Beginning of the Year in Kindergarten!

This was my post last year about this time.... not much has changed except I have 20 sweet Kinders this year!!!
Well my time this school year has definitely been spent having a great time getting to know my Kinders! I love Kindergarten! I started out teaching K and now I am hoping to stay with this grade until *****Retirement Time.*****

The best thing about Kindergarten is having 27 little darlings who absolutely LOVE their teacher. They hug me and tell me they love me constantly... even when I am asking them to move their color. The second best thing about Kindergarten is seeing students LEARN! You can actually see the progress day by day. How rewarding is that! Some people get their rewards making money, teachers get their rewards by knowing they are helping little people!

One thing we are doing every minute is Letter Recognition. This is a Standard:

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.1d Recognize and name all upper- and lowercase letters of the alphabet.

Having fun with Letter Recognition is what my students love to do best. We play games, we use flash cards, we do all kinds of things. One of the best ways I have found to help students with letter recognition AND know their color names are my "Letter Recognition Practice - 8 Mystery Pictures To Color!"

My students love doing these. At the beginning of the year I gave these out, but I had to color in each 'crayon' for them so they would begin recognizing their colors. Now that 2 months have gone by, (well almost 2) I printed these out again and they have to look at the color words to figure out the colors.

There are 8 different pictures in this set and by this time most students had completed about 6 of them at various times during the month. They are great when someone finishes up their work or as morning work. I kept all of the completed pictures in their folders and had them pick their best work to put up!

Thanks for reading my Blog! 

If you have any questions about anything posted, please just let me know. My email is pamjmmes@gmail.com.

The Mystery Pictures are in my TPT store. . I have two sets, one is the Letter Recognition pictured here and the other is Sight Word Practice. Both are fun for students and they really do LEARN while having fun!

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Sight-Word-Practice-Mystery-Pictures-to-Color-Centers-Activities-K-1031695

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Letter-Recognition-8-Mystery-Pictures-to-Color-1031156#show-price-update

Thanks for reading!

Math Puzzles - Scrambled Squares - 4.NBT.4

Drill and Practice! Oh how students groaned and moaned when they were handed a worksheet with problems to work out. They needed the practice though, Practice Makes Perfect! Right? I use Math Puzzles in my room and my students never, ever turn them down! They are aligned to the Common Core Standard that we are working on at the time. I can use them as an assessment or just as practice. I love color and cute, and these are both, but they are also a meaningful activity that incorporates some higher level thinking by having students think about the numbers and move the puzzle pieces around until they all fit together. 

First I took the regular Magic Squares that we have all used for years and “fixed” them up a bit. My Math Puzzles are designed for groups of 4, with each student getting a different Puzzle Sheet. No more having to cut the pieces out yourself and paper clip together for each student. Also, every 4 students will have a different puzzle and you will have the answer sheet for a quick check. This is how it works for me.

Math Puzzles 4.NBT.4 

In the picture you see a Teacher Answer Sheet #1 and a Scrambled Squares for Students # 1. The fonts match on the TA Sheet 1-4 and the Scrambled Student Sheet 1-4. I put the 4 TA sheets on a Clipboard to carry with me so I can monitor my students working out the problems.

Students working in journals using Math Puzzles 4.NBT.4

The picture above shows two different students' work. After cutting out their squares, they get to work. The math problems align with the common core standard 4.NBT.4. They are working the math problems out in their journals (showing their work.) I ask them to write the answers on the math puzzle pieces because it makes putting the puzzle together easier. 

Notice one Student pasted the I Can Statement at the top of her puzzle page. This is required and is included in the Math Puzzle 4.NBT.4 packet. ( I always include PAM somewhere in the  puzzle.) They love it!

This student went to another page where she had some extra room (to save her paper) and starting working her problems out. The journals are graded every 9 weeks and kept to show students growth.

You can see where this student has written her answers in with pencil.

The 4 different fonts keep the students from glancing over at what someone else is doing. All students have the same 31 problems that match 4.NBT.6 but they are scrambled up!

Some students work methodically. 

These are finished squares from 5th grade.

After finishing, I check their work by just looking at my 4 clipboard pages. Then they glue the squares and color. Some students never get to the coloring part because they might work slower than others. To differentiate by giving some students less problems to work with, just take off the bottom 4 squares from your Teacher Answer Sheet. When the student has cut all of his out, take those bottom pieces away. It gives the same practice but with fewer problems to do which would be helpful with some students who cannot process so many at one time.

Hope this helps with your classroom activities. Email me with any questions for comments! Next time I'll show of the work we are doing with task cards.

Veterans Day in Primary Grades!

Veterans Day was an all day event in  my class.  I took the time to talk about our military, to watch Discovery Education videos about our military, and to share some of my family experiences being a military 'brat.' I gave my students time to discuss and share with their shoulder buddies and also in front of the class. Most of my students knew about the military only from play and cartoons.

We wrote letters to my nephew, David Cody who has just joined the Army. I am so proud of him, but at the same time I am sad because I know what a sacrifice this will be for him as far as being away from family and friends.

With my students, they have to have some kind of connection before they can even begin to write. I was hoping our day of talking, watching, discussing, and sharing would prepare them for their afternoon writing activity.

I believe by coloring they are beginning the writing process. They are thinking about what they are doing and getting their thoughts together.

As they finished, I hung their work out for all to see.

Tuesday we started another activity and I took down their letters to my nephew, David Cody and got those ready to mail to him.

