Healthy Eating!

I love USDA's new visual for a healthy diet! My kids seemed to grasp this better than the food pyramid. Below is a picture, and it actually makes sense to the students because they can visually see the portioned amount on a plate.

If you go to choosemyplate.gov they have a lot of great printables and resources. The following activities were made using the materials they provided.

After reading a book about healthy eating and the different food groups (basic info), we sorted pictures together so the students can see what kinds of foods go in each section of the plate. I made a flipchart (for the promethean board). 

You can get it here.

Then the students each made their own version of the food plate. I didn't want it to be too time-consuming so I only had one picture for each section that they had to glue on their paper. To differentiate the learning, I had the students who were able to come up with their own food draw on their plates instead of cut/glue the pictures I provided. Below are two examples (sorry for the poor picture quality, only had my phone):

If you want this, you can get the plate here and the pictures to go with it here. 

Again, I got the pictures from USDA's website and the black & white pictures also come in color (they use it for a go-fish game) and you can find that on their website here.

I plan on attaching 10 tips on how to make healthy food more fun to this activity sheet (also from USDA website) to give parents some ideas!

Hope you are able to use this with your students! Happy healthy eating :)

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

I love the book, love the video even more and that song is SO catchy! If you have never seen it you need to check it out:

Anyway, we made chicka chicka boom boom trees by tearing with our fingers and they had to glue letters of their name on the tree. I got the letters from oriental trading ($8 for over 1000 pieces!) and love how they turned out. The trees are on half sheets of construction paper so the letters don't seem too small on the tree.

 

letters from Oriental Trading

Thank you, little giraffes, for the awesome idea! :)

Marzano Thinking Skills

Wow I forgot how exhausting the beginning of the year can be!  Just wanted to share a goal of mine for this upcoming school year - to be better at questioning! I made examples of different types of questions I can ask during whole group carpet time (during read alouds, etc.) and guided reading groups. They are based off of Marzano's 7 thinking skills: knowledge, organizing, applying, analyzing, generating, integrating, and evaluating. I plan on putting these on a ring and keeping them by my small group and carpet areas. Hope you can find them useful!

You can get yours here!

Lucky Ducks

I saw this idea from Growing Kinders and fell in love with it! She has sticks in a can that she draws names from and calls it her "lucky duck" can. I made my own version of it:

The paper I used is from a scrapbooking paper pad from Hobby Lobby. I bought it a few days ago for 50% off (so it was around $8 for the whole thing) and the best part about it is that the paper is made a little bit longer to have a bumpy border edge! I love bumpy borders and you can cut it off to use for something else and the paper would be back to regular scrapbooking size.

I don't remember where this next idea came from but one teacher painted her sticks 2 different colors so that after you call on someone, you turn their stick around and it's a different color so you know who you've called on. I've been using it for a few years now and works really well.

Multicultural Daily 5

I have had a lot requests for multicultural posters and choice cards so here they are. Thanks for the feedback! Click on the picture to go directly to the Google doc.

Full page posters

6 to a page choice cards

Computer Choice Time Cards

UPDATE: Click on the first computer cards to download! Thanks, Tracy, for the cute computer kids!

Emilys, I have not forgotten about y'all! I'm still in the process of trying to get permission for these cute kids on computer clipart so in the meantime, here is a preview of what it looks like.

Not sure if you were interested in them all looking the same so I made this one as well.

Hopefully I'll hear back soon!

Reading Log

In Kindergarten we ask all parents to read with their child for 20 minutes, 5 nights a week. We used to have parents list out the date, what books they read, and how long they read for. To make it easier for the parents and for me this year, I decided to create a Calendar-style reading log, where parents have to fill out what they read/how long on an actual calendar so they can visually see which days they read/did not read with their child and if they met the goal of 5 nights a week. I think it will also be a great visual for the kiddos to see as well. Spacing was a little tight so there wasn't room to make it cute!

This explanation will go in front of the whole packet. I have also included a blank reading log instruction sheet incase you have different reading goals.

This is what each month looks like. This reading log calendar goes to the end of May.

You can get the .pdf version here
and the Word version here.