Last week, we celebrated Fire Safety Week. Most of what we did is a repeat of years before {which you can read about here}, but I did one new comparing activity that I really liked. My kids this year are having a little trouble with reading comprehension and recalling things from a story/book, so we have to have lots of "prompting and support." We've been working really hard on comparing, so we used the book Fire, Fire! by Gail Gibbons to help us with some of these skills {if you don't have any of her informational books, they're awesome!!}.

After reading the story two days last week, I gave each student a bag with small, colored strips. These strips had details from the story and we put them on our organizer as to whether they were about firefighters in the city, country, or both. I had larger strips in the same color to put on a large chart. We had to go back to the text A LOT, but it was a great learning opportunity to always go back to the text and check.

Having the strips really worked well, because right now my students still struggle with remembering details from a book and definitely need a lot of the prompting and support that is part of our standards. Having the strips be different colors works well since the text is a little too hard for my students to read right now. I could just tell them which color to find instead of saying, "Find the strip that says ____."
You can get this activity FREE by clicking here.
Happy Monday everyone!

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Vickie

I'm sure I'm preachin' to the choir when I say that life is cah-ra-zeeeeee!!! It seems like last year it was much easier for me to blog two or three times a week and this week I'm doing good to get one post written! I'm going to cut myself a *little* slack since I am having to learn how to use a new reading series and I have a little one is about to turn 1 {can you hear my crying!!}! I've been just a little pre-occupied with making her Halloween costume and figuring out her first birthday party. For what it's worth, here's what we did last week:
We learned all about firefighters and made these little guys to hold our tree maps.

We used firefighters to help us with our math {compliments of Deeanna}. We used our math stick to decompose the number 7, sang a song about 7 brave firemen to practice taking 1 away, and used manipulatives that firemen on one side and fire dogs on the other to decompose 7.

I often get asked how we have our kids doing these activities so early in the year. It's not easy to start, but since we start from the very start, by now, it's a breeze. The key is to model, model, model and do it TOGETHER! We always sit in circle around the rug and the kids have clipboards while we do the activities {except for the Firemen Drop - we modeled together then they went to their seat to do it independently}. This makes it easy for me to monitor who is getting it and who needs help. Here we are in action...

We also made our hexagon craft that we didn't get to the week before.

We also learned about the -at word family and made these cutie Halloween cats to hold our -at words.

This week we're learning all about Columbus and spiders. I didn't have exactly what I wanted for workshops {literacy centers}, so I made some spider themed ones this weekend to go along with what we're working on.
Matching uppercase and lowercase letters...

Stretching CVC words {I am determined to get some sensory in somehow, so I put our picture cards in pumpkin scented rice ;)}

Matching pictures to word families...this was for my higher groups and it was definitely a challenge, so we'll be working on it a while

Sorting nouns and verbs {they loved that they were able to use the words noun and verb correctly!}

Rolling sight words

And clipping beginning sounds

All of the centers above can be found in my new Spidery Centers pack on TpT.

We have a jam packed week ahead with homecoming dress up days, early release, and a trip to the pumpkin patch, so I'm not making any promised about when I'll blog again this week ;)

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Vickie

We had lots of fun this week learning about firefighters and fire safety! Most of the activities we did came from Deeanna's fire safety pack that you can grab here for only $3!!



We decomposed the number 7 by using firemen on a fire truck and Deeanna's 7 Brave Firemen song

This was our recording sheet

We made a tree map about firefighters together

The students made their own {the kids do their's as we are doing the group one}

We made these cute firemen to hold our tree maps

We did a fuzzy stick with beads to represent firemen to decompose 7 even more. These sticks are such a good tool for decomposing and most of the kids are really catching on!

We used the song 7 Brave Firemen again.

 

Next week, we're on to spiders, so hopefully I'll have some things to share this weekend.

One last picture just to show how sweet my school is. This is my kindergarten group (minus a few) yesterday at a baby shower they gave me to welcome Ellie Grace. It was so much fun and everything was so nice. I work with a great team :)

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Vickie

This week, we have been learning all about Chistopher Columbus, which isn't the easiest person for kindergarten kiddos to learn about, but the kids have done a great job!

We watched a video on United Streaming then read a short biography and completed a circle map together

Student version of the circle map...you can get it here.

We attached our circle maps to these super cute Columbus crafts...thanks Kim Adsit!

The kids loved these!!

We made Columbus' three ships with our handprints and labeled them. This idea came from pinterest, but I cannot find where the original idea came from. Anyone know?

We practiced our sight word the and stretched the word had {ignore the sail at the bottom...it fell off of another}

We've also been celebrating fire safety week and using firemen to help us learn about the number 7.

We practiced adding one more until we had 7 firemen on our ten frame

We sang Deeanna's Brave Firemen song to work on decomposing. You can see the song in her fire safety pack here.

Making equations

This also came from Deeanna's pack (she used paint instead of paper). It helped us practice our counting. 

 

 

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Vickie