Our Week in Review

Real quick, I just wanted to say “thank you” to the sweet folks over at Teacher Certification Degrees for including Emilyk Cole on their list of the Top 50 Early Childhood Education Blogs. SO not deserving to be in that category with all the BEYOND amazing blogs they have listed. It should be named the Top 1,000 Early Childhood Education Blogs because every.single. one of y’all are inspiring beyond belief. My Google Reader is FILLED with hundreds of AMAZING early childhood education blogs and I’m forever grateful for the inspiration I’ve gotten from each one of you!

I also want to say “thank you” to the sweet girls who emailed me to let me know I was in their Top 10 blog list. SO not deserving of that either, but thank you for making me smile :) There’s NO way in a million years I could possibly narrow down my blog list to a Top 10. I love all of y’all :) THANK YOU for inspiring me to be a better teacher!!!

Now..onto my little week in review.

This was a SHORT week. Monday was a holiday and Tuesday was a professional development day, so no kids. Wednesday and Thursday were full throttle as usual and I was only at school for a half day Friday because of my not-so-exciting visit to the dentist. Apparently the EXTREME pain I’m experiencing is normal and he prescribed me some steroids to combat the swelling in my roots. UGH. The good news is that I haven’t been able to eat in 2 days, so all this tooth pain is doing wonders for my waistline :) {I kid…sort of.}

We kept on goin’ strong with Daily 5 this week and built up our reading stamina considerably. Not gonna lie though, I’m ready for the “practice” phase to be over. We talked a ton about choosing *Good Fit* books and I introduced our little IPICK chart…

Google Docs isn’t working, so I’m trying something new.

Download the IPICK printables

We also made a few anchor charts for reading… “Why Readers Read” and “What Do Readers Read?” Apparently I got NO pics of the “Why Readers Read” anchor chart, but trust me when I tell you it was nothing to write home about :)

Thank you, Abby, for giving me the idea to hang my anchor charts on my window! LOVE!

We finished up our heart maps and the kids were IN.LOVE!! Jess from Rambling About Reading left a comment saying that she keeps her kids’ heart maps in the front of their notebooks, so we decided to do *almost* the same thing! LOVED the suggestion! We stapled ours to the front of our draft books/writing folders. The kids were SO excited!!

I’m trying to train my kids to use their heart maps when they need writing inspiration, so I keep my heart map by my easel and refer to it during every minilesson prior to writing. I like to pretend…VERY dramatically…that I have NOTHING to write about. The kids are quick to remind me that I can use my heart map for inspiration! They’re all, “DUH, Mrs. Carroll!!!” HA!

We had a great 3 days in math tubs. This year I’m spreading my math tubs out over 5 days, so I have about 4 kids per group. Since we were operating on a 3-day week, I set out 3 math tubs and switched it up to 7 kids per group. Here are some of the fun things we did {still working on number sense}…

We used pattern block cards to create & extend patterns and practice one-to-one correspondence, rote counting, and sorting.

We practiced ordering numbers from least to greatest with this fun little dice activity my kids just loved.

Download Roll, Order, and Write


We also read through riddles and matched them up to their 10’s frame partner and matching number card. They did SO well!!!

Download the Tens Frame Riddle Match

We’re also learning all about being scientists. My kids are LOVING science this year and so am I!! This is a little anchor chart I created BEFORE meeting with the kids. We filled it out together after reading a book called, “Being a Scientist”.

Then we created our own little scientists and talked about what makes US a scientist.

Even though it was a short week, it was a busy one! I’m happy to be relaxing this weekend at my house…my childhood home…with all my family. Mr. Spouse has been looking forward to this weekend since I can remember. He’s cheering on his Boilers today at Rice Stadium here in Houston. That man BLEEDS black & gold!

GO PURDUE!!

Happy Saturday!!! Hope you’re spending the day RELAXING!!!!

