We had a very busy, productive, and fun first week of Kindergarten! We started our week off with reading The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn....
The first week of drama class can be the toughest week of the semester. A drama class is quite different than a “regular” class. Students need to...
An educational blog that shares ideas about teaching! Mostly geared towards science, but sometimes offer ideas that any teacher might benefit from. Come see me!
(Kindly note that our classes are only released in 6-week blocks. Ensure you sign up for our newsletter to be the first to know when the next block of classes is available.) Our Pottery Class is specially designed to cater to beginners and those eager to refine their pottery skills. Whether you're a curious novice or a seasoned enthusiast, you're welcome. 🏺 What's in Store for You? 🔹 Hands-On Throwing Technique: In the first half of the class, we'll dive into the basics of pottery, mastering the art of throwing. From centering the clay to skillfully pulling it up, we'll focus on creating beautiful bowls. With unlimited clay at your disposal, you'll have ample opportunities to refine your technique. 🔹 Personalized Creations: We believe in nurturing your creativity. After the lesson, you'll get to select your best four creations to be fired and glazed, ensuring you take home your most treasured pieces. ☕ Tea & Cake: We know the importance of refueling, so we'll take a refreshing tea and cake break to recharge your energy and create a friendly atmosphere where you can chat. 🎨 Mug Painting: Once we've recharged, we'll return to the studio to decorate and handle your very own personalized mug. This is your chance to infuse your unique style into your artwork, making it truly one-of-a-kind. 🧡 Embrace Your Project: We're here to support your artistic aspirations. If you have any specific ideas for creations, don't hesitate to share them with us. We'll be more than happy to help you bring your dream project to life! Premium Materials: Our studio is equipped with top-quality porcelain clay, alongside a full array of tools and slips you'll need for your pottery adventure. All you need to bring is your enthusiasm and an apron. Let the artistic magic begin! 🔥 From Creation to Collection: Once your class is complete, we'll take care of firing and glazing your pieces with utmost care and precision. Within two weeks, your masterpieces will be ready for collection or, if you prefer, they can be shipped to your doorstep at an additional cost.
Last week I purchased a classroom license to Raz-Kids.com. Have you heard of this before? You probably have. It is popular and an extension
Here is my version of a getting to know you facebook worksheet. I am planning on using it the first week of school. Get your copy here . or...
I love the way we created our class agreements this year. First, students participated in a carousel activity where they went around the room to each poster. They had a pile of small post it notes that they used to respond to the questions- A Great Classmate, IS-DOES-SAYS-DOES NOT... A Terrific Teacher, IS-DOES-SAYS-DOES NOT... A Learner, IS-DOES-SAYS-DOES NOT... A Classroom of Learners, IS- LOOKS LIKE- FEELS... Then each group of 4 students looked at all of the responses and came up with their own class agreements. Finally, we put them all together and this is what they came up with. I think they did a great job!
Are you looking for ways to connect with your students and build community during the first week of class? Do you want to get to know your students, but also set the expectation of “Spanish only” from the start? Here are 5 games that accomplish both of those objectives! 1. ¡Corre, corre! Students form a ... Read More about 5 icebreaker activities for the first week of Spanish
How in the world do we start? There are so many ways to design an AP English Language course, that it’s hard to decide what to do the first week. For some schools, schedules are pretty fluid the first ten days or so, so you may be constantly dropping and gaining students. For others, students […]
written by Hillary Kiser
It's summer time!! I haven't blogged in a while because I've been working on some really great resources. (And enjoying the fact that I am no longer a first year teacher!) I am almost done,but until then, here is a great first day of school/music class game. This is an icebreaker and I am planning to use it with my upper primary/middle school classes. Here is a link to the pdf of this worksheet. This is on Google Docs. Just open it and under file, click download! Enjoy!
The first week of spring in New England has given rise to some doubt that winter isn’t quite done with us. Despite the current frigid temperatures and a March blizzard, spring is showing signs of emergence, with the sun observed Read More
Here are a few happenings from this past week. We've been learning about sentences this week. I made this anchor chart to help us remem...
