Kindergarten Teacher

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Dice Battle Game Using Number Chart

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If your kids love to battle as much as mine do they will love this game. The materials I used were doubled sided counters, dice (numbered 0,1,2,3 on them) and a game board (link below.) The game is super easy! I divided the class up into pairs and each group had to decide which kid was going to be the yellow counters and which one was red. Then they take turns rolling the dice and adding their color counter to the board. Once the board is full the real fun begins because they get to flip their partners counters over instead of adding them. For example, in the image above the child (red counter)  rolled a 3, so she would turn over three of the yellow counters for her turn and make them red. This continues back and forth until the board is completely one color and that child wins. The reason I used the dice with smaller numbers is because it makes the game take longer but this could be done with regular dice as well.

You can download the printable here (just print on card stock and cut them in half) -> PDF file or Microsoft Word File

If you don’t have two-sided counter you can use other manipulatives of course. They will just need to remove their partners counter and replace with their own instead of flipping them.

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I wrote the numbers 1-20 on the cards my kids use because we use them as a tool for working on math problems. You could easily add that if you see a need.

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Creative Fun With Build Your Wild Self Website

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I really love the site Build Your Wild Self. The site allows you customize a person by using many different animal parts as you can see in the image above. It is simple to use and FREE.  Today we played around on the site during large group and had a great time creating “wild people.” After a while I asked the class to discuss with their neighbor “what animal parts do you wish you had?” Then I sent them to write a journal about what two animal parts they wished the had and why. I enjoyed listening to them discuss and think through what parts they would pick and why. Here are a few of the examples…

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Connect Four With Google Docs

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Last month my class played tic-tac-toe live using Google Docs with our twitter friends in Montana (see here) Today we stepped up to connect four and it was a blast. I enjoyed connect four more because it is a longer game than tic-tac-toe and more kids got a chance to play. Connect four is also more challenging of a game and requires the kids to focus with all the different ways to win. Special thanks to @JonFines for making the template. You are welcome to use the template and play your own game with classes around the world using this link

Playing these games is fun but Jon and I know the kids are learning important lessons about collaborating, being respectful and digital citizenship. I love the tweet his class sent my class after the game was over.

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Creating A Texas Pledge Video With The iPad

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Last week one of my twitter friends (@barbinnebraska) asked if my class would record the Texas pledge for her students in Nebraska. I jumped on the chance for my kids to share about their state and we used Explain Everything to create the video. The first step was having the kids think of images we could add to our slides that would represent Texas. This was a great review of Texas symbols from earlier in the year when we had created a book for some friends in Japan (see here) After gathering many images we started creating the slides in Explain Everything by adding the text and pictures. Once we had all the slides created I recorded the students saying the words for each slide and exported it to my camera roll as a video. If you need more info on using Explain Everything look here. Next year I think I will have my class create both the US and Texas pledge at the beginning fo the year as we work to learn them. The kids really liked making the video and sharing it on our blog and to their twitter friends.


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Writing Animal Facts with ABCmouse Zoo Apps

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There are three different ABCmouse Zoo apps and they are all FREE. Each one covers five different animals. You can download set 1 here, set 2 here and set 3 here. We have been using this app to write animal the animal facts in a literacy center (pictured above). If you would like to use the same sheet I used you can download the PDF file here or the Microsoft Word file here. When the kids visit an animal in the app the screen below will appear  and all they need to do it touch the screen for the zookeeper to start sharing facts about the animal. What I really like about the app is the “show fact” feature, when they click on that the screen will change to show the words as they are read to them (second image below.) The last cool feature of the app is there is a quiz option that my class loves! All they have to do is click “quiz me” and the quiz starts (third image below.)

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Perler Beads Art with Template

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I try to find ways to use Perler beads as often as I can. They are colorful, fun and really great for fine motor practice. This week I decided to pair them with some q-tip art sheets I had seen before (download them here) This activity is not as creative as I prefer their art jobs to be but overall I think it worked really well. The kids work on fine motor by practicing to put a perfect sized dot of glue in each circle, when they pick up and place the bead and of course cleaning up all the beads after the center is over.

Here are three other posts I have about Perler beads…

Patterns with Perler beads

More fun with Perler beads

Fine motor with Perler beads

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