New Year, New Ideas, New Freebie

I still can't believe how quickly the time has gone! We are half way through the school year....can you believe it?!? I always feel so old when I talk about how time flies, but it is true!  Time seems to slip away quicker and quicker each year. 

I don't usually make New Year's Resolutions but this year I did.  I have decided to try and spend more quality time with my family.  I spend lots of "time" with them, but over the holidays I realized that a lot of it isn't "quality".  The kids are in the room and I'm cleaning or making dinner, or reading emails on the IPad, but I'm not really "there" with them.  So this year I am going to make a conscious effort to put down the broom (our world will not fall apart if the floor doesn't get swept for a day!) and just be there and enjoy and play with my two beautiful children.  Since making the resolution, we have been on so many more walks and we have had such fun just playing on the floor together.  It has been wonderful!

So I am making that same resolution in the classroom.  We do a lot of work, but I'm going to make sure that all of the work that we do is "quality" work so that we have more time to play.  Play is so important and I think sometimes that is forgotten....not just structured play, but good old-fashioned run in fields, build fairy houses, and get dirty kind of outdoor play....you know....like we used to do when we were kids!

Yesterday we read the book  "Squirrel's New Year's Resolution" by Pat Miller.

If you don't know it, it is a great book for New Year's Resolutions.  I shared my resolution with them and then they created the most wonderful, thoughtful and insightful resolutions themselves...I wasn't sure what I was going to get, but almost every child had a different thing that they wanted to work on...and they were pretty dead on with areas that they struggle with.  I had everything from "I want to read more books" to "I will learn how to swim without a floatie" to "I am going to be nicer to my mom" to "I will put my toys in my toy box more" to "I won't argue with my cousin as much".  I love Kindies...they are so cute, yet so self aware. We partner talked about their resolutions and I think that really helped them figure out what they needed to work on this year.  When they are all done, we shared them in a "Talking Train".  I love love love talking trains!  You put kids in two rows, side by side (so two kids are sitting shoulder to shoulder with the next two behind the first two and so on).  The kids love getting on the talking train!  I have a little toy whistle that I blow and call out "All Aboard!"  That's the cue for partner A to talk and share their writing.  B listens.  I give them a warning when it is almost time to switch to partner B's turn: "train is coming into the station!" so that A can finish up.  Then it is B's turn to comment on A's writing and then share their work.  Did I say that the kids LOVE this?!? It also takes a lot less time than having the whole class share out one at a time!

Here is a copy of the New Year's Resolution page if you would like it.   The picture will take you to my store to download :-)

I have also just made 7 new differentiated math centers and activities for learning the teen numbers.  More on how that goes in my next post...this one is so long already!!  I'm really excited to get using it in the classroom though!

Have you made any New Year's Resolutions this year?  I would love to hear them!
Take care,
Terra

Home Reading Program and my first Freebie!

I don't know how some people manage to update their blogs so often. I am in awe of them!  I think I'm one of those people who need to have 29 hours in a day and 9 days in a week.  Of course I have officially decided that one of those 9 days needs to be a spa day....every week!  One can dream......

So, in our school, there is no set home reading program for Kindergarten.  We send home a VERY informal sheet that parents can fill out if they read any books to their children, but we are finding only about half of the children in each class are actually bringing the sheets back.  My collegue and I are finding it to be such a huge leap for them once they get into Grade 1 and are expected to be reading books independently every night. 

We both thought hard about this because we don't want parents to get the idea that their child must be reading books independently at this point (most of the kiddies don't even know all of their letters yet!) but we feel like we need something more.  So starting in January we are going to send home some emergent readers that we will already have practiced in class.  I am going to invite all of the parents in for an information session and help them learn how to effectively read with their child.  We are going to talk about things like doing letter hunts in books, counting how many of one particular word they can find in the book, "framing" a word with their fingers, etc....all great concepts of print strategies.  I think it will be a good idea to teach the parents all of the reading strategies we use in the classroom so that the don't just say "Sound it out!" when the child comes to a word they don't know.

Each time they read a story, the child will have to talk with parents about the book and decide which of the characters is their favourite.  I'm hoping that this will encourage some rich conversation about the book.  The parent will then record the date, book title and the favourite character.  When the reading log is returned, the children will be given a home reading certificate.
Here's hoping it works and that parents buy into it!

Here is the home reading sheet that they will be asked to fill in each month. You can grab it for FREE by clicking on the picture.  It will take you to my store.

Happy Reading!

Terra