Learning about coins

Last week we started learning about money in kindergarten. We're just focusing on the basics like naming coins and their values. We've also been counting pennies-nothing too challenging! I'm planning on adding some money games to my math work stations this week. Here are some freebies for you in case your students need some practice with coins too!

This game is called Coin Grab and it practices coin recognition. I fill a little cloth bag with an assortment of coins (you could also fill a paper lunch bag or little purse) and then students take turns pulling out a coin and graphing it on their recording sheet. They do not grab a whole handful of coins at once-this is important to explain to kinders. Once they reach the top of their graph with one of the coins, the child stops and records how many of each coin they had on the bottom of the recording sheet. You can laminate the recording sheet and let students fill it in with a dry erase marker, or what I usually do is just copy it in black and white so students can fill it in with a pencil (and it is not a big deal to the kids that the coin pictures are not in color).

In case you're still studying teeth for dental health month, here is a simple little tooth math game that works on money skills. Students spin the spinner, count how many cents they spun, and move that many spaces on the game board.

I'll be back later this week with pictures of all my current math work stations. I'd love to hear what you're up to this week!

February Math Stations

Valentine's Day may not be until next week, but we are already celebrating with lots of heart themed activities. My kinders have definitely gone valentine crazy!

We've been practicing measurement, counting, graphing, patterns, and addition this week with our math stations. Most of these station activities are meant to be done using candy hearts, but I decided to save the candy for Valentine's day and we have been using foam hearts, plastic hearts, and heart erasers instead.

The kids have been LOVING these stations-my class loves using manipulatives and I guess all the cute little hearts are hard to resist!

Station 1: Candy Heart Patterns

(Students make a pattern with candy hearts (we used foam hearts) and then color in their pattern on the recording sheet. You can get this great freebie from Mrs. Ricca's Kindergarten.)



Station 2A: Counting Hearts

(I wrote numbers on a bunch of those little heart containers from Target, and then students had to put the containers in number order and fill them with the correct number of heart erasers. Simple number and counting review!)

Station 2B: Valentine Clip Cards

(Students count the monsters and then clip a clothespin onto the heart showing the correct number. Such an adorable activity! The heart clips are from Target and the monster cards are a freebie from Amy at The Resourceful Room. This is a pretty quick activity so that is why I had this game in the station 2 basket along with the heart containers counting game (above). Both games give great counting practice!). 

Station 3: Race to 50

(Students take turns rolling the die and covering up that many numbers on their game board. My kiddos used heart erasers to cover-up their game boards. First player to get to 50 wins. This fun freebie is from Shari Sloane's Kids Count website.)

Station 4: How Many Letters Graph

(Students took a conversation heart out of the bag, counted how many letters were on the heart, and graphed it on their paper. This station snuck in a little literacy too! This fun freebie is from The First Grade Parade.)

 

Station 5: Cupcake Addition

(Are these cupcake erasers not the cutest thing? Thank you Target! Students picked an addition card, placed cupcake erasers over the cupcake images on the card, and then recorded the addition problem and the answer on their recording sheet. This fun freebie is from Amy at The Resourceful Room and she even has cupcake subtraction cards if your kids are ready for that too!)

 

Station 6: Measuring Length with Hearts

(Students used hearts to measure the length of different classroom objects and then recorded their findings on the sheet. You can get my freebie recording sheet here.)

Station 7: Lovin' Addition Game

(I just love this type of addition mat. Students were given a bag with a mix of pink and purple plastic hearts (from Target). Then they put some purple hearts on the left side of their addition mat and some pink hearts on the right side of their addition mat. Finally they recorded the addition problem they'd made and the answer on the recording sheet. Even my struggling students were able to use the manipulatives successfully to do some simple addition problems! Grab this fantastic freebie from Mrs. Ricca's Kindergarten.)

Station 8: Measuring Weight with Hearts

(This was easily the most popular station this week-but also one of the more challenging ones too since it introduced a new skill. My students had never used a balance scale before, but now they are turning into pros! They weighed different classroom objects to see how many hearts they weighed. It took some real teamwork to count each heart as it was dropped into the balance's bucket. You can grab my free recording sheet here.)

