I can officially now say that I've had a snow day! {Well, 2 actually}

The weather here has definitely been crazy and my family and friends in Birmingham and Atlanta are still having a time getting home and to their abandoned cars! My sister, who is in Birmingham, ended up spending the night at my niece's daycare and my sweet friend Angela spent the night at her school! Definitely a wacky week!
While I've been home, I've been prepping my groundhog activities. I'm going to try to cram as much as I can tomorrow, and we'll keep using the centers next week. Here's a peek at what we'll be doing {excuse the floor...we were playing and prepping at the same time!}.

We'll learn about groundhogs and Groundhog Day with these fact sheets {I'll also project these onto our screen} and student readers.

We will also make a class graph of our groundhog prediction...I wish I would have brought chart paper home to make the header!

The kids will also start some new workshops. I have a few kiddos still working on matching letters, who will use this center.

Some will work on identifying beginning sounds/letters by picking a card and writing the letter that stands for the first sound in the word.

 The kids will also continue to work on spelling CVC words.

We'll also continue to identify beginning blends.

In math, we'll also start some new math centers.
In each pack I make, I include ten frame and numeral cards. I love these because I can do so much with them! This week, the kids will use them to practice counting on and making 10.

We're also going to continue to practice our addition facts to 5.

And, since base 10 is still giving us a little trouble, I'm hoping this center will hekp.

If you think you could use any of these activities with your sweeties, you can get them in my Groundhog Games pack. If you already have it, be sure to download the updates!

I'm hoping that it will warm up a little and I can go get the stuff to make these cute cupcakes.

{Idea from Little Giraffes}

I'm off to try to get a little housework done and be productive the rest of this snow day {or we may just stay in our jammmies and play!}. Hope you're safe and warm wherever you are!

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Vickie

I love this time of year in kindergarten! It seems like we start rolling with reading and everything starts to click with the kids. Of course, the first words we read are CVC words and my kids are pros at them now! We start pretty early in the year sounding and blending words. I don't like to waste time with basic letter sounds with the ones who come in with a solid alphabet foundation. Here are some of the activities I've been using this year {earlier in the year with some, and now with the kiddos who know their letters now}. The kids love them!
CVC Match

Cut and paste activity pages

Matching pictures/words activity pages

CVC puzzles from Lori

CVC word mats from Lori {love using these in small group!}

You can get Lori's CVC activities in her CVC pack.

You can get the first 3 activities in my I Can Read pack by clicking the picture below. 

Head over to my Facebook page for a chance to win the pack! Happy Monday...we're forcasted to get SNOW Wednesday and I am giddy!!

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Vickie

This past wee, we dove into all things penguins and my kids had a blast!!
I like to start our themes by letting the kids give me their schema  about our topic. I record it with stickies on our chart, then we add new learning throughout the week.

After reading lots of informational stories, we worked together to create a tree map. We attached them to our cute penguin crafts.

We also loved reading Tacky the Penguin! We listed his character traits then compared him to real penguins. {I forgot to snap a pic of the comparison, but you can grab it by clicking on the document!}

Of course, on Friday, we had to do the experiment to see how penguins stay warm and the kids loved it!

We also used penguins to review some math skills { I didn't get many pictures since we were VERY into the lessons!}
We worked on decomposing 10...

and comparing numbers...

and also decomposing teen numbers {we had a group of 10 on one iceberg and another group on the other iceberg}.

All of the math activities are in my Playful Penguins pack {along with the craftivity}.

I'm off to *hopefully* finish updating my groundhog pack...to say it was bad is an understatement!! Happy Saturday!

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Vickie

Whew!! Last week was a whirlwind!! My little one started daycare the week we came back to school and of course last week, ended up sick and out of "big girl school" the whole week! Luckily, she finally started feeling better this past weekend and was able to go back to school yesterday. I'm praying we make it through this month with no more sickness!

{Even sick, she still loves her books!}

In class last week, we talked about animals in winter and focused on the book The Mitten, by Jen Brett. This is one of my favorites! Of course, we sequenced the story together after we read it, and then the students did an independent sequencing {that I forgot to take a picture of!}.

{You can get the whole group and individual activities in my Winter Sequencing Pack}

As usual, we tied in our story to math and the kids loved all of the activities. {Most of these are from Deeanna's Mitten Pack}.
We worked on decomposing teen numbers into a group of 10 and some more by using a clothesline that only had 10 pins. I dropped a group of mittens on the floor and two kids hung ten mittens on the line. Then, we counted to see how many were left on the floor. We wrote equations to figure out how many mittens we had alltogether.

We also worked on the same skill by singing a song about Grandma Baba's mittens. We started with a group of ten, then added a certain number more to the bottom and wrote the equations to figure out how many mittens we had.

I think the thing my kids loved most last week was measuring each other with mittens. They did a great job lining the mittens up, making sure we started at the person's feet, etc. It was a hoot!

We also read The Hat, by Jen Brett and sequenced the story together and independently. You can get this here as a freebie {I didn't have a goose/gander, so I used a duck!}.

To add to our winter animal fun, we read Bear Snores On and made these adorable hibernating bears from sweet Michelle...love them!

This week we're on to penguins and we're already having so much fun!

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Vickie