August Currently!

Woohoo! It's another Currently from Farley over at Oh' Boy 4th Grade! But wait, that means school is just around the corner - waahhhh!


You might notice that I'm doing the Currently instead of a Center post. I have something planned that needs a couple more days' work, so you'll see my Center post in conjunction with my Monday Made It post on Monday - oh the suspense, right?

First up - Japanese music videos are STRANGE. And I'm not sure why she watches them. But, while watching those videos she did come across a 3d animated short that I just loved. It's not kindergarten appropriate, but I thought it was such a clever story about numbers - maybe middle school? You really have to watch it all the way through - and notice that teachers are 9's in this world!

Next up - how sad is this coffee thermos?!

 It's one of my faves cause it keeps the coffee hot a LONG time, but my husband got it from the Army so it's not very attractive.

 But, add a coffee cozy and now it's just precious!

My friend Staci from Going Nutty has an Etsy store now and these sweet little things are available to "Cute up your Coffee"! I can't wait to take them into work and watch the jealousy :P I'm going to keep one for my thermos and one for those times I treat myself to Starbucks - no ugly naked coffee for me any more!

On the 13th our in-service begins, and on one of those days we get to see Debbie Diller! I am compiling a list of questions for her - let me know if there's anything you want me to ask her!

Yes, I need another month before school because I haven't even been in my classroom yet! I can get in on Monday but I also have to help with enrollment, so I'm not sure how much time I'll actually get in my room. In-service starts the 13th and the 17th the kids come so I am running out of time! and I've been collecting files but neglecting to print and laminate them so I I am going to have a lot of cutting and laminating in my near future! See what procrastination gets you?!

Now that I can get back in my room I will be purchasing more hermit crabs - they really are cute little buggers when you get to know them - my tank is huge so my three little guys need some new friends :). I also decided we need an ant habitat and some fish. So I am going to try for a Pets in the Classroom grant for an aquarium!

Tomorrow is "Girls Day Out" with my daughter - we go shopping, get haircuts and eat at the fanciest restaurant we can find! Hopefully I'll be able to find a  cute Meet N Greet outfit!

Alright, head over to Farley's to link up!

Number Sense Rings

Since we're going full-bore Common Core in kindergarten this year (at least here in Oklahoma) I've been studying the standards. I've got to say - I really like the idea of getting in depth with number sense. I've attended several Singapore Math training sessions and found that while some of the ideas were above my grade level, a lot of the ideas were just perfect for kindergarten. I found that this approach focuses on number sense to a degree we hadn't taken it to before.

Way back in August of last year I shared my number sense rings that I made after attending my first Singapore Math workshop. These will be even more useful this year in teaching in depth number sense, so I decided to share them again! I made my set as a whole group activity. We all gathered on the rug and made the rings together. It was a very good way for me to tell who had difficulties conserving numbers and counting! Once we had the sets made I could then use them for all sorts of activities!

As you can see, the rings are made from chenille stems and pony beads. I chose a different color for each number so that it was easy to differentiate them from each other. I store them in two separate ziploc bags: 1-5 in one bag and 6-10 in the other - and I've labeled on the front which color goes with which number. It absolutely does not matter which color you pick for which number - I actually had my kiddos vote as we went along, just to keep them engaged in the whole process of making the rings.

When I made these with my class, I gave each child one stem at a time and placed a pile of the appropriate color beads in front of every 3-4 students. Then they had to count out the right number of beads to place on their ring. Once they had the beads on their ring they got a buddy to check it (I was watching those that had the most trouble of course) and then they twisted the ends together to form the ring. This was a bit hard for those with poor fine motor skills, so you might have to help out there, to make sure the pointy end gets twisted down and is not poking out at small hands!

These rings are great counting practice for students even after they are made. You can give them a complete set of rings and have them lay them out in number order (or place them on their arm as "bracelets" from most to least). It is also a great way to practice decomposing a number. In the picture above you can see that the ring on the bottom left has 9 beads - divided into three groups of three. Another child might discover that 9 is also a group of 4 plus a group of 5. Still another might say 9 is actually  2 and 7.

Sometimes I would give these rings to the children with a dry erase board and have them write down all the different ways they could group the beads on their ring. It was always an engaging activity for them because they enjoyed the tactile nature of the chenille stems and the ability to manipulate the beads. This is a great beginning addition/subtraction activity, although of course the kiddos don't know that that's what they're doing. I love for them to be able to explore numbers and be able to fully grasp them before I start in with addition or subtraction. It's also a great tool for teaching odd and even - just have the students separate the beads so that there are two equal groups - if one bead is left out then that number is odd!

Here's the list of materials if you want to make your own set of 1-10 rings. Lakeshore Learning has a ready made set too, but this is very inexpensive and easy to make yourself!

