Five for Friday – June 10

Hi guys!

Long time no blog!

Actually I just checked and it has only been 2 weeks, but for some reason it feels like it has been forever since I last blogged! With report cards, case conferences and permanent teaching postings closing yesterday (for those of you who don’t know, I am a LTO) I have been SWAMPED with paper work!

But now that that’s all done and I have a quiet morning to myself, I’m linking up with Kacey from Doodle Bugs Teaching to share a little update on our classroom from the last week!

1. Foam Shape Flip & Trace

I had originally found these foam shapes a few months ago at Dollar Tree and since I knew we were going to be raising caterpillars again in the spring I snatched them up. I finally used them and made a few math flip & trace games.

For this one the students were told to flip the butterfly over, read the number word and trace the matching word on the sheet. I put the corresponding number of dots under each number word for the kids who are still learning their number words!

For this one I put just dots (1-12) on the back of the tulips and had the students flip, count the dots and trace the matching number on the sheet.

If you want to try this activity you can grab the free printable by clicking on the image below!

2. Golden Trash Can Award

Our kids have been so good all year about tidying up after themselves but when we learned that we could win the Golden Trash Can Award for having the cleanest classroom in the school at last month’s assembly, their motivation to keep the class clean has increased even more!

They were rewarded for all of their efforts this week and we were presented with the award! We also got a treat on Friday as a prize 🙂 I’m proud of them, they have always worked hard at keeping our classroom clean with minimal reminders even before the award so I can truly say that it is well deserved!

3. Watercolour Sight Word with Quills

I got this idea from the amazing Darla (you can see here post about it on Instagram here) and knew my kids would love it too! All you need are some feathers, some water colour paint (I make mine by sticking dried up markers in water over night), paper and sight words!

These sight words are from our word wall. I told them that they can choose any sight word from the word wall to write. They loved this activity as literacy centre for the entire week!

4. Time Centres

Last week we started learning about time. We started with the vocabulary morning, afternoon, night and 1 second vs. 1 minute. Now we have moved on to telling time on a clock. This is not a kindergarten expectation but I have a really bright bunch this year and though some exposure wouldn’t hurt.

Here are some of the centres we had out to explore time:

Build a clock: Pick a number from the container, look at our classroom clock and put the numbers in the correct spot.

Clock Mat: Pick a time card from the bucket and move the clock hands to match.

We are going to finish off time next week. The 2 centres above and all of my other centres that I use for teaching time is included in my latest product “What Time Is It?”. You can check it out on TPT by clicking here or on the picture below:

5. June Writing: See You Next Year

Every month (since February) we have been doing a writing piece that connects to a read aloud. For June I read “See You Next Year” by Andrew Larson.

The accompanying personal response question we answered was:

In the story “See You Next Year” the girl goes to the beach for her summer vacation. If you could go on a vacation anywhere where would you want to go? Why?

Here is one sample. This little guy said “If I could go on a vacation anywhere I would like to go to the Dominican Republic because my mom got married there.”

I was so impressed by his schema!

Some other popular responses were the beach, Legoland and Disneyland.

If you would like to try this writing activity in your classroom it is included in my “Step by Step 3: Guided Writing & Assessments” Pack.

You can download the pack by clicking here or on the image below: