I know...I'm a terrible blogger so far this year! I haven't *quite* gotten in the groove of teaching, mommying, and blogging again ;)
However, I do want to share a little of what went down in kindergarten last week. We did a VERY simple farm week. I had grand plans of my granddad bringing the tractor and lots of other big things, but it just didn't happen. I think the kids still learned a lot and had fun!
We started the week by reading some fun farm books. Then, we made a little chart of animals on the farm.

Then the kids sorted animals as to whether they live on a farm or not.

One of my favorite farm stories to read is The Cow Who Clucked. It is so cute and perfect for introducing onomatopoeia! We did a little problem/solution then thought of all the sound words we would hear on the farm.  

We learned all about different farm animals {I even learned a little bit myself!}. First up was cows...we worked together to make a big handprint cow, then did a little shared writing to tell all that we learned about cows. Then the kids make their own cow {thanks to Cara Carroll for the idea - soooo easy!].

We also learned about goats...did you know goats usually have twins?!? We made some little goats {nevermind that they look more like cows/horses}.

We also learned all about pigs. We loved making the handprint cow so much, that we made a handprint pig then did another shared writing activity to add the facts we learned. The kids made their own pig using the template from my 3 Little Pigs pack.

 To go along with pigs we painted with "mud" {aka chocolate pudding}. The kids loved this! Afterwards, we worked together to write a mud poem {I first got this idea from Victoria at KinderKorner}.

In math, we used "5 Little Ducks" to help us learn all about and decompose the number 5. I didn't get a ton of pictures because math is still a lot of management right now, but here's a little peek.

{While we worked with these mats, we were writing equations on our white boards}

{Starting with 5, we do a math stick each week. The beads this week represented the ducks. I LOVE these!!}

I also made up a few new literacy centers and my kids loved them! I can definitely tell this is a group that's going to like themed centers!

All these centers along with lots of graphic organizers and the animal sorting activity can be found in my farm mini pack. 
This week we're learning all about apples and we're having so much fun!!

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Vickie

Since there are sooooo many great Dr. Seuss books, we couldn't limit our fun to just one week! We've used more Seuss books this week to practice a variety of skills!
First, we read Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? and discuss onomatopoeia. The kids always love learning this word! After we charted the sound words, the kids wrote their own sentence using onomatopoeia as well as quotation marks {great time to throw in a mini-lesson!}.

You can get the writing page here as a freebie!

We also read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish and of course, did a little goldfish graphing. This activity is part of my Crazy Cat pack on TpT. 

One of my favorite Dr. Seuss books is one of his most simple, but I remember reading it as a child. In a People House is a great book to review labeling! We read it, then made our own houses with things we have in our houses.

In science, we used If I Ran the Zoo to kick off our study of zoo animals. We read the story, then charted zoo animals. We also took each day to learn about a different zoo animal {I let the kids vote on the ones we learned about}. We made an informational book about zoo animals {which we got a little behind on since I had to be out this week}, made a class organizer, and made a cute craft. The crafts can be found in Deanna Jump's zoo pack on TpT. You can get the zoo book here as a freebie! :) {The book only includes the animals my class voted to learn about, but it includes a blank page you could use for others}

Along with learning about real elephants, we also read Horton Hears A Who. We charted Horton's charactersitics along with evidence from the story that helped proved them. Then, we made our own Horton's with our writing of how we could be more like Horton. They turned out to be so cute! {Can you tell we like to be the best??}

Whew! What a week! Be sure to check back this weekend...there might be some bright ideas floating around!

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Vickie