Graduation

I have been absent from the blogging world for a little bit.  Where have I been?  Busy!  Over the past 6 weeks I have had SO MUCH going on!  All happy and fantastic things, but boy have I been side-tracked!  We bought a home, which we are thrilled about!  We then  put our house on the market, sold it and are in the midst of packing up eight years of stuff!  I am trying to de-clutter while I pack, but I have a little bit of trouble 'letting go' so I have been packing everything and figure I will decide if I still need it when we get to the new home.  I am also packing up at school.  The theme in my life would be summed up as MOVING.  The boxes are everywhere!  I`m moving into a temporary (tiny classroom) until my new (humongous) classroom is ready (sometime in the fall), at which point I will move into that classroom.  We are getting Full Time Kindergarten and are anticipated to have around 29 to 30 students in our classrooms (eeek!), so construction will begin to create larger classrooms for us.  So much has happened at school, starting with our Graduation Celebration.  The kids did such a great job singing and reading.  We had a big presentation in the gym for all family members.  Our theme was Reach for the Stars. 

Bottom of the stage.

Pictures on either side of the gym.

Students art work.  Students wrote what they wanted to be when they grew up on the star, had their name in glitter in the center and had their kid picture at the bottom.  This idea came from Peace, Love and Kindergarten.

Here are some random photos of other things we`ve done.

We learned about time and money.  This activity is from the ConGRADulations Unit Alessia Albanese and I created.  

We learned about life on the farm and went to a real life farm.

We stamped our farm thematic words.  This activity is from my Trace, Stamp, Color, Cut and Paste it, Farm theme.

We learned about word families.  Here we are making various words with our playdough.  These mats are from my Play dough Word Fun Word Family Placemats pack.  This pack is huge and has over 200 pages of word family play dough pages.  The kids are having so much fun, they forget they are learning important skills!

We celebrated our Fathers by making them car cards and keychains.  The keychains were from Oriental Trading and were super cheap.  The kids simply colored and wrote messages to dad on the back.

We are also getting ready for next year.  Although our program is changing and we are still trying to figure out what all these changes mean for us, we are still trying to plan ahead.  We have our Kindergarten Memory Books all ready to go.  This is such a special momento of a child`s Kindergarten year.  It captures monthly progress in writing letters, numbers, journal writing and also has special pages to capture memories of friends, losing teeth and so much more!  I have just updated it to include number printing to 30.

Well, one more week left of school!  I am going to miss my littles, who are actually looking bigger and acting much more mature.  They are definitely ready for Grade one.  Well, I had better get some packing done before bed!  Wishing everyone a great start to summer! 

Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there!  I've already had a great start to Mother's Day with my daughter's Mother's Day Tea.  She and her classmates put on a very heart-warming presentation of poems and songs, including Mamma Mia!  Afterwards, we drank tea and ate wraps and cookies!  The kids had iced-tea, of course!  All the moms were presented with their gifts, beautiful broaches!  They are made from plastic champagne glasses from the dollar store.  The kids colored the base with marker, then they were placed upside down and melted for a few seconds.

My kiddos also made their moms a cool gift.  We had a whole bunch of quartz small tiles donated to us, so I put them to good use.  The kids drew their moms and we podged their mom photos on the tiles to make coasters.  The students wrote messages to their moms inside the martini glass card.

Wishing all the moms out there a Happy Mother's Day with your little or big munchkins!

Time for a Sale (and Living Things)

As part of our study of Spring we have been learning about living things.  All the kids in my class could easily tell the difference between something that was living versus something that was non-living.  The tricky part came when I asked them how they knew that particular object was alive or not.  Crickets.  That's when I brought out my posters of the characteristics of living things and we went through and discussed them.  The kids were fascinated!  We got into such great discussions about how fish breathe, where animals excrete and what animals are born by hatching out of an egg versus being born alive. 

We then sorted picture cards into the categories of Living and Non-living and gave proof for how we knew it belonged in that category (using the vocabulary we had learned from our posters).

The kids then sorted pictures onto their own sorting mats and glued them into the proper place.  They had to tell the friend beside them why the objects were living and non-living.  No crickets this time!  They were using all the vocabulary from the posters in their explanations.  In overhearing one of my littles speak she was saying to the friend beside her that she would have to ask me if the picture of the person (on the living side) was a girl or a mermaid, because if it was a mermaid then it was not real!  Vera, the Tutu teacher used this product in her classroom during our product swap and had the same story to tell!  Check out how she used these posters and activities in her room here.  

To check out my Living Things Posters, click the image below.

