Bricklayer's Snack

The  Bricklayer's Snack was our writing project for the day.  We started by reading the book/rhyme Peanut Butter and Jelly.  Be sure to ask your child to sing it for you!  We talked about the sequence of events and the transition words we heard.  (Words like first, next, and then are transition words.)

 

Kids started with a graham cracker, added some frosting, and then put another cracker on top to make a sandwich.

 

We wrote a rough draft of the process and then came the yummy part!

 



We ate them!

 

Happy writing!

Sight Words and Writing Homework

Recently, we sent home two sets of sight word cards with each child.  These cards are for you to keep at home.  This is the list of 42 words that we expect our kindergarten students to know at the end of the year.


At my house, when the kids were in kindergarten and first grade, we would use these cards to play Memory.  Remember that game when you were little?  I would encourage you to start with a smaller number of cards.  Having 84 word cards on the floor in front of you seems quite overwhelming.  I would suggest choosing 10 words, to start, and finding their matches.  That way you only have 20 total cards staring at you. (By the way, I have found that my memory must be declining as I get older.  My kids would always beat me, even when I was truly trying.)

Another thing you may want to do, is use these cards as flash cards.  You can keep one set at home and one set in the car.  I found that this ended whining in the car.  As soon as my kids started to whine about being bored, I said, "Hey, let's practice those sight words!"  Voila!  No more whining!

One last tip for practicing sight words.
 (and I LOVE this idea)
Write all of the words on your child's pillow case, with a permanent marker.  (Buy a cheap pillow case first!)  Then, every night at bedtime, ask your child to pick a handful of words to read.  It's quick and easy, and you'll also have a visual reminder to practice the sight words every single night!  My kids loved this!

By the way, the green folders that were sent home are yours to keep.  We thought they would be a good place for you to keep your child's work.  The name cards are for practicing first and last name with proper letter formation.  The sight word practice sheets are something we are going to use in the classroom, but I accidentally copied a whole bunch.  Rather than recycle them, I thought you might want to have your child practice the words at home.  No need to return these two items.

Also, if the writing homework is too much, please feel free to modify!  You are your child's first and best teacher!  You know how much is too much for them.  Kindergarten homework should not be torture!  Have them do what they can and then set a new goal for the following week.  We will only have this writing homework for a few weeks.  That being said, I would certainly encourage writing at home even when the homework ends!  Kids love to write cards, books, notes to friends, and even grocery lists.

Happy reading and writing!

Kindergarten Writing in January

We're just wrapping up the first semester, in the Edmonds School District.  Report cards will be coming home at the end of the week and parents are anxious to see if their kids are meeting grade level expectations.  What are kids expected to do by this time of the year?

Here is a writing sample that shows what most kindergartners are able to do right now. 

This student identified a topic she wanted to write about.  She drew a picture and was able to write a sentence to match.  Her words contained the beginning sounds.  She is starting to be able to spell some of our sight words.  I notice that she's beginning to use lowercase letters in her writing and she's even using spaces in between her words. 

Just so you know, we don't use writing prompts very often on kindergarten.  We structure our writing time in a Writer's Workshop model.  About once a month I ask kids to write from a prompt.  It's a great tool to see their growth and share with other teachers at our grade level.  

Writing homework will begin coming home in the next few weeks. (We'll be doing writing instead of math homework for a few weeks.)  I hope you'll keep these expectations in mind as your child writes at home.

By the way, by the end of the year your child should be able to:

*write multiple sentences on a single topic

*work on piece of writing over multiple days

*use beginning, middle, and ending sounds in words

*use many sight words in writing

*use consistent spaces between words

*use mostly lowercase letters

Happy writing!

Wild Thing Math

Who doesn't love the book Where the Wild Things Are?  It's a true classic.

We use the Expressions math curriculum in our school district, and when one of the lessons asks kids to label parts of a monster, I think Wild Things.  The lesson asks kids to draw a picture of a monster, count the different features, and write the corresponding numbers.  Kids are supposed to draw things like 4 eyes, 8 teeth, 10 claws, etc.  After reading Where the Wild Things Are, I pass out large black construction paper and brand new boxes of oil pastels.  This lesson is more than just math.  It's math, art, reading, writing, and phonics, all rolled into one.



We spend a lot of time talking about the book, thinking about what's happening to the main character in the book, and looking closely at the Wild Things that Maurice Sendak has created.  After a very quick introduction to oil pastels, a reminder to "think big" as they draw and fill their paper, and a brief modeling of how to draw a Wild Thing, kids are off to create.  Once their Wild Things have been created, we ready to count and label.  I give kids a form that says:

Wild Thing Math
by __________________

My Wild Thing has ______ _____________.

