Weekly Round-Up: October 13

Hi friends! How's your October going? Truth be told I'm on a little bit of a #strugglebus.  I just cannot get myself up as early as usual in the mornings and feel rushed everyday getting my room ready.  5:00 comes way too quick and I don't feel like I'm getting much done after school. Being sick since last Saturday doesn't help! I'm going to try to rest up this weekend so I'm ready to take on next week!

Even though I'm not feeling the greatest my kids still did a great job learning and growing this week.  Here is what we have been up to!

1. SORTING MATS

We started sorting this week (you can read my sorting post from last year by clicking here).  I did some whole group lessons and invited students to sort at a variety of centres.

At this centre, I provided a variety of fall loose parts, wooden numbers and ten-frames with open-ended sorting mats where they can choose the sorting rule.

We also set out this sorting mat with counting bears after our sorting by colour lesson.

Both of these mats (and many more) are in my sorting unit on TpT.  You can find that unit by clicking here or on the image below:

2. SORTING GEL BAGS

I originally saw these on Facebook and thought it would be the perfect way to introduce sensory bags and also incorporate our math focus, sorting!  To make these I grabbed a large ziplock baggie, drew 3 circles on the bag with a Sharpie (I used the top of a cup for the circles), poured some shape beads into the bag and then squeezed some hand sanitizer in it.  You can use clear hair gel too, but I found a big bottle of hand sanitizer for $3 at Dollarama so I went with that!

Students were invited to choose a sorting rule and then squish the beads into the circles to match their chosen sorting rule.  Here one of my boys is showing me how he sorted the beads by colour.

3. LONG WEEKEND WRITING

So this is something I literally whipped up 10 minutes to the bell on Tuesday morning.  I figured the kids would want to share about their long weekend so I wrote the prompt "Draw and write about your long weekend!" and copied a bunch of these papers.  Then I left them out on a table and told the kids that if they drew and write about it, they could share what they did with the class during our morning meeting.  I'm not sure if it's the sharing bit that motivated them so much, but the kids were all about it! We got some great detailed pictures and some great independent writing as well!

I don't have any student examples since I let them take it home after they shared their piece, but here an SK girl working hard on adding details to her picture!

If you would like to try this after the next long weekend, you can download the printable version by clicking here or on the link below:

4. BEGINNING SOUND PLAY DOUGH

My kiddos love play dough this year so I thought I'd put a little twist on it and add the initial sound of each cookie cutter to the tray.  Then I invited the students to make the shape, say the word and find the first letter of the word.

This is the invitation I put along with the play dough tray.

The fall themed cookie cutters are from Dollar Tree.

The alphabet cookie cutters are from an independent dollar store.

The chalkboard is from Michaels.

The chalk marker I use is the Bistro brand one from Michaels.

5. FALL LOOSE PARTS & LETTER TRAY

I also set out the loose parts (seen with the sorting mats for math above) during literacy centres and encouraged them to make letters.  One of my students wanted to spell the whole word when he was working at the play dough centre (that was mentioned above) so I quickly drew the cutters and wrote the word beside them on the back of the board.  I put this centre on the other side of the play dough centre so that if students were ready to make words, they could try to make some of the fall words on the chalkboard.

6. THE FRIDGE

I have such a sweet class this year.  They are always making me pictures.  I had started to tape some of it up on the cabinets behind my "desk" but we officially named it "The Fridge" this week.  We talked about how when mom and/or dad are proud of something you have done, they will often put it on the fridge and that it will work in a similar way here.

Students are encouraged to bring me their best work, work they are proud of, to display on "The Fridge".  It goes up on the wall as long as they are proud of it and they can tell me what they drew/wrote.  

It's getting quite full already so I'm thinking about making a binder that says "Past work from The Fridge" and filing all the pictures in there once in a while.  I'll also need to make a hand in basket as my desk was getting quite messy with all of their submissions thrown about!

That's it from me this week! I hope there were some ideas you could use in your classroom.  Have a great weekend!

- Yukari