Solid Shapes

Book Cover of "Captain Invincible and the Space Shapes"

Every year, I struggle with my solid shape unit.  I can't find books or songs, and I also feel like manipulatives and fun games are virtually nonexistent.  I just purchased the book Captain Invincible and the Space Shapes by Stuart J. Murphy from Amazon.com.  It is a totally awesome book and perfect for any unit on solid shapes!  The story is about a boy who is a space captain along with his dog, Comet.  I told my kids that I had a special treat for them, and when I presented it they were thrilled!  They'd been asking me for space books for so long, and it felt fantastic to find the perfect book for them.  The book is really in the style of a comic book, but very appropriate for kindergarten.  Captain Invincible has to overcome many dangers and obstacles, and he uses solid shapes to get rid of the threats of the poison gas and galactic beast.  Seriously, my kids were spellbound!  They've asked me to read it every single day this week in math.  It's also great for beginning/middle/end and comprehension questions.  By the end of the book, you find out that Captain Invincible is a little boy in his bedroom, using his imagination.  His whole family comes in, in their pajamas, and they just want to get a little sleep.  In writing, we are currently working on list-and-label books.  This story really inspired my children to start writing their own books with little word bubbles.

After a lot of searching, I found a song called "Solid Shapes" by Miss Jenny.  There's also a wonderful YouTube video by Harry Kindergarten called 3D Shapes I Know.  My kids walk around the centers singing that song - it's SO cute!  Since I've never been able to find any good games, I made my own Solid Shape Bingo.  Again, I couldn't find any worksheets that I liked, so I made my own solid webs.  Here's a sample freebie that you can use:

Solid Web Worksheet Cube by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley

If you want a whole set of products like this one, ready to use, take a look at my Solid Shape Unit on TPT.

I would really enjoy hearing about what all of you do for solid shapes, and I'd be very grateful for any advice or pointers that you'd like to leave in a comment.

Super Shapes with Freebie

I can't believe it's been weeks since my last blog post!  The beginning of school this year was a little hectic.  You see, our school was switching over from carpet flooring to tiles, and the classrooms were not quite ready the week that we went back.  I have to say I actually had chest pains worrying about getting my classroom done in time for our kindergarten orientation.  Seriously!  Am I obsessive-compulsive or what?

So anyway, Monday is going to be my 14th day of school, and I wanted to share with you all some things that really worked thus far.  We started off the year with positions and shapes.  The books in the carousel above are some of my favorite shape books ever.  I have previously blogged about two of the books, Mouse Shapes and Grandfather Tang's Story. 

Four songs that worked really well for me this year, where the students can practice drawing the shapes in the air while they're learning about them, are:

"Waltz of the Triangles" by Newbridge Education

"I'm a Circle" by Jack Hartmann

"I'm a Square" by Jack Hartmann

"Circles" by Miss Jenny

I really listened to my students this year talking about what they like.  Robots seemed to be something that they were interested in.  Also, my class is very boy-heavy.  So, taking that into consideration, I cut out shapes and had the students create their own shape robots.  You would not believe the creativity!  The children were saying their robots were space aliens, vampire robots (I have no idea!), Barbie robots, and princess robots.  I really thought this was a great project to do at the beginning of the year, because it really got my ESOL students talking to each other about their shapes, what they were creating, etc.  I was also able to find out who could say the names of the shapes that their robots were made out of.  Here are two examples of the robots that they made:

I just gave each student a Ziploc bag of a variety of shapes.  Another teacher in my school just put the shapes on the table without giving each child a bag.  The one tip that I have for you is to keep the activity to the four basic shapes (circle, square, rectangle, triangle) because you can still make a great person-like creature with them.  The Common Core State Standard for this project was:

CCSS.Math.Content.K.G.B.6:  Compose simple shapes to form larger shapes. For example, “Can you join these two triangles with full sides touching to make a rectangle?”

Finally, here is a freebie that you can use along with this robot project, to make a connection to reading:

Robot Action Book by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley

I hope you like this freebie and can use it with your kiddos.  I'd love to know what you're doing for shape projects!

