations These highly engaging activities keep the learning going all year long. You can find one for just about every theme under the sun. Click ...
Math Tool Kits (FREE download)
Are you looking for ways to organize your math resources? Have you tried Math Tool Kits? Why math tool kits? One question that came up was how I organized my math units. So I am bringing back an old post to share the Math Tool Kits that I use in my math workshop. I have said this before... I am NOT organized by nature. I am a stacker and shuffler. I make stacks starting in August and I shuffle them until May... ...
What Worked Last Year? Save My Ink
Sometimes... you JUST need easy...kindergarten no prep worksheets! There! I said it! I love the little tan girl next to the crab...ha! Each month contains literacy and math activities. I am not a huge fan of using worksheets in my classroom as these tend to be the lowest level learning, but sometimes I do use them. Periodically I use them as morning work or a quick formative assessment. ...
What Worked Last Year? Just Roll With it (FREE FILE Included)
Last year I sort of fell in love with these kindergarten differentiation cube activities (and my class did too!). We started the year off slowly. Simply roll and trace. Because I made these files editable, I could select any 6 letters I wanted the students to focus on and print them on the response page. We also had numeracy activities as well! Let us not forget sight words! I loved being able to look at my data ...
What Worked Last Year? Part 2 GAMES!
Games can put the brain in a positive state, lessen stress, and memory for content is increased. Check out these printable kindergarten educational games! ABC, CVC, and sight words too! Research and Games! Marcia Tate states in her book, Worksheets Don't Grow Dendrites the following when it comes to games: They put the brain in a positive state. When students are engrossed in game playing, the stress is lessened and memory for ...
What worked last year? Part 1: Math Journals
My students loved their journals last year AND we had a few! Using different colored duct tape help my students quickly find the journal they needed. Math journals literally took just minutes each day. You can find this visual classroom timer HERE. This is how journaling time goes in my room: I say, "Friends, take out your math journals." I had a piece of duct tape (green) along the spine of their math journals, so they could ...
Building Skills: Our Calendar Time
I have been asked how we do our calendar and what skills we cover. It is a VERY quick part of our day. I decided to video tape today's session... It takes a total of 5-6 minutes each morning. It did not occur to me to tape it until we had already started, so you missed about the first minute of the lesson(sorry, in my next life I will be better.) Here is how it works. My "Leader of the Day" leads the class with the ...