Our snail inquiry is really popular amongst our students! They come to school each day with cucumber slices, lettuce and apple pieces (although the snails have not really touched the apple yet) to feed them.
We will continue to learn about snails this week!
Since Thanksgiving is around the corner here in Canada (we will be focusing more on that next week), we set up our Dramatic Centre to be a Farmer's Market!
These are magnetic alphabet tracing boards. I bought them several years ago from Scholastic.
Let's explore numbers!
Use loose parts to trace the letters. These felt letters are from Target (bought them a few summers back) but you can easily make your own with a Cricut or use die cut letters!
Match the magnetic letters to the alphabet strips (so many different ones included!).
You can find these ready to use alphabet strips here:
What can you build? We left out loose parts as well as our picture book about structures.
It's the first month of school! That means new students, new routines, new everything! I love this time of year....yes, it may be the most stressful but it's also a time of fresh beginnings. We start the year slowly, thinking about how to set up our classroom so that students are able to independently navigate and explore. This year, Covid restrictions are still in place, so students will be sitting, once again, in "Friendship Pods". Here's a peek into our room!
What does my timetable look like this year?
Keep in mind that it still may change (early in the year to finalize everything) but this is how we planned out our week.
Do I have long range plans for Kindergarten?
YES! And they are a FREE download!
How do I schedule our week?
I'm keeping it the same as last year since that worked so well given the many restrictions.
READ ALL ABOUT IT HERE (this is the post from last September but it's the same for this year).
If you are looking to download the same materials I use, check out these resources:
Monday - WEEKLY POEM/JOURNAL
We start the week learning a new poem! We sing/chant it, find letters/sight words and more!
I compiled a huge pack of poems for the whole year (they are either well known and I have permission to use them or I wrote them myself).
Students draw/write in a blank notebook. They can draw anything but I like doing this activity on Monday because we discuss what we did over the weekend with our family.
Tuesday - PRINTING BOOK
I teach the letters in order and have students work on fine motor skills by printing.
The SK students cut/paste pictures of things that begin with each letter and write the word beside by stretching and sounding it out.
If you would like to use these supplementary pictures, these alphabet strip cards can be found in my Alphabet Folding Books pack.
Wednesday - WRITER'S WORKSHOP
I start lesson #1 the second week of school and simply follow the weekly lessons from my I Can Write packs.
Here's an example of one of the first writing pieces we do. I build a Writing Wall with the students from the first month of school and post our work.
Thursday - POETRY JOURNAL
We review the weekly poem (see Monday) and have fun saying/chanting it in different voices. I place these cards in a tin can and have students choose one. They LOVE this!
Then they work on a poetry journal (there are 3 differentiated activities per poem and over 50 poems included).
Friday - CHILD OF THE DAY
We choose a child to be the special "Child of the Day" where classmates ask questions to learn more about this person. Students can draw a picture of this friend in a blank notebook.
September 6-10, 2021
We introduced a variety of centres around the room, sat and spoke with students to get to know them, spent lots of time outdoors (seems to be our favourite!) and learned to sing/chant the Alphabet Song Book (which we will be doing each morning!).
Click the picture below to download a copy for FREE.
September 13-17, 2021
We are getting to know one another! This is a great song/chant to help students identify their name.
We will also be playing a lot of number games - our focus this week is on number sense (counting and 1:1 correspondence). You can find a lot of games and hands-on activities in my Number Sense in Kindergarten pack on TpT. Our favourite games so far are "Bears in a Cave" and "5 Little Monkeys".
We celebrated "Dot Day" by making our mark using watercolour paint on a small paper plate! Such an easy activity to set up and so much fun. Students loved this!
Click the picture below to download a copy for FREE.
September 20-24, 2021
This week we are continuing with our morning literacy routines (very slowly!). You can see more in my week at a glance below.
We used pentominoes to show students different ways that 5 can be represented and then they tried it using Unifix cubes!
5 Busy Beavers
This is a fun book to read - introduce a 5-frame and have your students learn to add/take away a dot to show increase/decrease of the number.
Show Me The Number!
We played this using numeral cards and these number mats. Choose a number and count out that many.
Since there will be a fire drill coming up in the next week or so, we will be reading books about that and practising. We are also noticing that some students are working on sharing and turn taking. There are a few stories I've pulled out that we will read together as a class.
For our weekly writing program this week we talked all about our special names! We read The Change Your Name Store and practiced printing our names three times. Students each got a name tag with their first name on the front and last name on the back. We will keep these at our Writing Centre.
Click the picture below to download a copy of my weekly plans for FREE.
September 27-October 1, 2021
We have a busy week coming up - Terry Fox walk and Orange Shirt Day (which is the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation). Check out my plans below to see how we are honouring each day.
Our Terry Fox walk will be on Wednesday morning. I explain a bit about who Terry was and why we walk in his honour each year. There is a lot you can use from this story and I just love this song (with adorable graphics!).
We will be reading the story Phyllis' Orange Shirt and decorating an orange shirt to represent the fact that every child matters.
You can download this shirt template I made for FREE by clicking below. Just photocopy on orange construction paper (or have students colour it orange).
We are also starting to learn more about sorting! We already sort every day - when we clean up our materials!
