Hello everyone! Kelly and Kim here from Kelly and Kim's
Kindergarten Kreations.
This is our first time blogging with all the other wonderful contributors to this blog. We are excited to be here and hope you enjoy our ideas.
We would like to share a little about ourselves. We are both kindergarten teachers that share a love of all things technology. We are always pushing ourselves to better our skills and we love the challenge!
We work very well together planning lessons and running our TpT business. It works because we have similar beliefs in what we do.
We love organization! We really should buy stock in Sterilite, haha!!
We love teaching the children new things and seeing that ah-ha moment as it happens! It really makes the teacher heart happy!
We believe in high expectations. All children can learn and all children should be given that opportunity to shine!
We have been having so much fun in our classes during our Colors All Around unit. We have been reading a lot of great books like The Day the Crayons Quit, The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big, Hungry Bear,Bear Sees Colors, and so many more!! However, our most favorite book is Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes. We are sure you could all say the exact same thing. There is just something about that laid back cat that reminds us, "It's all good!"
First, we read the story aloud and afterwards we watch the video below. The children are so in love with Pete!! They ask us to play the video over and over and over again!! Of course, we are happy to!
(Funny it is labeled in Spanish, but it is the English version...who knows!)
After reading, the children got to make their very own Pete the Cat to take home. Can you say, "over the moon with excitement"? This describes the children to a "T"!! Their cats were singing in the class, the hall, and probably on the bus too!
Here a child is coloring her Pete the Cat pieces:
Next, they cut the pieces out:
Lastly, they put Pete together!
The Final Product!!
Our children have been working very hard to learn new sight words, including the color words. Here you can see a child reading sentences using the color words to match Pete's shoes.
We also put the book into our reading center so the children can enjoy reading Pete the Cat over and over again. We changed our listening center over from CDs to iPods and it has been the best thing ever. You can read about how we made the transition by visiting our blog here.
You can also check out a fun Pete the Cat food activity we like also.
It’s
that time of the year when everyone is getting a little buggy! So of course you've got to go
with the flow! We're off to
study insects! Insects are incredible creatures. There are
over one million different kinds of insects on our planet! Who would ever have
enough time to study them all? Here are a few engaging activities that we use to incorporate some Reading and Writing Common Core Standards with the study of insects.
This Literacy Center game is a great ACTIVE way to practice Sight words!
Swat the Fly!
Materials needed:
*Skill Cards – White 3" by 5" cards- about 10-12
*Game board – Large Colored Poster Board
*2 Flyswatters
Prep the Cards: Write words (or letters or numbers or math facts) on the cards. You can make several sets of cards with a variety of skills and/or varying levels. Play the game again and again using sets of cards to differentiate between groups of students.
Make the Game board: Glue some large fly clipart pictures onto a poster board. Laminate the board for durability. Lay the cards on top of the flies. The cards just lay on top of the flies and can be easily switched to different sets.
How to play the game: 2 players stand across from each other each holding a REAL fly swatter.
An adult calls out a word and both students try to be the first one to swat the fly. Whoever has their flyswatter on top of the word card first takes that card and puts it in their pile. Keep going until all cards are gone. Count the cards and the player with the most cards is the winner.
If you want to involve more students, create 2 teams. After the first two students have had their turn, they hand the swatter to their next teammate. Usually 3 or 4 on a team is enough. This is not a quiet activity BUT it sure is a fun way to practice a skill!
Insects can be helpful or harmful. Most people would agree flies fall into the category of pests! The picture shown here is of a funny, engaging ABC book called Old Black Fly. It tells about the adventures of a pesky fly going from food items to stacks of laundry etc. ....until he meets his demise! SPLAT! Oops, sorry to spoil the ending! This book has the repetitive phrase "Shoo fly, Shoo Fly, Shooo!" Have the children say it with you each time you reach that part of the story. The children will be asking you to read this story over and over again! (It is not necessary to have this book to do the following activity.)
Extension Idea: Writing and Art project Students use a straw and watercolors to make a picture that is similar to the book's illustrations. They blow through the straw onto a few big drippy spots of watercolors. Using just 2-3 colors makes their picture turn out great!
After they have created their picture, they look at it and decide what food it reminds them of. (Wow, lots of imagination may be needed here!) Next they write their sentence adding the repetitive phrase from the book. Ex. "He landed on my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Shoo fly! Shoo fly! Shooo!"or"He landed on my ice cream. Shoo fly! Shoo fly! Shooo!"
You might be lucky enough to find some plastic flies at the store to glue on their finished painting. If not, just use a small clip art picture of a fly or have the children draw a fly on their paper.
The Magical Life Cycle of a Butterfly
After we have studied butterflies and learned about their life cycle, use this magical demonstration as an example of metamorphosis!
Materials: *A leaf with an egg: Green construction paper or green felt & a small white pompom
(Ours was made using fun foam with black veins drawn on the leaf and a tiny pompom)
*Caterpillar: Cute clipart caterpillar or 4 large yellow pompoms glued on some paper*Chrysalis: Crumpled up old brown lunch bag
*Butterfly: Cute colorful clip art of a butterfly (Ours is a butterfly puppet!)
Students are sitting on the floor anxiously awaiting the magical butterfly trick. You may have a poem or song that tells about the life cycle of a butterfly. The students can sing along as you perform the magictrick! If not, just say the stages as seen in quotes.
Step 1) Show them the leaf with the egg ("Stage 1-the egg")
Step 2) Turn over the leaf with the egg and set the caterpillar on top ("Stage 2-the caterpillar")
Step 3) Place both items inside the bag and twist the bag around and around for the spinning chysalis "Stage 3-the chysalis")
NOW for the magic!!