Teaching Smart

Tammy over at Live, Love, Laugh is hosting a great "Teaching Smart" linky party that you can find here:

Teaching Smart Linky Party

One of the best things that I have learned, for any grade level, is that preparation is critical to having a happy, organized, fun-loving classroom.  So, with that said, I have been working diligently on making centers that will be interesting and effective for my kinders.  The center ideas and activities that I'm going to show you are for the beginning of the kindergarten school year.

Color Pizza

The first idea is a color-matching word game that can be placed in a center or in a station.  Students match colored pieces of "pizza" to the corresponding color word on the circular "pie".  I picked up some unused pizza boxes that I thought would be a great way to store these pieces.

Shape Placemat

The second game is a shape-matching activity where children place the correct parts of a table setting on a laminated place mat.  This game really helps develop visual matching and shape identification and can be used for cutting and gluing if you don't wish to laminate the pieces.  Here is the download:
Shape Placemat Long Free

Fantasy Folder

Finally, I have found that my students at the beginning of kindergarten do not wish to go to writing center as much as math, ABC, or science centers.  Therefore I really accommodate their interests by making mini word walls that they can use to label their own drawings.  I truly believe that the beginning of kindergarten should be all about instilling in the children a real love for reading and writing.  Later months can be used more for expanding labels into phrases and full sentence writing.  I know philosophies about this may vary, but I also know that kids who aren't excited about reading and writing can only be taught so much.

I just put up a collection of 10 mini word walls on sale at Teacher's Notebook for a really great price.  I also have some free products that you may be interested in on TN as well.

Sharon's Shop

Let me know what you think!  :-)

Simple and Sweet Birthday Ideas

"The Secret Birthday Message" by Eric Carle

Yesterday was my birthday and I started thinking about all the things I've done in past years to teach pre-k and kindergarten students about when their birthdays are and how people in America and various other cultures celebrate their birthdays.  This is the first of a series of posts that I will be writing about birthdays.

The Secret Birthday Message by Eric Carle is really special because it has that treasure-hunt-type feel to it.  Students have to look at shape clues to predict where the boy will go in the story to find his birthday surprise.  This book covers concepts such as shape identification, direction words and sequencing, and you could extend it to talk about map skills.  I really enjoy having my children guess what each shape represents in the real world.  Since we're always being told to include higher-level thinking for our pre-k and kindergarten kids, I think this is an excellent way to do it.

Throughout the year in pre-k I use the song "Happy Birthday Letters" by Dr. Jean.  I use the following book with the song, and my kids really focus on every single page.

Happy Birthday Letters

Another thing I do to work on one-to-one correspondence and number identification is to put straight candles and numeral candles in Play Doh Center so that children can put them in sculpted cakes.  It's easy, fun, and the students are learning how to match quantities with numerals.

In kindergarten, I use these birthday cakes with candles to teach months of the year, spelling, fine motor skills, and name writing.  Students write their names somewhere on the cake, cut out the appropriate number of candles, and glue them onto the cake.  You can use chalk, markers, crayons, paint, etc. to decorate these cakes.  I've also used sequins, foam shapes, and little paper flowers.  I always make a pre-made list to tell me whose birthdays are in which month.

Birthday Cakes and Candles 2

After we finish the cakes, there's a great song by Jack Hartmann called "Birthdays" where the children stand up and sit down when they hear their birthday month.  I've noticed that this song really helps children with focusing problems, because they have to listen to stand up for their birthday month.

For many years, I celebrated my birthday with the children and taught them traditions from around the world.  Here's one of my favorites:

Canada:  At birthday parties they serve homemade birthday cakes decorated with colored sugar sprinkles. Between the layers of the cake a wrapped coin might be found. Whomever finds it is the first to get a turn at all the party games. At the parties children receive colorful party favors called crackers. These are tubes wrapped in crepe paper. They pop when you pull a paper strip. Inside there is a small prize, your fortune or a hat.


I would really love to hear special birthday traditions or celebration ideas from you.  Please leave me a comment!

Toy Car Fun

"Beep Beep, Vroom Vroom" by Stuart Murphy

As the end of the year approaches, my students are a little wound up.  I have found that I really have to pull out all of my best tricks at the end of the year to keep their attention and their focus, and still keep teaching concepts.  Hold onto your seat belts as I race through a few of my best car ideas!

