Kindergarten October Activity Guide is here! October is such a fun (but busy) month. I thought I would round up resources to help you make the most of your month! Books to read in October (affiliate links) Pumpkin Circle by George Levenson We can then complete the Pumpkin Lifecycle activity. Pumpkin Jack by Will Hubbell. Stellaluna by Janell Cannon We love this fun craft from our Guiding Readers ...
Fall
Using Mentor Texts in Kindergarten
Kindergarten Mentor Texts to teach reading and writing with Cynthia Rylant's Scarecrow book (affiliate link)... you bet! This last week I had the pleasure of visiting a kindergarten classroom. She had already started the book, Scarecrow by Cynthia Rylant for her Guiding Readers/Close Read, so when she asked me to do a lesson on word choice... I could not contain my excitement. This book is PERFECT for word choice (among other ...
The Life Cycle of Apples Lesson Ideas (FREE file)
Apple Life Cycle Lesson Plan Ideas are here! Learning about apples in kindergarten is a tradition. This informational book about apples is packed with apple facts. See how we integrate reading, writing, science, and math! Free File included are here! A September tradition in many kindergarten classrooms is a thorough exploration of apples! I would like to recommend this book for you to use to lead the study. How Do ...
Scaredy Squirrel Lesson Plans
Scaredy Squirrel Lesson Plans! This hilarious book by Melanie Watt is featured in this week's plans. Close Reading We love this sweet character. Honestly, sometimes I recognize myself with some of the things he worries about (ha) *affiliate Readers ask questions in the beginning, middle, and end of the text. Here is what we came up with! Students also worked on identify the character and setting. This is a cute craft ...
Scarecrow Lesson Plans
Scarecrows are some of my favorite fall friends! So this week I have rounded up some ideas for your lesson plans! This little scarecrow is part of the sentence study from our Guiding Readers: Close Read units. After reading the book Scarecrow by Cynthia Rylant , we worked on this craft and sentence. Responding to Literature Here are some of the response sheets we worked on. Recalling Key Details from the Text This is one of my ...
Creepy Carrots Lesson Plans
Creepy carrot lesson plans for the week are here! See how we use this book for a close reading lesson plan. We love the book Creepy Carrots! by Aaron Reynolds (*affiliate link). Creepy Carrots Close Read During our close reading, we can dig in deep! We like to read and reread a text so we can uncover text nuances that might be missed if you just read the text one time. We look at the cause and effect of the actions of our ...
Exploring Pumpkins Lesson Plans
Exploring Pumpkin Life Cycles in Kindergarten! Science, math, literacy, and fine motor skills are included in this week's lesson plans. Pumpkin Life Cycles We start by reading some of my favorite books about pumpkins! (affiliate) Seed, Sprout, Pumpkin Pie! From Seed to Pumpkin The Biggest Pumpkin Ever! The Pumpkin Book Pumpkin Jack Pumpkin Circle But the book we look closely at for this set of lesson plans is ...
Bat Lesson Plans for Kindergarten
Bat Lesson Plans! We love the book Stellaluna by Janelle Cannon! Reading and Writing These photos came from a sweet teacher. We love seeing our units being used in other classrooms. These are from the Stellaluna lesson in our October Guiding Readers! The lessons start with predictions! For students who do not have letter/sound association yet, they can make their predictions with illustrations. But we move onto ...
Lesson Plans for Your Apple Week
Are you ready for another week of apple fun! Here are some lesson plans that will make your apple week the best one yet! This is a fun math fluency game that is great for any time of the year. It addresses subitizing, numeral recognition, reading number words, counting, addition and subtraction. The best part is that it is totally differentiated. So you can pick the skills your students need to practice the most. ...
The BEST Kindergarten Schedule ~ Fitting it all in!
Here it is! That moment when you look at all of your ideas and try to figure out HOW to fit it all in! Here are my tips for the BEST kindergarten schedule! This post will be an overview of our day... If I went into great detail in this post... whew... it would read like a novel. I do plan on follow up posts that will address these topics in detail: How I manage stations (Click HERE to view) How to introduce ...
Thanksgiving Week Lesson Plans: Peek at my week
Kindergarten Thanksgiving Activities are HERE! Thanksgiving week is historically a short school week. (Raise your hand if you are grateful). We will have a week in pictorial review vs my typical Peek at my Week. We have always enjoyed these turkey glyphs. And these WANTED (turkey in disguise) papers. This turkey is disguised as a present! I love the book Turkey Trouble by Wendi Silvano and my class does ...
Halloween Lesson Plans ~ Peek at my Week
Halloween week in kindergarten is not for the weak! It is like grabbing the reins of a speeding horse. You think you are in charge... but you are not! Ha! But it is also so much fun. Here are few fun ideas for this week that you can still use even if you are not able to celebrate Halloween in your school. Souce: One Little Project I have loved Deep Space Sparkle for a long, LONG time! These make my heart so ...
Math and Literacy Stations for Kindergarten: Black Ink Only!
November Kindergarten Math and Literacy Stations Check out these printable centers which are perfect for you to print out (no color ink required) for your students! There are 14 math and literacy centers that will be perfect for kindergarten!I like to make the activities predictable so teachers have time to work with individual students or with their small groups. Nobody has time to explain each station. The "I Can" cards raise ...
Math and Literacy for November
Here are my kindergarten Math and Literacy Stations for November! 8 Literacy Stations Students will listen for the ending sound and complete the response page. This activity focuses on the beginning sounds. This is an odd-man-out activity for beginning sounds. Letter writing activity too! This is a sentence writing station. Students match the sentences to the pictures then write the sentence. There are ...
Halloween Free Items, Target Finds, and Printer Woes
Ugh Printer Issues! Don't they drive you crazy? My printers get a work out. I have used HP for a while, but the last one I got was on double-mark-down-discount (I think they paid me to buy it) and it showed. It was slow as molasses in December! It was ink efficient, but I go slap-crazy when I stare at my printer waiting... and waiting... and waiting. Today Amazon brought me this baby! [pause for ohhs and ahhs]. UPDATE: This printer ...
Peek at my Week: Apples Week (free goodies included)
Apple Week is always a lot of fun. Here is a peek at my week that is filled with fun apple themed activities. Apple Themed Literacy Centers Here are some of my apple themed resources. If you click on the images, it will take you to the source. In this activity, students will identify the letter attributes. This is fun alphabet matching puzzle. Each letter is included, but you would probably want to limit the letters ...
Black Ink Only Activities for Kindergarten
I was asked if I would develop some stations that would be printer friendly. I have heard from many of you that your schools only have black ink and I know there are times when the personal budget does not allow for oodles of color ink. {Side note: I have an HP8600 and it is super kind on ink.} So about a million years ago, I started working on these stations. I was asked if they were the same as my color version of Math and Literacy ...
So Thankful! Free download
Here's a kindergarten free Thanksgiving activity for you to download! So I seriously LOVED Indiana this week. I am sitting here at the airport thinking of all of lovely people I met. I know teachers come to conferences to learn something new, while that may happen, I have to tell you that I always walk away learning something from them. I am so THANKFUL! I was able to catch up with some long time friends and meet some of my cyber friends ...
Peek at my Week-FALL!
Fall has arrived! These kindergarten fall activities are perfect for this time of year! I added more writing page options to my writing station. I don't like to put the entire month's worth of pages out at once. I want to keep the engagement high, so I am constantly adding new things. You can find this station writing work station HERE. Our poem is ready! You can find all of November's poems here. Here is our focus wall for next ...
Peek at my Week-Pumpkins
The beginning of the month can be a little hectic! Here are a few kindergarten autumn resources to help you through it! We are ready! I switched out our writing station. You can find November's Writing Work Station HERE. Our poem is ready! Click on the poem to find November's Poems and Shared Reading And as you can see from our Focus Wall... we are learning about pumpkins this week. I fell in love with ...
Peek at my Week-Spiders with a limited time free file
This week (and part of next week) we will be learning about spiders with these kindergarten spider lesson plans. Here are a few videos I have found. Brain Pop also has a spider video if you subscribe to that service. Our poem is ready! I also want to focus on sight words this week in our "Roll with it" station. I have taken the "trace" papers out of these stations and will have the students work on "writing" ...
Peek at my Week-Apples
We had a great time completing our farm book last week, but it put us a little behind when it came to learning about apples. This week, we'll be using these kindergarten apple lesson plans! That horse picture makes me happy! So this week we will REALLY start to learn about apples! They loved learning this poem last week, so we will keep it another week. My "early finishers" will practice putting the apples in the pie and ...
ARRR You ready for some treasure?
Ahoy, me Hearties! Today is 'International Talk Like a Pirate Day'! Here are some cute kindergarten pirate activities that might float your ship! Source: Melissa and Doug Source: I Heart Crafty Things Source: Housewife eclectic To celebrate, I have joined with some friends to give you the chance to find lots of pirate booty! Each blog will have some different treasure for you ...
Fire Safety and a Free Emergent Reader
Fire safety week is right around the corner. We have our fire trucks scheduled to come to our school next week. We also invite the police and ambulance and make it a community helper day! Books to Read I love Miss Mango and so does my class! You can find it on Amazon (Affiliate link). . This is a great book if you have students a little apprehensive about fire drills! You can find it here (Affiliate link). Videos Here are a ...