Weekly Round-Up: June 10

Hi friends! I’ll be writing other blog posts still but this will be my last weekly round-up for a while.. since Friday was my last day of work! I’m officially on maternity leave!

Here is what we were up to my last week of work!

1. COUNTING WATERMELON SEEDS

We are working on 1:1 correspondence and identifying numbers (most friends are working in the teens) so I made these counting mats! I put them out with play dough and magnet dots so that kids can choose the manipulative they wanted to count with.

I included the numbers 1-20 and a recording sheet for the kids to keep track of the numbers they made. They especially loved using the magnets to practice counting!

You can find these counting mats in my “Kindergarten Summer Activities” pack. You can click here or on the image below if you are interested in grabbing this activity!

2. SUMMER SURVEYS

I introduced this surveys in the spring and the kids LOVED them. A lot of you guys said your kids liked them too and asked to have them included in the summer pack, so I happily obliged! The kids loved these as well and it’s a great authentic way to practice asking questions, recording data using tally marks and comparing numbers.

Again, you can find these survey sheets in my “Kindergarten Summer Activities” pack!

3. SUMMER WORDS CHART + INVITATION TO WRITE

This is what I set up for the dry erase centre this week! I put the summer words chart on an easel, put some whiteboards and dry erase markers out and invited the students to draw and label a picture or write a sentence with a summer word. My kids love whiteboards and this was a popular centre this week! I love that it is open-ended and has multiple entry points for the kids.

Again, you can find this summer words chart in my “Kindergarten Summer Activities” pack if you are interested!

4. WATCH ME GROW WRITING PORTFOLIOS

For the last few years I’ve made these “Watch me grow!” writing portfolios to give out at the end of year learning celebration (where the parents come in and we do a short presentation on our learning from the year). Since I’m on mat leave, I put these together this week so they are ready to be handed out by the LTO teacher covering me at the year end celebration.

I absolutely love looking through these and seeing the progress the kids have made over the year. I hope the parents love looking through them too!

On June 1st, I take their picture and make their covers. I add a picture from September (I use the headshots I took on the first day of school for their name cards) and the picture I took on June 1st for the cover. Then I print them in colour (at home) and have the kids write their name on the line. I outline it with Sharpie to make it pop!

This girl has shown HUGE growth this year. This is how she wrote her name and draw herself at the beginning of the year. She was not yet writing any letters independently.

Look at her now! I know you can’t see it because I had to blur her name out, but she is now able to write both her first and last name without her name card and look at how neat her drawing is!

Again this is her first guided writing piece. We were working hard on letter formation at the beginning of the year.

And look at her in May! She is now able to use the anchor chart to write some words independently, write some sight words using the word wall and sound out some beginning sounds on her own!

If you want to try these writing portfolios next year, the templates are in my “Step by Step #3: Guided Writing & Assessments” pack. You can grab it by clicking here or on the image below:

5. THE POUT-POUT FISH ACTIVITY BOOK

Along with the frame I shared last week, I gave my kids a book (I got all the books using Scholastic bonus bucks) and an activity book to go with it. Since they had it in the June flyer and it’s one of my favourite books I choose “The Pout-Pout Fish” for this year’s gift!

I also recorded myself reading the book and stuck a QR code to the front cover of the book so the kids can listen to me read the book to them over and over at home! I’ll do a more detailed blog post about how I made the QR codes soon, since it’ll make this post too lengthy.

Here are the pages I made to go with the book. I wanted to focus on the different skills we have been working on in class (identifying characters, setting, text-to-self connection, opinion writing, inferencing etc!)

A lot of you asked if I would put this activity book on TPT so I got it up this morning! If you are interested in grabbing it, you can click here or on the image below:

6. KINDERGARTEN MEMORY BOOK

I also always make these “Who Am I?” memory books! I’ve been doing it since my first year. It’s a great way for me to remember all of my students from previous years and when I’ve had kids for 2 years, parents have told me the kids love reading it over the summer!

I unfortunately had lots of kids sick the last two weeks of school so this was the best we could do to get most of the class in the picture!

I binded my copy this year but for the kids I just ran it through the copier and had the copier staple it!

I had the kids write in their answers and their names and photocopied them back to back.

And here is my page from this year 🙂

Unfortunately the copier at my school made the pictures a little dark. If your budget allows you to, getting it copied in colour is amazing and if you can’t do that there is usually a button to lighten the picture when you are copying if it’s coming out a little dark!

If you want to make a memory book for your class too, you can grab the FREE templates to make this book from my TPT store! You can click here or on the image below: