Five for Friday! 9-25-15

Hi there!  I am so happy to be linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for another Five for Friday.

My blog has a new design and I am having a giveaway to celebrate.  There are three prize packs!  My store has been on sale all week too!  I still have everything 20% off today!  You can go grab a good deal if you need something for your Kinder or First grade classroom.  The giveaway is going on until tonight 6:00 pm Eastern time.  Let me know what you think of the new design.

I promise that I did not plan for  the pocket chart to match my little birdies... just a happy accident!  Ha ha!  So, we did this as a whole group activity and then I taught my kiddos how to make tally marks for this page from my Print and Go! Back to School.  They did a great job and I felt like this activity was a big success.  It was a perfect blend of what we have been doing in ELA and math.  Woo hoo!

OK, and can I just say how much I love my kiddos' names this year... and my kiddos too, of course!  I have some truly amazing little people in my classroom.

This is an image of what the page from my pack looks like:

We did two math lessons with these cards and cubes this week.  We reviewed number order, counted forwards and backwards, wrote numerals and then did the worksheet from my new math program that related to the concepts.  I changed up the lessons to work a bit better for our classroom.  I appreciate a lot of things about this program, but I need to make it work for my classroom.  I thought these materials helped my kids solidify the concepts being taught better than the lesson as it was written.  My kids totally demonstrated mastery on the worksheets, so I think this worked great!  I did this as a center with small groups.  Sometimes the lessons work fine as written, but sometimes the transitions required to pass out materials for the whole group wastes so much time.  I am doing more of the lessons as centers instead of whole class.  I also feel like I get a much better picture of who is "getting it" and who needs help.  This is my first year doing this new math program, so it is a learning curve for me.  But, I am up for the challenge!  You can get those number cards here.

We also did a lesson where the kiddos were telling stories about teddies and I modeled writing number sentences.  Then they did a flower picture and wrote their own number sentence.  We just did this with small numbers.  Since we told teddy stories for 3,4,5, I let them do flower stories for 3,4, or 5.   We did this lesson with part/part/whole (2+1=3) equations and then did another lesson later in the week with whole/part/part number sentences (3=2+1).  So far, my kiddos are keeping up with the pace and getting the concepts.  Although the worksheet for the whole/part/part number sentences was tricky! 

My Print and Go! Back to School pack is sure coming in handy.  I needed a letter sound independent center that my kiddos could handle.  This was perfect!  They LOVED using Do-a-Dots to stamp the answers.  Woo hoo!  I love it when they are doing serious academics and feel like it is fun:)

And I just have to say this, because as kindergarten teachers, this is a constant line we have to walk.  I am very concerned about the balance of academic rigor with developmental appropriateness.  My students PLAY every day in my classroom.  EVERY DAY, and I'm not just talking about recess.  The way I do my centers has open ended play and exploration built in.  It works great!  I just felt like I needed to mention that because this post is so academic.  Even though my kiddos are doing very important learning, they are also doing very important playing, as they should be!

Thanks so much for stopping by!  Don't forget to go check out all the other great blogs on Doodle Bugs Teaching.
Happy teaching!