The great news is that all the products in my TPT store will be on sale for the Teacher's Appreciation Sale from May 7th to the 8th.  It's a great time to stock up on all the items on your wish list!  

Thank you to Beth from Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah Designs for the graphics.

Happy Shopping!

Graduation

It's that time of year again!  It's time to start preparing for graduation since the end of the school year is right around the corner!  The invitations have been sent, the readings have been assigned, the crafts are being made, and it's time to start practising our songs!  Graduation is always a lot of work, but I love doing it because it really ends up being a special celebration of all that the kiddos have learned throughout their time in Kindergarten.  Parents always love it and compliment (sometimes through teary eyes) how beautiful all the crafts are!  I have teamed up with my teaching partner and good friend, Alessia Albanese from Mrs. Albanese's Kindergarten Class, to create... Con'GRAD'ulations - A Graduation Unit, which has Literacy and Math Activities and so much more! It really does take the guess work out of this special day!  (Click the image to check it out!)

This pack is loaded with end of year skills for your centers:  skip counting, telling time, identifying coins and their value, sentence writing, blends, syllables, sight words and so much more.  

We have four Graduation themes that we rotate through in various years.  Each theme is included in the pack with specific crafts and writing paper.  Also included are Graduation certificates/diplomas, student gifts, a pocket chart activity, bulletin board idea and so much more.  It has everything you need to send your kiddos off to First Grade with a smile on their face!  

Con'grad'ulations on making it to May!

Happy Teaching!

Learning Sight Words has never been SO MUCH fun!

Have you ever seen one of your students try to sound out a sight-word?  They segment the sounds into parts, then blend them together perfectly only to find that the word doesn't make sense and neither does the sentence.  That's because we all know that sounding out sight words does not work.  These sight words, high-frequency words or popcorn words as they are often called because they pop up so frequently, all have one thing in common - they must be recognized upon sight, or memorization.  There are so many ways to teach sight words.  Here are a few things we do in class that work and that the kids really enjoy!

Playdough Sight Words

The kids just LOVE the playdough center.  It is a favorite in our class!  Each week I put out the sight words that we are focusing on for them to cover up with their 'spaghetti' dough.  They roll the playdough into thin, long strips before applying it to the word.  It's also great fine-motor practise!  These activities are from my Playdough Literacy and Numeracy Mats Pack.  It includes all uppercase and lowercase letters, all Pre-Primer and Primer Dolch Sight Words as well as numbers, colors and shapes.

Magnetic Letters

So simple and so effective.  The students enjoy manipulating the letters to form new words.  I put out different colored or themed sight words which keeps them interested in this center since there is always something new there.  We often use these when learning new sight words during Guided Reading.

Spot the Word Game

This is a simple game that requires only a flashlight and your sight words.  We play this as a class and use the words from our Word Wall, or I put it out as a center for students to use on a table top.  Students take turns spotting the word with the flashlight.  Or have two flashlights and see who can spot the word first.  I always use the configuration of the word on the word wall so students can see the shape of the word.

Stamping our Sight Words

The students have fun stamping our thematic words, but they also love to stamp in general, so this was the perfect way to help reinforce sight-words.  This activity is from my Trace, Stamp, Write, Cut and Paste it.  The picture is from my Part 1:  Words edition, but I also have a Part 2:  Sentences edition, for more of a challenge.  All Dolch Pre-Primer and Primer words are included.  The pages have the same lay-out so that once students are familiar with what to do, they can do it independently as a center activity.

Step on the Word Sight Word Game

This idea came from my retired K teacher mom.  Thanks mom!  Kids just love games that get them up and moving and this is one of them!  Students do exactly what the game title says...step on the word!  You can play one child at a time or in opposing teams (for a little healthy competition!)  I've just uploaded it as a game to TPT with cute KPM Doodles sneaker clipart.  The pre-primer Dolch sight word list is done, and I'm currently working on the other sight-word lists, so stay tuned!

It's so fascinating to see the students learn and memorize these words through repeated exposure to fun, engaging activities, centers and games!  How do you teach sight words?

My First Product Swap

For the past two and a half weeks we have been trying something new in the class - morning work!  When the students would come in the classroom first thing in the morning I usually had thematic name cards set out for them at the carpet.  They would use these to review current skills we were working on in class, but since I have been a part of the Magical Product Swap, organized by Jessica Stanford from Mrs. Stanford's Class, I got to try out and use a fantastic morning work product.  

