Homework... Need I Say More?

We start the expectation of homework the second semester in kindergarten at my school.  My grade level decided on this format:

Monday:  Practice sight words
Tuesday: Read story that was sent home
Wednesday:  Math sheet
Thursday:  Read a story and practice a story element (we sent a list of suggestions home)

I think it is a great plan, because technically, I only have to send an extra thing home one day, yet I am still convinced that I dislike homework more than the kids, lol!.   Every Wednesday I am trying to find a good homework sheet.  Yep, you read that right... I forget every week, leaving myself scrambling every Wednesday.  I hate to send home anything meaningless, yet finding cute things aligned with common core and our themes has been a challenge. Now that I have my student teacher who is doing a good portion of my job- I have had some time to think ahead and I have started making my own homework sheets. Here is what I sent home last week to go with our social studies unit on American Symbols:

You can click on. the picture to get your FREE copy

This is what I am sending home this week to go with Dental Health Month:

You can get a FREE copy of this one here.

I hope you find these helpful.  Please feel free to post your comments. :)

Making Sight Word Fluency Fun

My students practice reading the sight words in a flip chart every day... pretty mundane... I would love to try to make the experience fun everyday, but there is only so much time...  I try to make up for that routine practice by playing sight word games.  Each week I try to fit a sight word game into either my group or my teacher assistant's group.  This week we will be playing a Valentine themed game... Love at First Sight. The object of the game is to read the most sight words "at first sight".  When it is a player's turn, he/she rolls a cube or spins a spinner (Both options are included in the game).  The number he/she gets determines the number of cards he/she gets to try to read. Players who are waiting for their turn are not excused from thinking as I have built in two options to keep them engaged.  One, there is a sheet for them to find and circle the words that are read, and two- there is a little card that they put in front of them to show whether or not they could read the cards the player has drawn.  If the player's whose turn it is can not read a word, another player can try to earn the point by reading it. This game is available in my Teachers Pay Teachers store, but you can get a free copy by going here because I love you for reading my blog.  :)  Speaking of Valentine's Day, my fabulous student teacher, Ana Strafford, has planned a problem solution activity for this week with the book The Biggest Valentine Ever by Steven Kroll.  I made up a sheet with some cute Scrappin'Doodles clip art, a border from Anita Goodwin (you can visit her blog here), and a font from Hello Literacy.  You can get a copy of the response sheet here. It has two options, one with lines for writing and one with blank spaces for picture drawing.  I usually copy both back to back and give my students a choice. Have a great Valentine's Day!

Presidents' Day Ideas Executed Despite the Chaos of the Week

What a week it was... new computers being installed Monday and Tuesday, Tornado Warnings complete with hallway fun on Wednesday, Teacher of the Year finalist stuff on Thursday, and PTA launched their wonderful appreciation of teachers on Friday.  Three out of four of those things ended well.  We got four computers instead of three, a tornado never touched down where we are, and PTA's breakfast and flowers were great! Well, except that my breakfast was a little too close to my flowers when I sprinkled the preservative into the vase...  Take it from me- it doesn't taste good!  I was not named Teacher of the Year, but it is still an honor to get as far as I did and I thank my colleagues for that. :)

Despite the chaos, we  had some pretty successful lessons.  I am going to share two of them that I did in social studies.  We are studying Presidents' Day.

The students should know what a president does to help them understand why we would honor them, so we watched the Brainpop jr. video titled Presidents to start.  Then we did a flip chart where we decided if the statements in each column were true. The headings were A president does... and A president does not...  I included  pictures of the flip chart so you can see what it looked like.  Unfortunately, I can't share flip charts because they have unsecured clip art.  This clip art is from www.scrappindoodles.com.

Then the students did a sheet, "If I were president of the United States... I would..."

Download Here

Then, on another day, we learned who we celebrate on Presidents' Day.  First we read, President's Day.

 

Then we did another flip chart.  It is kind of silly, but helped get the point across and only took a few minutes both to make and to do in class.  We pulled pictures out from behind the black box and put them on stage if it was someone we celebrated, and put them in the audience if it was not someone we celebrate on Presidents' Day.  Again, I can't share the flip chart.  The clip art came from www.scrappindoodles.com, creative clips' teacherspayteachers store, digiwebstudios.com  mycuteclipart.com and www.cklr.com. 

Then I had the students do this sheet:

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Both response sheets are available for download.  I am experimenting... hopefully I did this right.  I have had a Dropbox for years, but just learned about the public folder. I learned that I can use it to share things... so here is my first shot at it. By the way, if you don't have a Dropbox yet- you need one!  They are awesome!!!  Go here to get one. http://db.tt/LtAidqz. They are free! You won't be able to figure out how you did without it.  A friend of mine pulled up her transportation home document on her phone when we ended up dismissing from the cafeteria unexpectedly on Wednesday. She was so glad she had it (and yes, I had gotten her started so I was glad I helped someone out, too!)

Back to Presidents' Day, I enjoy our Presidents' Day unit a lot!  It is easy to incorporate into ELA.  Here are two more things I have recently done.  Both are available at my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

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Purchase Here