Step 4) Reach into the bag and pull out the butterfly and fly it! ("Stage 4-the butterfly")
(As ours was a butterfly puppet, we put a hand inside the puppet after placing caterpillar & leaf inside the bag.) Bring out ONLY the butterfly! Don’t forget you must put
the butterfly inside the bag before you begin this magnificent magical trick!)
Step 5) Ooooo & Ahhhh! A magical metamorphosis has occurred right before their eyes!!
Writing Extension
Black spotted ladybug beetles are always a
favorite with kids! Below
is writing activity that plays off the black dots on ladybugs and helps reinforce the use of describing words. Some creativity is needed to complete the task!
We love the book 10 Black Dotsas
a lead-in to this activity. But you don't really have it to use this writing idea. The book uses dots in the illustrations and text. To begin them thinking about their writing, ask the children to
look around the classroom for things that have dots or black circles or holes. Make
a list. Next, ask them to visualize - eyes are closed and no talking! Ask them to imagine going inside their homes and looking around their house or bedroom. Have them share with the class what they saw. One child said, “I see my Mickey Mouse on my bed. He
has 2 black circles for ears!” That child then wrote about her Mickey Mouse stuffed
animal. The two pictures below are
examples of some student work. One child wrote about a ladybug and the
other wrote about cheddar cheese. (We really think he meant to write Swiss
cheese ...because of the holes!). It is always amazing to see how they “connect
the dots"!
Click {HERE}to link to the FREE writing templates for this activity.
Ladybug Singable
We always have songs and poems to reinforce vocabulary and reading. Below is a short movie we made of our singableLucille the Ladybug, sung to the tune "Take Me Out to the
Ballgame". Just
click and sing away!
Dragonfly & Bee Craft projects
After learning about the dragonfly and bee, follow up with these craftivities! Dragon
Fly Art
Directions:
Body: Clothes pin or popsicle stick
Wings: Colored cellophane or
cut up colored plastic vinyl
Head: PomPom (only on the popsicle stick)
Eyes: Small wiggly eyes
Antenna: Pipe cleaner
Students
may paint the bodies (clothespin or popsiclestick) before gluing on the other body parts.
Bee Art
Directions:
Body: Toilet paper tube- color black and yellow stripes or cover with strips of colored paper
Wings: Cut 4 paper wings (our picture shows only 2. Maybe the other 2 are hiding!)
Head: Glue a small circle at one end of the tube
Eyes: Small wiggly eyes or draw them on with black crayon
Antenna: Pipe cleaners behind the face P.S. The flower pictured above was made using a coffee filter, watercolors, and a colored tongue depressor...or just paint the tan ones!
Hi All! My name is Bee from Miss Teacher Resources 101. I am currently a Kindergarten Special Education Teacher in New York. I am SO excited to be an author on this blog. I have been a seller on TpT for under a year so I'm one of the newer TpT and blog authors.
Now I don't know about all of ya'll, but New York had been facing incrediblycold weather conditions. About a week and a half ago, New York was preparing to have a blizzard at night, which also
happened to be on the first day back to school after a (wonderful) holiday vacation. After preparing for a day full of learning and fun with my little kinders, I went to the cafeteria to pick up my students to alarmingly find that there were only12 ... YES12 students!! Automatically my mind went into panic mode. I started thinking ... okay maybe the other 13 will just trickle in! If I can get at least 20 out of the 25 students then I can conduct my lessons. Then my glimmer of hope turned into full blown panic ... What if I don't get at least 20 students? What am I going to do?? I can't teach new lessons without the majority of my class here! And that is exactly how it went in my head for the first 10 minutes of the
school day. Has something like that ever happened to you?? (I would love to hear I am not alone in the comments section)!
Well needless to say, only 4 more students showed up, bringing my co-teacher and I to a total of 16 students. Yikes! No sticking to the lesson plan today! I would have to let go of my perfectionistic ways and think quick! So on the spot, I thought of a way I could fill up some of my literacy block ... and here it goes... drumroll please ... a snowy day craftivity!
Immediately, I looked at my library selection of winter books and I saw "The Snowy Day," by Ezra Jack Keats! Perfect!! (Although in my head it was more like "SCOOOORRRRRE!!!!!!!")!
So here is what we spent our morning doing so that we could make sure we had a terrific, fun morning:
* I read "The Snowy Day" out loud. I asked them questions and had them turn and talk just like any other literacy lesson that I conduct.
* We then created a whole class web and brainstormed ideas of different things that we could do on a snow day.
* The students were responsible to choose one idea and draw a picture of themselves doing whatever it is that their perfect snowy day is. I had my students do this on light blue construction paper.
* We added cotton balls to our scenery to show snow falling down.
* Finally we wrote a sentence about our perfect snow day and what we would do.
Now, I am going to share something with you - I am SO HORRIBLE at taking pictures of student work. This is so silly on my part, so I feel so sad that I do not have pictures to show you. So instead I will share some of the ideas my students came up with... drinking hot chocolate (then they used the cotton balls as whipped cream), watching TV in the house and then showing a window with snow falling down, building a snowman (using the cotton balls to show different snowmen), etc.
I have uploaded a freebie onto my TpT store that gives your directions and options. Included in that freebie is a graphic organizer and snowy day writing paper. Click on the link below the pictures to bring you to the freebie.
I am going to conclude my (already a novel) blog post by telling you that this was such a simple activity and the students had a BLAST!!! It also was so simple and fun that it completely dissipated the chaos in my head. Sometimes when you are in a jam, your mind can go nutty (if you are a perfectionist like me especially)! So next time you need a quick activity in a pinch, let this be your guide!
JK Curriculum Connection
