Integrating Spring

"Hopper Hunts for Spring" Book Cover

I'd like to start by thanking Linda at Primary Inspiration for hosting her Primary Math Linky Party.  What a terrific idea!  My contribution to the linky party is this integrated post featuring several freebies including addition bunnies.

I love using the book Hopper Hunts for Spring because it can tie in math, science, language arts, and writing all in one beautiful spring package.  The story itself focuses on a young bunny's confusion about who "Spring" is.  I think this book is fabulous for starting discussions with your class about the spring season.  I try really hard to encourage higher-level thinking by asking open-ended questions such as "What do you think Hopper is thinking?", "What kinds of things do you like to do in the spring?", and "What would you see, hear, smell, and taste in the spring if you were a bunny?".

For writing and art, I'm going to have my students use these differentiated spring cut-up sentences that they can also illustrate.

Spring Sentence Worksheets With Drawing by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley

I've taken a few classes this year that say it's really important to use sentence starters for ESOL children.  Since my class is almost entirely ESOL, I've really embraced sentence starters throughout this school year.  Here is an example of one of them, with a picture word bank.

Spring Writing Prompt by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley


Even though Common Core has taken time and money out of kindergarten, I still think that a short calendar time is important.  I still use my calendar and I use different songs to represent special times of the year.  Some songs that I will use in April are:

"Five Little Bunnies" by Mar Harmon
"5 Little Bunnies" by Joanie Calem
"Celebrate the Spring" by Jack Hartmann
"It's Spring" by Tiana

I feel that my children focus much better when we sing and dance to bring us all together on the carpet and to transition between subjects.  I think all four of these songs give details about spring that some five-year-olds aren't yet familiar with.  They also provide a nice baseline to make connections between the book, what they're writing about, and what they're hearing.  The bunny songs are nice fingerplays for those students who still don't have one-to-one correspondence - I still have two in my kindergarten class who are having trouble with this.  It's still good for the other children in my class because they can focus on the rhyming parts of the song.

I'm going to cut up these addition bunnies, laminate them, and put them in my math center for further practice.  My children are going to use manipulatives of their choice from the center to check their answers.

Addition Bunnies by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley

Please let me know which ideas you like from this post.  Your feedback really helps me to decide what to write about next.

Visit from the Secretary of Education

The Secretary of Education is a really cool guy!  Ok, so this is the story.  A few weeks ago, I was asked to be on a panel with Arne Duncan.  I couldn't believe it!  I kept thinking "Something bad is going to happen.  I'm going to get the flu or get into a car accident, or maybe Arne Duncan will just cancel."  But the day came and I wasn't sick, we didn't get into a car accident, and one of my sweetest friends even did make-up for me (I can't do my own make-up, being blind).  So, before Arne Duncan arrived everyone was very nervous and reading over tons of articles about new education initiatives that President Obama is trying to make happen.  I kept focusing on early childhood articles, because I believe with all my heart and soul that universal pre-k is a fabulous idea.  I just can't believe there are people out there who disagree and say that it's a waste of money to provide more pre-k education throughout the country.  The eight panelists from my school were very honest in the discussion.  We told Secretary Duncan that sometimes we feel like there are so many new initiatives and so much to do that we're constantly playing "catch-up."  Sometimes living in the Washington D.C. area, I meet people who actually say they're sorry to me once they find out I'm a teacher because they  think it's not a very worthwhile profession and that we just babysit all day.  I think that this needs to change and that people in the general population need to realize how important early childhood education is.  We all know that very intelligent people decide to go into teaching because it's their passion and their dream, not as an easy way out or because we lack talent for other jobs.

The video above is an abbreviated version of the discussion.  Below is the full video, if you're interested in watching it.  Let me know what you think.

Having Fun with Habitats

One of my favorite units to teach in science is habitats.  I think over the years I've gotten better and better at incorporating all of the subjects within my habitat unit.  The books in the carousel above are perfect for any habitat unit, especially because of the new Common Core Standards.  I love them because of the realistic, vivid illustrations and the simple, factual text on each page.  My students were really engaged as we read these books to them, and they asked many intelligent questions that led to more in-depth study about sharks, scorpions, and poisonous frogs and snakes.

