Cooperative Learning, Fire Safety, and 2 Giveaways!

I hope everyone had a relaxing and productive weekend!  I certainly had a busy one and have lots to post about tonight!

First, Creation Castle is having a crazy HUGE giveaway to celebrate literacy.  There are literacy units from all grade levels and I am SO excited that my Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Unit is featured in the Kindergarten giveaway.  It's super easy to enter, so scoot on over and get busy entering!

Second, I have finally reached 50 followers!  I am sure this is due in part to the giveaway with Creation Castle, but I am so thankful that you guys are following me.  Welcome and I hope you find something useful on the blog!  To celebrate having 50 followers, I am going to giveaway any item of your choosing from my TpT store to a lucky winner!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Third, I just finished my Fire Safety Centers, which I just posted on TpT :) Side note, I purchased my first set of clip art from Scrappin Doodles - LOVE!

Last but not least, but sweet Kinders had their first Cooperative Group lesson on Friday.  We talked about Fall last week and for the lesson I gave them a large circle map and they had to find Fall pictures in magazines to go on the circle map.  To be sure they knew what Fall was, I gave them magazines that had pictures from all seasons in them and there was only one group I had to redirect.  For their first cooperative group, it wasn't bad!  It took a little long to explain the rules and the jobs, but pretty much every did their own jobs and they came out great :)  Here are some pics of my sweet friends working together!

I hope everyone has a great week! I am starting mine off with a mandatory Write from the Beginning training - hoping to learn something great!

Homework for the week of October 1st-5th

We started homework a few weeks ago.  I know it seems kind of early in the Kindergarten year, but it gets them in the routine and they desperately need practice with letter formation.  (I think I get 10 grey hairs with each letter!)  We had a few friends lose their homework sheet last week and I think it would be helpful to have the homework online just in case.  So, I am going to try and post it on here each weekend so parents can refer back to it if needed.




We added a bonus word this week! :)  I am proud to say we had 11 100%s on our last spelling test.  Thanks parents for helping your sweeties study :)

Five Senses Centers and a Freebie!

Today was a super busy day - it was over almost as quick as it started!  I finished my Five Senses Centers and made a few worksheets to help my kids with filling in missing numbers.  Both are posted in my TpT store - the missing number sheets are the freebie :) Enjoy!

Freebie:

Apple Tasting

This past week we spent the week talking about Apples and Johnny Appleseed.  I snapped a few pictures during centers when I saw this:

 I must admit, I was not going to have a library center this year....at least not a comfy cozy one.  The center makes me crazy...they never put the books back nicely and its always a hot mess.  I previously had pillows in the center and a lice problem...way stressful.  My sweet friends convinced me to make a library center and even got me those cute lime green chairs and when I saw this my heart MELTED.  I am so glad they made me make a cozy comfy center.

These friends worked hard tracing their letters.

 

  The Play-Doh center was open for the first time this week and was a big hit!

Working hard at the math center!

The apple centers went great this week!  To end our week, we had an apple tasting!  This is what our spread looked like:

There are tons of apple foods, but our sheet called for Apple Juice, Apple Jelly, Applesauce, and Apple Cereal. We also tasted red, yellow, and green apples to graph our favorite.

Here are some pictures of the tasting.

 

 Trying Juice

 Trying Jelly on a Cracker

 Jelly was not a favorite for all  :)

 Trying applesauce.

 Who liked it?

 Trying apples

 Graphing our favorite!

Yellow wins!

The kids had a great time :)  I can't wait until our pumpkin tasting next month! 

Did you know yesterday was the first day of Fall?  Still planning?? Stop by TpT and grab my Fall unit.  I am working on a Five Senses unit for next week...hoping to be finished soon!  Hope everyone has a great week!

Friday Books and Fall Centers

It has been a busy weekend here in the Payton house.  I spent today working on my Fall centers pack for week after next, which I just posted to TpT.  Head over there and grab the freebie by clicking "Download Preview."  Did I mention I was having a 10% sale for the rest of the night?  Stop by and take a look ;)

Kindergarten has been BUSY!  I forget every year how exhausting this time of year is.  I am sure very soon my sweeties will be more independent and it will take less energy, but in the meantime I am going to bed early and enjoying every moment with them :)  On Fridays, I do not do Guided Reading.  We worked on Color Words last week so in place of Guided Reading on Friday, we made a book. (This is what we do every Friday.)  I do this for a number of reasons. 1. I can integrate our unit with Language Arts 2. The kids have to use a number of skills to make the book (Coloring, Cutting, Gluing, Positional Words and so many more!) 3. The kids have a book they can take home that day and read to their families.

Have you ever read this book?

I have to be honest and say that I haven't, but one of my colleagues interns a few years ago came up with the idea to take the sentences to make a book with.

To make the book:

1. Type the sentences up with lines in between them so they can be cut out.

2. Staple the correct amount of half sheets of paper between construction paper.

3.  Have the students cut out the sentences and glue them to the bottom of each page. (We do this STEP BY STEP to avoid anymore grey hairs in my head....I model it on the document camera and walk around to make sure they have it.)

4. Have the students illustrate the book.  We used construction paper to illustrate this book because of the colored cakes.

When we finished, we practiced reading it and since my Kinders are still learning to point one to one (I'm pretty sure 1 or 2 of my grey hairs came from trying to teach them this) we used "old lady fingers" to point.  Here are some pics of them reading :) 

Next week for us is apples.  I can't wait for my Kinders to try all the fun apple foods on Friday.  Hope everyone has a great week!