Station 9: How Big is Your Heart?

(Students used little foam hearts to measure and then record how long different sized hearts were. You can grab the heart template and recording sheets for free from Mrs. Ricca's Kindergarten.) 

I hope your class is enjoying some valentine fun as well!

Candy Heart Fun

Looking for some fun ways to use candy hearts? I picked up a small box of conversation hearts for each of my students so that they'll be able to do some fun learning activities with them and then have a sweet little snack.

One way we'll be using candy hearts this week is in our math stations. I'll let students use the hearts to practice nonstandard measurement. They'll get to practice measuring how long different objects are and how much they weigh using candy hearts (you could also use plastic hearts instead of the candy).

Here are some freebie recording sheets in case you're interested! My kinders will draw/write the object they are measuring on the left side of the chart and then record the object's length (or weight) on the right side of the chart. This will be their first experience using our balance scale-should be interesting!

We'll also being using our candy hearts for patterning and then sorting, counting, and graphing by color. I've been doing this activity for years, but love the cute recording sheets Erin from Eberhart's Explorers made. I also like the idea of letting students graph how many letters are in the "conversation" on each of their candy hearts and plan to use the cute recording sheet from First Grade Parade (she has a cute candy heart probability game too!).

I bought the candy hearts at Target (of course!) where they were $2 for a set of 8 boxes. Not sure if they have them cheaper somewhere else. I was happy to find that Brach's candy hearts have not been processed with peanuts, since I have a peanut allergy in my class, and it seems most other candy heart brands like Necco have a peanut warning on the label. I also found a few other cute things at Target.

These cupcake and dinosaur erasers will be great to use in some sort of center activity and the little grocery bags are going straight to my dramatic play area. My fave is the "I love my farmer's market" bag since I am planning to turn my dramatic play area into a farmer's market later this spring!

Can you believe it's already February? Happy Valentine's Day!

Valentine Fun!

Looking for a cute valentine to give your students? Head on over to the Fabulous Finds blog where I just posted a fun idea for making your own heart-shaped crayons! It is super easy and I have the step by step directions and even a free template ready for you!

Also, if you're looking for some fun literacy centers for your students to do in February, I just added a pack of Valentine Literacy Games to my TPT store- just a few cute activities to practice the alphabet and sight words.

I'd love to hear what fun things you've got planned for celebrating Valentine's Day in your classroom!



More January Math Stations

January is starting to feel like a very long month! I just recently switched out our math stations from earlier this month for a new round of stations. Still lots of winter themed games and also a few fun Chinese New Year math games too! The best part about these math games....nearly every one is a freebie!

Station 1: Race to 100

(Students roll the die to see how many squares they can color in on their hundred chart. First player to get to 100 wins. A fun game and great for a week when we are celebrating the 100th day of school. Any old 100 chart you have lying around will work for this game.)

Station 2: Tic-Tac-Teen

(Students spin the spinner and cover up the teen number they spun on their little game board. First player to get three in a row (tic-tac-toe) on their game board wins. My students are using some cute X and O plastic table scatter pieces I found at Target to mark their game boards-and I am storing the pieces in a play-doh can. We are really hitting the teen numbers hard this month! This game can be found here.)

Station 3: Lantern Cover-up

(Students roll 2 dice and cover up the sum on their game board. First player to cover-up all their lanterns wins. This freebie of mine can be downloaded here.)

Station 4: Polar Pals Roll and Cover

(Students roll 3 dice and cover up the sum on their game board. First player to cover-up all their numbers wins. Using 3 dice is a great challenge! My higher kids are adding up the numbers in their head while my lower kids are pointing to each dot on the dice and counting up their total. This freebie from Mrs. Lirette's Learning Detective's can be downloaded here.)

