With distance learning or in person learning while wearing masks- teaching phonics has become so much more difficult in Kindergarten. I found that teaching an isolated sound when the children can not really see my mouth is almost impossible. We are trying so hard at our school to adhere to every health and safety protocol, so not wearing an approved mask is off the table. So in addition to the rest of our literacy programming, we are adding in a video segment to our day. It really is the regular phonics teaching I would do face to face with my students, but I am recording it at home so I can play it in my classroom, or if we end up distance learning, I can embed the links into Brightspace or Google classroom. The first two weeks of school we focus almost solely on routines, kindness, and recognizing our names in print. Then we begin our phonics program.
Letter A – Week 1
Introducing the letter A
We start with the letter A for a few reasons. Because it is the first letter of the alphabet, it prevents parents from getting stressed thinking that I somehow missed a bunch of letters. When I send home my calendar I tell them that we start with A and then we move around the alphabet so we can make words quickly so we move from isolated letters and sounds directly into reading and communicating with words. It is very very exciting that in just a few weeks they have words they can build, read and manipulate sounds, even in Junior Kindergarten! Each week I will add a video introducing our next letter and we will begin building our skills together.
Activities for A week
Students get or roll blobs of Red, Yellow and Green paint onto big pieces of construction paper. We often use a really large sheet of paper because they LOVE rolling on the paint, and we can get two apples from a sheet. When they dry we cut out an apple shape. With chalk we draw on an A and they glue dollar store ants onto the apple. One we can hang on our bulletin board, and one to send home to demonstrate their learning. We make applesauce- (Although this year due to Covid-19 we will have to skip this 🙁)We do some data management and an apple taste test. (This too, might not be allowed this year 😢) Even kids who do not usually like fruit are all over this!We learn to self-select our science inquiries. We make patterns by stamping a sliced apple in tempera paint on construction paper.
Letter T- Week 2
Activities for T week
Out Thankfulness Trees were a terrific success. We traced our hands onto watercolour paper and emphasized making the /t/ sound as we traced around our hand with a pencil . We then traced the pencil line with an oil pastel still making the /t/ sound. Then we painted the tree trunk, sky, and grass with watercolours. I interviewed each student over the week and they told me things they were thankful for and we added them to the finger branches. The last part was using the tip of a Q-tip to tap the leaves onto the tree tops with Tempera Paint.
Loose parts play outside- Tiger habitats!
Terry Fox video that is appropriate for Kindergarten and up!
We spent most of our week talking about Terry Fox and how he wasn’t afraid to try. We are working hard at building resilience within our students, and Terry was an excellent example for all of us. We also brought in toonies for Terry, and ran the Terry Fox run in just our cohort on Friday. It was a totally terrific week!
Next week we will be working on the letter S!
Letter S- Week 3
Activities for S week
Sorting is one of the first steps in being able to pattern- here we are sorting by size.Sorting at the light table. Sorting our sea shells.We did a super easy craft this week as we were helping 8 new students join our class after they folded a kindergarten class into mine and added returning students from virtual school. It was also a screening activity to have them identify colours and see who could already make a pattern as we start our patterning unit.
We also studied shadows in our science centre, observed some snails, and built some snake habitats with our loose parts. I would say it was a super week with the letter S. Join us next week as we learn about the letter Ii !
Letter I- Week 4
Activities for I week
We investigated insects this week. Our science centre was a very popular destination.We practiced investigating on these plastic replica insects before we were trusted with the real ones!My literacy set up for the week. We have started sight words as well!Our letter I craft of the week. We made inedible ice-cream! It’s shaving cream foam mixed with white glue (2:1 ratio) with a drop of ink to tint it. We also added pom-poms as sprinkles or a cherry on top. Do this craft early in the week to give it a few days to dry. They looked so puffy and perfect as they went out the door on Friday.Our math centres were also dominated by insects as we worked on number recognition and subitizing. The insects made everything more fun.More subitizing activities.Our outdoor exploration centres included a painting centre where we painted insects. An insect inn was constructed with some of our natural materials outside, and we were so excited when a real beetle came to check it out. He was very camera shy though.
Letter P
Activities for P Week
Our Pastel Pumpkin Patch turned out perfect!First we practiced drawing a pumpkin on a chalkboard. Once we were drawing a pumpkin we were happy with, we used the chalk to sketch it onto Kraft paper.A ratio of 2:1 school glue and black tempera paint was mixed in squeeze bottles for us to trace our chalk pumpkin lines.After it dried overnight, we used soft chalk pastels to fill in the background. We blended with our fingers and it was very messy which the students loved!Then we filled in the pumpkins! Aren’t they pretty?Panda habitats in our small world area.Our light table became a penguin habitat.We made patterns with pressed fallen leaves from our nature walk. I think these are the prettiest nature inspired patterns we have ever done in our class. I love them!More patterns- but this time with wooden shapes from Dollarama!We had a pumpkin investigation centre open all week.The goal here was to pick up the pumpkin pom-poms with the clothespins and then transfer them to the 10-frame, matching them with the correct number. Fine motor and number sense in one activity.We carved a puking pumpkin for letter P after voting for what we should carve our pumpkin to look like. I have to admit I came to school sure that I would be carving a panda pumpkin- but my class is hilarious this year! It actually turned out pretty awesome.
Letter N
Activities for N week
We splatter painted our night skies and made newspaper Ns.We made name necklaces with each person’s name out of these great natural wood beads from Michaels.We investigated nests at our science centre.Making our own nests was a popular activity at our nature table.On our neighbourhood walk we gathered natural materials and tried to make a nest. We discovered it was not as easy as the birds and squirrels make it seem.Our Letter N literacy teaching station.One of our numeracy exploration centres: What can you make with 9 objects from a loose parts basket?
Hope you had a great week. I will be posting about the Letter R next!
Hi! I'm Kelly- a Teacher that LOVES Kindergarten. Join me to learn some experienced teacher hacks as well as new best practices as we learn to navigate in a Covid-19 epidemic. I'd love to have you join my email list so I can send you awesome updates and user friendly freebies!
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