For the second to last week of school, I thought it would be fun and engaging for my students to review sight words and reading skills with a rainforest backdrop!
Here are my Pinterest found inspirations!
Month: May 2012
Skippyjon Jones fun!
Kindergarten Memories
On the last day of school, I asked my students what their most favorite thing about kindergarten was. They loved sharing their memories! I loved having their thoughts in this web!
I received this wonderful gift from a parent, one school year! Every child in my class is represented! I just love it!
A few years ago, my students drew a picture of themself as a Kindergarten student. They did a wonderful job!
One of my students inspired me to have an “End of the Year Circus-Themed” Party. So I did! It was fun and easy to decorate. It was also very inexpensive!
Easy Decorations:
1. I made the balloon center piece by taping 4 balloons to a popcorn cup and then a filled in the holes with tissue paper.
2. I sprinkled the table with peanuts and animal crackers.
3. The brown bags are filled with popcorn and are decorated with circus animal die-cuts.
4. I placed some more animal crackers in a ziploc bag and then placed a die-cut of a circus tent on the top.
5. Darn, I forgot to take a picture of it….but I hung up a pennant banner (that I bought at Wal-Mart). I also hung some balloons
6. At Michaels, I found some 50 cent Circus plates and napkins!
Incredible Insect Activities!
To start off our insect lesson, we compared what we know about the traits of animals, people and insects. However, this may be better for the end of an insect unit.
Here are my favorite Pinterest inspirations from other amazing teachers! Just click the picture to see the website of the original creator of the activity.
Firefly Craft- Add a glow stick inside of a mountain dew bottle! (idea found on Pinterest)
We just completed a fun “Hungry Caterpillar” activity, using real fruit and a caterpillar toy to retell Eric Carle’s story. My students also tasted each fruit, just as the caterpillar did!
Roaring Dinosaur Lessons
Dinosaur lessons pair up great with Science, especially “living things” lessons. I usually bring in this theme at the end of April and after Easter, since dinosaurs came from eggs. Here are some snip-it’s of some Dino things we have created.
KWL chart– We thought about what we knew about dinosaurs on Monday and on Tuesday, students stated things they wanted to learn about dinosaurs. Kindergarteners have lots of questions and this is a great way to list them and revisit when time permits. At the end of our dinosaur unit and during it, we listed the answers to some of our questions. We didn’t find out all of the answers, though and the kids learned that it ok!
Reading Words ending in -ed: I did the whole group lesson below, on chart paper, because I noticed that students were having trouble reading books that had words with “-ed.” After this lesson their reading was more proficient! They also had alot of fun thinking about verbs and action words of dinosaurs!
Picture Completion-Great for developing creative thinking! I got the drawing of T-Rex from a “Teacher Created Materials” teacher resource book. The students had fun drawing the rest of T-Rex’s body along with his environment.
Sight Words “yes” and “no” lesson– This is a chart we created before our dinosaur unit. It was a fun way to incorporate sight words!
My favorite dinosaur sight word writing! As I modeled writing (while the students read aloud) I emphasized how each word is a sight word that we have learned during Kindergarten. All except for the word dinosaur.
Student writing- My favorite dinsosaur
More “My favorite dinosaur” writing……
Cute dinosaur song! This song names the dinosaurs! It is nice and twangy.
Whole Group – Think about and listen for words that end with the sound “r”
Stegosaurus Name Dinosaur craft
Measure the Brontosaurus
How many “persons” long is a dinosaur?
Order dinosaur pictures by SIZE
Whole Group Activity – Pass out Clip Art made dino-sticks of “meat-eaters” and “plant eaters.” The meat eaters act out “subtraction” problems that the teacher verbalizes and writes down on the whiteboard. The children absolutely love eating their dinosaur friends!
Dinosaur Number Order
Match the dino to its skeleton
ABC activities
Giving a child a fun and tangible way to learn the letter names and sounds is-fun!
Oh! Oh! Ocean fun!
I love teaching about the Ocean during May. It gets me and my students excited about the upcoming summer time fun! The ocean is so magical! Here are some fun crafts that we made to help develop vocabulary. I have found that some of our children lack such vocabulary and are not exposed to the beach, shells and sand. Not all students have the opportunity to travel and vacation to the beach. However, as teachers, we can bring the ocean into our classrooms!
This is a whole group activity we did after reading several library books and viewing some YouTube video’s about the ocean. It is a great way to develop and build on vocabulary.
Compare/Contrast FISH on a Venn Diagram
I demonstrated how to draw a clownfish using ovals of various shapes and sizes. This is the fish I made during the demonstration.
Here is what my students made!
I had them draw their fish on white construction paper, cut it out, glue it to blue paper, then cut out pink sea anemone’s and green seaweed (using just scraps of paper).
Shark Craft! I drew out the head, the body and the fins. Then the students cut them out and put the shark together with glue. I gave them scrap white paper to cut out teeth.
Rainbow Fish using tissue paper squares and foil square scales.
The label below on the shark says “This is what I learned about sharks….”
The waves were cut out of construction paper. The students wrote: “____ lives in the ocean.”
The crab, shark and fish were items the students made in learning stations, with the help of older students. The Stations lasted for an hour, with a fourth station being a jellyfish craft.
Cute Crab!
I had Fifth grade students come help me with these Ocean crafts. I did not have a teacher assistant, so my plan of extra helpers worked out very well! Here are Printables for each Ocean Station.
2. ocean station writing labels
Comparing a Sea Horse and a Horse using a Venn Diagram
Ending Sounds, to go along with the Ocean themed lessons.
Hermit Crab – We made this after I read, “A House for Hermit Crab,” by Eric Carle.
Ocean Animals vs. Land Animals Picture Sort – Students worked on this activity at their tables, by cutting and pasting onto a T-chart they drew on long construction paper.
green bean kindergarten 