Spring Ducks

Last week we read one of my favorite stories - Make Way for Ducklings, by Robert McCloskey. The kids loved it too, as most of them gave it a 5 on our rating scale of 1-5! Our week consisted of all sorts of ducky things, including this word family center game I'm offering to you for free!

Print, laminate and cut out the cards. Place them in a bag or can and provide students with response sheet. They take turns drawing a card out of the bag and blending the sound with the ending "ack." If it makes a word, they record it on a duck. If not, they put the card back. The kiddos keep going until all their ducks have words. Here it is: 

Quack

We also made some cute ducky art --

The mama duck is made from a handprint, and the little ducklings are thumbprints. The kids then used a finger to paint a head and for mama duck and some decided to make heads for the ducklings too. After drying, they added the scene using crayons. 

These little ducklings were made from mini paper plates cut in half. You could have the kiddos paint or color the plates yellow first... mine covered them with yellow tissue paper. After that, they covered them with yellow cotton balls. I used regular cotton balls and shook them with yellow powder paint. Then I had the kids cut out a head, beak and feet from paper. I gave them a pattern for the head, but some like to do their own! I made Mr. and Mrs. Mallard. These ducks are inspired by a cute mallard I pinned: 

Source: 1.bp.blogspot.com via Sarah on Pinterest

Another great pinterest find from Mrs. Ricca's Kindergarten 

Source: mrsriccaskindergarten.blogspot.com via Sarah on Pinterest

After reading Eric Carle's 10 Little Rubber Ducks, the kiddos practiced ordinal numbers using the activities described by Mrs. Ricca. Go see her post and download the free page for creating the class book. Here's a couple examples of pages from our class book: 

Hope you found something you think is quack-tastic! 
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Free Easter Unit!

I have just completed my Easter Math and Literacy Unit and I'm so excited to use it! 

It includes: addition and subtractiongraphingmeasuring teen numbersa dice-roll board gamesight wordssh/ch/wh wordsshort vowel soundswriting prompts
I hope you all can find something you want to use too! Remember, the best thanks you can give is to follow me, pin it or leave some love if you download!

Easter Unit

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Nutcrackers and Target Love and Trees

I am in love with these nutcrackers! I did a drawing lesson following the directions from the amazing blog, artprojectsforkids.org. She has a whole Nutcracker Series. The kids then traced pencil lines with sharpie (one with reluctance... "but Miss Brooooowwwn, I'm not allowed to use sharpies!" Her parents have trained her well)! After sharpie tracing, they erased any pencil lines that were left over. We used my shiny tempera paint for big parts and cray pas for face, beard, hair, eyes. This project followed a reading and discussion of The Nutcracker, listening to the music and attending a puppet show version at the Dallas Children's Theater.

Have I mentioned that I LOVE the Target dollar section? There is so much inspiration to be had on those shelves. So, my latest finds are these cute, plastic Christmas-themed jars and these packs of tiny plastic ornaments! Each item is only $1 so that even a poor private-school teacher can have fun stuff in the classroom! Here is how I am using both in the classroom:

I got one of each jar - trees, gifts and gingerbreads. I filled each with different amounts of candy canes. This is going to be a station this week in which the sweeties estimate how many candy canes in each jar, then count them. I created this response page to go with the center (that you can download for free here).

As for the ornaments, I will use them along with my Christmas Math (on sale in TN) sorting mat and graphing page. The kiddos will first sort the ornaments by color. Then, they decide how to share each color equally among two trees. They will record their findings on the response sheet.

One of my fellow Kinder teachers came up with this cute project. The kiddos trace three different sized hearts and cut out from anything you choose. My colleague used fabric, I used wrapping paper and scrapbook paper. For those of you in a Christian setting, there is a sweet poem that goes with it.

One more precious idea I want to share tonight and then I'm calling it quits for the evening! I got this idea from Pinterest - a mom wraps 24 Christmas books (that she already has) every year and puts them under her child's tree. The child gets to unwrap one to read at bedtime each night as a sort of Advent calendar. I adapted this for my classroom. 15 days of school until Christmas break, 15 kids in the class, 15 books under the tree, 15 names on the tree. Every day I choose a different child to take his or her name off the tree and unwrap a book to be read during snack. It is a great incentive for good behavior and they are always so excited to see what we be unwrapped!

Centers, Centers, Centers!

Centers time can be so much fun! Thank you, blogging teachers, for sharing such great centers ideas. I wanted to give back a little bit by sharing a couple of my favorite recent centers and adding a freebie! Here we grow....

Here's the freebie! It is a sight word graphing page. I have seen this idea other places... I know Moffat Girls has a very cute version, but I needed to make my own to meet the needs of my little learners! The children were so excited to see which word would "win!"

Download the graph by going to my shop on Teacher's notebook.

I printed these pattern block numbers from makinglearningfun.com and they were a hit! They were such a great way to begin our journey into number formation. For a follow up, visit my shop for the still free numbers formation book!

Meeting the TEKS:

Sight Word Center

110.11. English Language Arts and Reading

• K.3.D identify and read at least 25 high-frequency words from a commonly used list

Math Center

111.12 Mathematics

• K.1.C use numbers to describe how many objects are in a set (through 20) using verbal and symbolic descriptions

Thanksgiving Numbers!

I can't wait to use these numbers come November! Our K math will be heavy into numeration at that time and I am already planning all of the fun math centers I can create. As soon as I have the corresponding worksheets made I will add those to the store. For now, I have plenty of printing and cutting to do!