Little Smiles Big Sunshine: April 2016

Saturday, April 30, 2016

Time for an Alphabet Countdown!

The end of the year is one of my favorite times of the year.

Most of my favorite units are saved until the end. Farm, Zoo, Owls, & Dinosaurs.

Here is the link to check out my blog on all of the fun farm activities we did in my classroom.

http://littlesmilesbigsunshine.blogspot.com/2016/04/on-farm-e-i-e-i-o.html

Stay tuned for my post on zoo animals.

This year my team has decided to add a kindergarten ABC countdown. I found the original idea from Kindergarten Smorgasbord.

http://www.thekindergartensmorgasboard.com/2014/04/a-kindergarten-smorgasboard-alphabet.html

I absolutely loved the idea! So my team decided to go for it. We made a few adjustments and came up with a version that works for us.

We started with the letter Z and are counting down to the letter A. We will get to the letter A on the last day of school. So far we have done the letters Z-W.

For each letter we have had a fun activity or theme.

Letter Z:

We did a fun Zebra craft and of course had YUMMY zebra cake brownies.

I found this cute craft from Tracy Pippin

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Zebra-Craft-AB-Pattern-FREE-872923

Letter Y:

We all wore the color yellow.

Letter X:

X marks the spot, Pirate fun!

One of my teaching besties, shared a fun pirate treasure hunt.

The prize were cute little pudding cups with graham crackers crumbled on top (sand).

Buried deep in the pudding cups were Hershey's Gold chocolates.

My kiddos loved it!

We also read a few pirate books.

Letter W:

Western Day

We wore our cowboy hats, boots, jeans, and plaid shirts!

We read a few cowboy books and did a few fun activities.

Next week we will countdown with the letters V-R

Letter V:

Violet - we will all wear purple.

Letter U:

We are going to decorate Umbrellas and have juice boxes with little tropical umbrellas.

Letter T:

We are going to write Thank You cards to all of the people who have helped us

learn and grow this year.

Letter S:

We will be sporting our sunglasses.

Letter R:

We will dress as Rock Stars.

We are the Stars at the elementary school that I teach.

We will be wearing our school spirit wear.

So far my students have loved each day of the countdown!

I can't wait to share more fun as we countdown to first grade!

Saturday, April 16, 2016

On the Farm - E-I-E-I-O!

For the past two weeks we have been studying farms in my classroom! It is probably one of my favorite units! okay...so I have A LOT of favorite units! To start the unit I sent home a letter to parents asking them to have students bring in a farm animal (stuffed or plastic) by the end of the week. The letter and some of the other activities that we did this week are included in my farm unit! Check it out by clicking the link below!

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Farm-Animal-Unit-2499945

I chose to study one animal a day. To begin each day we played a game similar to 20 questions to guess the mystery animal or farm object that we were studying. It helped my students gain an understanding of what a question really is.

I just used a brown paper bag and picked a plastic farm animal.

My students asked questions like:

Is it living?

Is it brown?

Does it have 4 legs?

Once they had asked enough questions to narrow it down they had a chance to guess what it was. They loved this activity! Every morning they were excited to find out what was in the mystery bag.

This activity was simple, easy to plan, and was a great way to lead into each day.

After we did the mystery bag we read a book (fiction or nonfiction) about the mystery object. We went over facts for each animal. We then made an anchor chart to lead into the activities for that day. Here are a few examples.

I have included fact pages for each animal and headers

to make anchor charts in my Farm Animal Packet on TPT.

(Product link at beginning of post and at the end.)

We also did one of the label the animal or graphic organizers from my Farm Packet.

We did a few super cute activity from A Spoonful of Learning.

Here is my final bulletin board!

The cows also came from A Spoonful of Learning.

The cute little farmers are from my bulletin board kit.

The kiddos wrote about being farmers.

Transform your kiddos into farmers! Take a picture and glue it where the farmers face goes.

On the writing prompt have kiddos write the last name after farmer. On the next line they write what they will do on the farm. They turned out SO cute! Here is a link to the bulletin board set.

Bulletin Board Set

I mentioned the letter I sent home about farm animals. Students brought in lots of different farm animals and we used them to graph and sort.

Students also brought in farm products the second week.

(This letter is also included included in my Farm Unit)

This was a great activity to help students practice speaking.

They have to tell you what the product is, if it comes from a plant or animal, and what we use it for.

We ended the unit with a special snack! Thanks to Mrs. Wishy Washy we had a yummy snack of animal crackers and pudding! We dipped the animal crackers in "mud", and just like Mrs. Wishy Washy we cleaned them off! YUMMY!