Monday, January 20, 2014

Lesson planning Sunday (Monday) a GIVEAWAY and a FREEBIE!

Be honest, have you been in your PJ's all day?! I sure have!! ;) I finally got around to finishing my plans for this week... take a peek by clicking the link below!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_8jWcDxxuDGOEltZl9lV1gxR2c/edit?usp=sharing

This will give you full access to my small group as well as my weekly lesson plans... but here's a peek at just my week!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_8jWcDxxuDGOEltZl9lV1gxR2c/edit?usp=sharing

All of the activities we will be using this week are available in my MLK, Jr. pack! This is on SALE for only $4.00!!

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Martin-Luther-King-Jr-Differentiated-and-CCSS-aligned-1068776

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Martin-Luther-King-Jr-Differentiated-and-CCSS-aligned-1068776

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Martin-Luther-King-Jr-Differentiated-and-CCSS-aligned-1068776

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Martin-Luther-King-Jr-Differentiated-and-CCSS-aligned-1068776

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Martin-Luther-King-Jr-Differentiated-and-CCSS-aligned-1068776
 
I did separate my super adorable MLK, Jr. craftivity for those of you who would only like to purchase the craft!
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Martin-Luther-King-Jr-Craftivity-1067968
 
 
I also have just reached 40 followers on TpT!! I'm so excited to hit 50, I will be having a GIVEAWAY!! So, to celebrate my 40th follower milestone, I'd like to give a copy of my MLK, Jr. Unit away!! Just start following me on bloglovin'!
 
I also whipped up this little poem freebie for you! Do you use The Crayon Box that Talked this week? This story fits perfectly with MLK, Jr.'s message, and it's very easy for my K babies to make the correlation! This is an EXCLUSIVE Blog freebie, so just click below to head over to my Google Docs and snatch your free copy!
 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_8jWcDxxuDGSjdCb25SVFJ5RXc/edit?usp=sharing
 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_8jWcDxxuDGOEltZl9lV1gxR2c/edit?usp=sharing

Sunday, January 19, 2014

MLK, Jr. Craftivity GIVEAWAY!

If you're like me, you have tomorrow off! Do you make special plans on single days off like tomorrow? My plans include snuggling up to my little heartbreaker and finishing my new centers pack! (Photo props to our amazing photographer Days Gone By... Photography by Gretchen)


I have been trying to upload my MLK, Jr. Unit to TpT tonight to no avail! I was able to upload just my craftivity tonight-for anyone who'd like to purchase it separately.

 
 http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Martin-Luther-King-Jr-Craftivity-1067968

Because I'm having a little trouble uploading the whole unit tonight... I'm going to GIVE AWAY 3 copies of this craft to the FIRST THREE people to comment below and start following my blog! :)

Saturday, January 18, 2014

Our Penguin Palooza Week!

This week was by far one of my students' favorite weeks of Kindergarten! It is so rewarding and exciting to know that activities you have spent so hard to gather, plan, prepare, and implement have turned into special moments for your students! We started our week on Monday with our whole class KWL chart and student KWL recording sheets. We added to these throughout the week. 
 



On Monday, we read the non-fiction text below after beginning our KWL charts. We used this information along with our prior knowledge to create a Penguins tree map and write facts about our penguins!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1426304269/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1426304269&linkCode=as2&tag=seeg-20

We also introduced our new poem for the week! On Monday we read and discuss our poems. On Tuesday, we read our poem and the students get their own copy for their poetry notebooks, where they circle our W.O.W. words and illustrate the poem. We read our poem and complete a word sort with our poem on Wednesday. Thursday we have an emergent reader for the poem. Fridays we read our poem and complete a sound sort with our poem.


 
Tuesday we read the story Pierre the Penguin, based on the true story of Pierre!
 
This story captures the hearts of my students every year! The best part about the story is being able to watch Pierre and his friends LIVE online! My students were BEGGING to watch Pierre all the time! They especially loved when the biologists came in and fed the penguins.
 