My Wild Thing has ______ _____________.

My Wild Thing has ______ _____________.

I model how to count the Wild Thing features, talking about parts of numbers as we go.  For example, 5 claws and one hand and 5 claws on the other, gives us 10 claws altogether.  We count, add, and then write the numbers on our papers.  Then I model how to sound out words by saying the words slowly and writing the sounds we hear.  We sound out words like horns, teeth, claws, stripes, and hands.  I usually write the word EYES on the board for kids, because that's a tough one to sound out when you're in kindergarten.

I love to have parent helpers (or 6th grade girls, in this case) help trim around the Wild Things. It gives them a bit more shape, and let's be honest, sometimes kindergartners' art projects are tough to decipher. Once cut, we mount the writing with the Wild Thing.  This year, kids did an especially nice job with their writing and sounding out words.  This lesson takes a while, but I love it because it wraps so many different curriculum areas into one project.  It's integration at its best!

Happy drawing, counting, adding, and writing!

Kindergarten Writer's Workshop Ebook

When I started this blog, my main purpose was to communicate with families in my classroom.  Since beginning, I've also been fortunate enough to meet many kindergarten teachers too.  I had no idea how many teacher blogs were out there, when I began writing.  I've had the opportunity to share what happens in my classroom and get to peak into other classrooms, through blogs, as well.   I realize that parents out there are probably not interested in this, but I wanted to share this with my teacher friends. 

Over the past seven years, I've had the opportunity to host demonstration lessons in literacy.  I usually have the chance to chat with teachers when my lesson is over, and I'm asked lots of management and setup questions.  Well, I finally got smart and wrote it all down.  I posted it on Teachers Pay Teachers a few weeks ago and have already sold a few copies.  If you are interested, here's the link to take a look.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Kindergarten-Writers-Workshop-Putting-Tools-In-The-Hands-of-Authors


Kindergarten Writer's Workshop
 

 

 

Happy writing!

Inspiring Shells

We let seashells inspire our writing today!  Next week we'll be heading to the beach for our last field trip of the year.  I broke out my shell collection for the kids to look at today.  I've been collecting shells since I was in kindergarten.  My mom always thought my ever-growing shell collection was a bit excessive.  She always wondered what I'd do with my shell collection when I grew up.  Well, when you become a teacher, all of those collections come in handy.


I passed around a lot of my really big shells for my kids to see.

The kids loved exploring with them too.

Some of the shells have been purchased at different aquariums I have visited or at garage sales, others have been collected over the years.

 

Some of the kids had stories to tell about the beach, during Writer's Workshop.  Other kids chose a shell and wrote about it.

Having seashells inspire our writing was so much fun!  The kids had wonderful beach stories to tell.  Hopefully, they'll have more fabulous stories after our field trip next week.

 

Painting Poems

One of my favorite poetry activities is painting poems.  We spend a lot of time thinking and planning our poem.  Then we get to paint.  The kids use their mental images to create their pictures.  As their painting, the adults go around the room and have the kids talk about their paintings.  We listen and emphasize the language we hear them using.

 

 

 

 

Once the paintings are dry, we start the writing portion.  After working on poetry for a month, the kids really start to get the hang of it.  Most kindergarteners like to write list poems.

Today, we had the fifth graders help us type our poems.

The fifth graders acted as our writing coaches.  They helped the kindergarteners with the layout and formatting of the poems.

The finished products are hanging in the hallway, between the fifth and kindergarten classrooms. 

The paintings are beautiful.  The writing is beautiful.  The experience was beautiful.

Simply beautiful.

A Really Cool Idea!

If you read my literacy blog, then you have probably already seen this post.  I'm sharing it with my kindergarten friends because I think this website is awesome for young writers!  The process is really very easy.  We have a scanner at home, but you could also do this by taking pictures of your child's artwork. 

Here's the post:

Yep, my daughter is a published author.  Her first addition, hardbound book, arrived in the mail yesterday.  She dedicated her book to her family.  Awww.



Ok, so the truth is, I found this GREAT website, run by Barnes and Noble.  It's called Tikatok.  I showed it to my daughter and we were able to read several featured stories, written by other kids.  She was so excited to get started!  I'll walk you through the process in a future post.  For now, you should just check out the site.  (By the way, I don't receive any compensation from the company.  I was just really excited to find this resource.)

