Embrace the madness

Halloween week in kindergarten = madness.

Fight the madness?

No, embrace it! I'm all about channeling that excitement and energy into some positive, cognitive experiences.

Here's one way we did it...

On Nov. 1, each kinder was invited to bring 4 treats from their night of fun. First, we sat in a big circle and sorted our candy by many, many attributes (all student-generated attributes... chocolate/no chocolate, one piece/many pieces, color of wrapper, etc.).

Then, we ate our candy, kept the wrappers and sorted them by beginning letter.

We ended up with a fun class book -- A-Z Trick-Or-Treat. The kids love "reading" this book at the library center.

I got this idea from a teammate of mine who got it from another teacher! All I can say is Thank Goodness! It is a lifesaver the day after Halloween!

  

Some letters had a lot... some had none (so we made up our own candy!)

Like I said... embrace the madness. :) It might lend itself to a great lesson!

Differentiated Letter Bingo

We only have 3 days of school this week -- and yesterday, we went on a field trip all day! So, with 2 days this week, it was a perfect time to play "catch-up" and have some fun with the kids. 

One thing I love to do with my whole class is BINGO. They never get sick of it! It's so versatile -- you can practice any skill! I play all the time with my kids during small group instruction, but only on these "special days" do we play as a whole class. :)

I wanted to play letter bingo with my kinders, but I wanted to provide some differentiation. Kindergarten always presents a challenge in the range of abilities... but this year I have students who know less than 5 letters -- and students who know all 26 letters (uppercase and lowercase)! 

So, I came up with this Differentiated Letter Bingo -- and I love it! It's a great way to engage all my students on their level. I plan to "secretly" seat my class in two groups. I will show and say the letter to one group (to encourage matching and letter ID) -- and just say the letter or sound to the other group (to encourage fluency and phonemic awareness).

                          

There are three levels of game boards -- the kids simply cut out their letters and glue them on the grid to create a bingo board! Then, you can call the letters by name, sound, or even a word that begins with that letter. ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES!

Click on the pictures above or HERE to download the printable.

Kindergarten parent handouts

Phonemic Awareness and Concepts of Print. They present us with quite a dilemma.

1. Phonemic awareness is one of the best predictors of future reading success. This skill is absolutely key for kindergartners.

2. Phonemic awareness is also one of the hardest skills for kindergartners to develop -- especially boys.

3. Concepts of print prepare our kindergartners for learning. Their concepts of print can highly affect their readiness to learn and achieve in the classroom.

4. Unless they are educators... parents hardly ever have any idea what these things are.

See what I mean? Dilemma.

One of the "saviors" of this dilemma is that many parents unknowingly work on these skills with their young children. Home environments full of conversation, dinners together, nightly reading, and rich language naturally foster phonemic awareness and concepts of print. However, we all know our children do not always come from these environments.

We are in the midst of parent-teacher conferences, so I developed two handouts to share with my students' parents -- one for phonemic awareness and one for concepts of print. Both explain what they are, what skills they include, and what we can do to help nurture these skills in our little ones.

                                            

Click HERE and HERE (or on the pictures above) for a printable download. 

I hope these handouts are helpful to you and your students' parents!

Book of the week: Plaidypus Lost

I love "beefing up" our curriculum book of the week with themed lessons. When done right, themed lessons can integrate authentic reading, writing, critical thinking, math, etc. in a meaningful way. I love the way the lessons flow together when we have a great book of the week.

This week was one of my favorites: Plaidypus Lost by Janet Stevens and Susan Stevens Crummel.



A few themed lessons from the week...



We were very interested in what a real platypus was like. So, we read a couple books, searched the web, and even watched a couple short video clips. Then, we made a Venn diagram comparing a real platypus with the character, Plaidypus.



We discussed all the settings where Plaidypus was lost. Then, we made a list of our own ideas - I was so impressed with their creativity!



Then, we used our list to create a class book - always a favorite in my classroom. Here are few of the pages (aren't they awesome?!)







Next week brings another of my favorite "books of the week" - Miss Bindergarten Takes a Field Trip with Kindergarten. And to celebrate... we're off to the fire station! Should be another great week. :)