Weekly Plans - Week 17 (Jan. 8-12) | Mrs. Albanese's Kindergarten Class

Happy new year!!!

I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays! I took the two weeks to relax and spend time with family, limiting my time on social media and this blog to really clear my head for a short time. It was wonderful!

I'm back and wanted to share some things we will be doing to ease our way into, and celebrate, 2024!

There are so many wonderful stories to read to students about the new year! One of my favourites is Squirrel's New Year's Resolution by Pat Miller. After reading this story, we discuss what a resolution is and brainstorm a few of our own.

I modified this activity I did a few years back to add 2024. Students will write and draw a resolution and then use paint to create fireworks on the black construction paper (we simple snipped and bent the bottom of a paper towel roll).

Download the updated version of this activity for FREE HERE.

You can also find a bunch of ready-to-print-and-use new year's resources on that blog post!

Here's what we planned at our centres for this week:

How tall can you build a snowman? We painted these cork pieces white years ago to dress them up like snowmen. Students can stack them on the wooden boards (oh so carefully so they don't topple over!).

We learned a bunch of fun and easy number games the last week before the Christmas break.

This game is called "Fivezies" (also called "Tenzies" if you play with 10 dice). Since we wanted to limit the amount of lost dice we only play with 5 per student.

You can read all about the games we introduced by clicking on my last post.

We will be adding blue tinted water to our sensory bin. Inside we also added blue and clear plastic ice cubes. Students can use the tools on the small shelf (measuring cups, colander, shovels, etc.) to explore.

At our Science and Discovery Centre, Mrs. Petrone (DECE) found a bunch of ice experiments to try with the students over the course of the week, including adding salt to ice cubes and then fishing for them using different strings!

A parent graciously donated this large felt snowman for our felt board. Students can add different pieces to build it (found on the basket underneath).

We set out these large hundred grids and square tiles.

Can you design your own pictures?

At our small world play, students can play in this "Frozen" themed winter wonderland.

Mrs. Caruso (DECE) I used to work with a few years back made me these Frozen characters by gluing the pictures to Jenga blocks! Brilliant!

At our light table, students can explore creating snowflakes. The large rectangular glass pieces come in a tub that I bought years ago from Michaels.

Can you create your own winter story?

We are hoping for some snow (it's been such a strange winter so far with little to no snow!) and we will be adding the snow to this large Tuff tray along with these Arctic animals for students to explore.

Fear not because if there is no snow this week we have a back up plan - we will be using artificial snow instead!

In our fine motor small group mini lessons, students will be using these hole punchers to punch different letters out of this alphabet strip.

These hole punchers are my absolute fav! They are from Bostitch and are a little pricey (got them off Amazon). But you only need 2-3 and students can share or you can pair this activity with something else like beading!

Download these alphabet strips for FREE by clicking HERE.

At our Writing Centre, we are continuing with card writing since our students had such a high interest in that before the break. I set out Happy New Year blank cards for them to use.

These are part of the FREE download that I added in my last blog post (including various Christmas and holiday cards) so if you'd like a copy of these, be sure to check out this blog post.

Our Dramatic Play Centre is always one of the most popular centres in the class.

We set it up as a Winter Wonderland, complete with ice skating, a hot chocolate stand, ice fishing, build a snowman and more!

You can download my Winter Wonderland Dramatic Play Centre here.

Our next unit in math is graphing.

Each morning, students will be singing in by moving their photo on this magnetic board and answering the Daily Sign In Question. It's a great way to introduce surveys, with a focus on more/less.

Some of our activities this week that focus on graphing include...

Graphing a collection - this is a super simple way to reinforce how to graph. Start with a 2-column graph and 2 things to compare (we used green and orange buttons). Students add them to the graph and use the words "more", "less", "same" to describe their findings. It's easy to switch the materials or amounts - we prepared buttons, mini erasers and shells to use this week.

I also have a bunch of ready-made graphs students can choose from to survey their peers. They take a clipboard and 2 colours of crayons, walk around the classroom and ask a handful of peers. This week we are using 2-column graphs. Next week we will introduce this same activity using 3-column graphs as well as offer students a chance to create their own survey question.

You can follow along with our graphing activities and lessons (as well as find all of the above) in my Graphing in Kindergarten pack in my TpT store.

At our pocket chart centre this week, I made this rhyming game.

Students match the rhyming pictures (left mitten with right mitten and colour coded to make it a little easier). Scroll down if you'd like to download this game for FREE!