Bb is for Bear and Buttons

Bears, buttons

My favorite story to begin with is Corduroy by Don Freeman.  Remember Corduroy lost his button on his overalls and he began searching everywhere.

 Paperbag Puppets for retelling

Button sorting

Over the years, I have requested buttons from my families to fill my tins and tubs.  With the generosity of many, the children have a lot to sort through.  At first, when given free exploration time, they enjoy the feel and sound of the buttons randomly examining them.  Some then sort by color, size and shape.  Buttons continue to fascinate them.  They begin to look for details that others may not have noticed before. 

I love the story The Button Box by Margarette S. Reid.

Grandma has a button box.  There are buttons with two holes and four holes and some with shanks.  So many different kinds of buttons and ways to sort them. 


Other bear stories:

Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Bill Martin Jr.  The more you read it and use choral reading, the children will be able to imitate and practice reading by looking at the pictures with memorized phrases and rhythm.

Our first Show and Tell experience is with bringing their own teddy bear.  Students who don't have their own bear can borrow a bear from parents, siblings, grandparents, neighbors, etc.  I also have a large tub filled with bears who love to be a friend for the day.

Where's My Teddy? 
by Jez Alborough 
My Friend Bear by Jez Alborough

 


Any version of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" or better yet, TELL the story.  Ham it up and the kids will love it.

Count and pattern with color sorting bears.

Use bear pattern cut outs and make matching cards with letters to match capital to capital, capital to lowercase, letters to initial sound pictures, numerals to sets, colors to color words.
 
Go on a bear hunt with Dr. Jean .

Have you ever watched "Cosmic Kids Yoga"?  I just found that Jaime has a bear hunt story with yoga positions. 

I use the yoga stories, peace out and meditations when they come in from recess to calm down and focus.


Raffi's song of "Teddy Bear Hug" is a great calm song to listen to while the children bring their bears in the room to start the day.

You've gotta do the Teddy Bear game with your bears,
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, turn around.
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, touch the ground.
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, show your shoe.
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, that will do. (bow with your bear)
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, climb the stairs.
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, say your prayers.
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, turn out the light.
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, say good night.  (Cuddle your bear and give him a kiss on the nose.)

Letter Identification

• Clip cards from Making Learning Fun. These cards show a bear with a capital letter and students put a clip on the cave with the lowercase letter.  You can make these self-checking by putting a dot on the back of the card for the correct match. 
•  Print cards with button shape.  Write letters on cards to match letters and beginning sounds.

 

Hand-in-hand we grow!

A is for apples

It's time to get out all those teacher apple gifts.

Apple, apple, /a/, /a/, /a/          

Sounds like Fun CD from Discovery Toys has a wonderful song that calmly practices the initial sounds of the alphabet.
There is also a free Ipad app that you can use.  

Do you know the story of the "Little House with no doors"?  You must have an apple and sharp knife as you tell the story.
Once upon a time there was a little boy who grew tired of all his toys and games.  He asked his mother, "What shall I do?
  "You shall go on a journey and find a little red house with no windows or doors and a star inside.  Come back as soon as you can."  
So the boy started out on his journey and he found a little girl and he asked her, "Do you know where I can find a little  red house with no windows and doors and a star inside?"  
"Ask my father, the farmer, he may know."  So the little boy found the farmer and asked him, "Do you know where I can find a little red house with no windows and no doors and a star inside?"  The farmer laughed and said, "I've lived many years but I've never seen anything like it -- go ask Granny-- she knows everything!"
So the little boy asked Granny, "Please Granny, where can I find a house with no windows and doors and a star inside."
"I'd like to find that house myself, it would be warm in the winter and the starlight would be beautiful.  Go ask the wind-- maybe he knows."
The wind whistled by the little boy and the boy said, "Oh, wind, can you help me find a little red house with no windows and doors and a star inside."  The  wind cannot speak any words but it went on singing ahead of the little boy until it came to an apple tree and shook the branches.  Down came a beautiful red apple. (Show your apple)  
The little boy picked it up and looked at it.  It was a little red house that had no windows or doors.  "I wonder," said the boy.  He took out his jackknife from his pocket and cut the apple in half. (cut apple sideways)  
How wonderful!  There in the center was a star holding little brown seeds.  He ran home and showed his mother.  "Look, I found it!"

Position words
Cut out apples and worms.  Give students two apples and one worm.  Tell them to put the apples side-by-side, put the worm above the apples, below the apples, between the two apples, at the bottom of an apple, at the top of one apple, over the two apples, etc.

