School Year 2014-2015 Week 1-3

Welcome Back!  So sorry for the late post, but everyone knows how crazy a start to Kindergarten is AND trying to get your scedule to work.

Week 1
We started the school year with just exploration,  Tubs are set out and the students simply explore what is there.  It give them a chance to get their "play" out.  Everyone wants to run their fingers through the buttons, but if you start right with a job for them to do, it is hard to focus with their desire to just play getting in the way.  SO you fix that with "explore" time.

Here are a list of some of my math tubs:
Links
Unifix cubes
Boats (from Oriental)
Keys
Pattern Blocks
Cubes
Tiles
Seashells
Squares
Shapes
Lids
Snap Cubes
Fish
Dinosaurs
Bread ties
Pentograms
Tangrams
Buttons
Jewels
Leaves (plastic from Michaels)


I usually move the tubs the first week, but due to our schedule, I needed for the students to move.  Here is why.  I have Math at the end of my day.  We have first lunch this year so I need to fit in packing up AND snack into my schedule without loosing instructional time, so I have one table for snack and one table for packing up.  I have continued with this for two weeks, and now that I have the students trained to pack up and I have taken that out of our rotation.

Week 2
Still exploring all five days.  Six tables with activities, remember two of those table are occupied with snack and packing up.  To make the packing up table independent, I used this packing up chart and the students checked off as they completed each item.  It made it so I could float and not stay just with packers.

Week 3

Monday:

Introduced 4 new jobs, still have packing and snack as the other 2 jobs.

    *Fishy Count on Computers - Great for counting, recognizing numbers and mouse practice.

    *Geoboard numbers - just making numbers on the Geoboards using picture cards to help.

    *Pete the Cat and his groovy buttons - Draw a card and place the correct buttons on Pete

    *Shape Book - my assistant is guiding this table with glue and scissors - Today is a Square House

Tuesday:
Moved packing up to before specials, opening up an additonal math tub
    *Fishy count
    *Geoboard numbers
    *Pete the Cat
    *Shape Book - Color and glue macaroni on triangle
    *Dot to Number - Tap not splat, students roll two die, one has a color dot and the other has a number on it - students tap using bingo markers on a blank sheet of paper.  Roll again, continue until the bell rings.

Wednesday:

Early Dismissal day so I had Math first thing in the morning  - so all 6 tubs were up and running

    *Fishy Count

    *Geoboard numbers

    *Dot to Number

    *Count and Write on iTouches

    *Dot to Dot Cards - students simply write the number and connet the numbers making a picture
    *Shape Book - Triangle carrots

   
Thursday:
    *Fishy Count
    *Geoboards
    *Dot to number Bingo dots
    *Shape Book - Color and glue Q-tips on rectangle
    *Snack with Count and Write on iTouches if they finish early
    *Dot to Dot Cards


Friday
    *Fishy Count - last day of this
    *Geoboards - last day of this
    *Shape Book - Rectangle window
    *Dot ot number using Bingo dots
    *Snack with Geoboards on iTouches if they finish early

Beginning of Kindergarten 2013 - Exploration

First three weeks of school:  Exploration

I work on opening, team captains job, cleaning up, freezing when the bell rings, moving from tub to tub, etc.  For the first two week, I move the tub, the third week, THEY move so we will be ready for the real deal next week.

More Exploration and then the attach movie is a helpful link to my made up song. :)

We moved a little faster today and I set a timer so we would not loose track of the time. Three minutes is all we spent in each tub.

Math Tubs and transition

Today we moved! The Tubs stayed on our tables and moved around to each tub. My classroom has tables numbered 1-6 and it is in order that way so the children move in a clockwise motion around my room.

We continued to explore the tubs and I worked with a group on the Smart table. We should explore for three more days and then off to having jobs we will go!

I sang my clean up song, in yesterdays post, and at the end I say "check the floors, check the tables, check your laps" - and instead of clap clap, I would say "Stand up" so as they cleaned up they would stand up and put their eyes on me. At this time, they are still a bit chatty and I usually have to ask for them to give me 5. Once they are all quiet, I showed them where they would go next, then I had them all point to where they were going and then they moved. ( Now I always have a friend who goes the wrong way.) I ring the bell and then they begin. Remember to have a team captain, to aviod fussing. :)