Happy Long Weekend!! (With Freebie links!)

Happy Columbus Day Weekend!!  We had quite a week!  This post is full of all the things we have been working so hard on this week!  I hope the links are helpful for you to find ideas for your own classroom! 

 We read "Christopher Columbus" by Marion Dane Bauer.  Then we made these cute FREE finger puppets so the children could go home and retell the story to their parents/guardians!!!  We also learned a Columbus Day song called "We Celebrate Columbus Day".  

 My Work on Writing area is open during Free Choice for the moment.  They love all the word cards they can copy words from and they love filling out the Fill in pictures using the word cards hanging on the wall.  I will be opening up this area as my real Work on Writing soon.  First we are going to add "Listen to Reading" next week.  That is our third part to Daily 5!!  The children are up to 12 minutes of stamina :)  So, technically, they are doing 24 minutes total!!  I am super proud of them and you should be too!!

This is a list we made for Writing Workshop on Wednesday.  The stories they wrote were so cute :)  They drew a picture of something they do in Kindergarten, then would come up and find the word (with assistance) and copy it onto their paper.

This week was also Fire Safety Week.  The children made these fire trucks inspired by Miss Kindergarten.  The children will be bringing home fire hats and coloring books next week...they weren't order in time :(

 My colleague gave me these hats for the kids to make!  They were adorable!  They say "Salisbury Firefighter" on them :)

Daily 5 is going very well!  Like I said, I am very impressed with their stamina!  Here, the children are sorting uppercase and lowercase letters.  I found the mat on another blog, but can't remember where I found it :(

 The kids still love their special book nooks!  They get so comfortable and are very good at not being distracted by the other kids doing Word Work.  It totally paid off doing only Read to Self for over a month.  They really built up their stamina and can do it now while others are doing different things right beside them.

 They LOVE Writing the Room!!!  This is from "A Year of Write the Room".  I will change the page next week to the Shape Words and Free Write.  They have been writing Color Words and Free Write.

 This is one of their favorite Word/Letter Work activities.  They are from Caitlyn Clabby at Kindergarten Smiles.  I have them separate all the capital, lowercase and pictures.  That makes it much easier for them to find the matches quicker.

 This is a pocket chart activity that I got from my mom years ago.  They put the uppercase and/or lowercase letter in each pocket, then find the picture that has the same beginning sound.  This center is changing to an uppercase/lowercase sort next week.  They really love the new dabbers game.  They need to roll a lowercase letter and dab the matching uppercase letter!  Here is the FREE packet!

 We start a new unit in Math next week dealing with 2D shapes.  To finish off this unit, the children have been counting objects in our Counting Jar, then showing the same amount on a plate and drawing a representation and posting it on the board.  The objects in the jar were ghost erasers, that's why she drew ghosts :)

**PARENTS**

No School-Monday, October 14th in observance of Columbus Day.

Next week is Pumpkin Week!  Look for all the activities we do to learn about pumpkins!!

Have a great long weekend!!

Aimee