Mrs. Albanese's Kindergarten Class

Weekly Wrap-Up -> Sept. 24-28

Although this was a short week (Monday was a PA Day), we packed a lot into it!

Our students are continuing to explore their names, their feelings and how to play appropriately with materials (we use the phrase "gentle hands").

SHADES OF PEOPLE

The students were very inspired by the book Shades of People that we set out this provocation and wanted to see where it took us. All week we have seen students asking to mix colours to try and make their skin colour!

We are thinking where we can go from here - perhaps next week draw ourselves and use the new skin colour paint?

FEELINGS

We have been talking a lot about how we are feeling and so we introduced this provocation to the students - they can use the emotion stones to express or draw how they are feeling or they can create a face using these small stones we painted.

CAN YOU MAKE YOUR NAME?

Students were invited to use the loose parts to create their names.

Some traced over the letters and others matched.

POM POM PICKUP - FINE MOTOR

I love activities that offer more than one learning skill. Here we set out pom-poms and tweezers and had students pick them up (fine motor skills) and sort them into the muffin trays (math).

ALPHABET QR CODES

Our students loved using QR codes last year to search the room for pictures "that mysteriously appear" on the screen after scanning! We introduced the QR Codes Alphabet Mystery this week. Students had to check off the beginning sound of the picture they found.

You can find this activity by clicking on the picture below if you are interested.

WORKING ON WRITING

I added this Alphabet Chart to my "Get Your Students to Write" pack on TpT this week. Here I printed it and inserted it into a clear frame (from Dollarama) and left a couple out at the writing centre.

You can see more of what I've included in this huge pack by clicking on the picture below.

BEAUTIFUL JUNK

I did this activity several years ago and, since we are working on sorting, I thought it would be a great time to introduce it again.

Each students got a brown paper lunch bag last week to take home with this letter attached.

(You can download this for FREE below!)

The students dumped their beautiful junk into the middle of the circle and we spoke a lot about how we could sort the materials out (by size, colour, object, etc.)

Here are our weekly plans for this week:

You can download the Week-at-a-Glance PDF version{here}.

If you would like the editable version to modify this for your own class click {here}.

You will need Power Point to edit.

I used the following fonts if you wish to keep it the same (free to download):

KG Primary Penmanship

KG Behind These Hazel Eyes

Enjoy the weekend!

Lucy Letter and William Word

I first "met" Lucy Letter and William Word years ago when I attended a conference by my sweet friend Kim Adsit from KinderGals.

They are fly swatters all dressed up with a mouth cut out!

*(You have to excuse my Lucy Letter and William Word - their hair is a little thin as they are several years old! LOL)*

Super easy to make!

Lucy Letter has a small mouth and is perfect for finding letters.

William Word has a larger mouth and can find words.

They hang just on the side of my easel.

I like to write out my poems on chart paper as the children can come back and use these pointers throughout the day to read it with a friend. You can also project it onto your Bright Links board and use the pointers to find letters/words and then circle them.

So how do we use them?

I introduce a new poem to the class each Monday. I start by asking if anyone can read the title or knows any letters/words in the title. Then I read/sing/chant the poem to them and point (using a simple pointer) to each word to track the print. We read it again but this time the children can chime in with me.

We do this a few times and I have them read it in different ways:

- regular voice

- baby voice

- Papa bear voice (deep)

- loud

- soft

- whisper

- etc.

I then take out Lucy Letter (she's easier to start with as it's only a letter) and ask students to come up and point to a specific letter in the poem. I've also done it where I have a bag of letters (large plastic ones work great) and I reach in and choose a letter and they have to find it (perfect for the beginning of the year where students might not know what letter you are talking about!).

William Word is great for focusing on sight words. I don't have particular sight words we focus on each week. Rather, I take the poem I want to use for the week and choose sight words from there.

We always start the year with easy ones (I, an, the) and move along. But if I want to challenge some students (especially my Year 2 students!) I'll ask them to find a more difficult word (i.e. I'm thinking of a 4 letter word, this word has 3 syllables, etc.).

I use all of the poems from my Rhyme and Chime pack on TpT if you'd like to see more.

You can click on the picture to take you there.

Weekly Wrap-Up -> Sept. 17-21

This week we focused on building a sense of community by continuing to learn each other's names and asking to play with one another at the various centres.

Here's a look at what we did!

BUILD YOUR NAME

These bright neon straws are from Ikea and we had the students cut them and sort them (as we are also learning about sorting!). Then they used the straws to build their names.

STRING THE BEADS

Students chose a number and strung that many beads onto the pipe cleaner.

You can download the numeral cards to set up your own provocation - just add beads and pipe cleaners (all from Dollar Store!).

CAN YOU BUILD IT?

We added a bunch of loose parts (i.e. wine corks, wooden discs, Popsicle sticks) as well as this binder full of pictures of structures and asked students what they could build.

*You can find the structure pictures as a free download HERE.*

NATURE FACES

Make your face with the items of nature we collected last week. I LOVE the book on the table - Shades of People - it uses real photos of children and does a great job explaining how we are all unique and special.

ALPHABET SORT

We set up only 3 letters and matching pictures for students to sort by beginning sounds at our pocket chart centre.

You can download the cards for this centre by clicking on the picture below:

SORTING AT THE LIGHT TABLE

Students sorted the coloured bugs (from Wintergreen Learning Resources). You can find these by clicking {here}.

MAKE YOUR NAME

Here's another easy way for students to practice their names - we wrote the name on a paint stick (free from a hardware store!) and each letter on a clothespin. Students clipped the letters to the paint stick.

ALPHABET SONG BOOK

On the very first day of school we begin singing the Alphabet Song Book with our students. It's a quick and easy song and it really works in helping students learn their letters and sounds! This week we sent home the black and white version (to the Year 1 students) to colour and practice with their family at home. Parents can scan the QR code on the front of the book to sing along!