I can't even begin to tell you the smiles and giggles coming from my little girl, when her book arrived.

There's even a great About the Author page on the back of the book.

Oh, so much fun!  I'll try to get a post out, this weekend, including the nuts and bolts of how this works.  It's pretty cool, very simple, and highly motivating for young writers.

Happy writing!

We're Authors!

Over the past few weeks, we've been really diving into our books by Gail Gibbons.  If you're not familiar with her work, take a trip to the library and find a few.  They are great for inspiring young authors and illustrators!

We talked about the way Gail Gibbons divides up the page to show different things.  Sometimes she shows a sequence of events.  Other times she shows different things, on a common topic. 



We've been noticing how often she uses labels in her illustrations, which we've been adding to our work as well.

During our Writer's Workshop time, I encourage kids to try a few of these ideas.  I don't require that they try something new, but wait for kids to show an interest and then nudge them in that direction.  Using authors as mentors in our writing has really made us fabulous authors!

With Spring upon us, we went outside this week to do a little research.  We looked for signs that Spring is here.  Each child had 4 sticky notes, and there job was to find 4 different things that reminded them of Spring.  We've been reading lots of Spring books in the classroom, so they knew what to look for. I told the kids that the sticky notes were just to keep their ideas on.  They didn't need to be fancy pictures, just a quick sketch and a label.

The next day, I began modeling how we can turn these four ideas, on four sticky notes, into a four page book.  Again, we looked to Gail Gibbons for inspiration and several kids were ready to try something new with their writing and illustrating.

 

In the next picture, this student is showing how a plant grows and changes.  We spotted some hyacinths in one of our planters.  He told me he didn't know, for sure, if this is what it would look like as it was growing, but that he was using his schema about plants to make his guess.  I just about melted into a puddle on the floor, when I heard those words come out of my little guy's mouth!  Happy teacher!

We talked about how Gail Gibbons usually has a sentence on each page, in addition to her illustrations and labels.  This page is a work in progress. "A little plant is growing."

This student wrote, "I see stuff in Spring."  He told me that for the first page of the book, he wanted to include 4 different things he sees.  Then he'd do some close up pictures on the next pages.  This was another of the ideas Gail Gibbons uses in her books. 

This one is a little more difficult to read.  The first sentence says, "I see trees."  Then he made three different pictures, in a sequence of events.  The first one shows a dirt mound and a seed, with labels. Then, a little plant growing, and finally a tree.

All of these kids are continuing to work on their books.  I wanted to take pictures of their work in progress to show you what we've been up to.  The kids know that writing is hard work in kindergarten!  We have learned to build our stamina for writing, and not expect to be finished in the first ten minutes with a project.  We have learned to use authors as mentors and think like writers.  Most importantly, we're authors!

Happy writing!

Writer's Worshop in March

After wrapping up our cooking unit, we are shifting our focus to other nonfiction topics.  In our Guided Reading groups, many students read this book about life at the beach.

In our whole class discussion, our conversation was about the author's purpose.  We decided that the author must really love the beach.  She must know a lot about the beach too.  Some kids even suggested that she may live at the beach.  At the very least, they decided she must have visited the beach at some time and just wanted to share her excitement about it.

As kindergarten authors, we are doing the same thing!  We are taking topics we know a lot about, and turning them into books.  Of course there is a range of topics. 

 Cats, dogs, butterflies, birds, and rainbows seem to be the favorites.  Kids are also writing about their favorite sports, games they love, and we even have one "sleep expert" in our class.

Prewriting, in kindergarten, looks very different than it does in older grades.  Most of our prewriting is done verbally.  One of my favorite ways to plan out a story, is to tell the story across your fingers.  We touch our thumb and say the title of the story.  The four remaining fingers represent one idea as well as one page of the book.

I'm working on uploading a video to demonstrate this.

Happy writing!

Baking Up Some Zucchini

Our cooking project of the week was baked zucchini.  We made this recipe on Wednesday and wrote about it on Thursday.  I was pleasantly surprised at how many of the kids said they really liked this!


I sliced the zucchini and put it into a Ziploc bag.  We sprayed some olive oil on the zucchini slices and then added the yummy stuff.  We sprinkled in a little Parmesan cheese, some bread crumbs, a little bit of all purpose seasoning, and a pinch of salt.  We zipped up the bag and shook it like crazy.  (Of course, the kids loved this part!)

We baked them at 350 degrees for 10 minutes, and snack was ready.  The kids loved these and even asked for seconds!  We're not quite done writing about this recipe, so I'll share it when we finish up.

Happy cooking!