BOOM cards

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This is the link to my TPT store if you want to download the deck. You must have a boom account first. 

Counting Forest Friends Boom Cards

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...)

Halloween Sticker Graph

Today my kids created sticker graphs for Halloween. First we made a large one together.





I gave each child a little container of stickers. I got most of them from Dollar Tree. They were so quiet trying to peel the paper off! After they graphed their stickers, I read the questions for each student individually (This took a while.) I didn't make the graph boxes large enough so some kids got confused on which sticker had the most. Then we glued all 3 parts onto a large piece of construction paper. It took way longer than I had anticipated but they enjoyed it.

Math Tubs and Literacy Centers

Two blog posts in 2 days- must be some kind of record! Actually, school has been closed since Thursday due to weather so I have a lot of free time on my hands.... Well, I could clean the house but this is more fun. 

I just wanted to share our math tubs. I wish I could say we get to them every day but .... something seems to always come up. I'm going to do better. I have to redo all of them anyway but these are from a while back. Basically, I have 5 math tubs. I pull a small group and the rest of the class does one tub a day. This way it is very easy to maintain because each tub can last 4 weeks. The directions for each tub stay the same- the activities change. So the kids already know how each tub works. 

Math Tub 1- Roll a die, count out that many erasers, put them on the background, and complete the recording sheet. The recording sheet is front and back so the student has to roll the die a total of 8 times before getting another background. I have collected erasers for years so I have many different counting objects. I am going to make this center harder. Next time, they will have 2 dice and a different recording sheet where they have to add and write a number sentence. 

Math Tub 1

Math Tub 2 

Math Tub 2 is the pattern block center. In this tub, the children were making numbers out of pattern blocks. 

 Math Tub 3

Math Tub 3 is the playdough tub. In this tub, they were making gumballs. I have lots of different playdough mats and I change the activity out monthly. But it always involves play dough.

Math Tub 4

Math Tub 4 is the file folder games tub. This tub is the hardest one to maintain. I made a whole bunch of these folders and that took a lot of work.  I thought I had more pictures of the folders....Next year it will be easier. 

Math Tub 5

For some reason, I don't have any pictures of tub 5. It was a writing numbers center but I changed it to the clip card center. Basically, there are 5 or 6 bags of clip cards with paper clips inside and the kids match the number with a paper clip. I also have some bigger ones with clothespins. These are the ones I'm going to put in the tub for this month.  I've been putting my husband to work laminating this weekend. I think these were all free on TPT. :) 

Literacy Centers

I don't have many pictures of the literacy centers. I did want to share one or two. I finally finished putting my listening center onto donated iphones. It was a lot of work but I think it will be worth it. Now to get the kids to actually listen to the  whole story...

Another center that has worked out pretty well is what I call the Shower Curtain Center. Not a very catchy name but it's the best I could come up with. It's basically a word work/phonics center made out of shower curtains. Here are 2 examples:

I just do activities on a shower curtain. I buy the cheap ones, cut them in fourths, and come up with an activity. They are very durable as they have been stepped on numerous times. I wrote all their names on one chart and they had to match with letters. (I couldn't take a picture of that one.)  Several charts I wrote sight words for them to match. The possibilities are endless.