Happy Spring!

  Hello there, and, Happy Spring!!!!!  Though the calendar says today is the first day of spring, we are expecting some more snow tomorrow.  Boooooo!  That's fine, because I don't really have much time to get into the topic of spring with the kiddos because St. Patrick's Day and Easter are so close together this year! As soon as Easter is over and the weather is warmer (hopefully!) we will discuss spring, the plant life cycle, the life cycle of a butterfly and everything else that comes along with spring. 

  Today we had a bit of fun playing "Spill the Beans!"  Each table was given eight tiny cups filled with different amounts of red and white beans.  Each student have a turn spilling the beans, counting the red beans, counting the white beans and then adding them together.  Each time the beans were spilled the students recorded the findings in an addition equation.  Here are a few pictures of our fun today:

  Kudos to my lovely volunteer who put this activity together for us.  She even created the worksheet!  The Kinders really enjoyed this activity!

  Another activity we did today was also compliments of my volunteer.  She created these sentences using the Kinders two new sight words.  The love doing this activity each week as we learn more and more sight words.

 

This is so simple, yet the Kinders really enjoy this and it is helping them to not only practice their new sight words but to help them with their comprehension skills. What skills are you working on in your classroom?

Is it Spring yet?

My para's creative side is definitely in full swing now.  She has almost the whole hallway decorated!  She just completed our spring styled door cover as well as a floral mural!   Here are a few pictures of the flower garden mural:

 Look at those roses!  Isn't she amazing?!  She's added a few insects to this as well as a sun and clouds; I will post an updated picture soon!  We are working on creating some rainbows and bumble bees to add to her St. Patrick's Day and Bee Hive displays.

To tag on to get Spring fever I have created a Word Family recording sheet.  I am using this in my room a few times a week.  Since I have removed our Counting to 100 Days Tree, I hung a chart where that was and we are using it to make word family words.  I pre-write the ending 6 times.  I then ask students to think of a letter that they could put in front of the ending to make a word.  They then find the letter and put it right in front of the ending on the chart.  Once we have the six words the students go back to their seat and write them on this paper:

You can download your copy of this sheet for FREE by clicking on the image.  Happy March!