When do your kids go book shopping?

I was sent a few emails in the past few weeks about how and when I let my students know when they can book shop for new books in the their book boxes.

I have a morning "Buzz Work" wheel that my students check each morning to see what they need to work on that day.  These are activities that they do for morning work and when they finish their work throughout the day. 

Basically each student's name in on a section and colored bee is pointing toward that section.  I turn it each day so that students have a new activity each day.  Below the wheel are baskets with bees attached to them that match the wheel above.

These baskets provide the work that they work on each day.  Every color bee is represented on a basket except for blue.  If a student is on blue, then they can book shop that day.  So each student gets to book shop once a week.  I also allow anyone to book shop during our social centers at the end of the day.

Before they can book shop, you will need to make sure your students understand your classroom library system and how to choose good fit books.  (You can read about my library here.)  Here is a chart that helps us with choosing good fit book.  I found this idea on Kim Adsit's site. 

I taught this lesson with the sisters' suggestion of using shoes.  I LOVE to use this book to help the lesson even more:

While we're talking about books, here is a little chart I made with photos of students showing them what good readers do:

I made this with the class by showing them the photos that I snapped and asked them how the kids in the photo were being good readers.  I was sooo proud of their responses!

We're getting there!

Happy Saturday, peeps!  I am so thankful for this week because I feel like we finally jumped over that hump that is the first few {CrAzY} weeks of kindergarten - PHEW!  There was so much learning that happened with my cuties and they have been expressing that learning at home and in other areas of the school.  

One of my favorite things that happen in kindergarten is when we move past reading the pictures and we start reading the words.  I encourage finding the sight words that we have learned while doing Read to Self by giving each student a small hand lense that stays in their book box to hunt for these words.  It may be reading just one word amidst a whole sentence, but they're reading words and they feel soooo successful!  They are always pointing out our four words that we have learned and I LOVE IT!  Sprinkles to these cuties!

Anyways, I just had to share my joy with you all.  Little celebrations are celebrations too!

This week we started learning about plane shapes.  I started with circles and gave each student a pipe cleaner to play with for a moment (always play with manipulatives first) and they started using them as mustaches!  How cute!

 

Anyways, then I taught them a circle song in which we bent the pipe cleaner into a circle while singing it.

We also read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and used a lot of shape activities form Julie Lee's Chicka Chicka pack on TPT.

We also tasted coconut and graphed the results and discussed what we learned:

We also created Chicka Chicka Boom Boom trees with our names.

Here is all of it put together!

 Another shape activity that we did at the end of the week was create shapes with our bodies.  I compile these photos into a class book.  Here is one picture of our body shapes.  (By the way, I learned who the leaders and planners are in my class with this activity because those kiddos jumped in so fast to tell their friends how to lay to make the shapes.)

We had trouble making a rectangle so we made a plan on the marker board.

 We also played some alphabet games.  Here we are playing Alphabet Swat!  All I do is lay out letters that we have learned and give two students a fly swatter.  Then I call out a letter and they swat it.  They loved it!

We also went on a letter hunt to review our letter that we have already learned.  When we found a letter that we were reviewing we recorded it on the recording sheet.  To spice it up we wore super star reader glasses!

We played Alphabet Bump to review our letters that we have already learned, but I forgot to snap pics of it - Stink a roni!

I promise I am almost finished...

We also reviewed out sight words by arranging our friends wearing letter vests in the correct order to spell a sight word.

We also turned our home living center into a vet's office since we were learning about community helpers this week.  I was so impressed with my cuties' kindness toward the animals and how they wanted to take care of them.

One last exciting thing is that my sweet bloggy friend, Heather at Heather's Heart, is having a give away that you will not want to miss.  Click the pic below to enter.

 

Thanks for reading this super long post.  Happy Saturday friends!

Hi friends!

I am still alive!  I know I have not posted in f-o-r-e-v-e-r... but that's because it's been a little busy.  Here's what we have been up to the first two weeks of school.

We started the year with All About Me activities to get to know each other.  We shared Me Bags, but I didn't get any pics of them - oops!  You can get the directions for FREE here on my website.

We also completed our first family project which was to decorate a hexagon for a class honeycomb that shows that we all "bee" long together.  Here are some of them.  They will stay up all year to remind us of our classroom community.  You can print the directions, sign, and honeycombs here for FREE on my website.

 

We also created a few familiar looking projects compliments of Deanna Jump and Kim Adsit.

Here are some All About Me books we made.

This was a little extra fun project that we did for my news bulletin board outside of my classroom.  We turned our pictures into little bees!

Totally not necessary, but super cute and fun!

We also celebrated our good behavior with a shaving cream party.  We earned this reward last Friday when we earned 50 Pride Passes as a class.  Pride Passes are little tickets that students earn throughout the school.  It's a part of our PBIS system.

Look, one of my cuties drew Pete!

 

Here are a few more pics.  You may notice our Pete the Cat hats.  Pete tied in great this week because our letters of study were C, A, and T.

We also started building our reading stamina in Daily 5 and have been graphing our progress.  We have made it to 7 minutes.

You can print out the graph here for FREE on my website.

We also learned about the people at school by going on my Kissing Hand Tour.  The cuties LOVED it!

 

We're off the find Chester...

 

 The first stop was the library to visit Mrs. Robledo.

You can get it here on my TPT store for only $2.

Here is a pic of us building the letter A from my Building the Alphabet set on TPT.

We also go to meet Penelope after learning how to take care of our stuffed hedgehog first.

This is actually an old photo.  The pic I snapped of us with Penelope had a student in it that does not have permission to be on my blog.  I am sure you can visualize our enjoyment of her.

There has been a lot more going on, but there is a small glimpse of our two weeks together.  I must say, too, that this class is AMAZING!  I have tickled pink to be with this group everyday and we still have the rest of the year together!