Rodeo Day! Yee Haw!

Rodeo Day is one of the "special days" that we have in kindergarten every year.  The children love dressing up like cowboys and cowgirls and they love going outside for our Rodeo.  We start off in the classroom doing some fun cowboy/girl related activities such as making a hat.  We use large brown construction paper that has a pattern traced onto it.  The children cut it out and decorate it and are ready to go!

The last 30-45 minutes of the day we head out side for the Rodeo!  We have collected some stick horses throughout the years and the children love having horse races with them.  That is just one activity, there is also making S'mores and eating it by a campfire, making a stick cowboy/girl, panning for gold, playing horse shoes, and shaving (we let the children put shaving cream on their arm and pretend a popsicle stick is a razor to shave it off) like cowboys used to do when they were out camping. 

Making S'mores the easy way (one graham cracker square, chocolate frosting and a marshmallow).

Our adorable campfire!

Panning for gold - we filled the sand table with sand and rocks we spray painted gold.

We use paint sticks to color a cowboy/girl and then use brown paper to cut out a hat and boots and add a little fabric bandana.

Repost: The Very Hungry Caterpillar

I am just finishing up our unit on insects and I remembered this post that I posted last year.  I just did the life cycle project from Golden Gang Kindergarten and I loved it.  I thought I would repost for those looking for some good Hungry Caterpillar ideas.


I was looking for some new ideas for the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar and here are some of the things I found:

• I came across a new blog that I had not seen before.  It is called Golden Gang Kindergarten.  I love the ideas that I found on this blog! 

•  Making Learning Fun has many printables including math and literacy activities and even has a Youtube link for a video.
• On eric-carle.com Eric Carle has a video of him reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
• Mrs. Sears has great Smartboard resources on her website, including some about this book. 

• Teachwithme(dot)com has a free packet to download! 
•  I found some games for the computer or smartboard on http://www.topmarks.co.uk/ . Under maths there are so many great games but I did find one with caterpillars.  The children have to put numbers in order on the caterpillar ( there are different levels of difficulty). 

Great Number Sense Game

I found a great number sense game for kinders on the Teaching Channel!  It is called Mingle and Count.  The students mingle around the room until the teacher calls out a number.  The students have to form groups of that number.  Then the teacher and children check each group.  Any students that are left over without a group are assigned a special way to mingle, such as hopping like a bunny or flapping their arms like a bird.  In the video the teacher did this with the numbers 2,3,4 and 5.  I cannot believe that I forgot about the Teaching Channel and I haven't been on it in a while.  I found so many great ideas just now!

Dear Gingerbread Man... (and freebie)

I can't believe I haven't posted anything in so long!  It has been a crazy school year with so many changes and I am just trying to keep my head above water!  I wanted to share something that I did in my classroom before winter break.  Before the holidays we always do a unit on The Gingerbread Man.  There are so many great versions of this story now and this can lead to so many good discussions with the student!

During one of our discussions one of my students said, " I want to write the gingerbread man a letter and warn him about the fox so he won't be eaten again".  What a great idea!  I ran with this and the next day after brainstorming things that we would tell the gingerbread man we starting writing letters to him.  The kids loved this and we had a lot of fun with it!  I created a simple template for writing this letter that you can download if you would like a copy.  Click HERE.

After the students wrote the letters I posted them in the classroom and told them that sometimes the gingerbread man visits classrooms so he would see the letters if he came.  So I got out my stuffed gingerbread man, had him write a letter to the students and he was waiting for them the next day!  They couldn't believe it ( I love how 5 year olds still have that great imagination)!  I had not read a book yet where the gingerbread man lived in the end so after all of this I read The Gingerbread Baby and the children swore that it was because of their letters that the gingerbread baby lived!  Haha I loved it!  We covered comprehension, creativity, reasoning skills, and writing all in one lesson! Here are a few pictures of some of the letters that they wrote:

"Don't go near the fox because he will trick you because he will eat you."

"Don't trust the fox."

"Don't go near a fox."

Bulletin board with the letters posted.

Free iPad apps for Kindergarten

My colleagues and I have each received 6 iPads to use in our classrooms.  I am looking for some really good free educational apps to use for my intervention groups.  So far I have found ABC Magic which is very easy to use and I can focus on all of the skills that we need right now.  Does anyone know of any other good apps that work on letters, beginning sounds, phoneme segmentation or blending?

Sight Word Smartboard Game *Freebie*

I just posted a new smartboard game on TpT.   It is called Find the Turkey and it is like my other games where you have to click on a picture and try to find something.  On this one I decided to practice sight words so I added the sight words that we have covered in Reading Street so far this year.  Click on the picture below to check it out!