Smorgasboard of activities and a Thanksgiving FREEBIE!

Happy Sunday, friends! It's been a few weeks since I last updated about the activities I have going on in my classroom, so today's blog will be a relative smorgasboard of different activities! And I've got a Thanksgiving math station freebie at the end, so make sure to read the whole thing! :)

Awhile back we wrapped up our colors unit - I think that's one of my favorite units to teach because there are so many great activities you can do. We learned color word songs to help us learn how to read and write them and the kids love them so much that they'll just randomly burst into song throughout the day! We make a fancy color songs flip book for them to take home and practice with their families. (Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of it!) We also read Pete the Cat (of course) and created the little sentence building craftivity that's all over Pinterest. They cut up their sentence, put it back in order, and then built their Pete the Cat with the color shoes that their sentence had.

We also read The Crayon Box That Talked - I love that book - and I created a response sheet for the kids to complete. Below is my partially completed version that I did with the kids under the document camera. On the back, the kids had to combine all the things the character drew in the story to make an illustration with "lots of details". I challenged them to fill up the entire picture space (easier said than done for a 5-year old on an 11x17 piece of paper) and most of them did! My kids have been so cute with their writing and illustrations -- they'll ask me, "Did I use lots of details?" or "Look at all the good details I used!" I've noticed a big change in their writing because of it... love it!

We've also been working on a ton of labeling activities, still. Our latest vocab from our reading series was clothing words, so one of my amazing (former) teammates made up this little draw and label clothing activity - it's so funny to see how they draw themselves! I love the meticulousness of the striped shirt! Haha!

I didn't end up doing TONS of Halloween activities with my kiddos -- I mostly incorporated those activities into their math and literacy center time. We are currently finishing up our bat unit, so I'll post all of those activities when we are done! The kids are loving it. In the meantime, here are a few things that I did do. We sang the poem "5 Little Pumpkins" and created this craftivity to practice working with our ordinal numbers. I wish I had a picture of one of the completed versions my kids did -- theirs turned out much more cute and colorful! Here's the model I created to show them:

I also made a version of this poem that I got from A Place Called Kindergarten for the kids to work on in their interactive notebooks. We highlighted sight words we knew and then drew all the characters we read about in the poem! If you haven't checked out Mrs. Bell's blog, PLEASE go and see her posts on interactive notebooks! She has some fantastic ideas!

 Poem idea from Mrs. Bell at A Place Called Kindergarten

And finally, some quality gifts courtesy of my kinder kids. Haha. Love the "ghost poop"! ;)

Okay, okay, you've stuck with me this long! Thank you! Now for the FREEBIE! I made a little Thanksgiving themed math station for counting on from a given number in a known sequence. This concept has been a little tough for some of my kiddos so I thought this math station would be a fun way to practice it. Click on the picture below to get to my TPT store and download it for free! Enjoy! :)

Fun With Color Words!

My class just wrapped up their "colors" theme last week and we have done so many activities with color words and color-themed stories.

My district uses the Houghton Mifflin reading program, so all of our kinder themes last 3 weeks. I'll do the stories from the reading program for the first 2 weeks, and then the third week provides me with a little more freedom to use my own themed books that I love. During that week we read stories like Harold and the Purple Crayon, Pinkalicious, Caps for Sale, Go Away Big Green Monster, & The Crayon Box That Talked.

For the latter book, I created a center where my kids had to write the color word on the game pieces, match it to the same color on the game board, and then, when they were done, use it to fill out and color the recording sheet.

I posted it in my last entry, but I'll put it here again for your free downloading pleasure if you missed it! Click on the link below to download the center from Google Docs.

The Crayon Box That Talked Color Words Center

To help the kids learn to read and write their color words, my kinder team and I have them sing color word songs. I noticed such a difference between my first year class, when I didn't have the songs, and my second year class, who did, with how quickly they remembered and were able to read all the words. I swear, there is a song for everything! But it's more fun that way!

Another book we read for this theme was A Color of His Own by Leo Leonni. After we read the story, I have my kids write their own sentence stem to tell what color their chameleon turned and what object made it do so. I give them the sentence stem, "My chameleon turned ________________ when it sat on a _____________." They make their own chameleon (I just found a template online), glue it to the writing sheet, and then draw the object that it stood on to make it change colors. I got some cute and creative ones this year! One kid said a tiger, so he drew orange and black stripes on his chameleon. Other kids chose rainbows, leaves, cherries, and strawberries. I love how excited they get for this activity! Unfortunately I don't have my writing sheet available to download, but you can feel free to use this idea and make it your own. I'll try to take some pictures of the finished writing... I don't know how anyone takes pictures in their class, kindergarten is too exhausting for that! Haha!

Even though we have moved on from our colors reading theme, I don't stop integrating those activities with the color words. We're onto a families theme - what stories or activities do you guys like to do with colors and/or families? I've seen some great ideas out there in blogland already. Till next time!