My product swap partner was Vera, The Tutu Teacher.  Perhaps you know her as Vera from Bedford, Love and Teaching, but her blog got a make-over and so did her name!  She loves to make and wear tutus!  I got to use her April morning work pack and the kids had so much fun with these worksheets.  These activities were great because the students were engaged from the moment they got to school.  There was no 'down' time before announcements began and this was because the students were busy working.  Another fabulous thing about this pack was that it got increasingly more complex as the days progressed.  For example, at the beginning of the month the students would read, then eventually trace the word April, but by mid month they were writing some of the word independently.  The pack also focused on so many skills we were currently working on -identifying sight words, subtraction, reading and writing blends and so much more!  The activities were related to current holidays or thematic days such as Easter, April Fool's Day, National Poetry Month and so much more.  We didn't get to do the April Fool's Page since we were on our Easter holiday that day, but all the activities were SO MUCH FUN!  Check out our morning work activities:

My kiddos are so used to circling the words they know in our poems or Read-Along pages that I didn't even have to tell them (and it wasn't expected of them), but they did it anyway!  

I love the sound substitution (change rain into train) and fine-motor printing practise.

The kids loved the word search pages!  This little one was doing mental math and didn't need to cross off or cover up the eggs to subtract.

Here we are circling sight words and applying knowledge of using the word in a sentence (capital letter for the beginning).

I love the visual on this little ones drawing representing "it's as hot as an oven!"  Sweat is just oozing off this person!

Here we are putting the life cycle of a chicken in order.

Here is another great visual.  In this drawing, her hand is WAY up in the air (touching the sky) - the box is that light!

Vera also used one of my products in her class.  Click here to check out her blog and find out what product she used!

Vera has a morning work pack available for all the months, so click the image below to go check out the April morning work pack and the rest of her TPT store.  

Thank you to Jessica Stanford (for organizing the Product Swap) and to Michelle, The 3 am Teacher for the graphics.  Click here to see who else has joined in the fun!

I'm going to leave you with something one of my littles asked me that just made my day...

Little:  "Mrs. Parisi....(pause:  thinking)...are you a grown-up?" hehehe

Wishing the 'kid' in everyone a good weekend!  

Week two with dinosaurs

Since I teach full day, alternate day Kindergarten, my students either see me 2 or 3 times a week.  That really isn't enough time to get through everything there is to explore and discover with a theme or topic, so we usually do our themes for at least 2 weeks.  It was quite fitting learning about dinosaurs this past week since while we thought Spring was on its way, we felt like we were in the ice age!  We had a very bad ice storm.  The trees were frozen stiff and when the wind would blow it sounded like a bowl of Rice Krispies (Snap! Crackle! Pop!) only MUCH louder!  Well, it might have been blistering outside, but we were having fun learning inside.  Here are some more dinosaur activities we did this week.

This is our dinosaur pocket chart activity.  We practised writing our color words and reading with intonation (voice inflection goes up for a question and reads with excitement for an exclamation).

We graphed our favourite dinosaur and then wrote facts about them in our journals.

My favourite dinosaur is a Stegosaurus.  It has spikes on its back.

My favourite dinosaur is a Triceratops.  It has 3 horns.

My favourite dinosaur is a T-Rex.  It has Sharp teeth.

Here are our literacy centers for the week:

Making words.  We found little words within the big word 'Dinosaur' and recorded our findings.

Writing our CVC words.

Working with the blends br-, tr-, st-.

We reviewed our vowel sounds and found the middle vowel sound in the word.  I always sing this little song with the kids (it's from my daughter's Leapfrog Making Words DVD)

A-E-I-O-U

They're the vowels

They're the glue

They stick the words together

Stick the words together!

As a class we brainstormed Dinosaurs can, have, are...

and then the students used these words to personalize their own dinosaur with our finger-paint activity.

All the activities above are from my Dinosaurs Math and Literacy Activities.

We wrote our dinosaur words around our classroom.  This activity from my teaching partner, Alessia Albanese.

We had a special day when we were Paleontologists.  We had our own special hats and of course, we needed tools.  The kids had a blast 'digging' out bones (okay, they were chocolate chips) out of the ground (okay, it was out of a cookie).  Our tool was a popsicle stick (you could also use a toothpick).  They counted how many bones (chocolates) they found and recorded their answers.  Our Reading Buddies in Grade 3 helped us out with this activity.  Then we got to eat our cookies!  Mmmmm!

We stamped our dinosaur thematic words.  This activity is from my Dinosaurs Trace, Stamp, Color, Cut and Paste it.

I wish I could show pictures of what a great time the kids had, but our School Board does not allow that...so we we are (the teachers) having a great time!  Pictured below:  Mrs. Albanese, me (I'm not really that short...I'm squatting so you can see the cute paleontologist on the door!), and Ms. Bucci (student teacher).

Have a great week!