August's Calendar

Here is August's Activity/Homework Calendar. Enjoy!

You’re on the Right Track

As part of our transportation unit each year, we travel to our local train station and take the train to the next stop. From there we take the bus to the airport where there is an observation tower by the runway to watch planes take off and land. This field trip is easily one of my favorites. I used to take the train all the time in college to get from my dorm to the airport to fly home, but for most people taking the train is a rare opportunity and most kids haven’t been on a train before our trip.

Since the transportation unit comes pretty early in the year, I thought it would be fun to start the year with that theme as well for our “welcome” display. To start I created an engine and some train cars for the outside hallway display. The train track was just strips of black construction paper resting on green bulletin board paper for the grass. For the background I stretched a long rectangle of blue bulletin board paper and place the green paper and train tracks on top. I also added a sun with a smiley face because apparently I am really a kid at heart.)

To make the train I cut a silhouette of an engine out of black paper. Then, for each car I used a 12” x 18” sheet of colored construction paper and then added two black wheels at the bottom. I put several children’s names on each of the cars and wrote across the top in “smoke” letters:  “You’re on the Right Track in Kindergarten!” After the first week of school I put each child’s picture next to their name on the “kindergarten train.”

I actually ended up liking the train so much that I saved it and transferred into my room the next year. In this room we had these huge soffits that came down around the middle of the classroom. I hated the big bare spaces but had never gotten up to put anything there. That summer I made the same outdoor background using bulletin board paper and attached it to the soffit using stapes and glue. Then I attached the train so it looked as if it was running across the soffit. I made each car a different color and as part of our color unit the kids found and attached different representation of that color to the correct car on the color train. Classic teacher - we can reuse anything under the sun, which is probably why we save everything as well!

A New Year is Popping Up

It’s that time again to think about how you are going to welcome your future friends to a new school year. I spend a ridiculous amount of time deciding what my start of year display is going to be and typically use at least one workday to get it all done. I like to tell myself that it’s because first impressions matter (which they do), but secretly I think it is just one of those teacher things I dreamed about doing (like using an overhead) and now that I can finally do it I may go over the top a little bit.

I’m almost positive I originally saw this idea (or one very similar) in a Mailbox magazine years ago. A teacher had taken a large sheet of bulletin board paper and stretched it for a background display. Then he or she had cut a large bowl out of paper and put it at the bottom. Inside the bowl and popping up all around were pieces of popcorn with the students’ names on them. The title said “Look Who’s Popping Up in Kindergarten!” Too cute.

Keeping with the food theme, I also saw a display that was an apple tree that “grew” from the hallway floor up to almost the ceiling. From the tree were hanging apples with each child’s name and the saying “You’re the Apple of My Eye.” I also think it would be cute to have the same food - apples or popcorn - as a snack for families at the Open House. Yum! 

The Writing Center

      Writing is a great center for kids. It gives them a chance to practice their newfound skills in another setting besides writing workshop (because, of course, we want kids to think of their skills in isolation) and explore different types and purposes for writing. This is also a great time for students to practice writing to a prompt. In writing workshop they usually have the freedom to use their own ideas and choose their topics. Almost all writing tests students will ever take, though, involve prompts so it is important that they are able to do that, too. Prompts can be as vague or specific as you’d like. Many time Kindergartners struggle with staying on one topic and this is a skill you can reinforce in your writing mini-lessons. Some teachers like to write prompts and post them in the writing area while others like to give slightly more choice. One of my favorite compromises was to make posters with similar themes, ex: Clifford, Froggy, Curious George, Olivia, and Chester Raccoon and then give a prompt such as “Please write a story about one of these characters and the adventure they have.” By this time we’ve talking about plot, setting, character, so the students have ideas about what their story’s shape will look like. You could make similar posters for setting, problem, or theme.

          The writing center can also encourage students to use functional forms of writing as well. They can write letters to friends and family, make shopping lists for the grocery store, or write a diary or journal entry about their day.

          The writing center’s location is extremely important. Anchor charts, word walls, picture dictionaries, samples of good and bad student work, idea charts, sound charts, pencils, crayons, erasers, paper choices, and handwriting charts should all be close by and easily seen. If you have the resources, students can also publish their writing on the computer through word processing programs. Many kids programs, such as Kid Keys, allow students to illustrate their work on the computer as well.