I thought they turned out great.

It is nice to see early learners beginning to understand a little about the world around them.

They made connections to our military which was different than just TV shows or cartoons.

They thought about a real person, my nephew, wanting to help his country.

Some just thought about fighting, but we talked about helping children all over the world.

If you would like my Veterans Day Writing Activity, https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Veterans-Day-Writing-Craftivity-for-Kindergarten-1560777. It's $3.00 on TPT, but can be used for many years to come. On the pictures there is a year, that has been taken off.  Please leave me some feedback and consider following my TPT store for new product notification!

This post was from last year's Christmas celebration! Missing Kinders, but First Grade has its own special times!
So nice to be able to say Merry Christmas! At times it seems this school year has flown by, but some days it seems forever.
We are having lots of fun. We made Gingerbread Houses, Gingerbread Retelling Houses, decorated Christmas Tree Cookies, Traveled Around the World, made a class Christmas Tree and today we will take a ride on the Polar Express wearing our PJs!

Our Gingerbread Houses. This year we used icing instead of glue for the sides. They each had 6 graham crackers and had to decide how to "glue" the house together to get the roof and sides to stay up. We had a dear volunteer and baker, Mrs. Deborah Houston, come with Gingerbread cookies! That was a huge surprise! Our prompt was to make a Gingerbread House sturdy enough so that the Gingerbread Man would live there forever and not get eaten.

We did some math with our buddies. We rolled the dice and took turns making one more than the dice. They loved this activity. Nothing to do with the holiday, but any time we can use manipulatives and their math kits, they love it!

We also made a Class Christmas Tree using triangles. One of our standards in math is K.G.6.

K.G.6. CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.K.G.B.6  

Compose simple shapes to form larger shapes. For example, "Can you join these two triangles with full sides touching to make a rectangle?"

We have to make larger shapes with small shapes. Usually we do this with our pattern blocks and puzzles. I made some decorated triangles and they had to put it together to make a tree! It took a long time after coloring the triangles to make a tree but they had fun and they persevered. Later I put a picture on the overhead of how to do this and it helped!

One of our classes has a child that doesn't celebrate Christmas so I made a woodland tree with birds and one with just 'cranberry' garland. I also added a trunk. I gave the buddies two triangles and together they had to figure out how to make a square tree trunk. We used one on the "skinny tree."

I packaged all this up and put it on TPT for others! It is a fun package that meets the standards and is also a little merry for your students. This is good for Pre-k (with more support,) Kindergarten and First Grade. A first grade class is  making this today so more pictures later!

If you are interested the link to grab the packet is: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Class-Triangle-Christmas-Tree-Geometry-Project-2916741

Thanks for visiting and Merry Christmas to you and yours!

Time For End of the Year Brochures! Make one for the classes coming in!

End of the year Brochures! I didn't get all my End of Year Memory Brochures finished so we can work on those.  The Memory Brochures were a big hit! I didn't think I was going to have time to use them with my students, but I did get a few minutes to have them work on them.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/End-Of-Year-Memory-Brochure-Graduating-5th-Graders-Make-For-4th-Graders-708762

5th Grade Teachers must have really made our students tow the line because most of the them mentioned 'do not make your teachers mad!' They also wrote to pay attention to your teacher... whatever she says listen! I did start making sure every student in my room was looking at me when I explained or talked to them. I would stop and just wait, pretty soon they all would put down their pencils and listen. If someone picked up a pencil in the middle of my explanation, I would stop again and wait for that person. In the beginning this took extra time, but after a week or so, they knew they had to stop and look and listen! Kindergarten stuff I know, but it is so important to reinforce this even in 5th grade!

I made sure all students had crayons and pencils. We did the graphic organizer first, then I let them finish up. The activity took about an hour and they enjoyed doing this because they felt like they were really helping out the 4th graders who would be in their place next year.

I didn't realize so many of my students liked the privileges appreciated the privileges of being able to walk to areas in the school with a buddy instead of the entire class. Most put this down as something you get to do!

5th Grade didn't get to go on a Field Trip because of budget concerns. The only place we went was to the Middle School. They all loved this! Well, we did go to First Tee every Monday for 5 weeks, but to a lot of my students this wasn't something 'fun.'

This one was cute.... NO chitchat! Good advice!

Star Base was awesome! We didn't go on a Field Trip, but StarBase came to us. I can't believe how much my students learned. Unfortunately this is not funded in NC for next year.

They really turned out sweet. I plan on giving these to my 5th grade class next year. If I had used them earlier I would have had my students present them to the 4th graders.

As they were making these I thought how bittersweet the end of each year is, then I got the news that we had one more day! I guess we will have to do all those good-byes and hugs and crying times again Monday!

Hope you enjoyed your End of Year or if you are still teaching (Year Rounders or homeschoolers) enjoy your days! They go by so fast! 

(Oh, you can pick this item up in my TPT store at this link: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/End-Of-Year-Memory-Brochure-Graduating-5th-Graders-Make-For-4th-Graders-708762 )

Graduating 8th Graders Make for 7th Grade Students
Graduating 7th Graders Make for 6th Grade Students
Graduating 6th Graders Make for 5th Grade Students
Graduating 5th Graders Make for 4th Graders
Graduating 4th Graders Make for 3rd Graders
Graduating 3rd Graders Make for 2nd Graders
Graduating 2nd Graders Make for 1st Graders
Graduating 1st Graders Make for Kindergarten Students
Graduating Kinders Make for new Kinders