Candy Heart Math {& A Making Words Activity}

I know Valentine’s Day is over, but I like to extend my Valentine-ish activities throughout the month. After all, February is the month of LOVE, right?! Well, that’s what I’m goin’ with anyway. Candy hearts are my favorite February math manipulative and here are a couple of little math printables & activities for you!!

The first is a little candy heart graph. I know there are a GAJILLION of these floating around right now. I like to graph the number of letters in the conversation. I pass out a large conversation heart to each kiddo and have them count the number of letters on the heart. Then we create a big ol’ graph on a giant heart to show all the data. I’ll come back with a pic later this week!!

I also love this little candy heart probability activity. I placed a set of conversation hearts in a brown paper bag. I made 4 bags…one for each table. In each bag, I added a different assortment of colored hearts, but I made sure that there was A LOT of one particular color. For example, in one bag I put 12 pink, 2 purple, 1 white, 1 green, and 3 yellow hearts.

The kids had to reach inside the bag…without looking…and pull out a heart {10 different times}. On the corresponding sheet, the kids had to tally the color they pulled. If they pulled out a pink heart, they had to put a tally inside the heart labeled pink.

Throughout the activity, the kids were having awesome discussions. They talked about how they kept pulling out the same color over and over and then…on their own…started making predictions as to why that was happening. Sweet!! After each person at their table had a turn to pull 10 different hearts, I had the kids empty their bags so they could see what was inside and then they wrote about it.

Click on the pic to download the printables to go with these activities!!

Speaking of candy hearts, I found these darling little heart-shaped boxes at the Dollar Tree and snatched ‘em up. I knew they’d be perfect for something ;) I put these in our Word Work station for a little making words activity.

I labeled each with a different number and filled them with letter tiles to spell different popcorn words or chunk/digraph words. The kids had to open up the hearts, spill the tiles, and spell a word using those letters. After they spelled a new word, they had to write it in the matching heart on the corresponding sheet.

My favorite thing about these little boxes is that I can use them for ANYTHING!! I think I’ll put coins in them next week for a little hands-on money activity!!

Click the pic to download your copy of the recording sheet.

Place Value Mystery Pictures

For whatever reason, I absolutely LOVE teaching place value! It’s one of my favorites! Considering I’ve always LOVED teaching reading/writing/anything related to language arts, I think that says A LOT! I have a WHOLE big packet FULL of place value activities and games coming soon, but until I’m finished with that, here’s a little something you can add to your vault of place value fun!

{click to download}

PLACE VALUE MYSTERY PICTURES

This is just a little preview! You can find the full version {8 more mystery picture cards and all 9 answer keys} on TpT!

Snow Day Stats

So…which of you has been the lucky recipient of a snow day, or two, this week?! Don’tcha just love those days?! I thought we’d for sure have one Monday because the entire city shuts.down. at the sight of flurries. It snowed cats & dogs & fluffy white rabbits on Sunday. You KNOW I was up about an hour earlier than normal checking the local news to see if our district was giving us a day to cozy up by the fire. No such luck, but I did get to sleep in. We were on a 2 hour delay. I’ll take it! Since snow is such a novelty in these areas, I knew the kids would have nothing but SNOW on their minds, so I rearranged my Monday plans and we had a little snow day in the class. Mercy. Since a lot of you will be returning to your classes tomorrow after getting a few fabulous days off, I thought you might like this for your babies.

Graphics courtesy of Digi Web Studio

{click the pic to download}

I had the kids break up into groups and survey their classmates. After they tallied all the data, they went back to their desks and showed the data on the graph. Then I had them complete the Interpreting the Data sheet. When they were finished with all that, I let them take construction paper and draw their favorite snow day activity, cut it out, and glue it to a big “SNOW DAY 2011” mural we have hanging outside of our classroom door. My firsties loved it and it was an awesome way to channel all their snow day energy into something productive :)

Winter Math Games

Happy first day back after a niiiiiiiiiice long break :) I know we’re all excited, right?! Just 10 short weeks ‘til the next vacation, but who’s counting?! Seriously though…I’m already missing my little boys during the day, but I’m SO happy the whole family is back in a routine! Since I’m currently raising the two wildest boys under the age of 4, I didn’t have much time to create a whole lot over the break. I had to spend all my *down time* {yeah right} being a mommy & tending to domestic duties. Thankfully I had lots of planning time today to try and get caught up! Here are a few little games I’ll be putting in our math tubs this week.

