All about nouns!

This week we've been learning all about nouns. We made a fun anchor chart brainstorming examples for the four types of nouns- person, place, thing and animal. Hopefully having this chart up in our room will help my Kindergarteners!

To assess, I made this page:

It has 8 pictures (2 of each type). Students have to cut and sort/organize the nouns into the different categories. Its available on my TpT site for only $1.50! 

How do you teach nouns? 

Apple Unit!

The week before Fall Break I taught my "Apple Unit." Pretty much everything we did was about apples! And it made me want to integrate more thematic units into my daily lesson plans. Maybe a pumpkin unit in a few weeks?

We tasted 3 different types of apples and made a graph to see which was the class favorite. Here they are getting their samples:

And the taste testing begins!

After they tasted each piece, I gave them a picture of an apple to color according to which was their favorite:

I wish I had a picture of the finished graph! Red delicious were by far the class favorite, followed by Granny Smith (surprised me!) and Yellow delicious in a distant 3rd place. We love making graphs as a class and I love how great my kids have become at interpreting the data and drawing conclusions.

Sadly, I forgot to take pictures of our experiment when we "dissected" an apple. But we talked about the parts of an apple and then the kids labeled their own. They did great with it and were stretching out some tough words- flesh, skin, etc.

Next up- best part of the unit, applesauce day! We talked about the steps to make applesauce:

1. wash them 2. cut them 3 cook them 4. eat them

 1. wash 2. cut 3. sprinkle (because we "sprinkled" in cinnamon and sugar) 4. eat

 1. wash 2. cut 3. sugar and cinnamon 4. eat

Then for a fun math activity, we read 10 Apples Up on Top and made our own version. This was a great end of quarter assessment for me- which kids can write and put in order numbers 1-5 and those who still need help. 

We had a great apple-filled week! Tomorrow I return to school after a week-long break. And dare I say it? I'm actually ready to go back because I miss my kiddos!

Symbols and Celebrations!

Lately in my Kindergarten class we have been studying "symbols and celebrations". It's our latest science/social studies unit that is mainly about US and Tennessee state symbols. But, I love the title because there are symbols all over! And since punctuation is a HUGE K standard, I came up with a cute way of getting my kids to understand the 3 main punctuation symbols- period, exclamation mark and question mark. Here it is!


I really wish I had taken a picture of the kids' work instead of my example, but you get the idea. It's a super cute flip book that turned out great! They got to draw their understanding of the symbol and add some writing to it. It has really helped them understand the 3 punctuation symbols that we use.

If you would like to do this in your classroom, feel free! Just take a piece of paper (I used construction paper bc it's a little thicker than plain copy paper) and do a "hot dog" fold. Then draw 2 lines to separate it into 3 areas. Open the fold and cut to the middle of the paper. Re-fold and there you go! I use these kind of flip books ALL the time and my kids love them! The best part is that now they can make them by themselves so I don't have to go and fold and cut 16 pieces of paper. The joys of independence!!

"Picture" this

Back at the beginning of the school year, I had a project funded through Donor's Choose. If you are unfamiliar, this is a website where teachers can go and select items and supplies that they can use in their classrooms. People can then go on the site and either search for a friend's or loved one's project or select a project at random to donate to (yes, I just ended that sentence with a preposition. So kill me). It is GREAT! I have gotten some great stuff through here, things that either I wouldn't or couldn't afford to buy myself.

This project included some dry erase boards, markers, writing paper and the best part...picture dictionaries! My kids LOVE them and I love how excited they are to look through them. They're discovering new words, how words are spelled, expanding their vocabulary, etc. The only down side is that I only ordered 6, thinking the kids could share them. Not so much. Now we have to take turns, which in Kindergarten can be problematic. I'm thinking of creating a "dictionary center" to incorporate into my language centers. Any ideas on how to make a center out of these??

Check out how cute they are:

(ok, I have to admit these pictures are staged. Part of the whole Donors Choose thing is that as the recipient, I have to submit photos of the supplies being used and make a thank-you package. I had forgotten about the photos until the last day of school, so had to quickly "pose" some kids with the dictionaries. But you get the idea! They really do look through these like they are the most exciting books ever!)