Patriotism- How America Works

Here's a little look at our second week of Patriotism! This week our main focus was on learning about the specific symbols, qualities and government of the United States. 

 (sorry for the glare!)

These words (along with some picture cards to match) were placed in our word wall throughout the week so that the kiddos could use them in their writing and review them before our lessons. You can find them in my freebies!

We learned about three very important presidents and got to take home an "all about" book thanks to thekindergartensmorgasboard.com 

We did some cut and paste activities during activity time to help us remember some important sight words, the words to the "promise to our country," The Pledge of Allegiance, and how to spell our wonderful state!

We also made our very own version of our country's great Bald Eagle!

On Wednesday, we learned about the Statue of Liberty and talked about its meaning and importance to all citizens, but especially immigrants. This hit home for many of my bees because so many of them immigrated recently. We learned a "super crazy" fact- that Lady Liberty was given as a gift and is actually made of copper, but she's "dirty" now! To show the kiddos how this happened, we turned a very shiny penny green over a few days. Such a great opportunity to talk about the scientific process and about observing and only drawing or recording what we can see. 

Day 1- soaking our shiny penny in vinegar

Final recording sheet!

We've been working on coins and their value and playing Flip the Coin helped to combine our knowledge of presidents, their importance, graphing, and coin identification!

Here's a peek at our math centers for the week!

We always have a number writing center, we are working SO HARD to correctly identify and write the numbers 0-20!

Here's our number ID center. We LOVE Pete the cat and so think that this roll and read fluency center  is so fun! Plus its focused on teen numbers which are the trickiest for us! Found at Kinderglynn

Here's a cut and paste domino addition center. The kiddos practiced their addition AND fine motor skills and my highest learners were recording all of their dominos as addition sentences as well.

Subtraction is super tricky for the kids. Where many of them are able to add using their fingers or making or using manipulatives, subtraction seems impossible without visuals. The extra step of putting all the manipulatives on the table and then taking some away seems to prove really difficult. However, this week we used these simple picture based subtraction booklets and the kids placed an X over the items taken away. This helped SO MUCH! 

A few of my high acheivers needed an extra push towards number comparison. These kiddos worked on putting non sequential numbers in order using groups between 1 and 100. 

Literacy Centers

Middle sounds are difficult for my middle students to grasp and master. This past week, we used these to help us identify the middle sound. If you can see (the tiny ones on the table in the back) the vowel- or the middle sound- in each of these words is written on the sticks in red. This way, the students can identify the beginning, ending, middle, or all three sounds. Easily differentiable!

Here's a sound switching game (from Kidsparkz) each of my middle kiddos enjoyed. They got to play soccer and "kick" the ball into a word ending's goal. They then read and recorded the new word. 

On Skill and Drill Friday, we spent some time learning about blends. The kids found these jelly bean jars (from Maddie M's TPT Site here) really helpful at putting an object and a word they knew with some tricky to hear and identify blends.

Discovering Our Country- Beginning our United States Unit

I was SO excited to start our unit on patriotism and the United States this week. It is such an interesting and important unit for the kiddos.

The first activity we did (other than our KWL chart) is discovery of our country. We read a book about Betsy Ross and the first American flag  ( A Flag for our Country ) and talked about why there were 13 stars and stripes. I then immediately introduced them to the map of the United States and showed them Massachusetts. I asked one of my more numerically inclined students to count the states in our country and asked the class how many stars they thought were in our new American flag based on our counting activity. Because I let them figure it out themselves, they were SO EXCITED to make the connection and very proud of their new knowledge. And it stuck!

The next day we focused on text comparisons and read another book, Red, White and Blue, The Story of the American Flag. We talked about the similarities and differences between the two historical fiction books and decided we had enough knowledge about the flag to make our own version. I gave each student a star to stick on and we placed the stripes down together- all the while talking about the significance of each part of the flag. One of the bees even said we were creating the flag together because we all work together in the United States. How perfect and just what I wanted to accomplish with this activity!

Glue the states! We used tissue paper squares to represent the idea of states within our country so the kiddos could grasp the idea of many different states living under one united nation.

We also started ability grouping this week within the Kindergarten team. I am teaching the middle group and so we are focusing heavily on fluency with the alphabet and sounds, improving our phonemic awareness skills, learning some digraphs and blends and blending and reading CVC words fluently.

MOOSE! Moose is a simple game that the kiddos absolutely LOVE. Write a sight word, CVC word, the alphabet, etc. on popsicle sticks and the kiddos use the game to review and learn skills that can be difficult, not to mention boring, to practice. When they pick up MOOSE (which you can make in any way you want: letters, goggly eyes, stickers) they have to put all of the sticks they have collected so far back in the pail. They beg to play it- even though its never ending! Teacher's dream...

I edited this wonderful game shared by a fellow teacher to include pictures to sort instead of words. I wanted to make the activity a little more phonemically focused and didn't want my bees to cheat by just looking at the middle letter and sorting it accordingly. The kiddos each get a vowel template and a baggie of pictures and they sort them by their middle sound. Great practice for e/i/a confusion!

To aid in practicing and sharpening our phonemic awareness skills, I made these two to four piece puzzles to show the phonemes in some common words. When the kiddos are done putting the laminated puzzle together, they use a dry erase marker to write the phonemes right on the individual pieces. You can find them under my freebies!

My bees love candy land so when I saw this game, by Deanna Jump on TPT, I HAD to have it. This is sight word POP! and each of the sight words are placed on a colored gum ball. If you can read the sight word, you move to a space of that color and if you get POP! you're stuck on your space for one turn. So simple and fun!

Here's a peak at our favorite math center of the week! I found the monsters at Mrs W's TPT store and used some position word cards to aid the kiddos in practicing and placing the monsters around their cave. The position cards had the word and a picture to show placement and helped them to transfer the vocabulary knowledge to a new situation (the monsters and the cave). My kiddos (most speaking two or three languages) have a very difficult time with position words in English and we NEED to practice them in many different ways since they are on our end of the year math test. Always looking for fun activities for them in this area!

Here's a recording sheet included in the packet. They needed a little assistance to read the position words but found it so fun to do and color!

We also finished up our matter unit this week and experimented with turing a solid into a liquid (ice to water, of course) and with mixing colors. The students discussed how they could turn the ice into a liquid and got into groups of 3-4. Each group got a recording sheet and one bag of two different colored ice cubes. Some of the most ingenious ideas the bees came up with were melting the ice under their armpits, sitting on it (the bag broke, naturally), and using friction to melt the ice cubes. They had never before mixed colors and were so excited to see the change. I made these super easy to follow recording sheets to go along with it! 

Color Mixing Recording Sheet