We used various texts throughout the week to create story webs, analyze story elements, and label penguin parts!
 

 
 
We finished our week reading other fiction and non-fiction texts about penguins. We compared and contrasted the elements of both kinds of texts and what we learned about fiction and non-fiction penguins.
 
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-emperors-egg-martin-jenkins/1103166124?ean=9780763618711

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/one-cool-friend-toni-buzzeo/1103633845?ean=9780803734135

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/penguins-penguins-everywhere-bob-barner/1007836416?ean=9781452104072
 
 
On Friday, we created two penguin crafts. One was a "fiction" penguin, and the other was a "non-fiction" penguin, and we wrote about both of them!
 








 
 
 
 

 
 During writing this week, we worked on our sentence structure, as well as creating a non-fiction penguin report. I forgot to snap pictures of our completed reports, so I included an example of the report sheets.






As a quick assessment for my kiddos, I used this fiction and non-fiction cut and paste sort for my K kiddos. In my unit, there is a higher level comprehension passage and quiz for other grades :)




In Math, we continued our studies of subtraction from 0-5 using penguin story problems and counters! We also used stickers to solve subtraction story problems.



All of our resources this week can be found in my Penguin Palooza Unit!!

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Penguin-Palooza-a-common-core-fiction-and-non-fiction-unit-about-penguins-1058145

Sunday, January 12, 2014

Penguin Palooza and Lesson Plan Sunday!

This week is an exciting week in our Whoville. We are completing our very first Research Project! As part of our Penguin Palooza week, we will be researching and writing non-fiction research reports on penguins. To complete this we will use my unit, Penguin Palooza!

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Penguin-Palooza-a-common-core-fiction-and-non-fiction-unit-about-penguins-1058145
 
We will be reading one of my favorite penguin books, Pierre the Penguin by Jean Marzollo!
 
http://jeanmarzollo.com/books/pierrethepenguin.html
 
Aside from the fact that Pierre is an adorable little penguin, I love that this true story promotes our study of non-fiction, as well as problem/solution. I super love this website where you can watch Pierre and his friends! A biologist answers questions during the 10:30 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. feeding sessions!
 
We will be reading many other non-fiction and fiction texts this week, and we are going to finish Friday with teacher PD, so I will only see my kiddos 4 days this week. We have a lot to cram in, check out my plans for this week below :)
 
 

 
 
 
 I hope you have a wonderful Monday!

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Snowmen Studies!

Although this has been a short week so far (2 days! What?! Tomorrow's already FRIDAY!) we have had a blast reading the "Snowmen at Night" series of books by Caralyn Buehner. We started with the text Snowmen at Night.

http://www.amazon.com/Snowmen-Night-Storytown-Library-Grade/dp/0153524855
 
My kids just love all of the fabulous illustrations and the imaginative world of what snowmen do at night! We used my Snowmen Studies unit to create a tree map of snowmen, and compare and contrast the text to Snowmen at Work! This book really got their little wheels turning, imagining snowmen as dentists, construction workers, and teachers! We have also read Snowmen at Christmas and The Snowmen: Pop up book. These books are so valuable for using expression while reading, as well as for the use of adjectives! We have been working on adding adjectives to our writing to make it more interesting for the reader. I could not be prouder of this little guy's progress. When he came to me in the fall, he only new a few letters! Now, look at his writing! Even omitting the words "drives a", I am very impressed with his spelling of a "simi". How adorable is his snowman semi-truck driver?!

 
This is from one of my babies who is working on writing every sound in one word. I was impressed when he wrote ice cream!


 This little friend is working on writing a complete sentence. She wrote, "At night my snowman wac (race)"
 
This little's snowman picks flowers! :)




These two were hard at work labeling their snowmen during work with words today!

 
Both of these activities and more can be found in my Snowmen Studies unit!
 
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Snowmen-Unit-based-on-the-books-by-Caralyn-Buehner-1047244