FREEBIE: January Journal BINGO

Whew! We made it through the first week back. Getting up with the alarm clock was rough to say the least. But the kids came back remembering most of the classroom routines;) I don't know about ya'll but we're exhausted! It will be nice to relax and refresh this weekend!
Here's January Journal Bingo. Download HERE!

Scrabble anyone?

Wow! Can't believe it's been a month since updating! The holidays were a busy a time as I'm sure it was for ya'll as well. I'm a little late on gifts but over the break I found this holiday Scrabble game on clearance at Barnes and Noble and had seen a cute idea on Pinterest. I loved that the letters were red and green and thought they would make a nice gift for coworkers. I made holiday themed words and super glued them together and then super glued ribbon on the back and tada ornaments! Check out the pictures! Hope my coworkers will like them...even though it's after the holidays. Better late than never right?!?!;)

Meet James the Elf;)

James is the newest addition to my Kindergarten classroom and my students are enthralled! He appeared this afternoon and after reading the adorable story the voting of the name began! He escaped the fate of the name Jacoin by 1 vote. I have to say I had a sigh of relief;) This is the first year I have done it and so far the students seem to really enjoy our new friend. They did have a lot of questions to which I gave some pretty creative answers;) They were very inquisitive.
Does anyone else do this at their school? What are some fun activities you do? Very excited to hear to any ideas! This is all so new to me! Any suggestions are more than welcomed;) Happy Holidays!

FREEBIE: Sight Word Hangman

My Kindergarteners LOVE playing hangman . It's a great way to practice sight words and vocabulary. First we play several times together as a class but then I put it in my writing or free choice station during reader's workshop and they LOVE IT! Here's a hangman sheet that you can put in sheet protectors or laminate so you can use over and over again. There are also some sight word cards you can laminate and cut for the students to use as their words. At the end of the year the hangman sheets always look "loved". To download your own sheet and word cards click on the picture below! Happy game playing!

Eat More Chicken

           

This is my favorite bullentin board and my Kindergarteners have a blast with it!

The feathers are coffee filters and students color them with markers. The body is a pattern the students trace and cut but you could totally trace their foot. The legs and beak are cut by the students from construction paper. You add eyes and a wattle and ta da a turkey!

Before starting we read the book Turkey Trouble. It's a cute story about a turkey who doesn't want to get eaten for Thanksgiving so he impersonates the other animals on the farm and finally tricks the farmer into eating a pizza he delivers.

The students then brainstorm ideas of what they could ask the farmer to eat if they were the turkey.

Is it an apple, pumpkin, or both? Freebie!

This past week we have been observing,exploring, and reading the characteristics of apples and pumpkins as I'm sure most of you have.  I created these cards as a venn diagram activity to really get the students involved and thinking. Click on the picture to download.

Monster Mash!

I LOVE Halloween!  It was always been one of my favorite holidays.  Of course we try to incorporate some educational Halloween activities into our October lesson plans.  A super fun activity that I did with my kids this past week was making our own monsters.  This is something that The Lesson Plan Diva and Plug-and-Plan have also done in the past.  I let the kids chose a mouth, nose, and some eyes.  They free cut a head or body and just created!  It was really cool to see what they came up with.  After they finished their monster, it was time to write!  I wrote some questions on the board to try and help direct their writing.  We also incorporated some Editing mini-lessons into our writing.  The kids did great with this!