I really like starting my lesson off with the songs "Habitat" by Walkin' Jim Stoltz, "Habitat Scat" by Mar Harman, and "Habitat Homes" by Dr. Jean.  I then read one of the habitat books from the carousel above.  Next I use a giant graphic organizer, either on a chart with realistic pictures or on the floor with plastic animals.  Here is a lesson plan that I think will thoroughly describe exactly what I do.  We have to do full-out lesson plans at our school, and this lesson plan was especially tweaked for an ESOL class that I'm taking.  I hope it's useful.

Final Lesson Plan - Sharon Dudley - Habitat by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley

I wanted to do some writing mixed with science, and I found that my students kept asking me how to spell the names of animals found in the various habitats that we were doing.  I decided to make sentence starters with word banks so that I could really concentrate on circulating around the room and finding out if my children understood what a habitat was.  The papers worked beautifully.  Here is a sample of one that you can use with your kids:

Animal Habitat Writing Prompt Desert by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley

I put up a whole Animal Habitat Unit on TPT including a writing prompt for a multitude of habitats and some graphic organizers.  If you buy this unit, here are some teaching tips to make things run really smoothly.  The first day that I used one of these writing prompts, a few of my students decided to rewrite the initial prompt.  I should have modeled for them on the Visualizer how to complete the prompt.  I learned my lesson, however, and I did that every day after the first time.  After the first writing prompt, I pulled some samples to show to the students.  I sort of used them as anchor charts to help the students to know what a high score would look like and what I expected from them.  My students caught on really quickly.  They started critiquing each other's work.  I heard comments such as "Oh, if you want a good grade on that you have to use more color," and "Maybe you could label your picture; Mrs. Dudley might like that."

Finally, here are a few Animal Habitat Books that you might want to take a look at.

Please let me know what you think, or if you have any questions.

Dr. Seuss is On the Loose!

Hi friends!  I hope this isn't too late for Dr. Seuss' birthday.  This post will contain places to find games, links to people reading books, freebies, and some ideas that worked in my kindergarten class.

Let's start with games, because our kids just love them and so do we!  I found some really great games on the PBS Kids web site.  The games are fabulous for pre-k or kindergarten in my opinion, because the characters are giving the students directions and they're really easy to follow.  I just found this site today!  I'm very excited to try them out tomorrow.  Some of the games cover skills like mapping, visual-spatial, size sequencing, position, shape recognition, and rhyming of course.  Seussville is also cool.  The games on that site are dealing more with coordination, but there are also some really nice activities in PDF format that you can print out for your class.  For first grade there are some rhyming and alphabetical order pages in the Cat in the Hat booklet.  For pre-k and kindergarten there are some mazes and coloring papers.  I'm going to try the rhyming sheet with my middle and top kids; I don't think my low kids would be able to do it.

There's a Wocket in my Pocket is a really cool Dr. Seuss book that I never read before.  I'm really not sure why, because I think it'll make an excellent writing prompt.  I'm just going to give the children the sentence frame "There's a _____ in my _____." and have them complete it using their imagination (for example, "There's a melevision in my television.") and then have the children draw a picture of that.  I'll then put them together to make a class book.  Here is a link to a video of a nice reading of the book:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlmyfyjc7hM.  Did you know that this is the shortest Dr. Seuss book?

We also read Green Eggs and Ham, and I made a comprehension graphic organizer for the kids to distinguish what was in the story and what wasn't in the story.

Graphic Organizer Green Eggs and Ham by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley

The students really enjoyed the reading of Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You?  They just got so into it and how to make the sounds!  I think this is an excellent book for ESOL children.  I want to add sound effects to the experience - I'll probably make that CD over the weekend.

I made this guided reading book to help the kids remember what books we've read this week.

Dr Seuss Book by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley

We also watched the video of Horton Hatches The Egg and had a great discussion about responsibility.  The children were really upset at Mayzie, but in the discussion she still thought it was her egg.  It was very interesting!

Here is a fact sheet about Dr. Seuss that you might find helpful, so that you don't have to spend time looking up all of the information yourself.

Dr Seuss Facts by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley

I would really enjoy hearing about the things you do for Dr. Seuss' birthday!