          In addition to your “I Can” chart you may also want to work with your students in interactive writing to make a chart about writing topic ideas. It will be important for you to model the different forms of writing children may do (you may only want to start with one or two choices), how to sound out words, how to use your classroom resources, taking out and putting materials away, sharing with peers, how to use pictures dictionaries, and what to do with finished and unfinished work. Many of these mini-lessons will also be replicated during your writing block, but you may find you need to reinforce them during literacy centers.

Writing Ideas

          -writing prompts

          -free choice

          -meaningful story recall

          -meaningful story predictions

          -write lists, cards, letters, stories, journal entries, books, surveys

          -write descriptions for pictures

The Pursuit of “Hoppy”ness.

Many teachers have a theme or “thing” that defines their classroom. For the room next door it is turtles, down the hall it’s cats, across the way it’s the ocean. Lots of times there is some alliteration like Smith’s Stars or Davis’ Dogs. I don’t have a thing – except I like my room to be neat (which probably doesn’t count). So one year while I was frantically stocking up on everything I needed (and many things I didn’t need) from the local teacher store, I saw that there was a line of frog products from stickers to name plates to decorations to notepads. Now, I don’t like frogs and probably if I saw one would steer clear, but there’s something about Carson-Dellosa because they make everything look happy.

So I loaded up my cart with all the frog essentials and decided my welcome to kindergarten display would be called “I’m very HOPPY you’re here!” I bought two big frogs and a bunch of smaller frogs for each child’s name to go in the “pond.” If I had been thinking, tadpoles would have been cuter, but I’m not sure most kids would have gotten the joke. (Actually, some of my parents probably wouldn’t have either.)

Before school began I worked on my welcome display, which as I've mentioned, is one of my favorite parts of the year. I made a cute pond from blue bulletin board paper and then cut green paper in a circle around the blue "pond" to look like grass and flowers. Inside the pond were some lilly pads and fish. I placed the two big frogs on the lilly pads and put mine and my assistant’s names on each one and then the new kindergartners names on the little frogs.

I did like the display, but the frog theme never caught on for me in the room. That’s OK; in fact I’m a little “hoppy” it didn’t! (Sorry – had to)

Mary Wore Her Red Dress, Red Dress, Red Dress

When I was student teaching I worked with a lady who I think had been a Kindergarten teacher for about a million years and she was still fabulous at it. At the start of the year she began with a theme on colors. Although most of her kids had mastered colors several years ago she always liked to start with something they felt confident with and activities to learn each other’s names. One of these activities was developed around the book Mary Wore Her Red Dress.

In the story Mary Wore Her Red Dress, animals are heading to a birthday party. The book begins in black and white and as characters are introduced it is around their clothing and its color. So as Mary enters on the first page with her red dress all the other images on the page that are red start to appear and so it continues through the end of the book when finally all the colors are revealed. There is a song that goes with the book as well and you can usually purchase the book with an accompanying tape or CD.

After reading the book, the class would make their own big book to mirror the story. Ahead of time, we had cut out items of clothing (shirts, dresses, shorts, pants) in a variety of colors. Each child would then pick one piece of clothing and take it back to their seat. They would glue the clothing to a large piece of paper and then draw the rest of their body around the clothing. (This took a little modeling before they started, but they actually do a great job.)

Then at the bottom of the piece of paper we would write a sentence like in the text, such as “Peter wore his yellow shirt.” When all the pages were done, we would laminate them and make them into a class big book. The next day we would read our class big book together and “sing” the book like we did with Mary Wore Her Red Dress.

The kids love this big book and it was a class favorite they returned to over and over again to read in the library. Not only did it help some friends who may be shaky with colors, but more importantly it was another fun way to learn everyone’s name at the start of the year.

The Beautiful Kinder-Garden

One of the most played up takes on Kindergarten is, of course, the Kinder "garden." Like most teachers I have planted the Kindergarden outside, but since I do not have a green thumb I am always more excited about plants and flowers I can’t kill.

I was always amazed at how much students grew in Kindergarten. Sometimes it seemed they just shot up over night! So a few years ago I started measuring kids during the first week of school. I would then cut a strip of green construction paper (about 2 inches wide) to their height. They would then decorate a large flower to put at the top of this green stem and finally add some leaves to the sides. Since I was the last room in the hallway, there was a stretch of about fifteen feet outside my door to the end of the hall that wasn’t really used. After our flowers were done, I would “plant” them outside in the hallway for the year. During the last few weeks of school I would measure the kids again and cut another strip of green construction paper to their height. This made their second stem. Again they would decorate a flower for the top and add leaves or other details. We would “plant” these flowers next to the ones from the start of school to see how much our garden had grown and at the end of the year the students took home both flowers from their “kindergarden.”