What's Working in Our Class!

Hi friends! Just a quick post today to share some things that are working in my classroom!

Centers: We can now clean up all of our centers and be back to carpet in less than 5 minutes! Seriously! We're only 3 weeks into the school year! We did have 1 time when some girls at Math Center continued to play at clean up time. But since recess is right after centers those girls learned quickly that staying inside to clean up while everyone else goes outside to play is no fun at all! Since then everyone is quick to tidy up ;)

GoNoodle! We are on our 2nd avatar! We LOVE our brain breaks and I am loving Koo Koo Kanga Roo videos! The dance moves are so easy to do that even my two left feet can manage, and the tunes are catchy too!

Counting! We have 1:1 correspondence down pat! (Did I mention its only the 3rd week?!) Check out this video of a little friend doing a crayon resist sheet:

We're also enjoying Roll & cover games - some of my friends are working on the basic 1-6 so they get 1 dice, but I have some friends who can handle two dice already!

Shapes! We're pretty good at identifying the basic 4, and now we're working on pentagon and trapezoid. Check out this Roll & Cover Brown Bear game, just a few times playing this and not only are they remembering the names of the shapes, they can pick them out from amid other shapes, even with differing sizes and orientations!

Reading! I bought this fabulous apron at I Teach K! in Vegas this summer and I LOVE it! (I love a lot of stuff lately - I'm having so much fun in pre-k!) I purchased the pack that goes with the apron on TpT, it has sight words, letters, numbers and pictures. This week we're doing Brown Bear, Brown Bear so I made character cards to fit in the apron as well. Every morning as the kids come in they read a sentence or two each, then throughout the day as we're in line for the bathroom, going to lunch, outside at recess etc I ask a child or two to read for me. It's helping them learn 1:1 correspondence with words in sentences, and most of them have the sight words "I", "see" and "a" down pat now!

 

Sorting! We are sorting fools now! We finished up our week with sorting M&Ms on our Brown Bear coloring mats and the kids did so well - after they sorted they even counted and named the color they had most and least!

I know we're good at sorting though, because I find evidence of it in other places too:

 

Another thing I'm loving? This shirt:

  

This little guy was doing a fabulous job on his hallway procedures on Friday so I complimented him. He immediately stepped out of line to let me know that it was his shirt that was doing the good job. "It's my tiger shirt Mrs. Knopf. It helps me be good and follow procedures!" Hmm can I get that shirt for the whole class?!

 

How's this for cuteness? These two friends were at our Felt Board Center, lining up all of the outer space felt pieces, making them "hold hands". I asked what they were doing and they said "There's a fire drill so they all have to hold hands to get out of the school and cross the street!" We've had 1 fire drill and one occasion where we thought there was an actual fire ( a Kinder friend pulled the alarm without his teacher seeing). That time was way scary for us because we were at the bathrooms and had to hurry to grab hands and get out of the building and across the street without all of the usual extra people who come down to help the primary classes during drills. There was a fire truck and police cars and we had to spend about 30 minutes in the church across the street waiting for the all clear to go back inside! I was glad to see that these friends were processing the experience with the felt pieces :)

Here's my favorite conversation of the week, which occurred at lunchtime on Friday:

J: My orange has a bean in it!
Me: That's a seed, oranges have seeds.
J: And animals have diseases!
Me: Did you say diseases??
J: Yes! Farm animals have diseases!
Me: Umm, yes I guess some farm animals have diseases....
J: And farmers! Farmers have diseases too!
Me: Umm ok, some farmers might have diseases, but I think...
J: And wolvesez! Wolvesez have diseases because they're wild animals! Wild animals have diseases!
Me: Ok! You should finish eating, lunchtime is almost over! (making mental note to ask parents about diseases as I quickly move to a different table)

We're still working on colors, shapes and numbers and we'll be integrating Brown Bear, Brown Bear
I made a pack of  Brown Bear Ten Frames for math that we'll be working with. It's on sale until midnight Sunday!

I think next up will be Mouse Shapes and Mouse Paint since I bought the cutest felt sets for those! Look for some freebies for those themes coming soon! Have a great week everyone!

Schedule, Brown Bear & Crayon Resist Freebie!

Can I just say...I feel like an idiot for fretting over moving to a new room/new grade this summer! I am having a BALL in pre-k! And, sure, my room is still old and small, but we have filled it with so many neat materials and cute, precious personalities, that it is the most fun I've had in ages! I have not had a single day yet where I've gone home tired! Can you tell that teaching little people is my niche?!

Check out the adorable shirt one of my kiddos' mothers made for her!

Here's our schedule so far:

I have to admit, we break up our carpet times even more with Brain Breaks. We've started using GoNoodle.com and the kids are loving it. Our little avatar is named "McPufferson" and the kids are crazy about him! They've all gone home and told their parents about him and they get so excited to see his little growth bar fill up. We've gotten him to the 3rd level now and he now has 3 eyes - you have never heard excitement until you've grown a third eye on your avatar!

Last week we did Humpty Dumpty - and man is there a big gap in my class. I've got kiddos who are about to turn 5 who can recite Humpty while standing on their heads and twirling batons. Then I've got my kiddos who just turned 4 (our cutoff is 4 by Sept 1st) who still need tons of support to repeat the rhyme. We did a bunch of activities and the cutest craft and I meant to post about it this weekend but of course the building closed early on Friday so I wasn't able to get all my pictures! Don't you hate when that happens?! I'll grab pictures and post them tomorrow!

I had someone ask me in my TPT store for the sheet from this activity:

I made up a little pack of Crayon Resist Sheets and its free in my TpT store here.

This week we're hitting colors and numbers big time with Brown Bear, Brown Bear and I made a Brown Bear Math Pack that is adorable! Its 50% off for the first 24 hours!

I'm off to put Sullivan to sleep and get ready for my short week! Have a fun-filled 4 days!