Daily Five Video

Hi friends!  So I have a fabulous volunteer in my room and she recorded my class checking for Daily 5 and working while I taught a guided reading group.  It's not much, but it shows how to check in and my cuties working.

During the video, I check in my students by calling the reading group friends first (after making a mistake - this gal was nervous!), then I call the friends who have the iPads for the day.  Last I check in the other students.  They quickly told me what daily they would do and I marked their response on this recording sheet.

If you want to learn more about the iPads and the apps I use, check out my presentation materials by clicking on the pic below.

This document also explains how I choose the students to use the iPads each day.

I hope this was helpful!  Have a happy Thursday!

Using QR Codes

I don't know if you are familiar with QR (quick response) codes, but I am becoming a fan of them.  They are so easy to use and kinders love using the iPads for anything, so I have been creating fun activities that use QR codes.  Here is a sight word scavenger hunt for you.  It uses the sight words be, good, go, she, said, will, play, and for.  Place the cards around the room and let students scan them with a QR reader on a iPad.  Then they record the word on the recording sheet.

 I also created this document that walks you through creating them and other uses for them.

I am also working on adding a QR codes page to my website.  Here is a very rough draft of it.  It will look better soon and have tons of resources, I promise.

Wish me luck because tomorrow I am presenting on QR codes for my campus after school.  EEKK!

Free iPad apps for Daily 5

Hi there!  Happy Presidents' Day!  We had a day of professional development and I was one of the presenters.  I presented on using {free} apps with our iPads during Daily 5.  Here is my little handout that went along with it.  I hope it's useful for some of you.

Happy Valentine's Week!

What a fun week we had!  I just love Valentine's Day oodles!  Before I tell you all about our fun, take a look at a gift one of my cuties gave to me:

 I got a giant, pink, fluffy dog!  How cute is he?!?

Anyways, we really enjoyed a lot of activities from Mrs. Maya's Valentine's Unit that I snagged during to Super Bowl sale.

We also worked on more CVC words with a Valentine's twist.

 I put my cuties in pairs.  Each pair received a bag with 10 heart shaped boxes from the Dollar Tree (of course).  Each box was numbered 1-10 and inside had a CVC picture.

 

 They opened them up and recorded the word on a recording sheet.

Click the pic below to grab it from my website.

We also created Valentine's glyphs.

Click here to get this glyph from my website.

On Valentine's day, we enjoyed searching for our missing candy that the Sweetheart Snatcher stole.

We found them in the tissue box!

We also enjoyed delivering Valentine's cards dressed as post office workers.  

(I received these from a Donors Choose grant.  You can see my completed projects here.)

We also played Valentine's bingo.

You can grab it here from my website.

For our yummies, we made parfaits.

Also, if you want to share the love, please consider donating to my Donors Choose project and use the match code HEART to have your donation matched.  We only need$61, which is actually only $31 with the match code.  Click below to donate.

I have to get ready now for my presentation on Monday.  I am teaching my campus on our PD day.  Yikes!  Have a happy weekend!

100th day - Hooray!

Yesterday was out 100th day of school!  What a blast we had - literally!  We blasted off as Zero the Hero:

 

We loved exercising to Jack Hartman's Zero the Hero song on this CD.

We also made Zero the Hero puppets.

 

These guys came from a sweet Texas gal that I met last summer, Crystal at Kreative in Kinder.

We created ourselves at 100 year olds.

 

We predicted and graphed if we could walk around our school in 100 steps.  Womp womp!  We barely made it to the front entrance.

At our school we have seven kindergarten classes.  We all went outside to take an aerial view of all of us standing in the formation of the number 100.  That pic is not here yet.  I will have to post it later.

 

Other fun we had included writing about what we would do with $100 and all the kinder teacher ran a different activity station for 100 seconds, such as hopping for 100 seconds, dancing for 100 seconds, etc.

"buy color feathers like red, yellow, purple, green, orange."

"I will buy a motorcycle if I had 100 dollars."

"I'm giving my 100 dollars to my dad."

We also brought 100 items from home to compare weights on a pan balance.  I introduced the activity by explaining that a pan balance helps us understand objects that are heavy and light in comparison to each other.  I used Penelope the hedgehog to help us understand better.

Thanks Penelope!

We then compared our items to other friends' items and recorded our learning on this recording sheet.

You can click on the pic above to snag it from my website.

The kinder teachers all dressed up like we were 100 years old.

We may have pulled a few pranks while the kids were at specials.

I hope you have or had a fabulous 100th day!

Understanding Diversity

Last year I wrote this post about diversity.  My cuties last year really understood the lesson on diversity through that activity so I did it again this year.

We started our lesson on diversity by talking about our skin and the colors we see.  Of course most answers were black and white.  One cutie did say peach.  Then I read this book:

Then we learned we were going to create our skin color with paint.  I asked my cuties what colors of paint we would need to create our skin color, and again, I heard black and white.  So I asked them, "To make Mrs. Crowder's skin color, what colors would we need?"  Many of them said white, so I rubbed a little white paint on my hand.  They all agreed it wasn't correct.  So then we mixed a little more of different colors, from the choices of red, yellow, black, brown, and white.  We all agreed I wouldn't need brown or black, so we tried with a little yellow, red, and white and then we did it!  We made Mrs. Crowder's skin color.

Then it was their turn.  I gave them little plates of paint to mix small amounts to make their skin color.

Once they made their color, then we mixed a little more in a Dixie cup for them to create a self portrait.

Then we all checked out each other's work and came to the conclusion (YAY!!!!!!) that we all have different skin and none of us are really the same color so we all need to be freinds because, really, we are all different!

A quick freebie for the 100th day!

Hi friends!  Out 100th day is coming on Thursday and I am so excited!  One activity my cuties need to do to prepare for the day is send 100 small items that fit in a baggie.  Since we are beginning our learning about measurement, I wanted us to compare the weight of our baggie to a friend's baggie.  Here is a little freebie to help us compare the weights of the two baggies.

Here are my past post about the 100th day.