The Week I Had No Internet

Let me just start by saying that I absolutely love my little town.  There is a certain charm that comes with living in a small, tight knit community.  It’s been a HUGE adjustment getting used to being so far away from so many things…mainly the mall and Starbuck’s.  The downside to living out this far is that we have intermittent internet connectivity.  We just got our internet restored after being without it for a week.  My house has never been this clean :)

ANYWAY, my blogging schedule was a bit interrupted and there was so much I planned on sharing this past week.  I’ll save it all for next week and give y’all a little week in review instead.

I was out for two days this past week.  One for an all day training and another for our beginning of year benchmark assessments {literacy}.  As time consuming as assessments can be, I love all the data it gives me!  Now I’ll be spending my time trying to plan for each of my kids’ individual needs so I can make sure my instruction best fits their abilities and challenges them at the same time.

These were our big concepts for the week.  This is our little focus wall.  I change it weekly to highlight the big objectives.  I didn’t introduce 11 sight words last week.  A few of those words were leftover from the week before.  Those will be moving to the word wall next week :) 

Letter Bb chevron poster – Kathleen Pedersen’s “Alphaheroes”

Letter Bb Path of Motion {Handwriting} – Deedee Wills “Make It Neat”

Blue color poster – Babbling Abby’s “Color Me Kindergarten”

#2 anchor chart – my “Don’t Forget My Number” packet

 

The kids got lots of hands-on practice during literacy stations this week.  We were still focusing on identifying and spelling our names and the names of our friends.  It never ceases to amaze me how quickly kids learn.  They are seriously recognizing names without any help!!!  LOVE THAT!!!

The kids got to make lists of the friends in our classroom with 5 letters in their names {the list recording sheet is from Deedee Wills August Writing Center}. At the pocket chart, we got to match names to pictures.  Of course, they used a resource for help and were VERY successful!  I loved this pocket chart activity because it went perfectly with the class book we created the week before.  The kids were able to read the sentences independently as well as identify the sight words “my” and “is”.

 

And our clothesline names were a big hit!  I can see their fine motor skills getting stronger and stronger every day!

Since our theme was still “All About Me!”, we used this little poem as our poem of the week and added it to our poetry journals on Friday.  We practiced identifying capital letters, sorting 2/3/4 letter words, expression, punctuation, & rhyming words.  We LOVE poetry!!!

Daily Dish is one of our favorite times of the day.  It’s such a great way to teach and assess so many literacy concepts.  At the beginning of the year, our daily dish looks like this…

We were able to focus on punctuation marks and their meaning…capital and lowercase letters…letter sounds…sight words…quotation marks…name recognition…and so much more!!!  As the year progresses, the Daily Dish will evolve and look a lot different.  You might remember reading about our mid-year Daily Dish in THIS POST. 

Here was a little “All About Me” activity from Deanna Jump’s Name Unit that I had in the plans for the 2nd week.  We never got around to it that week, so we squeezed it in this past week and I LOVE the way these little peeps turned out!  This was a great way to reinforce beginning sounds, too. 

My name is Madison and I like milk.         My name is Hector & I like hopping.     My name is Logan and I like lions.

Of course, math can’t be forgotten.  I didn’t take nearly enough pictures of our week in math, but we got lots of practice identifying numerals and SEQUENCING numbers 1-10.  We even “walked the line” with dice and a number line. LOVE IT!

We introduced the concept of patterns this week and worked on creating and identifying AB patterns.  We’re starting simple. 

In our math tubs, the kids got to use my Dollar Tree dobbers to create their own AB patterns on a sentence strip.  #toocheaptobuythedoadots :)  This was, hands down, their favorite activity of the week!!! 

Numeral recognition and one-to-one correspondence are two big skills I try to hit hard at the beginning of each year in K.  I really believe that it’s important to grow INDEPENDENT learners.  If they don’t know how to identify the numbers, it’s important for them to know how to find them and figure out what they are on their own.  Obviously, I’m there to guide them and help them, BUT I really want to grow little independent learners and I’m not doing them any favors by giving them the answer all the time.  When we’re working on these activities, my kids are quickly learning to use their resources to find the answers…math wall, number line, etc. 

We practiced identifying tens frames and matching numerals with this little spinner game from my “Don’t Forget My Number” number sense packet.  My kids LOVED this game!!  I really think they liked using the spinners more than anything ;) HA!

I found this fun idea on Pinterest {ORIGINAL SOURCE HERE} and LOVED this idea!!  This is a great beginning of the year activity.  It’s very hands-on, works their fine motor skills, and they get lots of practice identifying numerals, counting one-to-one, and sequencing.  My kids ADORED this!!!!!  This will be sliding right into our math dessert tubs for next week. 

  

Sorting was another big concept last week and the kids had SO much fun practicing this skill during our math tub time.  I put different size/color pom poms in the tub as well as little plastic bugs/animals and shape/texture/color sequins.  They got to practice MANY different ways to sort and then talk about their thinking and sorting rules with me {and their partners, too!}  We even learned this little song to help us remember how to sort…

And this anchor chart might look a little familiar.  I posted THIS ONE last year and changed it up just a bit this year to fit on our anchor chart rings on the math wall.

What I love about my anchor chart area on the wall is that it’s easy access for the kids.  They get to refer back to the anchor charts at their will and use these as their resources when they need help.  The anchor charts can easily be removed from the walls/rings and carried from place to place.  It was really awesome to see my kids refer back to these charts throughout the week.

I’m SO loving these Shape Monsters from Cheryl at Primary Graffiti!  We made our circle/ovals a couple of weeks ago and culminated our learning about squares with these little cuties this past week!!!  I love all the vocabulary we can bring in when we create our little monsters…vertex/vertices, parallel lines, equal lengths, and so much more!  We’re getting smarter…and more verbose…each and every day!

I’ll be back tomorrow with my visual plans :)  I’m excited about more intentional planning and spending a full week with my kids!!!  I can’t wait to see how much they learn and grow this year!!!  Eeeek!!!!!

Now off to spend the day with my momma…I LOVE that woman!!!!! Have a great Saturday, friends!!!!