Pick out your favorite stories about apples.

The Apple Pie Tree 
Ten Apples Up on Top

There are so many FREE and ready to print for a small fee apple activities on TeachersPayTeachers, Pintrest and just google ideas for kindergarten. 

MATH activities
Make or print trees and use apple erasers or red painted lima beans as counters. 

• Roll a die or use number cards to tell how many apples to put on your tree. 

• Addition number sentences can also be used.  (paint  lima beans yellow or green to show two sets--though real trees don't have two colors/kinds of apples)

• Practice 'take away' (subtraction), how many are left?

• How many more?  Students roll die and count out apples.  Ask how many more do you need to have 10 apples?  

Reading sight words printed on apple shapes.  
Make a memory game with sight words, letter match, shape match, letter and beginning sound pictures.

There will be more soon...keep watching because...

 Hand-in-hand, we grow!

P is for Pizza

Next week we will be teaching/reviewing the letter Pp with writing and initial sound practice.

"P", pizza,  /p/

I love to do Dr. Jean and Raffi's "I like to eat pepperoni pizza" song.
"I like to eat, eat, eat, pepperoni pizza.
I like to eat, eat, eat, pepperoni pizza."

I've made a pizza flip book to substitute the long vowel sound for each verse.  
Long a - "A lake tay ate, ate, ate paperana pazza..."
Long e -  "E leek te ete, ete, ete pepperene pezze..."
Long i -  "I like ti ite, ite, ite, pippirini pizzi..."
Long o -  "O loke toe ote, ote, ote, popporono pozzo..."
Long u -  "U luke tue ute, ute, ute, puppurunu puzzu..."
(I will also use this pizza book when we practice our long vowel sounds.)

These two pizza stories are fun to read and the kids LOVE them.  A boy named Pete becomes a pizza in Pete's a Pizza by William Steg.   I do explain to help some students' understand that the little boy is rolled, patted, baked as his dad pretends that he is the parts of the pizza.  
Pizza Pat by Rita Golden Gelman is a cumulative rhyming pizza version of "the house that Jack built" style.


For Math practice, I made felt pizza topping cutouts.  I took the idea from Dr. Jean and tweaked it for my supplies.  I had felt scraps rather than using fun foam.

Green rectangles- green pepper
Yellow triangles - cheese 
Brown ovals - sausage
Cream - mushrooms
Large Red circle - sauce
Gold circles painted with red sharpie - pepperoni
Black circles - olives

I didn't want to use red felt for my pepperoni pieces because my sauce is red.  I had gold scraps of felt and used a red Sharpie to color and some brown dots for my pepperoni pieces.  It had to look real to me.

I used a hole punch on a black strip of felt and cut out the olives.  I had to punch a piece of sandpaper to keep the punch cutting through. 
I also made oval sausages and rectangle green pepper pieces.  I wanted the kids to have to tell me the name of the shapes since rectangle and triangle are words they mix up. 

Recipe directions cards 

Cards will direct how each student will build their pizza and practice how to read a picture key.  I made cards in differentiated levels to practice and challenge students.


Following directions, coloring and counting 
Students can make a pizza with felt toppings then record on a card so another student must build by following their directions. 
Pizza puzzles

Students can design and color their favorite version of pizza.  Students can cut apart or teacher cut into pieces and then share their puzzle with classmates to put it back together.
Each year I seem to add and substitute activities.
I don't always do every activity, it depends on my group and their needs.

Hand-in-hand, we'll grow. 

I think I'm having pizza for dinner! 

Snowflakes first

I'm ready to start back in January.  To get the kids ready I will ease back into activities with making snowflakes.

Paper snowflakes
Use coffee filters and fold into fourths.  Real snowflakes have six sides but it is too thick for them to cut yet.  Show the children how to cut triangles tall, wide, short, skinny patterns along the edges.  I encourage them to make two.  One to decorate our classroom and another to take home.  

Before Christmas I had the children trace their hands in white and make multiple hand shapes over the course of days.  I stapled three together to make snowflakes for our classroom door display.  Green hands were used to make a pine tree with the lighter green hands holding a heart with the student's pictures in the center.

Some years I've made full snowmen with all their white hands.  And green hands to make an evergreen winter tree with white hand snowflakes.

Snowglobes
This project is done in stages over 2-3 days.  Show sample globes and writing is done at a center along with doing step by step craft.  This gives time for the snow paint to dry as you will see.  

