Check-In

Hi everybody!

Guess what?

My Donor's Choose project was funded!  Hooray!!  Thanks for all the help, once again.  Each time I am completely floored by everyone's generosity and selflessness.

Honestly, our classrooms would not be possible without the incredible help we get from the community.

So thank you.

We just finished up doing our Citizenship Unit and we're full steam ahead developing a Weather unit!  So far, we are pulling from a lot of different resources (HM, Science workbooks, TpT, etc.)  But I am really excited to get back into GLAD and watch the magic take place right before my eyes.

We are in the process, as a K-2 team, of switching over to a new teaching strategy called SEAL (Sobrato Early Academic Language).  We are all very excited, but it means a lot of creation and development.  RIGHT up my alley!

I posted on TpT some cute writing assignments I made for our kinders.  Keep in mind that these are for the beginning of the year, so it is a lot of tracing and then they get to write a portion by themselves.  I'll post pictures of some of the completed ones once we have done them!  In the meantime, you can get them in my TpT store!

Another Donor's Choose

I've done it again!  This time, it's for the kindergarten Scholastic Magazine, "Let's Find Out" in Spanish.

I think it is incredibly important for students to be able to discover their world through literature that accurately represents the world that surrounds them.  For kindergarteners, that can be a difficult task.  But Scholastic has found a way to make it accessible to them!

Now we need subscriptions...

Again, just like last time, if you can't donate please spread the word.  This project will be an incredibly asset to our classroom.  Just click here to help however you can.

Thank you so much!

Week 2

Week 2 of kindergarten was fantastic. I'm feeling really good about my kids and really good about the kindergarten team and the school. We be jammin'.

I had to make some changes though.

I needed to post my standards so I found some adorable ones on TpT and purchased them. I then slipped the ones we are working on into page protectors and used washi tape to decorate the edges.

You can get the standards from www.teacherspayteachers.com/store/mrs-riccas-kindergarten. Sorry, writing from my phone makes links impossible.

I then also recreated this board after a pocket chart I saw (with my amazing coworker) in a Lakeshore catalog.

Ooh! And my Donors Choose rug arrived!! Yippee!!!  

To top things off, I went to Barnes and Noble's to get some books for my kiddos.

My coworker and I decided to do a series of lessons on writing our names. Starting with this Chicka Chicka Book Boom activity I saw on Pinterest and that I saw another coworker make. Here's mine:

And aaaalllllll the prep

But at least I had a feline helper.

Capitanes

"Yo tengo 26 años."

"Whoa, maestra!!! That's a lot of numbers!!!"

So began my morning. 

I promised I would show you my capitanes chart that I made, so here it is:

I wrote each one of my students' names on a star and stapled it to a pipe cleaner I had cut in half. I purchased those library card envelopes last year (or the year before that) at lakeshore on clearance ("pieces missing."  What does that even mean for a pack of envelopes??!! Whatever.)

Every week, on Monday, we pick new table captains. Their tables have a Dr. Seuss hat taped to them with a number written on them. Those correspond with my chart.

Capitanes help me pass out papers and materials. For now, that's a lot of responsibility!! As they grow, we'll add jobs and new charts. But for now, this is perfect!

Can I add it is insanely difficult to get work done with a frisky kitten who likes to sleep on your shoulder around?