It's Fall, Y'all!

It's my favorite time of year!  I love the grey weather (only for so long) and the sweaters, and the orange, and the fireplaces and the hot chocolate and fuzzy pajamas.  Best. Time. Of. Year.

Speaking of which, we just finished our weather unit and started a community workers unit last week.  If you remember in one of my last posts, I posted a picture of a future pictorial input.  Well, here's what the finished product looked like:

The kids really liked sitting through this one because they had plenty of opportunities to guess what season I was drawing. 

This week, we started blending syllables together to read words!  Ahh!!!  My kiddos are growing up so fast!  But you know what, they're doing an amazing job.  To help make it a little easier, these were our centers:

Starting at the top left, that is the teacher run center.  We chanted our syllables with "a", then I showed them my thinking in figuring out what the word was and we went through a series of picture cards together and found the syllables that belong in those words.  We even go to write them on a whiteboard!

Moving clockwise, the next one was a syllable matching game.  Match the syllables together and then write a list of words with "a". 

Next up we had a "Me gusta" book that the kids had to work on the carpet.  Using words written on sentence frames, they had to recreate the book (match individual words to the word in a sentence on the strip), then put an individual copy of the book together for themselves.  These books went in their book boxes.

This was a fun center.  I gave them foam die and a recording sheet.  Each number on the die corresponded to a syllable.  They were to roll the die and then record the syllable on the sheet.  SO FUN!

Lastly, we traced a word and then used stamps to stamp the word in the box.

My vice principal and assistant superintendent of bilingual ed came in to observe me during these centers.  I was blessed with receiving their approval and praise.  Phew! 

In math, we are still working on the numbers 6-10, although this week we'll be going back to 0-5 (since that's the major focus in the new common core standards).  But here's what we did:

Starting in the top left corner and moving clockwise, we had a numbers 0-10 sort.  They had a number card, a tally card and a dot card.  They had to sort them by number.

Moving on to number sequences.  What number is missing?  Find it, put it in the right place and then write it on the recording sheet. 

Next, match the number of beads to the number on the top of the pipe cleaner.

Tons, and tons of number writing worksheets.  Oddly enough, they loved this center!  Something about doing worksheets that makes kids feel like BIG kids. 

I got this wheel from this blog.  The kiddos have to find the write clothespin and match it to the number on the wheel.  Fantastic!

And lastly, we just started our community workers unit.  Embedded in that is the mapping unit.  So we started with a map of the United States and will be zooming in on our school and then zooming back out to match community workers to the map.  Here is the United States:

 

I projected this page from the book Me on the Map, traced it onto a piece of butcher paper and then did it again with markers when the kids were there. 

I'm working on some sight word worksheets, so I'll be back up and posting once that packet is done!

Donor's Choose...AGAIN

Hi everybody,

It's a boring post for now (I'll be putting up a more exciting one later today about all the cool stuff we've been doing) but for right now, it's something simple.  I have another Donor's Choose project!

Dramatic Play is back, and I HAVE NOTHING FOR IT!

So here's my project.  Spread the word please!

Thank you so much!

Las estaciones del año

So here we are, wrapping up our weather unit this week.

The catch:  Monday and Tuesday of this week our kiddos are with subs.  We are continuing our awesome training for SEAL (Sobrato Early Academic Language) so the subs are very briefly introducing the seasons.  When we get back on Wednesday, we'll continue with seasons and wrap it up so we can start community workers on Monday!

Whew!  Time is FLYING!  No lo puedo creer.  Pero así es la vida.

This is the pictorial input I modified from this one I saw on Pinterest.

I modified it to include a picture of a child wearing a typical outfit for this type of weather/season.  The last piece of our unit puzzle is how the weather affects us.

I can't wait to draw this one on Wednesday!  Pictures of the completed input chart to come!

Weather Weather Everywhere!

As promised, I took pictures of my weather pictorial inputs and am ready to start explaining them.  So get set, buckle your seat belts and get ready for a lot of words!

The first input we did was about the sun.

We went over the sun being a star and what we get from it.  Our major words were clima (weather), luz (light), vitaminas (vitamines) and calor (heat).  We discussed that the sun influences the weather in different ways.  The heat warms up the earth and water which helps create storms, snow, etc.  The light that comes from the sun helps trees, people, plants and animals grow.  As does the heat.  The vitamins from the sun help us be healthy.

I drew that picture on the poster paper while the kids were watching.  This helps them stay engaged and focused on what I'm saying and doing because they want to know what I'm doing.  I went through the whole thing in one day (chunked it into two 30 minute parts).  The next day, I went through the poster again and explained the whole poster again, showing them a real life picture for every major vocabulary word.  I then had the vocabulary word written on a sentence strip in red and called on non-volunteers (popsicle sticks) to match the sentence strip word to the word on the poster.  OH, and including as much TPR as possible into the explanation is CRUCIAL.

Next, we did clouds.

We reviewed the sun and heat and added Earth, warm Earth, humidity, cool down, condense and cloud.  We used a lot of TPR to explain how the sun heats up the earth.  The warm earth releases humidity and as it rises, it cools down and condenses creating a cloud.

The same strategies were used for this poster.

Today, we finished up the water cycle.

The major words here were cloud, precipitation, accumulation, ocean, river, lake, humidity, evaporation and condensation.

Oh boy, we have learned a lot!  Tomorrow, we move on to WIND!

Centers

Oh boy have I neglected to share with you guys what we're doing! 

You'll have to forgive my post, I'm writing it from my bed on my phone. I'm tired.

Anyways, we have been working with the NEW California science standards and a new strategy called SEAL, and needless to say, it's been a lot of designing, creating and coloring. 

I still need to take pictures of my pictorial inputs (which I'll do tomorrow, I promise!) and write a post about them.  But for now, I have our centers!

Last week:

Literature 

We worked with stamping our sonidos iniciales with Estrellita, a fantastic phonics program in Spanish. That's what the yellow sheets are in the too box. Moving clockwise we did a vowel sort, a pocket chart poem that they constructed (llueve llueve llueve), a letter "u" vocabulary builder and another vowel sort.

Math numbers 0-5

We had sticker numbers in the too left box. Moving clockwise we did a too and color, play dough numbers, number line number representation with counting bears and spinner numbers.

This week:

Literature

Top left, Estrellita listening center. The kids followed the letters on the yellow sheet with a Popsicle stick with a giant googly eye on it. Moving clockwise we did another poem (que llueva, que llueve), a 4 ways to write it with our sight words, sentence building with sight words, and sílabas con a.

Math numbers 0-5

*disclosure: these materials come from various Teachers Pay Teachers stores. Links to come soon.*

Top left: memory game with teacher. Moving clockwise we had apple counting trees, number sort, number-clothespin correspondence, and number write the room.

That's it for now. I'll post those links soon and weather unit pictures to come!!!