Valentine's Day Fun

      Valentine's Day offers so many great learning opportunities in kindergarten.  This year, we made a mosaic hearts for display.  The first day, I talked about how a mosaic is an art piece made of different small pieces.  We looked at some mosaic pieces and noticed the way the tiles were placed and the grout lines or spaces between the small tiles.  Then, children were given 1/2" squares of different color papers and a background to glue them onto.  They tried different patterns and ways of gluing the tiles.  These papers were hung to dry and later flattened before school the following day.  Then, children were given a template of a heart they could trace around on the back of their paper.  After cutting out the heart, they mounted their hearts on black paper for some contrast.

     This activity could be done with many different colors/shapes throughout the year - consider a star for winter holidays or a shamrock for March!
     
     Of course, writing letters was part of our celebration also.  My students were very excited to write a letter to their family!

     Our school is located about a block from the post office, so we were able to walk over, have a short tour, and mail the letters home!

Enjoy!  Molly

Using Toy Boarders in Math

My sister-in-law found some wonderful new toys - Toy Boarders.  These toys look almost like toy soldiers, but with a twist.  They come in packs of snow boarders, skate boarders, or surfers.  I just knew my kinders would love these!  Besides being a great play toy, I thought they would be fun for math.
We are currently working on composing numbers so I designed a problem using all three types!  I told the children that I'd discovered an amazing new play park where children could snow board, surf, or skate.  But, only 10 children could go in at a time.   I had my children work in small groups. They made combinations of ten using the boarders and printed scenes.

 

Then, after several combinations, they chose one to record.  I thought my children needed a little help with the recording and wanted them to record what they had discovered not a different combination.  So, I made some small pictures they could use to paste to a recording sheet to show their chosen solution rather than having them draw in their journals.

 

The students were very successful and enjoyed sharing their findings later.  When packing up for going home, one boy commented, "That was fun!" as he placed his recording sheet in his backpack.

Enjoy!   Molly

Teen Number Snowflake Math

Learning to recognize TEEN numbers, both numerals and quantities

We had fun filling in the ten-frame with colorful stones to show a quantity between 10 and 20 and coloring the snowflake with the matching numeral!  Some colorful SNOWFLAKE MATH on a dreary winter day!

Visit our TeachersPayTeachers store (Right to the Core) to download this FREE activity!

Speaking of snowflakes....
We read the story, Snowflake Bentley and learned how to look closely at snowflakes.  Then we practiced drawing them different ways, but always with six sides.  We then used acrylic paint in cool winter colors on clear acetate paper - yup, the old stuff we used with overhead projectors!  You can purchase this in larger sizes at an art supply store.  These are gorgeous hanging in the light, either in a window or glass door!

Kindergartners Can!

Puppets and dialog

     Making puppets using Model Magic is fun and easy!  This year I reviewed characters and dialog using Mo Willems books.  The children formed the dough around their finger then pinched and pulled to make a puppet.  When they were dry, we painted the puppet characters with acrylic paints to make them a bit more sturdy.  We learned a bit about puppetry and how to use puppets.  Then, we thought of dialog that our puppets might say and how they would say it.  Finally, we wrote a line for our puppets.

     You can find details for this lesson and 19 other rich writing lessons for kindergarten students!

Enjoy!      Molly    

Learning about Community

     As part of our unit on "Community Helpers" this year, we made this bulletin board town.  We had some small boxes left over and re-purposed them to be buildings.  Our children painted them, then added construction paper to make buildings for our town.  I was surprised when they asked each other what they were making and tried to make a great variety.  Our town ended up with:

• a few houses
• an airport
• a school
• a doctor's office
• a store
• a zoo
• a hotel
• a bank

  

  

Enjoy!   Molly & Laura

There Was a Little Turtle

     This week, we used the song "There Was a Little Turtle" as a basis for literacy learning.  First, we learned the song:

There was a little turtle,

Who lived in a box,

He swam in a puddle 

and climbed on the rocks.

He snapped at a mosquito,

He snapped at a flea,

He snapped at a minnow,

and he snapped at me.

He caught the mosquito,

He caught the flea,

He caught the minnow,

but he didn't catch me.

     Then, we thought about how we could change the song to make it our own.  Where else could the turtle live?  What else could he climb on?  What could he snap? catch?  Not catch?

     We had a lot of fun with the possibilities and sang a few of them.  We then talked about writing our song in a song book with illustrations that match the words and help the reader understand the song/story.  We began working on the books by putting the title on the front cover, illustration, and author's name, decorating the back cover, and numbering the inside pages.  This helped get us thinking about our own versions.

     Over the next few days we worked on the other parts of our song books.  We have a free lesson plan and templates to print labels (30 per page) for the beginning part of the stanza. Children complete the stanza with their own word and illustrate the page to compliment the words. You can download this free lesson at our store: 

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Kindergarten-Literacy-Lesson-The-Little-Turtle-Song-1152041  

     We also worked on making a turtle puppet.  I cut an opening out of opposite sides of a paper bowl.  We stapled it to a paper plate of the same diameter and placed turtle feet where it was stapled.  Children then glued tissue paper squares on the shell using a paintbrush and liquid starch.

     When our books were complete and our puppets dry, we used our puppets to read and sing our songs!  

Enjoy!

     Molly and Laura