December Week 3 in Kindergarten - Christmas in Italy
December is here!
Only one more week until Christmas break. We can do it!
This blog post is short and sweet, and I hope it gets you through this last week of teaching this (calendar) year.
I share a bunch of fun ideas for teaching in December on my first two blog posts from this month.
Read Week 1 HERE and Week 2 HERE.
This month has been exhausting, but also so much fun. My goal with these weekly blog posts is to help alleviate the stress of planning and help you implement engaging, effective lessons.
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.
HELP IS HERE!
This last week of school in December can be so crazy. These Digital Boom Cards will save your sanity!
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 started tackling middle sounds in CVC words earlier this month, and students are doing so well.
We put so much work into phonemic awareness and stretching out words all year that is has really paid off.
On many of my weekly blog posts, I share tips, videos and ideas for building phonemic awareness skills with students.
On this blog post from November, I shared a video that shows how to use Elkonin Boxes if you’re not familiar with them (scroll down to the phonics section on the blog post.)
Middle sounds in CVC are actually the hardest for students to be able to isolate and identify.
This week we are focusing on middle sounds /a/ and /i/
I started teaching middle sounds sounds at last week - scroll down to the phonics section!
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, I outlined what it looks like to use Elkonin boxes with middle sounds last week.
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.
We are diving into measurement this week!
These are the activities I plan on using this week.
MEASUREMENT AND DATA IN KINDERGARTEN
Many of the activities get the kids up and moving which is helpful this week!
Here is a video that shows kids how to measure using objects:
CLICK HERE to read the full measurement and data blog post and try two freebies!
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
All three materials have the same sight words, vocabulary and pictures.
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 the first week in December:
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.
This month we have learned All About Christmas in Mexico and Germany, and this week we are learning about Christmas in Italy!
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,
Our story for the week is The Legend of Old Befana. The kids are absolutely fascinated by her, so this is a super fun book to read aloud. The illustrations in this story are beautiful, and you will have a captive audience. The kids will recognize The Three Kings from our week of studying Mexico, so this story really helps the kids compare and contrast Christmas across different cultures.
We do so many enrichment activities with La Befana this week!
The kids know our routine now for the mini books, so we color them, practice our fluency and vocabulary then buddy read.
This mini book coordinates perfectly with the slideshow.
You can show the slideshow again throughout the week for review and vocabulary practice.
Our vocabulary words for this week include Italy, panettone, La Befana, Babbo Natale and nativity.
This is a quick little sing a long video about La Befana. Before you show it, you may want to build a little background with your students by discussing what Italians like to eat (meatballs and spaghetti) as this video is about meatballs! It doesn’t give a lot of real information, but it is cute and silly.
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 (shown above.)
The word sorting activity is FREE!
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
It is a busy week in writing!
We are continuing with expository writing, and I plan on doing the “how to make pancakes” and “how to wrap a gift” writing craftivity.
The little resents turn out so cute, and the kids enjoy tracing the sentences and putting them in order. They can decorate their little “gifts” and this makes a cute bulletin board display.
Don’t forget this freebie from last week!
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.
The last week of the month, we always do a mini poetry unit.
Students love poetry week every month, and we have fun reading, memorizing and writing our own monthly poems.
To read the full blog post CLICK HERE or you can purchase the poetry unit HERE
Check out the expository writing unit in this quick video:
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!
Did you miss last the other December blog posts?
All my best,
Michala