• I take pictures of each student acting out playing in the falling snow.  Pretend you're catching snowflakes on your tongue.  Pretend you can catch a snowflake on your hand/mitten. Some years I have had them dressed in their snowclothes for the picture.

I cut out their picture for them. 

• A circle is pretraced to fit the clear plate size just a slightly larger line for cutting line is drawn.

• A trapezoid shape is cut out and the circle is glued to the base.  We do the writing project to glue on to this base prior to doing the circle part.

• Then we make a mini pine tree from a 3-inch square.  See post in December where we made 9-inch square pine trees folding on the diagonal. We glue the tree on the circle.

• We mix white paint and shaving cream and glue to make a fluffy snow which is painted on adding a few snowflakes in the sky.

A clear plastic plate is splattered with white paint and a toothbrush (I do that).  I found them at Target.  They don't have any printed words on the bottom.
Then with a hot glue gun, I assembled their creation to look like they ARE in a snowglobe!

• If I lived in a snowglobe writing projects. 

Using our five senses, we talk about what we would see, hear, taste, smell and feel if we lived in a snowglobe. 
I bring in small snowglobes that I have collected for those who may not have ever seen one.  
Living life in a bubble.  It is interesting how some can imagine and some just copy.  They think it's fun anyway.

Counting snowflakes.  
*We have ten frames with snowflakes to count and show numbers.  Use dry erase boards to write the number I show using the ten-frames.
*We count groups of snowflakes and put them in order.  This is an activity that lends itself to easy differentiation for ability groups.  Some groups can start at a higher number to practice counting on from the smallest number (11-20).  Some groups need to have a one to start from to do 1-10.
*Use snowflake stamps to stamp out the number.
*Make snow scene cards for the students to count sets or to follow a story problem to solve.  You can use erasers for counters or print out snowflakes on cardstock, laminate and cut for quick counters.

Snowflake words
*Print sight words on snowflakes.  
*Make memory matching games.  
*Write the room looking for sight words on the snowflakes.
*Use the words to build sentences.  

*Copy winter words describing winter weather.

Use different color markers and then Q-tips in white paint for the snowflakes.  

Science observing a cup of snow melting.  Place cups in various parts of the room and record observations. 

And then there are Reading stories about snowflakes .....coming soon my favorites.

Then we will move on to making snowmen...more activities coming up so wait and watch.....


 

Stars aglow

Let's make stars.

STAR EXERCISES
First start off with our bodies, spreading feet apart (not in the splits).

Stretch out both arms.


 
Wave left hand with elbow straight and twist body.  Waving hand as it moves in front of their body.  (Wave at me.)

Now touch (opposite) right foot and stand back up.



Wave right hand with elbow straight and twist body continuing to wave hand. (wave at me)
Then touch (opposite) left foot and stand up.

 Then I show them with lines repeating their body movements.  Redrawing to show what they did next.


Hey!  They made a star!
They get so excited. 
Practice on Dry Erase boards talk through each movement to practice drawing a star!  
Make a paper full in different colors.  This helps some students who need practice physically crossing their mid line and then on paper.  It is important to be able to cross their mid line to make diagonal lines too.  Young children have the most difficulty with making these lines.  It shows when they struggle to write the letters  A or M, N, Kk, Vv Ww and Yy.
They will be making stars all over.  Use this excitement to have them draw sets of stars or stars in a pattern.  (big, little, colors...)

Hidden Stars
Give students a white crayon to make stars (even just x-line stars) on a white paper.  Be sure to press hard with the crayon.  It's hard to see..but then use water-base dark blue/black paint to paint left to right to uncover the stars.


What's in the night sky?
Star sticker science:
Give students 5+ sticker stars.  Use the kind you need to lick.
Hold them in one hand over a black/dark blue construction paper about 10-12 inches.  One, two, three turn over hand and open up.  Let the stars drop on the paper.  One at a time, students pick up, lick and stick in the same spot.
Then students can connect the stars with chalk or a white crayon.  What does your design look like?
This could be an introductory lesson or conclusion to talking about the constellations and star designs. 

Books
These help introduce sky watching from our science series.

Now I know Stars is good to begin learning the sun is our closest star!  
Then we practice drawing stars in "Counting Stars".  On each page students draw the number of stars, learning number words, to the poem.  A sentence strip shows the step-by-step lines.
"One star twinkles,  Two stars shine, Three stars glow, Four stars sparkle, And five stars fill the sky!"  
I'm sure I adapted the poem borrowing it from somewhere.
I've also copied pages from our science series so each student has their own copy as we learn about the day and night sky.
Together answer questions about when do you:
? Eat breakfast, walk the dog, sleep, eat lunch, go to bed, see the moon, see stars?  Day or Night
Fold a paper in half (hamburger fold) and title each side with DAY  - NIGHT, draw pictures of things they could see in the day sky and in the night sky.  Label.
 