I made it through the first week and what a time we had! I have 22 students this year, but 5 of them were out on the first day! The second day I had 5 students out again, but I had a student come who had been sick the first day, and one was gone for a dental appointment. The third day I had 5 out again and on Thursday the one who had a dental appointment for two days came back and another student who just got back from vacation showed up! So by Friday I had 19 students with 3 that are still on vacation! Our state went to the year round system two years ago and it has not been a good schedule. We have many families that travel in the summer and don't come back until September!! So needless to say as I was trying to train all the rest and had students trickling in not knowing what to do and having to repeat myself many, many times! But overall it was a great week. This is a cute lively bunch who seem really happy to be back in school. They laugh at my goofy jokes and give me hugs all day long:) Things that I loved this week. My new clip chart! The kids loved this!! Over half the kids in my class are surfers and they thought this was the greatest thing ever!! It helped me focus on the positive and they all wanted to get to Cowabunga soo bad!! My dolphin magic wand!! I used this to get attention and we practiced alot!! It's such a soft, nice sound and they were quiet instantly when they heard it! Click on the wand to go to their site:) My New Rug What a time saver!! I love how they come sit down in their spot and there is no arguing about where to sit! My new book bags I feel so organized and they look so nice with matching numbers where they should hang. My word wall We added a few important words and I love that I can just write it on the board. My new students:) They really are cute and such pleasers this year:)) Things That Didn't Go So Well Our new schedule The whole school is implementing RTI and we have an intervention block the last half hour of school. We have also been given a new daily schedule after 7 years of the same one. I was off the whole week and running late for everything. Every night I went home exhausted and felt like I hadn't accomplished anything!! My classroom printer I am lucky to have a laser printer in my room and have depended on it for two years now. Well it is not connecting to my laptop and I have not been able to print anything from it, so all my parent letters will be a week late:( And I still have not found my Bulletin board letters!!!???I just don't know where to look?? I ordered new sets in May with my classroom money, but guess what?? The order was never placed because the money was just released!!! So many of the items I was depending on I do not have:( Okay I will stop whining now and end with our fun Friday activity. I love to have cooking projects in my class. I call it cooking but we never use heat. I have done this since I began teaching in Kindergarten 20 years ago!! Since our first science unit is life cycles of plants and animals I start off the year making fruit salad. Homework on Thursday night was to bring in a piece of fruit. I can't believe the spread we had this year!! I have Never gotten a pineapple before, lol! I have a recipe that we read together, then I call 3 kids back at a time to cut up their fruit and place it in the bowl. We go over rules of washing hands, not licking the knives, no sneezing on the food and no licking our fingers. I cut up the apples and core them and they do the rest with a plastic knife. The rest of the class decorates their recipe page, and then works together on a fruit word search. I usually do a graph of "What is Your Favorite Fruit", but I just didn't have it together this year!! I keep their recipe page and we place it into our cookbooks (that I will have a parent make later). After everyone cuts up the fruit we mix it up, talk about good manners, serve everyone, and all eat together. Even the teacher eats some:) The kids love it and always look forward to the next project:) Here is the recipe page and the cover I use for our cookbooks. Just click on the picture to grab it in Google Docs.
Use this activity as an ice breaker for the first week of school or as a classroom community builder. I have my students sit in a circle around our carpet, and I project the "Roll a topic" sheet up on the SmartBoard. Each student takes a turn rolling the dice and answering the corresponding question. I hope your class enjoys this activity as much as mine does! Enjoy! :)
I can hardly believe that we are almost back to school for another school year. Summers go by way too fast but I'm hopeful for another amazi...
Comma Rules! The comma separates the structural elements of a sentence into manageable segments. In this lesson, you will learn 8 important rules for using comma in English.
This month we are focusing on Careers at our school. At the elementary level we help children become aware of the many opportunities in t...
Give your child practice with his sentence building skills with this printable worksheet that's all about capital letters.
Howdy! I am Mr. Greg from The Kindergarten Smorgasboard. My real name is Greg Smedley-Warren. I have been teaching for 11 years. I spent a year teaching fifth grade, two years in second grade and am now in my 9th year in Kindergarten. Kindergarten is my passion and my calling but honestly, that wasn’t how it started. When I was moved to Kindergarten (not voluntarily!) I called my mommy and cried. But on the first day, I fell in love and knew that Kindergarten is where I belonged. I have remained in Kindergarten ever since. I plan to never leave the classroom as the kids are what drive me to continue my growth as a teacher and person.
Now that a new school year is starting, we had our “move-up Sunday” for all the student ministries. We had several Kindergarteners move up into the elementary class, and we have a huge …
The students drew a picture of when they were small and then they drew a picture of what they want to be when they grow up. On one side the students made a collage of their house on the other side the students drew a map of their room.
