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

Letterland and Kicking King!

Teaching Kindergarten has to be the best "job" anyone can have. I love it. Such sweet children and while it is the hardest grade to teach, it is the most rewarding. You can actually see the lightbulbs go off in their little heads as they learn.

Brunswick County chooses a class every month to do a short video during instruction time. This is my class with a letterland lesson. Now we go beyond the letters and teach other strategies and skills, but this is an engaging way to learn letters and sounds and how they all work together to make words!

You can go to www.Letterland.com to find information about the program. So much fun for all early learners!

Do you still do centers in your Kindergarten classroom?

I still call them Centers. I guess it is just stuck in my head. I know a lot of teachers call them rotations or stations. Some like them, some don't. I love centers! Centers keep my students moving and they are practicing what they have been taught. Centers free me up to work one on one or with small groups.

Centers also let students choose how they are going to complete their work. This is from a Daily Five, read to self rotation. I like the way he found a spot that he felt comfortable in. 

Sometimes an entire table is working on one center. This may not be their table, but I put the graphing on the RED table. I like the pencil boxes because all the tools students need for each center is in that box. (Please just overlook my messy room!)

This is from my American Symbols Unit on TPT. I have updated and added our new president, President Donald Trump!

This is from my American Symbols unit on TPT. We learn a lot about the USA and important symbols and why they are important.

Finally my Freebie! This is the 'at' family part of my CVC Word Work Collection. This freebie contains all the pages that have to do with the 'at' family. In the complete unit I have 27 Word Families represented and a little over 105 picture cards (I put some new ones up.) 

There are several reasons I like to make units like this... one is that they keep my students engaged and learning what I want them to learn. They are not boring. The main reason is selfish, I will not have to keep on telling my students what to do. I take the time with the first family to explain everything, and I help them fold and go over and over what to do. The next family I might have to go over a tad, but it is familiar to them. After that they are good to go and can do this all by themselves. What teacher doesn't like that!

Here are some videos that explain how to make the products included in this Unit. 

This video shows how to assemble the little 'hotdog' book.

This video shows how to make the Scrambled Letters book.

This video shows how students use the four square activity. My dear co-worker explains things so nicely! Her blog is Sugar~Spice & Everything Nice! Jodie's research projects are great. I use them all the time and I feel my students are learning more than just information about bears and all. They are using their brains to think! Try some of her freebies (you will be glad you did!)

THANKS! Hope these videos help! Pam

Merry Christmas!

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!

Kinders and Veterans Day!

We were out for Veterans Day so we had our lesson Thursday. My Kinders really did not know a lot about the military. I grew up in mostly military communities because my dad was in the Army. I was used to my friends's  fathers and  my own father being away... deployed. This was especially true during Vietnam. It was sad for us though during those days because you did not want people to call your dad names for fighting in Vietnam so mostly you kept your mouth shut unless you wanted a fight (verbal.) So to my dad and all of those Vets that fought in Vietnam, thank you from the bottom of my heart and I am sorry for what you had to go through when you came home.

That was sad. We knew that our fathers were doing their duty, but in the 60's many people blamed the soldiers. I am sure there wasn't a soldier over there that wouldn't love to be at home in the USA, but they were doing their job.

Anyway, my Kinders had a day love filled thoughts and wishes for all of our military. Some of my Kinders had connection to the military, and I let them share with each other.
My Kinders loved thinking about our Veterans and learning exactly what a Veteran is!

I had talked about the pledge many times since we say it every day. We went over the pledge and why we put our hands over our heart. My Kinders are used to the red dots under a word so we said the pledge word by word.

It is nice to have a kid-friendly poem for Kinders to read that is related to the theme. I used this book from Amazon: 

This was a great book for Text Features. I also showed my kinders the correct way to salute. Turns out I had that wrong, my dad would not have been happy!

After the book we made a bubble map of using the word veteran. My little kinders watch so many scary movies, many of them said that they protect us from zombies. I said, well those are not real, those movies are just to scare you. Fiction! We finally came up with some descriptions after going back into the book for Text Evidence!

I had printed out the soldier beforehand but having to lean over and write with a sinus headache I put some of the have's with the are's! This graphic organizer was great for our writing though.

After lunch we did our writing. I used my Veterans Day Writing packet because it involves drawing and coloring as well as writing. This year I am really focusing on the CC standards that say: with prompting and support. I was trying to get kinders to accomplish so much with out really giving them something to start with. We came up with a paragraph that all of us agreed on and I had them copy this on their paper. I did tell them they could come up with some of their own sentences if they wanted. I did stress the writing conventions and our writing rubric.

I love the way they are using their little pointer finger for spaces between words!

During our writing we had a surprise visit from a dad who is a veteran! A marine. I had told them about how marines never leave their buddies behind. It was nice that he came in and talked to us. He also showed us the correct way to salute! 

He was really good at using the anchor chart to explain what a soldier wears and then he talked a little about what a solder does. My boys were really interested in the weapons and tanks!

I was so proud of my Kinders for working so hard! And thank you to all the military and their families for the sacrifices they make daily.

This is my packet which includes graphics and a topper! I took off the year so it just says Veterans Day on the writing page!