Next Up - 2 Weeks of Summer Themes - Fathers Rock and At the Beach

Here's a great book we read during Father's Day Week!   I wanted to share some of the activities that we've been doing in Week 2 and Week 3 during Summer School!  

Week 2 - Father's Day Theme

In addition to reading some great stories about fathers and the special guys in our lives, we also did some writing about our favorite men!  I had the kiddies do a nonsense and real word sorting game, a review of the vowel sounds and a sweet Father's Day card and craft!

Father's Day Craftivity

Week 3 - At The Beach Theme
We read this book and worked on vocabulary, main idea and details, setting, characters and plot.

We did Beach Umbrella Writing and Flip Flop Writing too!  Here are a few pictures of our great writing!

I found this clip art design at Black Dog's Summer Fun Coloring Book website. 

It was perfect for this writing activity!

The paper design is from Deanna Jump and Deedee Wills'

Writing Through the Year - Unit 3

"How To Writing"

 This was the template that I used for my model. We colored the umbrella and cut it out to use as our design graphic for our writing activity.  I didn't give the prompt, we decided as a group, how we would start the writing and the kiddies finished with their own ideas.

Here's the same paper template, but the graphic came from

Sweet Clip Art

To practice number writing, we filled in the blank June calendar from the Education Center, Mailbox Superbook, Grade K.  I really love the clip art and the boxes are big enough for Kinder size numbers!

Push Pin Art
Finally, I saw this fun craftivity somewhere but I'm not sure where and it's been a few years.  I couldn't find a link, but here are the pictures that I have to share.  We traced stencils of beach shapes and then used a push pin to poke holes along the lines of the designs.  When we finished we held it up to the window to see the light shining through the design!

Finally we used this game to review rhyming words.

The Sandpit Trucks

We used this game to practice sight words!

The Hiding Snails Game

Wow!  I'm finishing up the plans for this week. Week 4 is going to be the July 4th theme because we'll be off next week!  It should be fun, fun, fun!  

Have a great week!
Kimmie!

Shape Mural Follow Up!

So we've been working on our Shape Mural of the ocean for a couple of weeks in our Math Center.  I left it out so that the kiddies could work on it and then revisit it over a several days.  The results are in and it now looks like there are lots of sea creatures in out little ocean! 

Here's the before!

 

 

Here's the after!

 

I love all the work that they put into making this an ocean full of sea creatures!  The "worms" and "long swimmy fish" are so fun and really creative!  I think they really enjoyed adding lots of interesting shape creatures to the mural!

 

Hope you're having a great week!

Yesterday it was sunny and beautiful and in the 70's and today it has been snowing!

Can you believe it?

 

Enjoy the day!

Kimmie

One of the Most Fun Stores Around!

I just didn't know.  I saw others blogging about it but I wasn't sure.  Then, the new DOLLAR GENERAL opened in my neighborhood!  Now, I'm all about it!  What a great place to find fun, fantastic and affordable classroom stuff!  The games, the materials, the storage containers and all the other things that you can find there makes the trip worth your time! 

Look at all these great bargains that I picked up!

I'm thinking that I'll use this to track the increase in reading stamina this year!  I can also use it to show how many total minutes that we've read over the week or month!  Love it!

 

 Every year, I always buy a new set of ABC cards.  I just like to have a new set that is clean and cute and colorful!  These clothes clips are great for a sorting game or for building finger strength.  We can use them to pick up and sort foam letters or numbers.  The finger lights are very popular right now, so I know my kiddies are going to love them!

 

I was so excited to find those orange ice trays!  The label says that it's a flower, but we all know it's really a Chicka Chicka tree!  LOL!  I'm going to laminate some of the Bingo cards so that they'll last longer and then cut and laminate individual squares for the calling cards.  Those ocean stampers are going to be perfect to use during my Ocean Unit!  They'll be great story starters, begining and ending

letter activities or a middle vowel sound sorting game!  Lots of ideas keep swimming into my head!

These cute little clipboards were too sweet to resist!  I have some old clipboards like these, but they are plain white and I think it's time to update and add these cutie pie ones to my Centers!  I actually purchased 6 clipboards.  I always try to purchase Center materials in sets of 6 because then I'm sure I have enough for every kiddie to have their own item or material to work with at that time!

 

Wow!  What a fun and productive shopping trip today!  I'm getting excited to get back to school in a few weeks!  It will be here before I know it!

Have a great week!  You deserve it!
Kimmie!