Class Books- All About Fall!

Class books are my absolute favorite! These books are always the hot ticket item in our classroom library. Students love reading their own work and I love seeing how proud each student is of his/her own work. We spend several days completing all the activities, which helps reinforce the skill we are working on. We have just completed our second class book and I wanted to share what a wonderful job these kiddos did.

The first day we brainstorm together and make a chart. students come up with what they want their page to say and I write it on the chart. We use this chart for several days to practice reading our sentences. 

Next I give students an envelope with their name on it. In their envelope they will find all the words that make up their own sentence. It is their job to put the sentence in order and read it to me. This really helps students recognize the difference between a letter/word/sentence. Once they have their words in order they glue them onto construction paper. 

The next day we work on our illustrations. We spent a lot of time this week talking about realistic pictures and making our pictures relate to our sentences. In kinder we often use pictures to read the story so we want our readers to be able to connect to the book through both the words and pictures. 

After students finish their illustrations they have the opportunity to share their work with the class. They really enjoy this part and I like how it helps students take ownership of their work. 

Next, I laminate the book and put it together for the class. Once we read it together as a whole class the book moves to the class library for students to read during read time :) 

Happy Fall!!

Mother Vowel Story

Last week I told the kiddos one of my favorite stories! When I was student teaching in first grade, the teacher I was with told me this story and I have loved it ever since. Right now we are using this story to learn the difference between vowels and consonants. We have been talking about how important vowels are and that all words have at least one vowel. Eventually I will use this story to help students differentiate between the short vowel sounds and the long vowel sounds. The kids love this story as much as I do which makes the story even better!


 This is the story of Mother Vowel and her 5 babies.

Baby "A" LOVES apples. She simple cannot eat enough apples, the only problem is that they are way up high in the apple tree so she always points to the tree and says "ă, ă, ă," until she gets an apple. 

Baby "E" is always playing on the computer or listening to music way too loud. When his mother calls him he can hardly hear her and always responds "ĕ, ĕ, ĕ" with his hand up to his ear. Baby "e" sure does frustrate Mother Vowel sometimes!

Baby "I" spends all his time outside playing. Rain or shine Baby "I" is outside playing. He often gets very muddy when he is outside so when he comes inside the house he says, "ĭ, ĭ, ĭ" as he tries to wipe all the icky mud off his clothes.

Baby "O" is the baker of the family. She loves to help her mom make muffins every night. The only problem is that Baby "O" is very impatient and never wants to wait until the muffins cool down to eat them. Baby "O" always puts the muffins in her mouth right when they get out of the oven and this makes her say, "ŏ, ŏ, ŏ" as she tries to cool down her mouth. 

Baby "U" also loves muffins. He loves muffins just a little bit too much! Every time the family makes muffins he always eats WAY too many. Eating all these muffins make his tummy hurt and he says "ŭ, ŭ, ŭ" while moaning and holding his upset tummy. 

 Mother Vowel and her 5 babies are hung in the classroom so students can easily look to the poster if they need a quick reminder of those letter sounds. I have found that this story along with the hand gestures really help students learn and remember these 5 letters and sounds.

I hope you all have a happy Monday!!

 

Fun Fall Math Workstations!

Today I introduced 3 new Fall math workstations, and the class loved them! Right now we are working on recognizing numbers 1-10, writing numbers 1-10, and counting using one-to-one correspondence. Students did a great job with these so I wanted to share some pictures :)

Candy Corn Matching 

Candy corn matching was a big hit today!

Students match the number, the word, and the correct 10 frame. After they have done that they place the correct number of "pom poms" under the candy corn. 

Pumpkin Seed Match

For this workstation, students match the correct number pumpkin to the correct number of seeds. After they have done that, they place the correct number of beans to represent the seeds. This is great to help with one-to-one correspondence and counting orally. 

Monster Eyes

For this workstation, students roll a die and whatever number they roll they place that number of googly eyes onto their monster. After they have placed the correct number of eyes they write the number in the box. 

Thanks for stopping by today, have a great evening!

All About Daily 5

We have spent the last 6 weeks, yes 6 weeks! learning about Daily 5 and building our stamina. Daily 5 consists of individual reading/writing activities that students do every day.

The 5 components of Daily 5 are:

 1. Read to Self
2. Read to Someone
3. Work on Writing
4. Word Work
5. Listen to Reading

I wanted to share some pictures so you can see what a great job students are doing learning and participating in Daily 5.

Read to Self

We learned that there are three different ways to read a book:
- read the words
- read the pictures
- retell the story

Read to Someone

This is a class favorite! We love reading with our friends. 

Ellie loves to listen to students read, and students LOVE reading to Ellie!

Work On Writing

Word Work

Students practice building words, writing words, and reading words during word work. 

Listen to Reading

This is another class favorite! Students love to use the computers to follow along and listen to stories. 

Learning About Properties!

Over the last week in science we have been talking about properties. We have been using our science notebooks to record observations and predictions.

We looked at/felt/examined an apple last week and I wanted to share with you what we found. By observing the apple we noticed that the color is red, the shape is round, the texture is smooth, and the taste is juicy.

We made a big apple as a class and put all the properties that we had described onto the apple. Students then added their own apple to their science notebooks and labeled the properties. Students are getting more familiar with using their science notebooks and we had a lot of fun describing the properties of our apple.

Welcome!

Welcome to our classroom blog! I am so excited to share all the fun learning and exciting things we are doing in our classroom. I will also be posting fun activities and suggestions for you to do at home with your child so check back soon!