HeidiSongs Teaching Resource

This week we have been wrapping up some loose ends.  We tested on subtraction on Thursday, and will be starting problem solving on Friday and next week.  We also have been finishing up our unit on insects, and starting to learn about chicks and other animals that hatch from eggs.  Plus, we are getting ready for Mother’s Day, so we have been wrapping our presents and writing cards.  So this hopefully will give you some ideas for Mother’s Day if you are trying to figure out what to do with your own class!  One thing I would like to point out is that there were GOBS of great ideas offered up on my HeidiSongs Facebook page a week or so ago when I asked people to post their favorite ideas for Mother’s Day projects.  So if you don’t find anything you can use in this blog entry, maybe there will be an idea you can use there.  In any case, good luck! 1.  Mother’s Day Guided Drawing Greeting Card If you have been following my blog for very long at all, you probably have figured

What came first:  the chicken or the egg?  Most importantly, who really cares?  In Kindergarten, I can tell you that we care a lot more about eggs than chickens these days, that’s for sure!  This week, we have done gobs of activities with eggs, and I am hoping that it will not be too late for you to make use of some of them.  Actually, I think that we teachers stress out a lot more about giving children holiday themed activities after a holiday has passed much more than the children do!  I have seen them gladly accept a forgotten holiday worksheet or game many times as I squirm in discomfort, knowing it is a bit overdue.  In any case, I hope you enjoy these activities! 1.  What’s Inside?  Book I have a black and white computer print out of a very old book from Wiggle Works by Scholastic that is called What’s Inside?  by Mary Jane Martin.    I have saved it all these years because it is a nice, easy to read book, and I had enough copies of it for a reading group.  The bas

I must admit that I really enjoy the spring and Easter themed projects, and I have been looking forward to blogging about them for a while!  I guess I should have allowed more time, because it seems that Easter has hopped up on me a bit sooner than I thought!  I would have liked to have given you some of these ideas further in advance of Easter than I am doing now.  On the other hand, if I do them any earlier with my own class, then it turns out to be a bit awkward on the timing.  So I guess we will have to just live with the situation as it is. I hope that you enjoy these fun ideas as much as we did! 1.  Bunny Book and Bunny Guided Drawing Definitely, the best thing that we did all week was make a Bunny Book!  My students loved this so much that they simply couldn’t wait to read their books to me and to take them home and read them to their parents!  I came up with the idea for this activity when by posting a question about bookmaking on my HeidiSongs Facebook page.  I

Getting kids started writing STORIES in Kindergarten is not impossible!  In fact, I have done this MANY times with my students, and I can tell you that we certainly had a LOT of fun with it!  Once they get going, there is no stopping them!  Read on to find to how to turn your little ones into authors. 1.  Getting Kids Started Writing Stories At my school, it was decided that Kindergartners would be expected to write stories with more than one character, a setting, and beginning, middle, and an end.    (Insert heavy sigh here!)   I decided that if we were to accomplish such a feat, I would have to model this process faithfully as much as I possibly could. Helper of the Day Story (with an old version of our Sounds Fun poster !) So I decided that we would try to write a story about our helper of the day, every single day in shared writing.  I would write in front of the class, and let them give me their ideas about how it should be.   So far, the children are using th

Well, spring has finally really arrived, and it was actually 90 degrees here today!  We are so glad that it has finally warmed up, and the kids have been really living it up outside in the bright sunshine.  Our PTA even sold snow cones to the children after school today as a fund raiser, which I thought was pretty smart and great timing. Last weekend I finally got my fish tank all set up and the tadpoles purchased and safely settled into their new home, and the kids are incredibly excited about them, and have been watching them every day for signs of them turning into frogs.  I have some frog and tadpole books set up near their aquarium, so they have really been pouring over those books and looking at the little tadpoles very carefully, and comparing them.  It seems like a very good science activity to me! This week, I am going to share some of the butterfly themed activities we have done over the last month or so.  I hope you enjoy them!  As for me, my Spring Break is st