Distance Learning for Kindergarten: What We're Doing

Hi everyone!


Hope your distance learning is going well!
Many of you have been asking if I could share what I am doing for distance learning so I'm finally sitting down to write a blog post about it!

GENERAL INFO

At our school, our divisions were asked to works as a team and provide the same materials for each grade.  So at my school, we have 8 educators collaborating each week.

We have set up a Google Site (not sharing the link to this, sorry!) with..

HOME - Which has a welcome note to our families and a link to our school technology website (recommending apps and websites by grade).

WEEKLY ACTIVITIES - Where we upload our weekly placemats every Sunday.

READING - Tips on reading with kids at home, including a reading strategies chart and a "Practicing Comprehension Questions at Home" handout.


Click here or on the image below to download this comprehension hand out for free!


Reading strategy poster can be found in my "Kindergarten Reading Strategies: Lessons + Posters for Emergent Readers" pack here.

MATH - A break down of each strand in parent friendly language and suggestions of activities they could do to practice these at home.

WRITING - A short summary on Kindergarten writing encouraging inventive spelling.

SIGHT WORDS - Some suggestions for practicing sight words and the Dolch pre-primer and primer sight word lists.




MUSIC - A link to our music teacher's website
LIBRARY - A link to our librarian's website.
GYM - A link to our gym teacher's website.

The only thing we change each week is we upload the new placemat and corresponding (optional) printables to the "WEEKLY ACTIVITIES" page.  On Sunday nights we send out an email to the parents letting them know that the placemats are up.

The suggestion is that students and parents try as many activities as they want and send at least one picture to us by email.  One of the educators will then respond to the email with some descriptive feedback.

I wasn't sure if this was going to be enough, but our parents have been giving us amazing feedback and have been very grateful for the ease of this format!

WEEKLY COLLABORATION

To make choosing activities together each week as painless as possible, I made a Google Doc and shared it with the rest of the team.  The Google Doc has a table for each section (e.g. Alphabet, Sight Words, Shared Reading etc.) and we go in and add ideas as we see them/think of them.

Then on Thursday nights we have been meeting on Google Meet and we choose activities for that week.  We all look at the google doc before the meeting and have a few ideas in mind for each section so that the process goes as fast as possible!

After our Google Meet, I finalize the placemats and then upload them to our Google Site by Sunday afternoon so it is ready for everyone by Sunday night!

PLACEMAT FOR WEEK 1:

PLACEMAT FOR WEEK 2:


You can download a copy of our placemats and the corresponding printables for April 14-17 by clicking here or on the image below:


PLACEMAT FOR WEEK 3:

PLACEMAT FOR WEEK 4:



You can download a copy of our placemats and the corresponding printables for April 27-May 1 by clicking here or on the image below:


PLACEMAT FOR WEEK 5:





You can download a copy of our placemats and the corresponding printables for May 4-8 by clicking here or on the image below:


*The "Design a Medical Mask" worksheet was inspired by @jarrett_lerner's printable and is being shared with permission from him!

PLACEMAT FOR WEEK 6:



You can download a copy of our placemats and the corresponding printables for May 11-15 by clicking here or on the image below:


PLACEMAT FOR WEEK 7:



I'll be adding more weeks when I am able to! Follow me on Instagram or check this post periodically if you are interested in seeing what we are doing!

Also I had many requests to add an editable template of our placemats so you can download that by clicking here or on the image below (you will need PowerPoint to open the file).


Hope that was helpful!

- Yukari

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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS 

(Added April 16, 2021):


1. Do you sell the poems in a package? I need more!

I don't a set exactly like the ones that are in these placemats, but I do have sight word poems in my store that are similar! You can find them here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Fill-in-the-Blank-Sight-Word-Poems-for-Kindergarten-5914838


2. So these placemats are for asynchronous time. What do you do for synchronous time?

So the only time I was online (March 2020-June 2020) we didn't have the same requirements as now and we only did one Google Meet a week. I have been on a leave since, but have been creating Google Slides for teachers based on requests from current virtual teachers.

The Google Slides I get the most feedback on as being useful for synchronous time are my math slides! There are lesson slides, practice slides and centre slides included so you can do some during your synchronous math block and then assign some for asynchronous work too!