Click on the pictures to download the activities.

Race to the Snowman is a fun little 2 player game where the object is to reach the snowman first! The players add & remove marshmallows from their game path to reach the snowman and win the game!

I love toss/tally/graph activities. I usually like to play these with the two sided seasonal cardstock pieces you can buy by the package at teacher store. Since I don’t have any of those handy, I’ll be making my own 2 sided cards using the pictures I included in this download. Since the recording sheet will require the kids to complete several tasks {tally, create a picture graph, create a bar graph, write about the data}, I’ll be working with the kids in small groups to help facilitate this activity.

This fun little two player game will really challenge the kids to create & extend patterns. Read through the instruction page to see how you can vary this activity! And, of course, if you have any better ideas of how these games could be played….please share!!!

Santa Claus is Comin’ To Town

I have a thing for Santas. I really do. I have a HUGE collection here at the house and I just can’t get enough of him! He’s so dang cute! SO…it would only stand to reason that I’d want to include a few Santa activities in the classroom as well :) I know that a lot of kids don’t celebrate Christmas, but this year EVERY single one of my kiddos does…so that makes planning a little bit easier for me. However, this hasn’t always been the case! I guess you could say I’m taking advantage of it this year :)

I read a book about Santa the other day…can’t remember which one…and had the kids make these cute little scrapbook Santas after we read the story. I LOVE how different they all turned out! And I swear each one of them represents the kids’ personalities to a T!!! SO cute!

Have you ever read the story, A New Improved Santa?!?!

I haven’t read this to my kids yet, but it’s DARLING! It’s all about Santa & how he feels like he’s losing his “edge”, so he tries out a bunch of different styles…spiky hair, the “gangsta” look, etc. Anyway, it’s hilarious and I know the kids will LOVE it! I’m planning on reading it to them and then having them create a Santa with a new & improved look! And then, of course, they’ll write about it. Maybe about why Santa needs a new look OR what he thinks about his new style. Still thinking about that, but that’s just an idea for ya!

Did y’all know that Santa’s really a cowboy at heart?! Well…if you’re from Texas…I know that’s what you believe ;) HA! We loved the idea of a “Cowboy Christmas” so we read a few stories with a real Southern drawl…

Then we made our own little cowboy Santas! {I forgot to take pics of the kid’s Santas…they were SO funny!} We gave each of the kids a speech bubble and had the kids write about what SANTA wants for Christmas! It was so cute reading their responses…apparently, Santa wants an iphone, an ipad, material for making stuff?!?!, an American Girl doll, new reindeer, cookies & milk, and a new sleigh. HA!

And here are a few activities for your downloading pleasure ;) {Just click on the pics to download your copies :)}

The directions are included in this little Santa activity…it can be used several different ways! I made sure it was “Kindergarten friendly” as well :)

Here’s a fun little making words activity! Let me know if you need a better explanation that the directions provide ;)

This is a little fact family sorting activity. I didn’t include a recording sheet because I’m planning on having the kids make their own fact family tree out of construction paper as an extension to this activity.

