Shamrock Counting Cards

Shamrock Counting Cards

I created these cards as a way for my students to practice numbers 10-21. I plan to put them into a math center, as a follow up to another number activity. This is a simple activity that they can do independently or with a partner.

Big Rhyming Cards 2

big rhyming cards2

I got a Stylish Blogger Award! Thanks Ash (Teaching Happily Ever After) and Julie (The Alphabet Garden)

I am awarding the Stylish Blogger Award to the following five blogs.

Pinks My Ink

Always First Grade

Mrs. Guntorius' Kindergarten Class

Kinder Fun!

It is a Wonderful Life

Part of the award is to list seven facts about yourself. 

Here I go!

1. I love to write!
2. My favorite movie is the Wizard of Oz. My old apartment was totally decked out in Oz memorabilia. This included an autographed photograph of a munchkin, and ruby slipper shower curtain hangers.
3. I helped start a drama club at the school where I work, and last year I wrote the play that we performed.
4. I have known my best friend, Kristie, since Kindergarten.
5. I have been a yearbook advisor for the past 5 years. I love working with the students to create our yearbook. It is always so neat to see their excitement when the yearbooks come in.
6. I have a Bachelor’s Degree in English and a Master’s Degree in Elementary Education.
7. I got a Kindle for my birthday, and love it!

Big Rhyming Cards

Big Rhyming Cards

Last week we focused on rhyming words. I created these cards (using clip art) as part of our whole group lesson. I included words along with the pictures to help illustrate that rhyming words have the same endings.

 I will be posting another set of big rhyming later this week, along with a smaller set that we used to play a matching game with during small group reading.

Thanks Mrs.Hicks (The Alphabet Garden) for showing me how to use Scribd.

Chinese New Year

I was inspired by Ash at Teaching Happily Ever After to incorporate the Chinese New Year into my Social Studies plans.

 

We began by reading  Lion Dancer: Ernie Wan's Chinese New Year.  This books tells the story of how a family in  New York City's China Town celebrates the Chinese New Year.  

 

In the book Chinese Lanterns are hung for the festivities.  I saw the lanterns on Teaching Happily Ever After, and knew my students’ would love to make their own.

I like to use fairytales and folktales throughout the year. One of my favorite fairytales is Cinderella. I have over 20 versions of the story from different countries around the world. For the Chinese New Year we read Yeh Shen: A Cinderella Story from China.

This book is beautifully illustrated. The image of a fish is incorporated into every illustration. The students loved finding the fish on each page. When they wrote about the story they incorporated a fish into their own illustrations. I wish I had taken pictures of their work.

I wanted to incorporate math into our activities. I found the perfect activity in a fairytale resource book. The activity included a reproducible for making Tangram puzzles, which originated in China, and directions for using the puzzles to make a fish and a shoe (both important elements from the story).

I copied the tangram pages on construction paper and had each student cut apart their own puzzle pieces. Manipulating the different shapes (Tangrams consist of 5 various sized triangles, 1 square, and 1

parallelogram ) to make the fish and shoe covered one of our math objectives.

 

101 Days School!

On the 101st Day we do several activities revolving around 101 Dalmatians.  I found this idea on a website (unfortunately the website is no longer available) a few years ago, and added a few of my own ideas.  It’s a great way to start students thinking about numbers beyond 100.

The Day before the 101^st Day of School we make Dalmatian hats. Each students colors a white sentence strip with black spots. They use a pattern to cut two white ears out of construction paper, and add black spots to the ears. They glue the ears to the sentence strip, along with a 101 Days of School label.

We read a 101 Dalmatians  book, and watch the movie.

For snack we have Dalmatian  mix (leftover chocolate chips and marshmallows from the 100th day).

In the past we've also had cookies shaped like dog biscuits, but I could not find any this year.

Of course, we write about the day's activities. I include the writing in each child's scrapbook along with a class picture, and a Dalmatian art project.  Next year I plan to incorporate facts about Dalmatian s.