New Year, New Grade, New Material, New Kids, New Hours, OH MY!

I realized today that I have not blogged since the back to school sale.  I contribute this to my title of this post.  Since the back to school sale, the school year has started, I have both 4k and Kindergarten to teach and though I know my 4K curriculum, I am learning kindergarten as I go.  Also, we got our math curriculum the second week of school and I am still waiting on my teacher's edition so that has been somewhat stressful.  I have 5 of my students from my 4k class last year in my 5k class so that is nice, but I have 19 new faces in my 4k room, and finally, I have committed myself to working less hours this year to spend more time with my family.  Thought that is a long list of excuses, I am not ready to put a blog up.

In Kindergarten, we have started using Math Expressions: Common Core.  I like the series this far and do feel it is developmentally appropriate for the kindergartners.  I have one little guy who is struggling with the concepts of numbers so we are using touch counting with him.  He took it on Thursday night home and is already showing GREAT improvement on Friday!  I am so excited!

Though we are using Math Expressions, I do run it like centers and have some extras I add in.

For a Friday fun project we made a class book, Ten Black Dots.  First we read, Ten Black Dots and then I made a book for them to make. I was amazed at some of their illustrations!  My book is available FOR FREE on my TeachersPayTeachers store.  Click HERE.

I also made some numbers cards to have students practice counting, correlating the numbers to the dots (in 10 frame locations) and can also be flash cards if printed more than 1 to a page.  This is also Free and can be found HERE.


We do not have a Social Studies Curriculum, so I spoke with our first grade teacher about what they would want the kids coming in knowing.  They said basically they want them to know the groups they belong to and how they are a part of something larger.  This reminded me of some activities I have seen where they start with a small circle and get larger as the group does.  Our principal also said that this is the time the holidays are covered (we are in a Catholic school so celebrating the holidays is common place).  This also goes toward my circle concept--how the holidays came to our country and trickle down to affect them.

I then am going to have them create their own text book through out the year.  Each section has a title page, and it is labeled with the circle in the correct side.  Through out the entire year, when we do something that fits into one of those sections we discuss what section it belongs to and then put it in there. It is available on my Teacher pay Teachers page, HERE. 

Happy planning in Kindergarten!  I hope to be back soon!