Donors Choose!

I've had a project on Donors Choose for about a month now. I'm hoping to get a listening center funded for my classroom. So far, I have had several very generous donations and I'm getting close to having my project completely funded! I'm only about $120 away.

Last week, I decided to go ahead and post another project that I'd been thinking about working towards. Once a project is posted, you have four months to get it funded. My reading table in my classroom is horseshoe shaped, which makes it hard to get group work done. The table is really skinny and my students can't have all of their materials out at once. I can only work with 4 kids at a time right now, and even then it's a stretch to have their materials and my materials on the table. I love having that space in my room, but I was hoping to get a kidney table for my room to maximize our space. I submitted the project and it was approved a few days later. I wasn't going to start sharing that project until I got my listening center funded............and this is the miracle story of how I got my table :)

First, I got an email saying that Quill.com, the website that I ordered the table from, was offering a match grant for a limited time. Immediately, half of the cost of my table was covered.

For the first 7 days that a project is posted on Donors Choose, a donor will match donations up to $100. As a result, I only needed to raise a little over $100 to get an almost $500 table for my classroom.

When I got the email saying that my project had been funded, I assumed that it was my listening center. Until I opened the email. And realized that it was my brand new table project that had been fully funded. I about lost my mind. My kids were so funny about it. They had literally no idea what I was even talking about, but they were so excited because I was so excited. They were jumping up and down! It was priceless! They've asked about our table every day and don't really understand why we don't have it yet, but it will make our lives so much easier! We'll be able to work in reading and writing groups every day and I won't have to worry about space!

Our table was fully funded by a man from Boston who is originally from the town where I teach. I am so thankful that he found my project and chose my classroom to support. My students are going to benefit so much from his donation!!!

Donors Choose is an incredible charity that makes it possible for teachers like me to raise funds for materials for our classrooms. I have donated to several projects on there myself and it's very true that every dollar counts. You can search for projects by location, type of project, etc. It's a great way to support teachers in a very tangible way.

Have you had a project funded on Donors Choose? Do you have a project posted now? I would love to check them out!

Working Smarter, Not Harder

I'm sure you panicked that I missed my center post last weekend...I promise I taught my kids this week! I had to fly to Michigan for a funeral a few weekends ago, so we did the same centers two weeks in a row and we've just had a crazy few weeks!

I've realized that I am running myself to the ground introducing and keeping up with completely new centers every week. Last week, I traded in my number puzzles center for a Roll, Say, Keep center that is easily differentiated and can stay in the center all year. I'll trade out the cards as needed, but our letter naming/sounds cards are perfect for my class right now! My board was a freebie and I'm still using cards from the same download. As the year continues, I'll substitute letters with color/number words, sight words, simple sentences, etc. My kids did a great job with it last week and it makes me so happy that I won't have to teach them how to do that center every Monday!

Check out this freebie on TPT

My writing center last week was a Write the Room center. My students loved it, so I'm thinking I'll just switch out the cards and recording sheets every week. This week, we're going to practice counting and recording numbers. I found a really cute Halloween counting Write the Room center that I've printed and cut. The students will count the spiders/bats/pumpkins/cats and write the number on the appropriate line. I still have several little ones who are really struggling with writing numerals. The practice will be good for them! My favorite way to practice numbers is in shaving cream while we listen to the Dr. Jean Numeral Song. They sing that song all the time! Basically, any way that I can get my students to practice writing numbers that isn't just pencil to paper is great. Plus, they get to use clipboards. What could be better than clipboards?! 

Check out this freebie on TPT

My math center this week will be more counting practice. We've worked on five frames for several weeks and are ready to move on to ten frames this week. I wanted to make sure that they really understood fives as a set before we moved onto tens and I think they're ready! They'll be counting candy corn and matching the numeral to the tens frame. I printed these double sided this week. Cardstock is getting expensive! I'm going to put velcro on the back of each of the numbers and on each of the lines so that they can match the numerals. Velcro makes everything fun for 5 year olds ;)

Check out this freebie on TPT

My word work center is going to be more magnetic letters. My class really likes magnetic letters. We're practicing isolating the beginning sound in words and matching sounds to the corresponding letter, so I printed some more pages from the awesome magnetic letter pack I downloaded several weeks ago. They'll match the letter to the picture. It's a lot harder to record the beginning sound than it is to isolate it, but I think they can handle it. We'll adjust as we go with this one.

Check out this freebie on TPT

My other centers this week came from Miss Kindergarten's Fall Centers pack. They'll velcro letters and numbers in order and record them on their recording sheets. I also downloaded her sight word packs, which I'll use for their seat work this week. My plan was to start their computer center this week, but I'm not sure that's going to happen. I will keep the poetry center going this week, though! I'm going to start to introduce their poetry notebooks from Karen Jones. The best thing about this center is that they'll be able to do this one independently from week to week because the procedures will be the same!

That pretty much wraps up my centers for this week. I'm going to get some pictures of my kids actually doing the centers this week...I promise! I am so blessed by my students. I seriously have the best class ever. I might be biased, but I'm mostly just pretty sure they're the best ;)

Centers on Saturday...Celebrating Fall!