‘Tis The Season

Oh…I’m SO lovin’ all these fun little Christmas activities! There’s just something about this time of year, don’tcha think?! I’ve gotten SO many WONDERFUL ideas from blogland that I can’t wait to implement in my own room! Y’all are too dang much! Here are a few more things we worked on this week…

I was so inspired by Sarah Cooley’s Noun Town that we made one of our own, too! Since it’s the holiday season, we decided to make a Gingerbread Noun Town. We did some “city planning” before we got started. We talked about people, places, and things that we might see in our town and brainstormed a list of each. After city planning, I had each of the kids choose a different building to create {gingerbread style} using the list of buildings from our brainstorm chart {forgot to take pics!!} I set out cotton balls, garage sale dots, construction paper, and other little materials for them to use. They had to label their buildings as well!

We had a candy shop & a dentist’s office right next to each other…an airport…a toy store {of course!}…and they were adamant about including a school! After we put our town together, I had the kids write a fiction story about their visit to Gingerbread Noun Town. I told them that they had to start with a “hook” and tell me why they visited and what they did when they got there. They LOVED it! And it was so fun to read their stories…SO creative! The kids illustrated their writing and then we assembled it into a Gingerbread house shaped book! They’re still working on this part, so they aren’t quite finished yet ;)

You should check out Babbling Abby if you haven’t already. She has some DARLING Gingerbread activities and downloads posted on her blog!!

Speaking of Gingerbread, the holiday season just wouldn’t be complete without some kind of peppermint or candy cane activity. I can take NO credit for this idea…one of the teachers on my team has been doing this for years! And I think it’s PRECIOUS! We’ve been learning about doubles math facts, so we gave the kids two small paper plates and had them create peppermints using the backside of the plates. In the white part of the peppermints, the kids wrote their own doubles facts. We stapled the plates together, put them inside a little food baggie, and gathered the edges & tied them with yarn. I hung mine on my window, but some of the other teachers hung them from their ceilings. SO fun!

Gingerbread & Christmas Stuff

Okay…still SO behind…but here are just a couple of things we’ve been working on!

We’re still going strong with fact families, so I had my kids make fact family gifts. They rolled dice to get the numbers to add together for the sum. I also had them roll the dice twice and add those numbers together to practice working with higher numbers. As you can see, they made their own bows…but real bows would have been a great “addition” too! ;)

Speaking of gifts, this is one of my most FAVORITE writing activities. I started doing this my third year of teaching and have been doing it ever since! I think it’s so precious and sweet and really gets the kids thinking about non-material gifts. I used to read the book, Crispin The Pig Who Had It All {I ADORE this book!!!}, but unless you have $189 to shell out on a new version of this story, GOOD LUCK finding it!! HA!!! This year I read this book…

For a little reader’s response, I had the kids write about the best gift of all…and it couldn’t be anything store bought! I love, love, LOVE reading their responses!! One of my little guys wrote, The best gift of all is my family and the LORD. Melt. my. heart.

{I cut a class set of red rectangles….don’t know the dimensions…for the gift boxes and pre-cut the white gift wrap as well. I cut a white piece of paper just a touch smaller than the red and told the kids to write their responses and draw their illustrations on that. Then the kids assembled everything else themselves, making sure that the gift box lifted up so that we could peek underneath and read their writing.}

We’ve been working on a few little Gingerbread activities as well, but this is all I have pictures of so far! We’re learning about long vowels and this week’s chunks were –ike, –ide, & –ine. I programmed a bunch of little gingerbread men with the chunk words, cut them out, and placed them on a little cookie sheet. I labeled three paper plates with the chunks and the kids got to use a spatula to move the Gingerbread from the baking sheet to the corresponding paper plate. They are LOVING this activity! They also had to record the chunk words on a recording sheet as they sorted.

You can download your copy of this fun little activity right HERE!!!! {I included a sheet of blank Gingerbread men so you could write your own words inside their bellies!}

Here are a few little Gingerbread activities you can download as well! Just click on the pictures for your copy!!

This could be used as a perimeter/estimation activity. I used buttons for it! I had the kids estimate the perimeter of each Gingerbread and then use buttons to make an accurate count. We also talked about factors that would have made our counts different {using big/small buttons, etc.} Click on the picture for your copy.