Fact Fluency Practice

Since I have a lot of free time on my hands, I let Joy practice her math facts. In the video, she is working on one of the pages I put on TPT but I made her some harder ones. She's in second grade. I thought some music would motivate her. Homeschooling is quite the adventure! 

Fact Fluency Addition Practice

Read Across America

As a child, I really did not like Dr. Seuss (except for the Grinch). He made no sense to me. I have learned to appreciate his books and have fun during this week. The crafts....oh, the crafts we made...and the giant mess....I said I would never let them do another craft again after all this, but I know that's not true. First, we read The Cat in the Hat..

 Next, was Fox in Socks. They had to write/draw rhyming words on the socks.

Friday, they created their own Seuss creature for There's a Wocket in my Pocket. This was the hardest one to make.

February in Kindergarten

I have unfortunately been hit by a stomach bug again, so while I have the house to myself, I am going to upload my pictures.
I have also tried to fix all my old posts. About a third of the pictures disappeared for some reason. 

This cutie pie is two years old already! Her name is Julia. 

Joy is an AMAZING big sister. It is so fun to watch. She is so patient with her.

So here is some of what we have been doing in Kindergarten in February this year. I can't bring myself to take it all down yet, I love their work so much. We learned about Ruby Bridges and Rosa Parks...

Black History Month Door Contest

In math, we have been working on subtraction. I made these little cards out of sentence strips and stickers to practice writing subtraction sentences. My students needed a little more practice. (They kept forgetting to count them all first.) So I used this activity with a small group. I used wikisticks to make the Xs. First, I made up subtraction stories and I crossed out the animals and they wrote the problem on their white boards. Then, I gave each child a sentence strip and some of the x's and said, "Take away 4." "Everyone take away 5.." That way they each had a different problem to do. They covered the animals with the x's and wrote the sentence. It went really well. 

Goodbye, Mr. Troll, A-Rolling You Go....

My little girl is sick today so we are at home. She is taking a looooong nap, so it's given me a chance to work on my latest project which I just uploaded to TPT. My mom used to tell this version of The Three Billy Goats Gruff to me when I was little. I wanted her to tell it to me all. the. time. It has a song in it that the goats sing. Anyway, a few years ago, we found a record at her house and it was the Three Billy Goats Gruff. The troll had a song too. I wish I could find a link so you could hear the song. I wrote it up as a readers' theatre last week and have been working on my own clipart. I bought some from melonheadz illustrations and it was very cute. But I love to draw and wanted to make my own.

Whew! There has got to be an easier way to make clipart. I don't have any expensive programs like photoshop. I downloaded Inkscape (free) and tried to scan my handdrawn pictures in. That didn't really work. So I drew them on the computer which I had never tried before. It took a good while, but I finally finished. I think they turned out rather cute.

I want to make my own clipart to sell one day but I couldn't figure out how to get rid of the white background. Does anyone know how to turn your drawings into clipart without it taking forever? I'm sure there are programs out there.

Here is the link to Three Billy Goats Gruff: A Differentiated Readers' Theatre Station.
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/The-Three-Billy-Goats-Gruff-A-Differentiated-Readers-Theatre-Station

There are two versions- one on grade level and one for students who read on about a 1.3-1.4 level. My kids loved the Little Red Riding Hood one I made. I used it as a literacy station with only one or two kids. It was probably the only station where somebody wasn't playing. (Do your kids ever do that? Maybe it's just mine...)