Here is a link to all of my math Google Slides if you are interested in taking a look: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/A-Pinch-Of-Kinder-Yukari-Naka/Category/DIGITAL-Math-485608

I've gotten the most positive feedback on these non-standard measurement slides:


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My Favourite Math Videos for Kindergarten

Hi everyone! I had really great feedback when I posted "My Favourite Literacy Videos for Kindergarten" in March so here is the follow up blog post, My Favourite Math Videos for Kindergarten!

I introduce each song at the beginning of a corresponding math lesson and then it goes into our "Math Songs" folder.  After we have 2 songs in the folder, at the beginning of our math carpet time the special helper gets to choose a song for the class to listen to as part of our math warm-up!

Here are the songs, sorted by category and in the order we introduce them!

NUMBERS

1. NUMBER SONG 1 TO 20


These "Singing Walrus" songs are always a hit.  The animation is so cute and the kids love that this one starts slow and challenges them to count faster at the end.  However, you do need to train them to actually try to follow along and not just shout out whatever they want as they can get reaaaally silly with this one but it's a fun one that the kids love!



This one is a nice calm one (which I love) but the kids also love it too!  I think they like it because it goes up to super big numbers like 1 trillion.

3. WRITING NUMBERS


This is a good one for learning number formation!

2D SHAPES

1. THE SHAPE SONG BY ABC MOUSE


This is a fun one that the kids love! They love the part where the circle kisses the heart😂 This is a good one for shape identification and connecting shapes to real life objects!

2. SHAPES BY PANCAKE MANOR


This is another fun one! I love that this one is a bit more interactive. The kids love the part where they draw the shapes in the air!

3. THE SHAPES SONG


This is a nice calm song and it's perfect for when you introduce the concept of sides on a shape!

4. SHAPES ARE ALL AROUND


This is another good one for shape identification and connecting shapes to real life objects!

5. THE HEXAGON SONG


The kids love this one and it's perfect because hexagon is a hard one to learn!

SORTING


This is a really short video but it's a good one for sorting because it talks about putting items into groups and it shows sorting the same set of objects three ways!

PATTERNING



Scratch Garden songs are popular with the kids and the kids love that there is a guessing component for this song! I love this one because it's not just colour patterns.  It has letter and number patterns too!

2. BUNNY GOES HOP


This is suppose to be an Easter song but they kids love it year round.  This one also has a interactive guessing component to it which the kids love!

3D FIGURES



I've used this song for teaching 3D figures for as long as I can remember! It's a good one for reinforcing the names of the 3D figures and connecting them to real life objects!

2. 3D SHAPES SONG


I think I discovered this one in my second year of teaching.. and actually I have a little story to go with it.  One year I had a really really tough class and the one thing they were obsessed with was this song.  Christmas time rolled around and we tried a few different songs but we were having a hard time finding something that they liked (and that didn't escalate their behaviours during practices).  Well my ECE and I decided that since they love this song so much, we'll just adapt it a little and make it our Christmas song! We just changed the "It looks like a ______" part to ornament for all of them, made ornaments and a tree and for each part one student hung a 3D shape figure shaped ornament on the tree😂No other class has been obsessed as that class but every year it's still a hit!

3. 3D SHAPES SONG BY JACK HARTMANN


This one is another good one for 3D figure names and connecting them to real life objects! I like this one because it uses photographs of the objects!

SKIP COUNTING

1. THE COUNTING BY TENS SONG


The skip counting songs are all the same (except for the numbers of course) but the kids always like the animation in these videos!

2. THE COUNTING BY FIVES SONG


3. THE COUNTING BY TWOS SONG

ADDITION

1. WHEN YOU ADD WITH A PIRATE


This one is a favourite every year! Perfect for introducing addition and story problems!

2. ADD 'EM UP!


Another good for for introducing addition! This one just works on +1 facts.

SUBTRACTION

1. WHEN YOU SUBTRACT WITH A PIRATE


This is similar to the pirate addition video above and always a hit with the kids too!

CANADIAN COINS

1. CANADA IN MY POCKET


This one is an oldie but a goodie (I learned Canadian Coins listening to this song when I was in elementary school!) It's a good one to connect the symbols to the coins.

2. CANADIAN COIN SONG


This one is a good song for identifying coins and their values! It even has adding coin values at the end to challenge your high achievers!

Those are my favourites! Feel free to leave your favourite in the comments so others (and myself) can check them out!

Hope this was helpful!

- Yukari
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