We wrapped up Apple Week Part 2 last week with homemade applesauce! I forgot to take a picture, but it honestly did NOT look appetizing, so I'm really sparing you. Some of my students wouldn't touch it, but I had several that ate more than one serving! They helped me put all of the ingredients into the crockpot and we got to enjoy the smell all day long! We started peeling apples around 7:30 and decided that it was WAY too much work! After a quick google search to confirm that it was okay, we opted to give our students all of the fiber and nutrients that we could by leaving the skin on the apple! We learned about the parts of an apple (flesh, skin, seeds, stem). We learned about the life cycle of an apple and read a lot more apple books. We had applesauce in the cafeteria for lunch a few days and they were SO excited to be eating apple foods! It was really sweet.

Next week in Kindergarten, we'll be focusing on all things Fall! Pumpkins, leaves, Halloween, and whatever else we come up with. Haha! I've been working diligently all day on my centers for next week and I'm pretty excited about what I've come up with! I still have some work to do tomorrow. I'm going to try writing out directions for each center with pictures to go along with it. I'm really hoping to alleviate the "what do we do next, Miss Vick??" before I start pulling guided reading groups during that time. Along with library, writing, and big books, which don't change much from week to week, we'll have a center for poetry, math, word work, phonemic awareness, puzzles, and pocket chart. Some of them I made myself, but I got a lot for free off of Teachers Pay Teachers!

Poetry: Each student will have a copy of the poem that we used as a warm up for the past two weeks. They will read the poem with their partner and then illustrate it. When they've done that, they'll get to use highlighters to highlight the sight words that they know. I made an example to show them what I expect. I'm finding that this is a really effective and time saving tool! I'm hoping to start our A to Z poetry notebooks within the next few weeks, so this will be a great introduction.

Math: We're still working on 1 to 1 correspondence in counting. I found some cute monsters for a fun, Fall themed math center. Each monster has a number on it's tummy. The students will count googley eyes and put the correct number on each monster. We're really working on peer checking during center time. The partners check each other's work rather than come up to me while I'm working with students to ask me to check. When they've finished, they'll do a monster ten frames matching page as a recording sheet. Recording sheets are SO IMPORTANT for my students so that I can make sure that they really do understand the concepts. The entire Monster Mash math unit is FREE on TPT.

I printed my monsters on white cardstock and colored them in myself!

Check out this freebie on TPT

Word Work: I used my mad skills to create a candy corn word work center for my kids this week. They'll match the uppercase letter to the lowercase letter and the picture. 

Phonemic Awareness: I made this center, as well. We've been working on counting syllables this week, so I made some picture cards for my students. They'll clap the word and sort the pictures into the 1 or 2 syllables column. I made a recording sheet for this center, too!

Puzzles: The apple number puzzles were a HUGE hit last week! I found some Halloween number centers for my students to work on next week. These puzzles are differentiated to meet the needs of all of my students. Some go from 1-10, some from 11-20, some count by 2s, 5s, and 10s. They're really cute and I know my students are going to LOVE them!

Pocket Chart: Some of my students still need a lot of practice with numbers 1-20. I decided to make our pocket chart center an extension of our math center. They will be able to do a few different activities. They can put the pumpkins in number order, play "Find the Pie", and match the tens frames with the numeral. We haven't done much with tens frames yet, so this will sort of be an exploration for them. I think they'll really enjoy this center, too!

Check out this freebie

We're going to have a busy week with testing and all of our Fall fun! Our after school program is starting back up this week after a one week hiatus. I've enjoyed the break, but am looking forward to working with our kinders after school again! I sent home another book order at the beginning of last week and already have had THREE STUDENTS turn them in! I love book orders!!

I think my favorite thing about Kindergarten is watching them grow into these social, independent people. Some of my students have had limited experiences with kids their own age and it cracks me up to see them work through their awkward interactions and learn to interact with each other! Centers is probably one of my favorite times of day because they are learning cooperatively and it's so interesting to me to watch them learn to work together. My students have grown so much already. I can't wait to see how much they grow by the end of the year!

Our Class Promise

Our assembly this morning was about bullying and being a good friend. When we got back to the room, I pulled up Mr. Harry's Kindergarten's bullying video. We watched it and talked about how to show respect to our friends. I read the sweet book Cookies by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. Then, we created our class promise. All of our promises are straight from the mouths of my students! When we were finished, we all signed it. Our promise is hanging in our classroom as a reminder to all of us to be respectful and good friends. It was a sweet morning in kindergarten. 

Sweet Students!

Just had to pop in to share this sweet moment with my kiddos. My brother's name is Holden. His birthday was September 20. We called Holden on his birthday to sing to him and my kids spent part of their center time making cards for him. It was the most precious thing! We've been focusing on a letter a day in Phonics. Tuesday was "Hh" day. Part of our lesson was making a list of words that start with the letter "h". I'll let our list speak for itself. I am so thankful to have such sweet little ones in my room!