Stick Bang or Kaboom

 Stick Bang or Kaboom whatever you call this game it is something you need to have in your teaching bag of tricks.  It is so popular with all of the students I work with.  They love this game in fact they beg to play this game.  I first found this game in a sight word packet I purchased from Reagan Tunstall.  It was the best $5.75 I spent on TPT. 

I have made so many games based of her idea and at a variety of grade levels.  

This year I made several different versions for different students. 

For the little four year olds I work with I made:

• Capital Letters
• Lowercase Letters
• Number Awareness to 20
• Shapes and Colors

For the five year olds I made:

• Number Awareness to 30 (for the beginning of the years)
• Number Awareness to 100
• CVC words

For the first graders I made:

• sight words at different levels
• CVC words
• CVCE words
• Blends/Digraphs
• vowel team words

For the advanced math students I work with I made:

• Fast Facts for Math Fluency

I keep all the different games in plastic quart size baggies and then have my large pails for games.

I have to admit with the four year olds we had to take the BANG stick out of the bucket.  There were way to many tears and the little ones were so happy to collect sticks.  

Another bonus to this activity is that I can easily put this together the night before.  You can use simple markers, stickers or pre-made materials to make the sticks more colorful.  Here is a link to Pinterest for more ideas.    

Easter Listening Center

Keeping the boys and girls in kindergarten and first grade interested in reading all year long can be challenging.  That is why I have been working so hard this year to find stories the kids will be motivated to listen to.  It is more work than you think.   Creating an engaging listening center is a lot different these days, my students prefer to listen and watch stories on the ipad.  

When I first got my ipad I was able to find lots of story apps for $1 however that has not been the case lately.  In fact many of the stories can be costly or the apps are confusing for young readers to manage on their own.  So I have turned to youtube and the generosity of the wonderful people who are reading the stories and recording them.  

I find links on youtube and filter out the surrounding advertisements and create my own qr codes. My students use this center on their own as part of my weekly reading block and I want to make sure the links are safe for them.  Each week my students are required to listen to one story on the ipad and complete a listening form.  I use all sorts of different forms I have collected over the years on Pinterest and various other sources during the first two quarters. 

However, once third quarter starts I have the students start to complete the forms attached to the unit.  We start with the simple ones and work our way to writing our own letter on lined paper. 

I like to print out the listening cards on card stock and laminate them.  I punch a hole in the corner and gather them together with a ring.  I keep the cards in the ipad basket.  Another teacher at my school hangs the cards up on the students’ lockers.  Another organization idea might be to keep them in a small binder or create a bulletin board with the cards in your reading center. 

Click Here to get The Easter Listening Center for FREE! 

Building and Kitchen Centers

I am so excited my new carpet and the little community cars came that I ordered from Lakeshore Learning. 

I picked up this cute truck from Melissa and Doug and it goes perfect with the car set. 

I have some more items for the building center on my wish list.  Tomorrow I want to add some labels to my baskets. 

I also picked up this cute food play set from Melissa and Doug too.  I love that the food products from Melissa and Doug have a lot of print on it. 

These are my polka dots that I added to the kitchen area.   

I have official spent way too much of my own money this month.    

I Pad Center

The I-Pad Station

I will hopefully have three i-pads in my classroom this year so I set up two different stations for the children.   They are across the room from each other hopefully that will help with noise level.  

I put “I Can” directions in the stations.

The biggest problem I had with the i-pad last year was that the children could not write the title of the story they listened to on the i-pad on their paper.  So I created this chart,

Hopefully this will help with the problem.   I want the children to write the titles if possible.  I laminated the cards and I can circle the title I want them to listen to when it goes with our theme.  I have almost 40 stories on my i pad now.  I try to get apps when they are under $1 or $2.  

I do  have some headphones, however I need to pick up some more.   I also want to find this neat gadget I saw on Pinterest.    This gadget will allow two children to listen to the same story at one time.  

Word Center

I worked a lot the past two days in my classroom.  I have it almost set up.  Now it is time to put the finishing touches on it.  I want to go center by center and make sure everything is in order for the first few weeks. 

I thought I would start in my new center the Word Center.  I am glad I decided to work here today.  It was not as organized as I thought it would be. 

First of all nothing is labeled.  So I had to make labels tonight.  

Second, I did not have everything I wanted in the center.  So I had to make a quick trip to Target, well it ended up to be two Targets to find what I wanted, cookie sheets. 

In order to prepare myself to organize this center I quickly reviewed the book, The Daily 5 Fostering Literacy Independence in The Elementary Grades, by Gail Boushey & Joan Moser.  They state in their book the purpose of the word center is that children should be able to “experiment with words for learning and practicing a spelling pattern and memorize high frequency words.”  So I want to keep that in mind as I organize my center. 

Items for a word center:

·      Whiteboards (check)

·      Magnetic letters (check)

·      Wikki Stix (just purchased)

·      Letter stamps (set aside until I introduce them)

·      Writing materials (check)

·      Alphabet puzzles (I am adding this for the beginning of the year)

·      Alphabet bingo (I am adding this as well.)