Nursery Rhymes
Of course, include reciting these rhymes.
Twinkle, twinkle little star.  Research the other verses!
Starlight, star bright.  (making wishes)

Count the Stars
Make cards with varied amounts of stars. Use different  color of stars or use same color star stickers on different colors of cards.  Place the cards around the room. Make a record sheet for the students to "count around the room" and color the stars corresponding to the card or star color.
Variation for Sight Words on colored stars and students write the word and color the star to match.  See sample of record sheet below.

Pull a star card with a letter on it from a bag/box/pile.  Write the letter and its pair.  See sample of record sheet below.

Ten Frame counting 
Make ten frame cards, some filled with ten stars, some blank frames and individual star cards.  Gather a small group of students to practice counting together and filling ten frame with stars (can also use star shaped erasers).  When the group conceptualizes the value of 10, substitute the filled ten frame card and use an empty frame to count on, build teen numbers, etc.
Hands-on counting practice helps students conceptualize the value of numbers.

Star cards 
Put sight words, nonsense words, letters on star cards for games such as Lotto (directly matching same) or letters for letter sound matching.  
MEMORY GAMES with star cards to match same word, uppercase to lowercase matching, letter to initial sound picture, rhyming pictures, pictures with same ending sounds.
HIDE IT -Using rectangular word cards facing student, hide a star card and students have to read the word they think the star is behind. Or adapting the letter pair star cards, place a shooting star behind one of the cards.  Put the cards on the floor or a pocket chart.

READ THE STARS - place 'star word' cards around the room and give students a star pointer to take turns reading the words.
 
Fun with stars can work anytime throughout the year.  But during the dark days of January and February, it fits best for my classes.

Reach for the stars! 
 

Five for Friday November 4, 2016

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Thank you Kasey at Doodle Bugs for linky party this week.
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My colleague Pam Cochran has shared a 'lesson' on coloring that she did with her kindergarteners.  

We have found that they need specific of guidance and a rubric to understand what they should be striving to do.
 We put this on a large chart tablet so they can refer to it while they work.

The more they practice RIGHT, the better they will get.


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 It is still pumpkin harvest time these first early days of November.  

The students traced or wrote their numbers in the pumpkins. (Differentiated lesson) 
Then they learned a partner game.  One player rolls a die and counts out the number of counters (Pumpkin erasers, candy corn or uses a bingo dobber) to cover the pumpkins in number order.  The game ends when the first player to cover-up all their numbers.
We knew these needed lots of review this week as they worked out their sugar highs from Halloween Monday.   

  

More review of matching letters.  I selected the letters that were most missed when checking letter recognition.  Students remove a letter from the pumpkin on the left and matched it to their paper.  Students could also trace the letter with a marker or use a bingo dobber.  Then place the plastic letter in the bowl on the right.  (Reinforcing the left to right habit.)

The next step is writing letter pairs and saying the letter name while they are writing.  
We have found that repetitive writing of the letter pairs whether in alphabetical order and/or as shown above, helps the students learn the letters and sticks in their memory.  It has also greatly improved their ability to write the letters.


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For the past few years, I have asked the children to bring in their candy wrappers and we have sorted and graphed the various kinds.
Thanks to Dr. Jean to remind and extend this to more sorting.  It inspired me to write up a list of activities.
The day after Halloween I sent home a note in a baggie requesting empty candy wrappers.  I specifically asked them to cut the end rather than tear it.  They need MORE cutting practice anyway.

They sorted the wrappers.  I found a bit more control sending one row (table, group) at a time prevented a chaotic scramble.

I taped 26 pages on the chalkboard and labeled with the alphabet.  Students took turns getting a wrapper and finding the page to tape their wrapper on.  It was clear who could and could not identify the beginning letter of the words.

The next activity was to make SETS of candy wrappers.  Again, row by row, (table or group of 5 at a time) picked up a wrapper and decided where they were adding theirs.  As each group came, it was becoming more challenging to make sure not "too many" or "not enough" on each set page. I was excited when the students used the math vocabulary words we've identified as they described each page during our conclusion.


Woohoo....CUBS win............by the way!