Station 5: Spin a Character In The Mitten

(Students spin an animal on this darling spinner and then color in the graph with the appropriate color to record what animal they spun. This super cute game goes with the book The Mitten, and can be dowloaded for free here from Fran at Kindergarten Crayons.)

Station 6: Race to Trace

(Students roll the die and trace the number they rolled on their sheet. First player to trace all the numbers on their sheet wins. Super cute little polar bears on this game sheet too! I wrote the numbers 15-20 on a foam cube to make my dice. This fun freebie from Ketchen's Kindergarten can be downloaded here along with some other great winter math games!)

Station 7: Chinese New Year Counting Game

(Students pick a red envelope with a number word on it, and then match it to the corresponding picture and number cards. All of the picture cards are Chinese New Year themed. The free picture and number cards I made for this game can be found here.)

Station 8: Count Your Change

(Students pick a change purse, count the change inside, and record the amount on their sheet. Each little purse has a sticker with a letter on it for recording purposes. To give this game a little Chinese New Year flair, we are using little Chinese purses. Sorry I don't have a link to a recording sheet for you-I copied this sheet from a book of math games I have-but students could easily record the purse's letter and amount of money on a piece of scrap paper.)

Station 9: Snowman Button Counting

(Students look at the number on the snowman's hat and count out that many buttons to put on the snowman. This game was a hit! Kinders love anything with fun buttons. This cute game from Creating and Teaching can be downloaded for free here.)

Station 10: Snowflake Counting

(Students count our the the correct number of pom-pom balls to match the number written on their snowflake. I happened to find these foam snowflake cut-outs in the dollar spot at Target a few weeks ago.) 

Let me know how your math stations are going-I'm on the look out for any cute February stations I can use next month!

Celebrating Chinese New Year

This week my students and I are celebrating Chinese New Year! This is such a fun topic to teach about. Several of my students come from Asian countries that celebrate the lunar new year so they are teaching us about how their families celebrate (China is not the only country to celebrate this holiday).

I have decorated the room with some decorations I picked up in Chinatown. I have also had my students help me make some decorations. Today we made paper lanterns to hang from the ceiling (directions can be found here). Tomorrow we plan to make strings of red paper firecrackers (directions can be found here).

My students love the new additions to our dramatic play center. I've added a bowl of oranges for luck, and of course all of the plates and bowls are red for good luck too. I've also added some felt dumplings, spring rolls, and broccoli that I made and some yarn noodles (I do not sew-you can totally make this felt food with hot glue-directions can be found here).

Later this week we will have a chopstick lesson and I will pass out red envelopes with a little treat inside. We will also try rice candy, fortune cookies, and almond cookies. Some years I get particularly ambitious and we cook up fried rice and drink tea for our little New Year's feast.

I've made two Chinese New Year games for my math centers. One is a count and match game and the other is an addition cover-up game. They practice numbers 1-12 and addition to 12. If you're interested in these freebies, you can download them here.

I hope you will consider celebrating Chinese New Year with your students. Even though the new year officially started today, the celebration traditionally lasts for 15 days, so you have plenty of time! I'll be back later this week with more pictures and some great book recommendations for studying Chinese New Year!



Book-making Bliss!

Writing workshop has been so much fun these last few weeks! I'm not sure who has been enjoying it more- me or my students!

With the new year, I resolved to change a few things around during my writing time. My first priority was trying to squeeze a little more writing time into our day. So, I rearranged a few things in my schedule and was able to add an extra 10 minutes, so I now I have 40 minutes for writing workshop (30 minutes was just not cutting it before!).

Here's how I break up the 40 minutes:

-Mini-lesson (10 minutes)

-Check-in: students tell me what they're going to work on that day (5 minutes)
-Independent writing (20 minutes)
-Sharing (5 minutes)

So far, I have been able to squeeze in about 4 conferences a day while they are writing independently. It is tough though! Most of my conferences are running 4-5 minutes, which I hope to shorten a bit as I get a little better at it. I have been starting each conference with the student reading me their writing, and then jumping into my praise point and my teaching point, coming up with a plan with the student about how they can try out what I have taught them, and then jotting down some notes before I move along to the next kid!

