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!