Oh the Weather Outside... {Weather Themed Activities for the Common Core!}

We are in the middle of our three week weather unit and I am very excited to share my newest TPT product with you all: Oh the Weather Outside... {Weather Themed Activities for Math, Literacy, and More!}. It has 101 pages and is packed full of hands-on, weather themed literacy, writing, and math activities for your classroom! It meets the Common Core standards and includes literacy and math stations, writing activities, games, and more! Here's a little preview below:

My kids have been loving the activities we've done so far. I took a few pictures of some of the writing activities my kids have completed to share with you! I was so proud of their writing -- one of the writing prompts included in my weather unit is "On My Favorite Weather Day..." and my kids used this prompt in their writing center last week.

 

We also have been pretending to be meteorologists! Every day I have been taking my class outside with a makeshift microphone (AKA: styrofoam ball on top of a pencil) and they report the weather each day. Then we come back inside to record our observations in our weather journals, which are also included in this unit! We choose one "weather word of the day", record it in the box at the top, and the rule is, they have to use that word at least once in their journals.

Here's a few of the pocket chart activities included in the unit in action from last year.

You can find all these and MUCH more in my new weather unit! Click on the picture below to go to my little store! And I know I don't have all that many followers yet, but the first person to comment will get this unit for FREE!

Five for Friday {Linky Party January 25th}

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs for the weekly Five for Friday linky party! Here's 5 random things from my week:

1. Tuesday was the 100th day of school! Half of my kids thought that meant that it was the last day of school and they would be going to 1st grade. They kept telling me how much they were going to miss me, but I assured them they'd be stuck with me for another 80 days. ;)

2. This week my school kicked off our participation in Rachel's Challenge, which is the movement started by the family of Rachel Scott, one of the students killed in the Columbine tragedy. It encourages everyone to start a "chain reaction" of kindness. Our school is making a giant "chain of kindness" where the students write about either something kind someone did for them; or something kind they did for someone else. Here's some of the things my kinder kids wrote about (which melted my heart!):

3. One of my favorite shows, The Office, is in its last season ever and this week's episode left me so sad at the end! I won't post about what happened so as not to spoil it for anyone, but let's just say it's not something that is supposed to happen on the show. And yes I am invested since I've been watching for the last 9 years of my life. Haha.

4. We had a 3-day weekend due to the MLK holiday which gave me time to finish my new weather unit, Oh the Weather Outside... {Weather Themed Activities for Math, Literacy, & More!} My kids have been loving doing all of these weather activities, so I'm excited to share them with you all! Here's a preview picture of the unit below; and you can find out more by clicking on the link above to get to the product in my TPT store!

5. Last but not least, if you'll permit me to shout it to the mountains... HOCKEY IS BACK. HOCKEY HOCKEY HOCKEY. Booo to the NHL lockout for taking half of the season away from us, but I've been able to reconnect with my Phoenix Coyotes this week... go Yotes! I just love hockey, what a great sport. I took these pictures at a free scrimmage game they offered to the fans.

Link up with Doodle Bugs' post here and share your own 5 random things from the week! :)

Whether the Weather...

I've been wanting to post this stuff for awhile, but I always seem to get sidetracked with... teaching! As we all know, it feels like the work never ends. Oh well, better late than never! Our reading unit just recently ended with a weather theme that I am going to pick back up when Spring rolls around... though it already feels like it is here in Arizona, we don't really have a winter... ha! I wanted my kids to keep a daily weather observation journal, so prior to starting that we began to brainstorm a weather word wall. I was so impressed with the vocabulary they came up with! We brainstormed 3-4 words a day, added them to a sentence stem, and the kids read and wrote the words.

