Fairy Tale Fun!!!

We began our Fairy Tale unit this week...I LOVE fairy tales!!  They are my absolute favorite stories to read and do things with.  Of course, my centers are themed around my unit as you can see below AND we do lots of fun activities too!  My fairy tale unit will be ready soon and loaded to my tpt store in case your fairy tale unit needs some new center stations.  :)  

Integrating literacy with math...sight words, color words, counting and number recognition all in one center...I love these kind!

We are practicing hard on addition...this was super fun!  How many beans can Jack's hand hold?

Teen number words...

Ordering by 10's with Rapunzel's Tower

Reading nonsense and real words with Goldilocks

Our weekly word family word sort...they loved the little wands!  

My version of a rhyming center...matching a word we can read to a picture...rhyming is SO hard for my kinders, especially EL's...is it for yours?

Beginning and Ending sounds...they really have to listen to the stretched out word and concentrate to hear both sounds

Spelling CVC words

Okay, this was so much fun!  First we made Rapunzel and her tower then we add hair to her.  Next, I let the kiddos come up and cut a yellow piece of yarn.  I told them to cut it however they wanted.  You can find this activity HERE. 

  
Then, we measured Rapunzel's hair with cubes and the piece of "hair" we cut from yarn.  Last, we compared the two pieces.  So much learning going on here in a FUN way.  :) Can you tell I'm all about learning and FUN!?

ALL Of my kiddos were so engaged!  I was eating it up!

Little Red's Basket of Blends...first we made Little Red and her basket.  
You can find this activity HERE.

Next, we got a sheet of paper with pictures on it and only colored pictures that began with a blend.  

Last, we put the blend pictures in her basket.  :)  They LOVED this on too...plus they look adorable hanging in the hall!  

More fairy tale fun next week, AND Valentines!  :)  

Hope your weekend has been great!

Morning Centers this week & Weather Activities

This won't be a long post...but I did want to share the rest of our centers and some cute activities we did this week.  The centers below were our morning centers.  I mix math and literacy for morning centers.

I found the little umbrellas at Dollar Tree...Score!

Close up of how I made the game...labels with sight words written on them and stuck under the umbrella.

Here's the game I had asked for your opinion on Facebook...I did use the title as you can see...I hope you "get it"...It's after that show Sunny in Philadelphia...I don't even watch that show...but hey...

We practiced recognizing the correct sequence of numbers

I forgot to get a pic of the recording sheet for this but I had this DJ Inker bulletin board set from forever ago...I just had to use it!  

You can find my center activities above and more in my What's the Weather unit in my tpt store HERE.

We made meteorologists and wrote about the kind of weather we would predict...So Cute!

After we talked about rain...why and how it rains we made these cute little legs...it's always fun to jump and splash in rain puddles!

Addition with raining hearts

And finally, our little fact book about weather...

Our Literacy Centers this week...

Do you ever have those days or weeks where you are running around like a crazy person, but feel as though you can never catch up?  Well, the past two weeks have been those kind of weeks!  Whew...ever since I went back to work we have been crazy busy in our classroom...me assessing, assessing, and MORE assessing!  I totally didn't know where my students stood academically so I've been figuring all of that out...but, in the meantime we've been having lots of fun learning too!

Check out our weather literacy centers below...feel free to pin to your literacy boards on Pinterest!

(If you're interested in them they are in my What's the Weather pack on tpt)

I always do this type of center after Christmas where they have to listen for 2 sounds...beginning and ending...it really gets their brains to thinking!

For this center, I made and hung these little kites from our ceiling...the kiddos had to walk around the room with their clipboards and find the kites...listen for the ending sound...and record it on their paper.  I LOVE to get them up and moving for at least one center.

We are working hard on spelling cvc words...

Middle sounds...

 That pretty much sums up Lit centers...

And, by the way...do you use comprehension skill posters during your whole group literacy?...I didn't until this year...these posters are AWE.SOME!  I use them every single day of the world...it's so easy to tack up on my board and the definition is right there for me...less quick thinking for me which is a good thing most days...plus there's a cute little picture that explains each skill...SO GREAT!  Click the picture to buy them for your classroom...or stick them in your cart for the next big TPT sale...

My twinsie, Amy Hope, made these and has them in her store...

Tomorrow is Friday...Yay!

Our Math Centers this Week...plus some rainy fun!

Happy Tuesday!  I thought I would go ahead and post about our math stations today and do literacy & morning centers another day.  We are lovin' our math stations so far!  We adopted a new math series this year and since I was out for 3 1/2 months I feel "out of the loop", but am getting used to a little more each day.  It's just different from the way I've always taught math.  What math series do you use? Or do you?  Also, I've changed a few stations to go along more with Common Core.  Check out the pics below to see what we're doing.  Feel free to PIN the pictures to your math board.  

This is a subtraction center...what they do is pick a sun and look at the number.  Then, they take away that many rays by folding them back.  Each sun has 10 rays to begin with.  The little rays fit perfectly behind when folded...can I just say that I would LOVE this if I was a kid...and they DO!  :)  They have done awesome at this center so far!

This is what they look like before...

This is what they look like after they "take away" the rays

Oh my Goodness...this is so fun too!  All you need is cheap plastic sunglasses...I got mine at Wal-Mart in the party favor section...6 for $2.00.  Add sticker dots to each lens and Boom...easy peasy addition plus it's super FUN!  

This is what it looks like...

Chillin' at the rug...and doing MATH...

This game is ordering numbers counting by 5's...then they record what they did on their paper.

Stormy Subtraction...they have to count the dots on the storm cloud then roll the die to see how many they need to take away.  They needed some help with this so guess where I was the most...green basket

I forgot to snap one up close of one that was done but here's what it looks like...

Practicing counting with ten-frames and twisters...

 This was for morning work...and they did really good...happy teacher!

This next part is not about math, but we've been learning about weather...today we learned about rain...how and why it rains...then we practiced becoming a rain cloud...each student was one little rain drop...one by one we huddled together in the rope circle until we were so full that we just spilled out...Just like a rain cloud!!  Oh my...they were lovin' this fun little activity!  We had to do it twice!

 Notice the rope circle on the floor...you can use a hoola-hoop if you have one

 It's getting full...

 It rained...

Look at their precious little faces...so fun!

You can find the math centers you see in this post in my weather unit HERE if you are interested.