It amazes me how much class size affects my teaching and my students. I started the year with 31 students. I just lost my second one at the beginning of this week, so I'm down to 29. I've had 2 kids out all week on long vacations and 2 more out sick. So I've had a class of 25 ALL week!! It's been a big difference. Even though the ones gone are little angels and I still have all the hard ones, it really makes a BIG difference!! Our district and researchers keep telling us that class size doesn't make a difference but I have to beg to differ with them. It makes a HUGE difference in first grade. With a smaller class I can spread myself out more- work with more kids, more often, for longer periods of time. We can get more done- 25 kids take less time to finish an assignment than 31. With all the activities we do in first grade through out the day it can really add up. With less kids, fighting for my attention, I can give more attention to those that really need it. During class discussions, there is more participation by more kids. The shyer kids start to open up. It just feels more like a close knit community rather than a big city. I can hardly imagine what it would be like to teach less than 20. What a dream!! Back to reality. Our school has been doing training in SIOP this year. It stands for Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol. You can find out more HERE. It actually is training in teaching English Language Learner but our school does not have a very high percentage of ELLs. We actually have only 3 out of 180 in our grade level. But the SIOP model is really best practices and a great review in how to teach better. With the new common core our principal thought is would be a great help. We've had to do lesson studies and just finished one yesterday. Our team did ours on Synonyms. It's great to collaborate and work together as a team developing and analyzing a lesson. Here's a practice page we used and a cute song we found. I don't know who to give credit for the song but our kiddos really liked it. Click HERE if you'd like to grab a copy. Hey, believe it or not but it's FRIDAY tomorrow- again! Gotta love FRIDAY! I hope you all have a GREAT one.
First week of school with your ESL students can be great and set the tone for the year. Make connections, set classroom expectations and gather information.
Here are 27 engaging, fun, and creative ways to greet elementary students, based on an infographic by Mia MacMeekin.
Creative ways to handle classroom management.
Happy Monday! The first week back after Christmas break is over and you're back in the swing of things! Time to start pluggin' in some new ideas into your daily routine! Yesterday in our Sunday School class, we played a really fun (yet ridiculously simple to make) game to help review the lesson we were learning for the day. We were learning about the 12 sons of Jacob (characters from the Bible), and I was looking for a fun way to review them, so I decided to do a little "Guess Who" game. It's so simple friends, that I can barely even call it DIY because *I* didn't really do much accept for spend about 5 minutes on the computer creating the following two pages. This top picture has boxes with the pictures of Jacob and his 12 sons on it (images found here). and the bottom picture has the same sized boxes, but no pictures. I had the students cut out their picture boxes (see - so easy, I didn't even have to do the cutting!). They then set the up 2 file folders like shown below (I paper clipped them together so that they would stay together. You'll also notice I stuck an object (a bell, in my case) in between the folders to keep the top half from falling over. The students then placed their blank box sheet on their side of the folder and placed the picture cards in any order on top of the blank boxes. Again - notice who is doing all the work :) Not me! I then had a separate set of the picture cards, one set per partner group (this was in ADDITION to the cards that they cut up). Once students set up their board placing all pictures on the box, I had each partner group pick a person from the additional picture card set and paper clip this picture in the corner on the top of the file folder. (Ex. The picture below shows "Levi" clipped in the corner). This became the person that their partner would try to guess. Students played the game using the regular "Guess Who" rules asking their partner yes/no questions about their secret person. (ex. Does your person have a striped belt?). Students would remove people off their board as they eliminated who their partner's person might be. Once a partner had won, the students could rearrange their board as they wanted to and choose a new picture card and play again. So, how can you use this idea in your classroom? EASY! Choose characters from a book, historical figures, or any other group of people your students need to review. It would even make a great game to tuck away for now and use at the beginning of the school year by using pictures of your students and have students guess which classmate their partner has. What a great way for your students to get to know their classmates at the beginning of the year!!
Sample a day of Rooted in Reading with these lesson plans and activities for Reading Comprehension, Vocabulary, and Grammar!
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Today I am brining you the perfect combination of back to school ice-breakers and games for those first days of school! Back to school is a crazy time and we all want to hit the ground running. There are routines and procedures to teach and we are ready to get to them the second those kids walk in the door. Building community and getting to know
Hey there Recorder Ensemble Cats -- here is the first of three videos showing how to play the theme from Star Wars along with the music. Get started learning this for Friday and may the force be with you!