10 pipe cleaners per child.
10 different colors of pony beads. To figure out how many of each color you'll need, just times the number of the ring with how many students you have. For example, in a class of 18 you'll need 180 beads for the #10 rings, 162 beads for the #9's and 144 beads for the #8's etc. It is much easier to figure this out at home rather than in the aisle of the craft store!

I am working on some more math ideas, which I'll be sharing with you soon! It's funny, math was one of my least favorite subjects in school but now it's my favorite thing to teach!

Magical Product Swap!

I'm linking up for the Product Swap hosted by Jessica from Mrs. Standford's Class!

 
When I received the info about my Product Swap partner I was so pleased! I've followed Lidia's blog, Kinder Alphabet, for a while now and always thought she had great ideas!


I browsed through her TPT store and found tons of interesting things, but decided on her Short Vowel: Center Activites packet! She was so sweet and gracious when I contacted her by email, and I discovered she has a son the same age as my youngest! It will be so fun to see what he thought of my games!

First, let me tell you, this packet is huge!  Word of advice - make sure you have plenty of shows dvr'd because you'll be cutting and laminating for a while! This is not one of those units that you purchase and then think "Hmm it's nice, but I wish it were longer." It is 78 pages long! This unit has it all! There are 6 different games/activities included. 5 of the games include cards for all the short vowel sounds while another activity features the short a sound only. In addition, there are 40 "word bank" cards that have the picture and short vowel word. You could use these on a word wall or use them whenever you introduce a new short vowel sound!

As I started to cut and laminate, the first thing I noticed was that the images on the cards were very clear and easy to identify. I love that she repeated the images for the different games. This means I can introduce one game, teach the children the pictures and then they already know them for the next set of games! Each game (except for the short a tree) has 40 cards, so you can easily just use 20 at a time and rotate them to keep the activities fresh.

I decided to do my cutting and laminating in my bedroom where I was less apt to get interrupted by kids, cats or dogs lol! Here's what it looked like during my marathon cutting session (I opted to do it all at once rather than a little each night as a sane person would):

Once I had it all cut out, I then laminated it. I'll spare you those pictures. Just know that my laminator and I are not friends. At. All.

Once I had it all cut and laminated, I realized that I wasn't in my classroom! How am I supposed to do pocket chart activities without a pocket chart? Luckily I remembered that I had scored some at Target's Dollar Spot and even though they're small, they did all right in a pinch! I felt quite like McGuyver as I tied them to the back of my kitchen chairs lol!

Alright, onto the pictures of my sons playing the games.I roped my two youngest in for this. Tommy is 8 and Joshua is almost 6. They're a bit older than the target audience, but it was still great review, especially for Joshua!

Here they are with the title page - Tommy was thrilled to learn he would be "on the computer" lol.

This was Joshua's favorite activity. You say the picture name, sound it out and then write it with a dry erase marker. He didn't want to stop, he was determined to get to the bottom of the stack, but there are 40 cards! He finished about 20 before I could drag his attention away to the next game :)

This is what Tommy was doing while Joshua was writing! He quite enjoyed playing with the clothespins. What I really liked about this activity is that you can make it self-checking simply by putting a sticker on the back of the card where the correct vowel is. Students clip the vowel and then flip the card over to see if they were right - instant feedback!

 

Both of my boys enjoyed the puzzle cards. Since Tommy is more advanced he was able to do multiple cards at one time. Joshua stuck with two at a time. What I liked was that you could use the word bank cards as a template so that the kiddos know which word they are trying to build.

This one was hands down my favorite. Lidia, make more!! I printed the pieces onto construction paper and cut them out. Then I used velcro dots to put the apples on the tree and put velcro on each picture piece as well. Now I can rearrange the apples each time to make sure the kids are not just memorizing the order. It's a bit hard to see in these pictures, but the words are printed at the bottom of each apple. You match the picture to the apple!

This is a cute cupcake pocket chart activity. Due to the small pocket charts I couldn't fit all the vowels on at once, so we just did 3 at a time. The boys worked cooperatively on this one. I didn't use all the cards for this activity because I wanted to tie in a quick math concept lol. We discussed which vowel had the most cards, which had the least and how many more "i" cards there were than "e" cards! Again, there are 40 cards for this activity!

Joshua did this one by himself and he really enjoyed it. "What's In the Hen House? has 40 cards that you can sort according to the picture in the egg. I can't wait to use this on my giant pocket chart - this would be great for whole group or small group! You could do all 5 vowels at once or just choose 2 or 3.

When we had finished all of the games we spread the cards out on the table - I kid you not, I still had a huge stack in my hands even after filling the table and the two pocket charts!

I would definitely recommend this packet to anyone looking for short vowel work station activities. These can be done whole, group, small group or independently. I think, just based on the smiles my boys had, that you can tell that these are engaging activities!

Now head over to Lidia's blog to see which of my products she reviewed!