Monster Centers and Monster Fun!

What a fun, busy week!  Here's a peek at what our stations looked like this week.  My kids loved these centers and were truly engaged.  I love that my kiddos are catching on to our routine and doing their work so well!  Here's how it all went down...

patterning with monsters

Syllable counting...this is included in my Monster's TpT Unit

We sorted M's and not M's...funny how they turned some of the W's to be M's...SMART!

(this activity is in the Monster Unit)

We listened for beginning sounds...If it started with /m/ it got a smiley, if not it got a frowny

this is included in the unit

Here we practiced recognizing Mm and writing Mm by tracing the letter...

I think lowercase m will win

(this is included in the unit)

We have a pocket chart story every week.  Throughout the year they include most of our sight words and get harder over time...this week they practiced the word AM and color words.

(this is included in the unit)

practicing sight words...this activity is in the unit as well.

We are still working on recognizing numbers to 6...these roll and dot games really help!

(this is in the unit)

Practicing one-to-one and writing numbers.

(this is in the unit)

We measured monsters with cubes

(it's in the unit)

These are our unfinished monster glyphs....we have to add the nose

But they're cute huh?

Our cookie monsters sorted shape cookies..I LOVE how cute these turned out!

We are using Kim Jordano's poetry journal for our letter poems each week.  This is our M poem.  We have a journal where we find the M's and such.  My student teacher is making me a set of all of the poetry cards and they are too cute!

We finished our Pete's and they turned out adorable.  This came from Deanna's Pete the Cat packet.

 We are having our monster mash tomorrow so I'll post a few pictures then.

A Funny and A Freebie

Hello Friends and Happy Wednesday!  

I have to share a "funny" with you all.  My student teacher, Mrs. Wood, is sitting at the rug with our kids and I think one of the kids asks what time it is or something, and she says, "Time for Literacy."  Without hesitation of our little ones screams "Hey, I know what that is", (in the most country voice you will ever hear from a 5 year old)..."that's when somebody throws garbage on the ground and doesn't pick it up!"

Her reply?  "Yes, a "LITTERER" is someone who throws down trash without picking it up".  

OMGosh!!  Soooooooo funny those little ones!  How can you NOT love kindergarten?!?

I am throwing in a FREEBIE for all of you who do a "Teddy" unit with your kiddos.

P.S.  Let me know if you snag it...makes my heart smile!

Coming up...MONSTERS

Teddy Bear Exploration

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

We finished our introduction of the alphabet this week and celebrated by doing our Chicka Chicka Boom Boom unit!  I have a student teacher right now and I must say, she is AWESOME!  Oh my goodness....the kids love her.  They just have so much fun and it's kinda nice to sit back and watch my kids learn because they sure are!  Of course, she's following our reading series and curriculum map, so it's neat to see her do all the things I would be doing, but for me to watch the kids from a different view is great!  Check out all the fun things she did with them this week!  She's so "on top of it"!

You can find the next 8 activities plus MORE in my Chicka Chicka Boom Boom unit on TpT.

 This was fun...if you do this make sure you have pictures and a name chart for them to look at

 a little reader they take home

 Bowling is ALWAYS a HIT!

 Mrs. Wood made these next few activities herself...the kids LOVED the stickers!  She found number cards at Dollar Tree so they had to pick a card and then write the number, number word, and put that many stickers in the box.

 Jamie Mayas made this fun pattern game...check out her post as well!

 ABC order....they also did one with the first half of the alphabet

Look at this!  They made the alphabet by using the sides of their little hands only....no finger painting...they did so good!  

Each child got a balloon (or two) and popped out a letter to match to the uppercase letter on a pocket chart...we listened to Who Let the Letters Out by Dr. Jean

this idea came from Mrs. Estes

I can honestly say I've never even bought a real coconut much less cracked one open, but Mrs. Wood is up for anything so she cracked a few for us to see..but first we explored them

  eating coconut

She made a five senses chart about coconuts

  

They graphed if coconut was coconut was yummy or yucky

I think this little shape tree was on of my favorite things she did with them

Mrs. Wood created this beautiful door for our classroom using the kids handprints...each child used die-cut letters to build their name on top of their handprints

Cute little Chicka headbands...this idea came from April Larremore from Chalk Talk Blog

These cute little alphabet shakers are too cute, but so very loud!  I'm sure their parents are happy right now... :)  Mrs. Wood thought of adding the grass to the top...Clever!

These toilet paper roll trees came from Kim Jordano, but Mrs. Wood slit the side and put a rolled up alphabet inside then it just pulls right out...

She took the kids on an alphabet hunt after reading Alphabet City...

  

Our alphabet and coconut party was fun...

Yes, Dollar Tree...

Thanks Mrs. Bynum for the yummy coconut M&M's...

Have you ever seen these?  So. Good.

coconut juice....yum!