December Week 2 in Kindergarten - Christmas in Mexico
December is here! If you missed my blog post from last week, you can read it HERE. We learned all about Saint Nicholas and Christmas in Germany and we started our Measurement and Data math unit.
Teaching in December is truly magical.
Many of my lessons focus on different Christmas/winter themes so kiddos stay engaged. It can definitely be exhausting, but if you take the children’s excitement and buzz about Christmas and put that towards your lessons, teaching this month is so much fun.
This blog post will help you do just that.
If you’re new here, welcome! I share my lesson plans for free HERE
I go more in depth with my lessons on weekly blog posts so I can share more details, photos and videos that I am using. I truly hope this helps you and your students!
You can visit my December lesson planning homepage HERE and there you will find an overview of what I teach this month along with the links to the other weekly blog posts.
This page contains affiliate links. Read Full Disclosure
December Calendar and Morning Meeting
You’ll absolutely love this digital morning meeting and calendar resource!
I formatted these activities for both Google Slides™ and PowerPoint™.
Students are with the moveable pieces, embedded songs and daily activities.
Display the calendar on your front board and this will save you so much wall space (less clutter too!)
CLICK HERE to learn more or CLICK HERE to purchase the December kit.
Let’s get started!
Morning work has changed my life! If you haven’t used morning work before, you can try a WEEK FOR FREE
In the classroom, I have a million morning jobs to get through myself. I also like to focus my time on individually greeting every single child. This sets the tone for the day, and I know that every student of mine has made eye contact with me, and they feel acknowledged, seen and appreciated. I always tell them that I am so glad they are here today.
So while you’re doing making connections with students and competing your morning tasks like attendance, students are independently working on standards based skills using THIS morning work. Print an entire week for free from every single month to see how the skills progress.
Each month also now is compatible with Google Slides if you’re teaching virtually! This comes in each pack as a free upgrade.
DIGITAL TASK CARDS
Whether you’re in the classroom, homeschool or teaching virtually, another fabulous resource to help kindergarten kiddos be more independent is Boom Cards™.
“I am so excited to try using Boom cards with my class this year. These Boom decks look so engaging. I also like how they help students work on specific skills so I can assign students what they need. Thank you!”
“Worth every penny!”
I generally do not have children move to “play” stations when they complete their morning work because it is just so distracting for other children. But if you’re a 1:1 school or have iPads, it could be an incentive to work through their morning work to move on to their assigned Boom Cards.
They can put on their headphones and get right to work. You can assign them cards with the exact literacy or math skill they need more help with.
Just like the morning work, I target the exact skills we are working on this month. The audio provides scaffolding so students can be truly independent.
This video gives you a peak at one card from each deck to see how they work.
Tip: I often have children repeat the same deck multiple times. You can check the data and see how they are doing!
If you don’t have time to do this in the mornings, you can use Boom Cards whole group, assign them on SeeSaw and Google Classroom, and parents even can put the app on their phone.
One of my favorite things is that students get instant feedback so they know right away if the got the answer correct.
Visit my monthly Boom Card homepage to see all the decks for each month or SAVE BIG with the growing year long bundle!
What are Boom cards? They are digital task cards played on the Boom Learning website! They can be played on tablets, smart phones or computers! CLICK HERE to visit my FAQ
PHONICS
We have put in a lot of hard work mastering last sounds.
This week we take our last sounds post test, and then we will be moving on the middle sounds.
I have gotten a lot of questions about why I skip from first sounds, to last sounds and then come back to middle sounds?
Middle sounds in CVC are actually the hardest for students to be able to isolate and identify.
This is why I teach letter sounds and first sounds, then skip to teaching last sounds and finally come back to the tricky medial sounds.
I started teaching last sounds at the beginning of November - scroll down to the phonics section!
This week I give the post test for last sounds, and then we are going to tackle middle sounds.
If you are pulling students 1:1 to assess, you could actually give the last sounds post test and then quickly give the middle sounds pretest right after.
Since we have been using Elkonin boxes and have been working on stretching out words for quite awhile now, my kids are familiar with the routine.
If you’re new to this, here is a quick overview of what it looks like to use Elkonin boxes with middle sounds.
These are the picture cards that come with the unit.
All middle sounds will be vowels, so there are pictures for middle sounds a, e, i, o, u.
In the phonics middle sounds unit, you’ll see these picture pages. Cut out the elkonin boxes and laminate if you prefer.
Here is how I use the Elkonin Boxes to isolate sounds in CVC words:
For a quick check for understanding, you can have them complete the middle sound matching activities shown below.
This activity doesn’t have them write letters, rather it is just checking to see if they can isolate and match middle sounds.
For more information on how I teach phonics, please visit my phonics homepage HERE
MATH - MEASUREMENT & DATA
I love teaching this math unit to my Kinders. It is is much fun to teach them how to measure objects and we have so many fun things planned. I organize my math units in three ring binders with page protectors.
It is so easy to stay organized and find exactly what I need when I go to make copies.
We are diving into measurable attributes this week.
These are the printables I plan on using this week.
ME AND THE MEASURE OF THINGS
This is the perfect read aloud to build background for students and help them make connections.
The monkeys discuss and show examples of measurable attributes:
Grover helps you find the tallest monster:
Here are some of the activities we then complete this week. You can use them in any order you wish.