Ok I feel better about this center.  I made a cute graphic for my daily five chart using KPM Doodles graphics.

I'll add an after picture tomorrow after I label everything.  

Kindergarten Pet Clinic

It’s that time again……..

It’s time to change the dramatic play area…….we said good bye to the penguins on Friday.  It was so sad.  Some of the children were giving the penguins hugs good bye.  It almost seemed cruel to put them away.  I found several of them wrapped up in bandages.  It was adorable. 

But now it is time for the new…..

This is very exciting.  When I first started this play area years ago, it was Children’s Hospital.  But every year after the first week it always turns into an Animal Hospital.  I decided to just set it up that way this year. 

I have all the little doctor things you can find including ace bandages.  I have a real x-ray of a person’s head.  (Years ago one of my first graders gave it to me to show me he had a brain. Haha)

This year I am making two adjustments.  I am updating the clipboards for animal patients and a new sign for the clinic.  Oh I just got another idea....I put some plastic bowls from the house area for the animals to drink out of.   Click on the observation sheet if you would like a copy. :)

Gingerbread House

Welcome to my Gingerbread House.  It is my December Dramatic Play Area.  The students love it. 

Here is a peek inside:

This is one of the childrens' favorite items this year.  I purchased it at Melissa and Doug's. 

This is my favorite item:

The tiered dessert tray from Melissa and Doug's.....they gave it to me for free (well actually a $25 coupon)  because I wrote a post about my favorite items a few weeks back.  Thank you :)

Thanks for reading....please share your thoughts :)  Sue

Computer Center

Managing the computer center could be a full time job......the children have so many questions as they work at the computers.  

In order to make the computer center as kid friendly as possible.....I have set up this page so I can just tell the children what picture I want them to click on.......and then they know what to work on.  

http://schuellers.wikispaces.com/Recommended+Websites

For example,  this week I want them to  play the brown bear game or red apple game during Math Stations 

and

during Literacy Stations I want them to read One Hungry Monster

http://schuellers.wikispaces.com/Stories

What do you do to make the computer center child friendly???

Kindergarten Pumpkin Market

Every month I like to change my dramatic play area.   

This month we have the Pumpkin Market.  

I can not take credit for this idea all on my own, it came about with a student teacher many years ago and this is what it has developed into over the years.  

I have a lot of fake stuff to avoid having extra unwanted creatures in the classroom. 

The girls love the sunflower field.   The flowers can be picked and put back behind the plastic.  

The children can pretend they are picking pumpkins.

They can pretend to sell the apples, pears, gourds, and other little pumpkins.

Inside one of the pumpkins is fake leaves that they can throw around and then rake up.

Under the table is a wheelbarrow to push around.  

In the back is aprons and straw hats for the children to wear.

The stand is just the kitchen table and the two chairs facing forward covered in material.

I had a sign for the market but it is missing......so I will make a new one this weekend.

I was also thinking of making little signs that say, Apples 5 cents, Pumpkins 10 cents, Pears 7 Cents,  you get the idea.

This is the pumpkin field.  The children will make scarecrows for the field before Open House. 

House Keeping Area

This is what my housekeeping area looked like last week.  I did a little updating......

well actually I repainted the doll bed that belongs in the area.

Before

After

I was so excited to take the finish  bed  to school today to share with the children.  The area looked great.....

I even added a green carpet from Target and a little green bucket for utensils....

The little girls in my class had one question for me,  "Where are the baby dolls?"   

I will try to remember to bring them back to school tomorrow.  I left them at home, after I cleaned them too.  

See my polka dot plan for the file cabinets.  I am thinking of covering the back of the file cabinets with white contact paper and then placing large polka dots back there similar to the picture below, of course in a pattern.

image from pinterest

Writing Center

My writing center is complete.   Hooray!!!!

I have lots of new/or should I say redone items in my writing center this year.
1.  I repainted the chairs.
2.  I painted the art tray for art supplies.
3.  I added new labels on the drawers for different items.
4.  I put together a scrap paper organizer....so the children can find the color paper they want to use.
5.  The owl mobile I printed out, jazzed up a bit and put together.

6.  And finally I saw this bulletin board idea on Pinterest and put one together in my room too.  I used this bulletin board set(sorry could not find original source.)

I color copied the branches and cut them out and laminated them.  

The owls I had from an old pack I bought last year.  

7.  Labelled the mailboxes.

8.  Printed names of students on sentence strips so they will be able to write notes to their friends.

9.  Made Copies of letter paper below....for the center.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f-1fyJXsawndFuClzNQZUegm1Raw7hGi6MtsXqP05tA/edit?hl=en_US

https://docs.google.com/document/d/19PYeWkUZHy_l2DofCnERjEjMgnr-ziLtYueHV61HJsU/edit?hl=en_US

I start the year with this simple letter format and teach the children simple letter conventions.