January 2020

Here is a simple sensory bin that you can put together with left over New Year’s Eve goodies! The students enjoyed feeling and wearing the various items in the bin, talking about the items and lots of pretend/imaginative play! It was a simple bin but a hit!  Everything in the bin (except for the black beans) was from Party City!

2. NEW YEAR’S PLAY DOUGH

Here’s another fun and open-ended centre New Year’s themed centre!  Open-ended play dough is a favourite for this group so I knew this would be a hit! They were encouraged to make “2020” or anything else that reminded them of New Year’s Eve/Day using the loose parts & play dough!

3. WINTER PATTERN BLOCKS

I wanted to put out a centre for 2D shapes that encouraged students to explore composing with shapes and decomposing shapes so I made and put out these “Winter Break Pattern Block Pictures“.  The coloured mats were a hit but not too many friends tried the outlines.  Someone said on Instagram that their class loved putting the pictures side by side and challenging themselves to fill the pictures in a different way than was shown in the coloured version so I’m going to try that next week!

You can find these pattern block mats by clicking here or on the image below if you are interested in grabbing them!

4. SENTENCE BINDER

I have a few friends who are always asking me for more writing tasks.  These kids wouldn’t need these pages for support but I wanted this centre to be something that most of my kids could attempt in their writing duo-tangs (shown above) if they wanted to so I made these new sentence helpers and popped them in a binder!

So far the kids have loved it and it gets them using their writing duo-tangs more! It also makes it really easy for me and my ECE to pull a guided writing group as well when we have extra time.  I put these in my TPT store since so many of your were asking about them when I shared a sneak peek on Instagram! There are only four sentences right now but I hope you enjoy using it none the less!

You can find the sentence binder pages by clicking here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Sentence-Binder-Sentence-Helpers-for-Beginning-Writers-5152613 or by clicking on the image below!

I had lots of questions about the paper in their writing duo-tangs as well.  You can find those here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Step-by-Step-Kindergarten-Writing-Plans-1-2702186

6. FROZEN SMALL WORLD + STORY MAKING CENTRE

I was so excited to introduce this centre so I’m sad I missed it (I was away all this week due to my son having a double ear infection and high fever) and just when we was starting to feel better I caught the same thing too😭

Anyways my ECE says that they loved it (my girls are obsessed with Frozen II so I thought they would) so I’m so glad since those peg dolls took a million hours to paint!  But it’s all worth it when the kids are so engaged in the centres!

I get asked this all the time when I post these word charts so I’m going to say it again, I don’t share these word charts because printables with characters from Disney (and most big name companies) are trademarked and cannot be shared, whether it is a paid product or free.  Sorry!

7. PICK, STICK & WRITE

Again, I missed seeing the kids do this activity because I was off all week but I found these foam stickers at Dollarama the other week and thought they would be perfect for a literacy activity.  I brought them home and came up with this idea!

The students are invited to pick a sticker, stick it in the “Stick It” box and then write the letter in the “Write It” box!  Super simple, but peeling foam stickers is a great way to work on fine motor skills and this activity works on letter identification and letter formation too! And my kiddos love activities with stickers so I thought these would be a hit!  My ECE partner said they loved this activity too!

This is what the packaging for the stickers look like if you want to grab them at Dollarama too!

You can grab the printable for free by clicking here or on the image below!

8. SNOWFLAKE LETTER FORMATION CARDS

I wanted something new for salt trays so I made up these cards and mini wands to put out with them! The salt is mixed with a little bit of silver glitter and the wand is a table scatter I found at Michales glued on to a mini dowel I found at the dollar store.

The trays are from lacing kits by Melissa & Doug!

We also used them with dry erase markers the next week.

I added these letter formation cards to my “Kindergarten Winter Activities” pack.  If you already own it, you can re-download it for free by clicking here or on the image below:

9. RED ENVELOPE CENTRE

We learned about Chinese/Lunar New Year this week and after watching a video about Chinese New Year, one of the kids asked if we could have a centre with red envelopes.  My ECE and I didn’t have any red envelopes on hand so we decided to make it a centre where the kids make their own red envelopes, fill it with “gold coins” (yellow construction paper cut in to circles) and gift it to their friends.

I just folded red construction paper (8.5 x 11″) in half, cut that in half and then stapled the sides to make the “red envelopes”

If you want to grab the covers we used for free, you can click here or on the image below:

10. SIGHT WORD MINI BOOK “LOVE”

I rearranged my sight word list a little bit to target sight words that my kids are struggling with that are in the BAS level 1 and 2 books to give them more practice with them.  “Love” is on of these words and when I went to print off the sight word booklet for next week, I realized I didn’t have one for this sight word! So I made one.

It worked out because we recently made a list of favourite animals as a class so I used the animals that most commonly came up for the animals in this booklet.

You can grab these for free by clicking here or on the image below:

I use these mini books every week so I also have mini books for all 92 pre-primer and primer sight word booklets.

If you’re interested you can find the bundle and links to each individual set by clicking here on the image below:

That’s it for now! I’ll be adding more throughout the month! Follow me on Instagram to stay in the loop of when new things are added to this blog post!

– Yukari