10 Kid-Friendly Earth Day videos for your kindergarten or first grade classroom. Fun videos, songs, and books about Earth Day and how we can make the world a better place! Earth Day Videos Explore these 10 kid-friendly Earth Day videos! Through videos, read-alouds, and songs students will learn all about Earth Day. #1 Betsy’s Kindergarten…
Spring
Spring Poems | Poetry in the Classroom
Adding poetry to your daily routine is simple! Bring on Spring and add poetry in the classroom with these fun, spring poems! Your class will love to sing along with these shared readings. It’s officially Spring! We’ve had a couple of 60-degree days and I am SO HAPPY about it! I am sure it will…
Classroom Friendly Weather Videos
Classroom friendly weather videos. Videos, songs, and books to share with your kindergarten or 1st grade class during your study of weather. Classroom Friendly Weather Videos My students loved exploring and learning about all different types of weather. Since I lived in the midwest for a LONG time, we experienced quite a variety of weather….
City Dog, Country Frog Activity Ideas and more
City Dog Country Frog Activities and Mentor Text lesson ideas are here! Find reading comprehension and writing ideas to use with this amazing book by Mo Willems. City Dog, Country Frog Mentor Text I don’t remember the exact moment I fell in love with City Dog, Country Frog by Mo Willems. I think it was…
Are you ready for April?
April kindergarten activities and lesson plan ideas! This blog post is filled with Spring classroom ideas for read-aloud, spring literacy centers, spring math centers, and more! Plus a free lesson planning guide for you! April Book Activities We sure love books! Here are a few that we love to teach with in April. Tops and…
Sheila Rae the Brave Lesson Plans
Sheila Rae the Brave by Kevin Henkes is a beloved book in my classroom! Check out my Sheila Rae lesson plans! Close Reading/Comprehension Sheila Rae, the Brave is a great book to use for close reading. My students loved hearing it again and again! This is a book from the June Guiding Readers set, but…
Easter Bunny’s Assistant Lesson Plans (Free Download)
These Easter Bunny’s Assistant Lesson Plans are filled with reading comprehension ideas for kindergarten and first-grade. Reading Comprehension Lessons Do you love The Easter Bunny’s Assistant by Jan Thomas? We sure do. This is such a fun book for spring! After reading the book in our Guiding Readers units, we work on Cause and…
Tops and Bottoms Lesson Plans
Top and Bottoms Lesson Plans for Janet Stephens book are here! This is one of those CLASSIC reads. The illustrations are precious! and we love using this book in our Guiding Readers units. As with most weeks, we conduct a retelling of the text. You can find the retelling cards HERE. Video Here…
St Patrick’s Day Lesson Plans
St Patricks Day Lesson Plans for Kindergarten. We love the book, Jaime O’Rourke and the Big Potato by Tomie DePaola! st Patricks day lesson plans: St Patrick’s Day Reading Comprehension/Close Reading We spent the week working on this fun book by Tomie DePaola. It is a perfect book to get us in the mood for…
Insect Lesson Plans for Kindergarten
Insect lesson plans for kindergarten are here! Last week I was able to work with a kindergarten classroom as we immersed ourselves in all things insects! Insect Lesson Plans: Close Reading We started insect week by reading Insect Detectives by Steve Voake. This is a fantastic book! We spent our time contextualizing the vocabulary. …
Ocean Week Lesson Plans (AKA Shark Week)
Do you love ocean week as much as me? Here is a little ocean week AKA Shark WEEK flashback. This might be my favorite theme to teach all YEAR! I can’t get enough! Perhaps it is because I lived the majority of my life in San Diego or I first considered a career as a…
Tips for the BEST Kindergarten Round Up!
Kindergarten Round Up is always exciting for me. This is where we do our kindergarten screening assessment on our incoming students and learn more about them. I loved walking down the hall and looking at the fresh little faces that might make up my future class. Reconnecting with parents from previous years and meeting…
Getting Organized for April
April is right around the corner! Here are a few things that will help you get April off on the right foot. Before you know it, you’ll have mastered organizing the kindergarten classroom for April. Listening Station I get a lot of questions about my listening station. So here is a quick tour! I…
Looking Ahead to March! With a FREE file preview
Here are some March Kindergarten math and literacy stations! Kindergarten math centers are an essential part of our day. I love using math center to help reinforce and practice key skills. I updated this unit last year. In fact, I updated ALL of my Math Work Station files. Over the years, I have tried to…
Peek at my Week-Easter!!!!
We had a great week last week learning about oviparous animals. We jumped ahead to April’s Guiding Readers so we could read Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones. Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones (book) can be found HERE. Here is our schema chart. Then ALL… MONTH my little friends have been circling my book shelf. Asking,…
Peek at my Week-St. Pat’s Week!
We’ve got a holiday coming up! Here are some kindergarten St. Patrick’s Day resources! I just pulled into the homestead after a wonderful weekend in Indiana! It may have been a struggle for me to get there… but the struggle was worth it. Such a great teacher meet up! I will be brief and abbreviated…
Math and Art at the Same Time!
How do you fit it all in? How about multi-tasking? I saw this adorable cherry blossom tree on Hand and Footprint Arts & Crafts. Then I thought skip-counting? We do skip-counting!!! Wah-lah! A math station was born. First you will make (or have them make) a tree trunk. Then they will dip the end of…