week one ~ rules and consequences

I decided to start off with the Kindergarten unit title/theme Rules and Consequences. Nothing too exciting but something I think is important to take time out and talk about. 

Here are some of the books we read for our read-a-louds...

And here is our poem of the week! You can sing it to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. This is great for memorization and when you have memorization your child can make the connection between spoken and written words. (I actually heard Addie singing it all by herself in the car today! So cute.) Addie also drew a picture of her sharing with her brother. Then we highlighted all of the sight words she knows. We made sure to read it/sing it each day and highlighted a couple more new learned sight words. Pretty simple but such good practice. It's fun to think of all the other words she might have learned or was exposed to in print by repeating this poem. 

Click here to download and print your very own copy!

For one of our hands-on phonics activities Addie rolled the dice! It was a hit! Even little brother had fun chasing around the dice! I found our set of dice here on Amazon. Then I took a large sharpie, cut out some cardstock to fit and put the word families we've been working on in one dice ("-an," "-at," "ack," etc.) Then I filled up the other dice with consonants and digraphs ("t," "th," "s," etc.) Addie rolled the dice and blended the sounds together then I wrote the words down on the easel. Nonsense words are completely okay too, just as long as they're working on blending the sounds together!

Last in my first post about our summer school I talked about a great little download from teacherspayteachers.com. Here it is. I love that at the end of each page she has to show the quantity of the number she's working on. Right now she's doing that by using stickers, but I intend to add stamps, googely eyes, finger prints, whatever else I can think of to keep it fun! Here's the link to purchase your own copy (only $3). 

I spruced it up a little by adding some left over scrapbooking paper and laminating the front and back. Laminating...it's true what they say! "You know you're a teacher if you get a secret thrill from laminating things."

Next week is Citizenship followed by American Symbols/Holidays, just in time for the 4th of July!