When we began to do our weather observations, my kids used the word wall WONDERFULLY and their writing came out so good. We went outside everyday and I videotaped the kids with a microphone (a pencil topped with a styrofoam ball!) as they pretended to be "meteorologists". I created this journal for the kids to use - they had to choose one weather "word of the day" to write in the box at the top of the daily journal entry. They then have to use that word at least one time in their actual writing entry. Feel free to download by clicking the link above the pictures:

Google Docs: Weather Journal (Clipart courtesy of Scrappin Doodles/Fonts from Kevin & Amanda)

In an attempt to get my kinders to start doing more independent work, we read the story "What Will the Weather Be Like Today?" by Paul Rogers. After we read it whole group, I split the kids up into 5 separate groups, gave them their own copy of the book, and gave them one certain page to study and describe to me all the different picture clues they saw to let them know what kind of weather day it was. After they found all of their clues, each group created their own poster to describe what they would do on their certain weather day. I wasn't sure how the whole small group work would fly, considering they hadn't produced many projects on their own, but they did a great job! They all created their respective posters together and then presented it to the class. I was very happy with how they worked together. Here is one of the posters my Sunny Day group created: 

Most kids just drew detailed pictures, but a lot of them wrote sentences describing what they did. Love it!

I began creating my own weather unit with some math and literacy games that I hope to get out on TPT come Springtime. In the meantime, I used a couple of games I created. One of them was the "Striking Short -I" word sort. They loved this game! After they sorted all of the lightning bolts, they used the recording sheet to write the words in the right word family section. Here's a glimpse of what it looks like:

You can download the game for free here on Google Docs! (Clipart courtesy of Scrappin Doodles/Fonts from Kevin & Amanda): Striking Short I! Word Family Sort

Before I end this I just wanted to send a huge thank you to Deedee Wills at Mrs. Wills' Kindergarten and a host of others for having a February contest -- I was one of the lucky winners and I got 7 FABULOUS February units to use in my classroom. I was able to use a few of the literacy activities from some of the ladies' units and my kids about died over them. Thank you Deedee and your fellow bloggers for having such a generous contest!!

First week back...

So the first week back from break is over. And I must say, it has happened. Yes, again. What is it, you ask? Christmas. Break. Magic. Perhaps you all have heard of this wonderful occurrence. Christmas Break Magic is the thing that happens while the students are gone so that when they come back, they are ready to rock and roll and get down to business in class. I don't know what it is, but it always happens! The first or second day back I'll find myself looking around the classroom and realizing, "WOW! Everyone is in their seats! WOW, I am not running myself ragged going around to nearly every student who is needing help or off task! WOW, they can do more independent work and are doing it quietly!"

It's amazing, it really is.

I love Kindergarten, but I REALLY love post-December kindergarten. I can do so many more cool things with my kiddos just because they are finally ready to do them!

We are in our weather reading theme for the next 3 weeks, so that's what most of my posts will be about in the meantime. We started weather observation journals and their writing has grown so much! Every morning we've been brainstorming different weather describing words to put in a sentence stem: "I like _________ days." They nearly filled up the whole big pocket chart with their words they came up with. They've been using a ton of them in their writing as well, so I'm loving what the chart has done for their vocabulary.

On Thursday we watched a video about temperature on brainpopjr.com and then went outside with real thermometers to check our own weather temperature that day. They were having the best discussions with each other about what was happening and why.

I have no pictures this time, sadly! I never think about it until after the activity is done. I've gotta be better at that!

Have a great long weekend! And hello to my new followers! :)

The Wind Blew

Last week was my final week using the reading theme "Spring is Here" with my kiddos. Usually during the 3rd week of the unit theme, my team and I create our own reading activities/stories to do that go along with the theme simply because we get tired of reading the same stories over and over again!

We read the story The Wind Blew by Pat Hutchins (classic!) and focused on the rhyming words in the story, so I came up with a Rhyming Word Kite for my kids to make and record all the rhyming words we heard in the story. They loved making the kites and were so getting into all the rhyming words they found!

Here are the templates for your downloading happiness :D -- The Wind Blew rhyming kites (Google Doc)

This week we launch head on into our World of Animals theme. Should be fun! We take our first field trip to the zoo on Friday...