Author: Andrea Darcy

I am a mom of 4 young adults and have been teaching for 24 years. I currently am in my best post yet! Im Teaching 1st grade at a private Christian school and love it!!!! Over the past 20+ years, I have taught grades PK, K, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. In each grade I have also taught Special education, written IEP's, modified and accommodated lesson plans and activities and have also Co-Taught. When I began teaching Pre-K and then Kindergarten, is also when I was in the process of earning my Masters Degree in Education. As a result, I combined my love for teaching, learning and writing into my "2nd and 3rd jobs" which are: Writing curriculum and writing for my handful of websites!!! (green bean kindergarten, elementary elephant)! I hope you find something here that will be useful to you and your classroom! Happy teaching! -Andrea

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.

1. ocean station directions

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.

Phonics mini-lessons

Here are some fun whole group activities that we did for “Ending Sounds.” This is a tricky Kindergarten skill, but vital for reading!

Word Family Writing missing letter -ug -ig

Word Family Writing -ug -ig

Word family sort ug ig

Jack and the beanstalk

Every day is Earth Day!

Pete the Cat Activities

This is such a cute story. Pete the cat has some white shoes and every time he steps in something, they change colors! It is a great predictable story to help reinforce reading color words.

Spring has Sprung in Kindergarten!!

Yeah! Spring is here! Now that it is time to begin planting, I am started to gather my inspirations. Here is what I have found on Pinterest. Now…what will I do the same or differently. Stay posted to see!

Sunflowers Art – I decorated the walls of my classroom with these bright sunflowers. The students cut out the petals and added a long stem and leaves.

Sunflower Whole group Lesson – I drew this concept web and inserted the sight word sentence in the middle. The students then took turns thinking about how a sunflower looks and what it is. Then, they used these words to write about the flowers that they made.

Sunflower Writing – After the students made their sunflowers, I had them write about them. The rules were: Use a capital letter to begin the sentence, use sight words, add the correct ending mark. The focus sight word that we were working on was “are.”

Paint sample Flowers-I think this would be great to use for sight words. On each strip, students could write a sight word that has the same beginning sound. The pink could be for sight words that begin with letter “Aa”, green for sight words that begin with letter “Bb” etc….

Grass planters– These are so fun to watch grow. I have used recycled milk cartons, from the school cafeteria and it worked very well. All you do is get just simple grass seeds and plant in soil, water each day, give sunlight and then watch grow!

Tissue Paper Flower Art – Just trace the child’s hand, cut out, add stems then crunch tissue paper to look like flowers. Now you have a boquet for mom (possibly Mother’s day gift?!)

CD case planter– how smart!

Toilet Paper Tube planters and Recycled Green House! Just cut tubes in half, add soil, seeds and water, then close up the tupperware. Being that it is a greenhouse, the evaporation and condensation self waters the seeds. Be sure to keep it near the sun.

Date chart printables, as show above: Plant Growth Outside

Extra fun Easter Ideas!

Easter is coming! Bunnies, eggs, candy, butterflies and new life are on their way! Below are pictures of my inspirations for this fun filled week of learning. Thank you Pinterest for saving my online search time. I can’t wait to see how I bring these ideas to life, in my Kindergarten classroom. Stay tuned to see! I will post them along the way!

Masking Tape Resist Watercolor Eggs – Use masking tape or painters tape to place onto egg drawings (white tag paper works better for the tape to peel off, but I used white construction paper and it worked fine, but the tape did not come off as smoothly). Then, have the students paint the egg with watercolors. Let it dry then peel off the tape and this is what you have!

Rabbit Art – I just drew out the bunny pieces and had the kids trace them and glue them together. I love how they all look different. Then, I gave them orange and green construction paper and had them draw out their own carrots and carrot stems. See how some are huge and others are so tiny. These rabbits are so sweet!

Rabbit Ears-Whose the real Easter bunny?

Easter Egg hunt (that is not in a yard!)

This is a very cool Easter Egg Hunt for your kids at home! What an inspiration. Hmmm….how can I bring this idea into the classroom? I might hide plastic eggs in my Lakeshore Sand & Water table. I guess we will have to wait and see! I always like to use the Internet to inspire me. Great ideas come from one another! Thanks to those who posted such inspiring ideas. (Just click on the pictures to take you to the original website.)

Egg-shaped Chick

Easter Egg Art– This is inspired from the beautiful Jan Brett book, “The Easter Egg,” which is about an egg decorating contest. Each little bunny in the book decorate a special egg to give to the Easter bunny, so that he can pass out the eggs on Easter. How sweet to have your children make thier own unique egg!

Easter Bunny Word Problems (This was my inspiration for the bunnies above.)

Paper Plate Bunny Craft– This was made with 2 little cheap paper plates. This is a great way to teach fractions-whole and half, as well as symmetry.

Recycled Egg Planters!

Mini-Bunny baskets!

Egg-filled lunch…Mmmmm!

Toilet Paper Roll Bunnies– This would be a great measurement activity. Which bunny is taller? shorter? the same height? Which bunny has the longest ears? What makes each bunny alike and different?

Chick Sequencing and Sight Word Reading

Chick Finger-printing– This would be a great counting activity.

Egg Sight Word Coloring– I love this! Thank you for sharing. Check out the amazing website below to print these eggs!

http://talesfromoutsidetheclassroom.blogspot.com/2012/03/dolch-easter-egg-sight-words.html

WebQuest – Birds! Birds! Birds!

Bird - Chipping Sparrow (Photo credit: blmiers2)

Now that Spring is here and Easter is around the corner, my class is learning about birds. Birds is kind of a radom subject. But I chose this because kids are so excited about Angry Birds these days. This is my way of meeting the students where they are at. This webquest is designed for students as a challenge activity for students who have mastered certain areas of the general curriculum. I have used webquests in the past, in place of a Math lesson (for 2-3 students who mastered that math skill presented in the lesson). So, the rest of the class is learning the Math lesson and the small group of students are researching thier “birds” in the library and/or online using the attached webquest form.

Click here to print the WebQuest activity: Birds Math and Reading Research Challenge Project

Parent Letter – Bird Research Challenge