I am excited to begin this new venture! I hope to share with YOU, the parents of my wonderful students, a weekly diary into all the fun things that happen in our classroom. And for any teachers who might be jumping from blog to blog in search of ideas, I hope that I might be able to provide some inspiration and MAYBE an idea that you haven't seen!
So this week we were back in school for 3 days after returning from our Christmas break. I love January and February in kindergarten! They know the routine. They know each other. They know the classroom. So when the children return, they are set and ready to be back to learning! This week in guided reading groups, we worked on word families. We played a penguin word family game that just fit in with the beginning of our winter unit. Here is what I said, "The baby penguins are playing on the playground. They are having a great time! Then they heard "Time to come home!" After telling the story, I asked my students to find the baby penguin's home by matching the baby penguins to their word family home. What fun my students had! Next week we will do this activity again in reading groups and then I will put it into a literacy center where they will record their wor




For any teacher who might be interested in this game, here is the link that will take you to my Teachers Pay Teachers Store. It's free! I'm not sure if you have to have a TPT account to download it, but I do know that it is free to set up an account! Have fun! Just click on the penguin pack picture! :)
We call our sight words "popcorn words" as many kindergarten teachers do! :) We say they are words that just "keep popping up" when we are reading! We use Fountas and Pinnell's sight word list for kindergarten. I give each child a photo album, print off the word, and they add it to their album. We play a lot of games with the words, but their favorite one is one that I can't believe they love so much! It's called "Show Me!"

As I said, we began our winter unit this week. We talked about some big concepts - the tilt of the Earth that creates seasons; the fact that the northern and the southern hemispheres have season that are the opposite of each other; what animals do in the winter; migration, hibernation, adaptation... whew! We accomplished a lot in just 3 days! We created a book that depicts the things that we learned and will finish it this coming week.
Here are some pictures that I took of the children working on their robin page... I am so proud of how well they are doing on creating illustrations for their books. I truly believe that if children illustrate their own books, they take ownership into what they are learning and the knowledge stays SO MUCH better than if they just color a picture.....



Here are some pictures of a few of the BIG ideas that we learned this week!




In math, we began a measurement unit. Again, it is centered around our winter unit. This week we worked on size words and started using Unifix cubes as our measuring tool! Next week, I'll post some pictures of the measuring activities that we do!
I wish you all a peaceful and happy week! Until next week!