Nursery Rhymes and Lint (freebie!)

I spent some time yesterday making seating charts and small group lists. Got everything all fancied up for my sub folder. Thought I was finally going to be ahead of the game! First thing this morning? A new student! Go figure right? Luckily she is a sweetie and settled in very nicely - in fact, we were enjoying her so much that when the principal came to tell me they'd made a mistake and she was supposed to go to another classroom I begged to keep her! Isn't it funny how some kiddos can instantly become "yours"? I am now up to 26 kiddos, but for the most part we are pretty well behaved - just working on keeping the volume down (these kids have never learned to whisper apparently) and to leave lint alone.

Yes, lint. Or string. Or whatever they can pull from their socks or from in between the velcro on their shoes. I have never had a class that was so fascinated by this stuff! If there is a little string on the carpet I can count on at least 2 or 3 to become completely distracted by it - wrapping it around their fingers, sucking on it, tossing it in the air and catching it etc. I am about ready to buy a lint roller and run it over them in the morning to ensure they will not lose any strings on the carpet!

This week we are working on graphing! I am introducing lots of new vocabulary from CCSS to enhance our understanding of graphs. Many of my kiddos know how to read a graph, but have no idea of its purpose. We will be working on understanding the purpose of graphs as well as using the correct vocabulary all week. One thing I showed them was the graph I made of their Title I math test scores. I condensed about 3lbs of paper into a 2 page chart/graph and that seemed to sink in - it is much easier to carry around a graph than all that paper and much easier to find the info I need to plan lessons! They were able to tell me that I should spend more time on questions that 13 students got wrong rather than on the ones no one got wrong.

We will also be working with the Roll and Graph games I have created. It is a great way for kiddos to create their own graph and then answer questions about it. My latest creation is a Nursery Rhyme Roll & Graph with the cutest clipart - love it! Nursery rhymes are great right now because I still have a few that haven't mastered rhyming yet plus this class loooooves singing and finger plays! You can find the graph on TPT:

I couldn't find an emergent reader that I liked, so I created one for Little Miss Muffet - I will be working on making a complete set of emergent readers and teacher books for nursery rhymes this week! I'm offering this first one as a freebie - let me know what you think! Also, be on the lookout for a super fun (messy!) science experiement to go along with Little Miss Muffet - that should happen Friday baring unforeseen circumstances! click the picture to grab the reader for free!