Picking just one teaching point is really hard, but I know it is so important to stick with one thing until they get it. I'm trying to remember that I'm teaching the writer not the writing, so what I teach them now will show up in their future pieces. I really need a better record keeping system for my conference notes-I'd love ideas for that! One thing that has been helpful for me is looking back over my conference notes from the entire week. It has helped me get a big picture idea of what my kids need. When I saw that several of my kids had worked with me on going back to pages in their books and adding more details to the pictures or to the words I decided to focus a few of my mini-lessons on revision and adding details.

I have also been reading the most wonderful book about writing conferences.
Sit Down and Teach Up by Katie Wood Ray and Matt Glover is about how to conference with preschool, kindergarten, and first grade writers-and it is amazingly helpful!

The downside of this book is that it is only available right now as an iBook, so you have to have an ipad/iphone/ipod device to read it. Supposedly, they are working on making a PC version you can read on your computer, but no idea when that will come out.

The best part of this book is that it has videos of 15 writing conferences in it! Each chapter is set-up the same way. They briefly introduce the setting for the writing conference (classroom, student, etc.) then you can click on the video to watch the first part of the conference. Then there is time for you to think about how you might teach the student. Then there is a second video clip you can click on where you can see how Katie/Matt chose to focus the conference. Finally there is a write-up about how they decided on their teaching point and others directions they might have taken. It is some of the best PD I have ever had- especially since I can watch it laying on the couch in my PJs! The videos are just so fun to watch-and Katie and Matt are clearly awesome teachers.

So, in the last few weeks I've not only added on some additional minutes to my writing workshop and worked on improving my conferences, but I have made another MUCH bigger change. I am moving away from my students writing in their journals and have introduced book writing. I was honestly a bit terrified to introduce this to my kindergarteners just halfway through the school year. However, now that we are making books, and they are doing so well with it, I really wish I hadn't waited so long! When I taught first and second grades I always had my kids writing books, and I've even introduced it to kinders at the end of the school year-but for some reason I thought January might be too soon. But....it is not!

I have to share some of my students' work. They are all doing so much more writing now that they have whole books to fill, and the quality of writing has really been elevated too since they are now writing whole stories instead of just 2-3 sentences on a journal page.

**Disclaimer** My camera isn't working so I photographed the students' writing with my phone which is obviously not the best quality :(

One of my students decided to write a story about his neighbor's cat (I can only assume so many of my kids wrote pet stories this week because I modeled a story about my dog last week!). He worked on this book everyday this week (I pre-stapled booklets for the kids with a blank cover and 4 inside pages).

Cover: "My Neighbor's Cat" (the print is hard to see)

Page 1: "My neighbor's cat comes to my house."

Page 2: "I like to pet my neighbor's cat."

Page 3: "My neighbor's cat almost came into my garage. My mom warned my dad."

Page 4: "My neighbor's cat is always messy."

(Can you see the mud puddle in the pic and the arrow showing the cat walked through the mud?)

Here is another story by one of my students. She wrote about her dog-and shocked me by writing this entire book all in one day! She did agree to go back and add some more details to her pictures and words though before moving on to her next book.

Cover: "My Dog"

Page 1: "My dog likes taking a bath. I make it overflow."

(Am I the only one who think that overflowing part is hilarious?

I love how you can even see the water spilling out of the tub in the picture)

Page 2: "My dog likes getting combed. I was trying to find him. I was surprised."

(Can you see all the labels she included in the picture?)

Page 3: "My dogs likes to lick me. I giggle."

(LOVE that she included a speech bubble of her laughing)

Page 4: "My dog likes playing with his toys."

These are 2 of my higher students, but even my more average and lower students have embraced book making and have done a great job. I promise to post some writing samples from some of my more struggling students later this week so you can see that too.

I encourage you all to be brave and shake up your writing workshop time as well-if there are changes you want to make just jump in and try it! If you're looking for resources to help with your writing workshop, these are some of my favorite books about writing with young students.