CVC words, Martin Luther King Jr., Ramps and MORE.

Hi!  I can't believe we are half way through the school year.  This weekend I am working on 2nd quarter report cards and am wondering where the time has gone.  We've had so much fun in kindergarten and I am constantly amazed with the progress that we are making.  

We are going to be starting to really dive into CVC words and vowel sounds in words.  The kids have mastered their ABC letters and sounds and are ready for the next step. 

We are having lots of fun in our literacy centers.

In this center we roll the dice and read the sight word.  We record it on a piece of paper.  Every time that word is rolled, we put a tally under the word.

 Kids are loving this center.  We brainstormed a list of CVC words. The kids draw an index card off the table.  They say the word slowly and drop a ball into the slots of the plastic dishes for each sound they hear.

Lakeshore has these pretty fun rhyming houses.  The kids love sorting the rhyming words into the correct boxes.

Last week I introduced pin poking sight words to the kids.  They really enjoyed poking the sight words with a pin and then holding their paper up to the window to see their mystery word.  You can find these words HERE.

I just finished a new product that I will be introducing this week.  We are going to be using CVC word work mats in our centers.  There are 5 levels of difficulty,

 Students will put a plastic letter in the box for the missing ending sound that they hear in the word.

 Students will put a plastic letter in the box for the missing middle sound that they hear in the word.

 Students will put a plastic letter in the box for the missing beginning sound that they hear in the words.

 Students will also be able to put plastic letters in the boxes for the beginning, middle, and ending sounds that they hear in the words.

Each set of cards has an I can statement to go with it.

 You can find these HERE.

In addition to the fun centers we are doing, we just wrapped up our Martin Luther King Jr, unit. 

We started the unit by looking at 2 eggs.  We made a list of all the things that we noticed about the egg.  We then drew pictures of what we thought the eggs would look like on the inside.  

 

 We cracked them open and talked about how they were the same on the inside and compared this to our bodies.  We talked about how we are all the same on the inside and that our skin color makes us unique.

I broke open some M & M's and showed them the insides.  We talked about the outside being a different color but inside they were the same and they were just as good!  

 We read these books.  We learned that our skin color makes us unique and that the world would be a pretty boring place if we all looked the same.

 We all put our hands in the middle and looked at all the different shades of skin we have in our class,

We then put some brown paint in a container.  When a kid saw the color of paint that matched their skin, they came to the front of the room.  I painted their hand and made a hand print.    I added white and peach paint until the shade of paint got lighter.  We learned that we all have some brown pigmentation in our skin,  These hand prints will be made into a circle of friendship wreath.

This past week we also did a STEM unit on making ramps.  I gave the kids empty toilet paper rolls.  There job was to make a ramp,  They needed to make their marble go down it faster than anyone else.  It was fun watching them.  At first all the kids were working on their own,  I clarified that they needed ONE ramp per group.  It took a bit for them to figure out that they needed to be working together.  

We lined up all our ramps and had races at the end.  The kids had so much fun.  I loved watching them working together to figure it out.

Finally, I am going to be doing a 14 Days of Love give-away over in my TPT store.  Every day, starting February 1st - February 14th I will be giving away something that I create for free,  :)

The link to my store is HERE.

I hope you have a great week!

Sara