The book Beep Beep, Vroom Vroom by Stuart Murphy will really rev up your kids' engines!  It's all about patterns, but it's also a really cool story that allows your kids to make sound effects as you read it to them.  A little girl plays with her brother's toy cars and has to arrange them in the same pattern so she doesn't get in trouble when he returns.  Everyone in the family makes a different pattern with the toy cars, so it's a great tool to teach multiple kinds of patterns.  It's really perfect for pre-k and k.  I used construction paper cars (solid red, yellow and blue) to match the cars in the book.  The kids came up to the front and held the cars as they told me which car should go next.  I've also heard of teachers cutting out steering wheels of the same colors and have the children actually be the drivers.  If you place toy cars in your math center, your children can also further explore these concepts independently.  Here is a pattern assessment (for legal size paper, 8.5"x14") to check for understanding:
Pattern Car Long

I just went to a Dr. Jean workshop, and she mentioned a web site called Making Learning Fun.  It has the best highway mats that you run the toy car around so that students can actually feel how shapes, numbers and letters are made.  I made the shape set first, and laminated them, to see how my students would respond to this idea.  They absolutely loved it!  They kept saying things like "This is so awesome!  You're the best teacher!"  I figured the boys would enjoy it, but the reaction from the girls was also overwhelmingly positive as well.

Kids playing with shape highways

So that night, I made the highway numbers, adding traffic lights so the students would know where to start and stop for each one.  These are such a treasure for me, because my students tend to make numbers backwards.  Being blind, I wanted something that they could play with independently in centers that would be motivating and that would help them learn the correct way to form numbers.  Here is what I used:
Highway Numbers

I think it's important to introduce the mats in large group or in small group, show the children how to play with the mats, and then place them in the math center.  My students did a really great job in centers for the last two days, using the cars and mats appropriately.

"Vroom Chugga Vroom Vroom" by Anne Miranda and David Murphy

Vroom Chugga Vroom Vroom by Anne Miranda and David Murphy is another great book, which focuses more on numbers.  I have found many books that go up to 10, but not as many that go up to 20, like this one does.  I'm thinking to put stickers with numbers on the cars so the children could line them up before they race them.  I'm still going to only have 4 children in the center at a time, but each child could be in charge of 5 cars.

Here is a Level 2 guided reading book for those children who are working on their color identification skills:
I See The Cars

I would love to hear what all of you do with toy cars!

Finally, Miss Nelson is having an "All-Time Favorite Read-Alouds" Linky Party.  My favorite read-alouds change so often, but Beep Beep, Vroom Vroom is my favorite book for the end of the year because it holds their attention and it really solidifies the concept of patterns.

Mouse Shapes

The book "Mouse Shapes" by Ellen Stoll Walsh

I went to a Math Solutions workshop last year, and they mentioned the book Mouse Shapes.  Of course, I had read Mouse Paint and Mouse Count before, but Mouse Shapes was new to me.  The story is about some mice trying to hide from a cat, and they  hide in a box of - yes, you guessed it - shapes!  The mice make different pictures by holding up the shapes.  So I thought, "Why not teach my children how to do that?"  I cut out large pieces of poster board.  The children would look at the book, look at a giant pile of poster board shapes on the floor, and then arrange themselves and their chosen shapes into the correct design.  I also followed up this activity by cutting out tiny shapes, having them make a design at their table, and asking them how many of each shape they used.

Students holding shapes to make a house and a moon

Students holding shapes to make a fish

Students holding shapes to make a wagon

Here is another really cool shape place mat that I've used before.  I had students match and identify foods and other items by gluing pieces to the mat.  I assessed my students by asking them to point out what shapes they had on their mats.  It's really not that bad if you walk around with a chart while the children are gluing and placing their shapes.

Students gluing shapes onto their place mats.

These two songs  are excellent for teaching shapes:  "We Know Our Shapes" by Mar Harmon and "Spy a Shape" by Dr. Jean.  What I really like about Mar Harmon's song is that she makes a sound effect for each shape.  For example, for a triangle she'll say "Ting!  Ting!  Ting!"  This is so fab because the children can draw it, see it, and hear it.  Dr. Jean's song is also fantastic because the children are singing, drawing, and then finding the shape around the room.

Let me know what you think!