I use a variety of approaches and techniques so my students are exposed to the vocabulary and strategies for solving these problems over and over again. It is easy for them to mix up terms such as length, height and width... so we do lots of hands-on activities and reinforcement worksheets.
CLICK HERE to print this adorable Measurement and Data Mini Book.
The unit pretest, building background, some hands-on modeling and the vocabulary posters with mini take most of the first week!
CLICK HERE to read the full measurement and data blog post and try two more freebies!
If you missed last week’s blog post, here is another cute read aloud to teach about measurement .
I love this adorable read aloud about a little inch worm who likes to measure things. It is a great introduction to what can be measured and what cannot be measured.
It is the perfect book to help students make connections and build their background.
You can purchase it HERE or just watch it on YouTube below!
READING
I love guided reading time! I do this in small groups, and this is truly where the magic happens.
You can give 1:1 attention, move quickly or slowly and really “move” kids in small groups.
I would teach in small groups all day if I could. It is so easy to keep them engaged and make connections with each child.
We follow the same routine each week with guided reading using the same three materials: fluency and comprehension passage, mini reader and sentence builder
The theme changes each week and the difficulty increases each week, but the routine stays the same.
Monday: introduce theme, vocabulary/sight words, I read the comprehension passage, we read it together
Tuesday: review words, we read together, they read on their own (whisper/buddy), answer comprehension questions
Wednesday: sentence builder
Thursday: mini book, Review CAP skills - front cover, turning pages, holding a book properly, I read the book to them
Friday: we read the book together, buddy read, answer comprehension questions
This was our theme from last week:
The Santa book is FREE!
This setup works perfectly for the classroom, homeschooling and even distance learning.
I love that my kids are in a routine and it saves me so much energy not having to explain what to do. All of our instructional time is spent on learning.
Each day to start our guided reading, we warm up by reviewing sight word flash cards and then read two sight word fluency pages that we are working on.
If you have five kids in each small group, just make five fluency passage folders. I just slip each passage into a page protector and this makes it so quick and easy to read each day.
I use these three pronged folders and page protectors.
You can do the same thing with your guided reading fluency passages as well.
I outline my guided reading routine HERE on our rock star reader homepage.
I try to use my students’ excitement and buzz to tap into content areas and teach them the standards.
Instead of fighting the Christmas spirit that is going around, I use their energy to keep them engaged with our lessons this month.
So we are going to learn All About Christmas in Mexico, Italy and Germany.
We go to school for three weeks in December. So each week we learn about a different country’s Christmas traditions.
On Monday, I kick off each country we are studying with a slideshow. The beautiful photographs and simple sentences get the kids so engaged and excited. They love to share their connections, questions and inferences,
Then after we build our background knowledge with the slideshow, I read them our story for the week.
The week we study Christmas in Mexico, our book is ‘Twas Nochebuena and it is an adorable story about a family celebrating their Mexican Christmas traditions.
Spanish words are used throughout the story, and your students who speak Spanish love to share and help the class clarify what the words mean.
This adorable mini book that coordinates perfectly with the slideshow, so after we look at and discuss the slideshow and read the story, the children each get their own mini book.
Each page matches a slide from the slideshow, and students love to reread the sentences, color the pictures and buddy read with a partner. Then they can take them home to share with their families.
On Wednesday, we get to dive into a bunch of fun Christmas in Mexico activities.
This video is beautifully made and it is so neat for students to get to see how Christmas is celebrated in Mexico. We get see how families celebrate Las Posadas.
By the end of the week, my students have learned about las posadas, pinatas, Rosca de Reyes and other Mexican Christmas traditions.
It is such a fun week, and students always ask to read the story Twas’ Nochebuena again.
NO PREP ACTIVITIES
I use these activities as my “centers” in the classroom. This year I am using them just as supplemental activities here and there with my daughter for homeschooling.
You can use these activities in any order you wish and they are all standards based. They are so versatile! These are the ones I plan on using this week (show above.)
I ditched all the cute centers that took a ton of ink and lamination, and instead I just “print and teach” with these activities. The kids recognize the format of many of these now and they require very little direction.
They are perfect for “sub tubs” or for fast finishers too.
WRITING
We are finishing narrative writing this week.
We have learned so much in this unit, and I am so proud that most students now understand how to write a complete sentence, sequence events and add details.
Many do still require scaffolding of sentence starters and picture word banks, but they are understanding the process.
You can print this free activity HERE
After finishing narrative writing on Tuesday, I plan on doing this cute Christmas list making activity. It is FREE to print HERE.
We love making lists throughout the year! It becomes an independent writing center year round as my unit includes themes and holidays for the entire year.
We are moving on to Expository “how to” writing!
I start with how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich because this is an easy topic most children can relate to.
I show them the picture cards and they have to put them in order. I say, “Can I eat the sandwich before I even make it?”
I created digital Boom Cards to go with this unit. This helps so much if you’re in the classroom, teaching virtually or homeschooling.
The Boom Cards can be purchased separately, or a bundle is available for the writing unit and the digital cards.
DAILY REVIEW
I created this program last spring when schools went remote for virtual learning. It makes it so easy for parents to see what students need to work on each day.
It brings consistent, standards-based activities that students feel confident completing each day.
In the classroom, these make perfect daily warm ups for language arts and math time. They also can be used for a daily end of the day review.
I use them at home with my daughter each day - I just copy the math and language arts page back to back each day for her. I love how she can be almost totally independent with them!