Continuing Cupcakes

Wow!  My kids really got into the book If You Give a Cat a Cupcake.  We went around and made up our own story, and my little darlings were just coming up with so many creative ideas - I'm so proud of them!  I can't believe that this is the same group of kids from the beginning of the year who couldn't speak a whole sentence of English.  Here is another freebie that I used to go with the book.  I like making and using these papers because they help me find out if my kids truly are remembering details from the story.

Graphic Organizer Cat Cupcake by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley

Also, I've been concentrating so much on teaching reading, listening and speaking that I haven't been doing as much with creative writing as I should.  I mean, we did make Valentine's Cards for our friends and family, and that gave them an opportunity to write sentences, but I want to move away from the children copying sentences and get more into completing sentence starters.  So, today I made this sentence starter for the book that they really loved last week.

If You Give a Cat a Cupcake Writing Prompt by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley

I'd love to hear about writing ideas that all of you have.  Please, if you can, leave me a note below!

Cupcake Freebies and More

Book Cover of "If You Give a Cat a Cupcake"

I don't know about you, but I think books by Laura Numeroff really work for teaching cause and effect.  I found some great ideas for the book If You Give a Cat a Cupcake on the Mouse Cookie Books web site.  There's a really nice activity kit that includes a dot-to-dot paper, and matching pictures to words, fun games for the kids to play, and more.  I've been watching "Cupcake Wars" on TV lately, and it's really affected my choices of things to make for my class.  When I realized this, I thought "Why not blog about it?"

So, I'm going to start off tomorrow by giving my children this warm-up where they have to color each cupcake based on the color word:

Coloring Cupcakes by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley

During morning message, I will ask the students to do a turn-and-talk and describe their favorite cupcake: what it looks like, smells like, and tastes like.  I will also sing "Do You Know the Cupcake Man?", sung to the tune of "Do You Know the Muffin Man?".  ;-)  And instead of saying "Mulberry Street" at the end, you can say the street that your school is on.

I'm going to use this guided reading book when I pull the kids, to teach more sight words.  I wish that I could have them decorate the cupcake like I've done in years past, but we're not allowed to use food in the classroom this year.  :-(  I will have them also make-and-break the word "will" with magnet letters (that's our new sight word this week) on magnetic white boards.

My Cupcake Face Book by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley

When they work at their tables, I'm going to have them do this follow-up sight word coloring paper:

Sight Word Coloring Cupcakes by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley

If you like this sight word paper, I sell a package of these on TPT that you might want to check out.

In math, we're doing addition right now.  To really grab my students' attention I'm going to use plastic cupcakes that I bought in a bakery set to model what I want them to do, and then I will give them this cupcake addition paper to check for understanding:

Addition With Cupcakes by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley

Lastly, I'm going to put a cupcake tin with some Play Doh, along with some plastic candles, in math center so that they can practice counting by ones and skip counting by twos.  So if they're skip counting by twos, they would put two candles in each cupcake.

I hope you enjoy these cupcake freebies, let me know what you think.  I love hearing from all of you!

Magic in Your Classroom

The last two weeks, I have really been stressed!  We've been doing a lot of testing, and I feel like I've had to let go of some of the magic that makes me love my job.  Well, enough is enough!  We're done with testing.  I want to bring my classroom back to that fun place where children are growing, creating and loving school.

For Christmas, a friend got me this magic touch-and-feel hat from EAI Education.  He also made me cute little bunnies with the children's names (including Braille).  I'm using this as my "equity hat", so I can pull kids out of the hat to answer questions, do jobs, or anything else I can think of.

Magic Hat with Rabbits

Here are two different levels of guided reading books specifically made to go along with this hat, but you could also just use them as standalone guided reading books.  I left them as PowerPoint files, so feel free to replace my students' names with the names of children in your class.

Magic Hat Book - Easy by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley

Magic Hat Book - Advanced by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley

If you're looking for more books about dragons, unicorns, princesses, etc., I have one advanced set on TPT and one emerging set on TN.

Finally, I heard a really nice cheer a few days ago.  It goes like this:  "Hocus Pocus, everybody focus!"  Doesn't that go great with the whole magic theme?

I'd love to hear your ideas about magical songs, books, or adventures that you do with your kids.