Mrs. Albanese's Kindergarten Class

Weekly Wrap Up...June 4 - June 8 -> using Wikki Sticks to make an insect, retelling stories, intro to time

With just a few weeks left of school, it sometimes becomes hard to keep the children motivated to stay on task. So we set up some simple but fun provocations for them to explore.

They have been so interested in insects (see my post last week for your free insect vocabulary cards) that we invited them to create their very own insect using Wikki Sticks.

I love using these wax sticks in the classroom - they are simple enough for the students to create anything using them!

We read a few books on insects and learned about their 3 main body parts - head, thorax, abdomen - and labelled the butterfly.

We read lots and lots of books in our class. I love introducing well-known children's stories often and having the students retell the story (or even make up their own!). This week we set out props for the students to retell The Ugly Duckling. You can find this book at Dollarama!

I use Pic Collage often to capture students engaging in the various centres in the classroom. We print these and include them in their student portfolio.

I added these large connectors to our blocks on the carpet this week. Students had lots of fun exploring them to make shapes and structures.

We started our unit on characteristics of the clock - we are learning about the features of a clock (face, big hand, little hand, numbers, clockwise, etc.). We are also learning to show times - "o'clock" (arms straight up in the air) and "thirty" (arms straight down) are what we teach the children.

Lots more to come next week - we continue to retell well-known stories and our clock unit continues...

Father's Day Book (editable) FREEBIE!

As soon as you start working on anything that has to do with Father's Day you know the end of the school year is here!

We made these adorable books for Mother's Day (you can read all about it and download your own editable Mother's Day book here) and the moms loved them so much we decided to make them for all the dads.

Here are a few examples of the pages inside...

(try not to laugh, they are too cute!)

You can download your own *editable* Father's Day book by clicking {here}.

They don't take a very long time to do with the students. I worked with 2-3 students at a time. They answered each question and I wrote their answer down on the white board for them to copy into the books. Then they drew their own picture.

We are lucky at our school to have a binding machine (simple and quick to use!) but if you don't, you can always staple or tape the side.

If you are looking for a few other ideas for the last month of June (and Father's Day) here you go!

I just posted this earlier today to TpT. It's an Interactive Pocket Chart activity.

We read a poem each week (introducing it on Monday but it stays up all week for the students to read on their own). I'm prepping this for next week, just before Father's Day.

At my pocket chart, students can use the cut up words to assemble the poem on their own. I also like working with a group of students who are practicing identifying sight words - I call out a sight word and they have to find it.

You can click {here} to check it out!

Here are a few other's that I posted and will be using this month!

We are also planning to play a sight word game - Find that Beachball! - which I hope to post to TpT tonight or tomorrow. It makes for a great review of all sight words taught to date!

Weekly Wrap-Up...May 28-June 1 -> Simple provocations for the last month of school...with an insect FREEBIE!

We have a LOT on the go right now with the last month of school starting.

So we wanted these next few weeks to still be meaningful for the students but simple enough to set up for us that we can also focus our time on report card writing, end of year celebration, Father's Day, Play Day and everything else coming up in the next few weeks!

Playdough

The students in our class this year really seem to love Playdough. So we try and set out a new, simple provocation for them to explore. This week we invited the students to roll a letter dice and form the letter using Playdough.

*I used a wood burning pen from Michaels to make the letters onto each wooden cube.*

Math Provocations

Although we explored the concept of weight a few months back, we always like to invite students to explore learning concepts on their own. This provocation had the students roll the dot die and add that many counters to one side of the scale. Then they rolled again and added the counters to the other side. They could compare which side was heavier, lighter, etc.

We have been learning about Canadian coins over the past two weeks and left this game out, Capture 4, for the students to play either independently or with a friend. They roll the die that has images of coins on it and cover up a matching coin image. The object of the game is to "Capture 4" - or get 4 in a row (up, down, diagonal, box, etc.).

I printed a few different price tags with varying amounts and left them at the Dramatic Centre which also has a variety of plastic food. The students turned this area into a store and were thrilled when I added coins, a wallet and a cash register!

You can find these activities in my Canadian Coins pack on TpT if you are interested

(blog post explaining more about this math unit coming soon!)

Listening Centre

We have been using the iPads as our Listening Centre for the past few months. They are so easy to use! Students love scanning the QR Code and listening to a new book. The June pack was set up today and was an instant hit!

You can find this here if you are interested.

Planting

If you read my weekly post from last week you will know that we started planting simple seeds (beans, carrots, radishes) in our classroom....and this week they started growing!

Each day we choose a students to water the plants and many of them rush over to the windows first thing in the morning to see if they grew. They love looking for their roots!

Insects

Last week we noticed our students really taking an interest in the insects they saw outside (lots of worms from the rain, butterflies and flies!). We started reading some books on insects and set out this provocation inviting them to draw their favourite bugs.