Covid-19: Part 3 of 3

As I have chatted with people the last couple of weeks they are blown away that I am teaching my kindergarten students online. I miss my students dearly, but I am also SO proud of how much they are still learning online.

Each morning we have a live Google Meet morning meeting from 9-9:30am. Here is what our morning meeting routine looks like each day:

Each week during morning we assign jobs for the students to take responsibility with. Here is a list of their jobs for each week: 

Also, each Friday we have a "Fun Friday" morning meeting. So far our "Fun Friday" meetings have been: show-and-tell, crazy hair day, show your pet day, and favorite Halloween costume.

We love this time together!! Then after we have our morning meeting I stay on to teach a live small group with 2-4 children for about 30 minutes. Then my assistant comes on and teaches a small group of 3 children. For small group teaching I am still using Google Meet. I am also using a free platform called Explain Everything. With Google Meet I am able to share my screen so I just share with the kids my Explain Everything tab. With this platform I am able to put books for the students to read aloud to me and each other and math practice activities. I am so proud of all they are doing. 

Each week in Kindergarten we are having a "theme of the week". Each day we talk about the theme in our morning meeting. We also post optional activities each day to go along with the theme. Our themes so far have been: spring, butterflies, Easter, frog, and Earth Day. 

Each day after morning meeting and small groups students work on their learning for the day. We are using Google Classroom to publish assignments each day. Assignments are broken down by subject: phonics, reading, writing, math, optional special class assignments, and optional weekly theme activities. For each subject there is a typically a pre-recorded video by one of the kindergarten teachers and then an assignment for them to do at home and post on seesaw. We are then checking seesaw and giving feedback each day. 

Here is an example of one of our daily lesson plans: 

I am so incredibly proud of each one of my students! I feel so fortunate that we have the technology that we do to get to see our students each day. It makes my teacher heart so happy to see that even though we are not together in the classroom that they are all still learning and growing each day. I cannot wait till this summer when I can see them again. 

Covid- Part 2 of 3

Okay, as many of you know I currently have 2 preschoolers. A almost 5 year old and almost 3 year old. During this quarantine at home as a family I knew early on that I needed to keep my kiddos busy and learning, and that we have been doing. Each week I pick a theme and run with it. Each day we do one theme activity. Then Ansleigh, my almost kindergartner, does a reading/writing activity and a math activity each day. I am able to choose these activities of things I want her to know well before coming up to kindergarten in the fall. Cooper, my energetic 2 year old, typically has one activity that involves fine motor skills or a age-appropriate learning skill. These activities I choose based on things I think he is ready to start learning. In addition to learning with me, both children get to live chat with their class via Google Meet every day. Ansleigh gets to meet with her class twice a day, which she looks forward to every day, and Cooper chats with his once a day. Here is a picture of each of them engaging with their classes: 

Our first week of at-home learning our theme was Spring. Here were our lesson plans: Spring Lesson Plans

Here are a few of the pictures of the activities we completed through this week: 

 spring science experiment 

 painting pots to plant seeds

 painting spring pictures with water colors 

 putting numbers in order with LEGO's 0-20

 making butterflies with paper plates, construction paper, and dot markers 

 rainbow writing her sight words for this week (a favorite activity of Ansleigh) 

 matching teen number cards with dots

 making towers that are the same color and then counting how many blocks are in each tower

 putting Cheerios on spaghetti noodles stuck in play doh

 making her number line 0-20

sorting bears by color

Our second week of at-home learning our theme was Butterflies. Here were our lesson plans: Butterfly Lesson Plans

Here are a few of the pictures of the activities we completed through this week: 

 New sight words= new rainbow write

 shape graphing 

 oval book 

 butterfly life cycle book and circle book 

 we do a sight word hunt each week to find new sight words 

 making shapes out of toothpicks and marshmallows 

 writing lowercase letters in a bowl of salt

 writing random teen numbers out of order

 square book 

 yummy caterpillar treat that they ask me to make now each week

our Friday science experiment 

Our third week of at-home learning our theme was Easter. Here were our lesson plans: Easter Lesson Plans

Here are a few of the pictures of the activities we completed through this week: 

 sorting jelly beans by color

 weekly sight word hunt with new sight words

 E is for Egg

Easter maze with teen numbers 

 dying eggs and making an emergent reader Easter book 

 Friday jelly bean science experiment 

 weekly rainbow write of sight words 

 B is for Bunny

counting by 10s 

Our fourth week of at-home learning our theme was Frogs. Here were our lesson plans: Frog Lesson plans

Here are a few of the pictures of the activities we completed through this week:

 fine motor practice

 roll and hop game... what number comes next

 sight word hunt

 name practice

life cycle of a frog

name practice

 CVC word game

 roll 2 dice, count, and dot the number

 fine motor practice

 frog cookies

frog sandwiches

 F is for Frog

name practice

frog puppets 

Our fifth week of at-home learning our theme was Earth Day. Here were our lesson plans: Earth Week Lesson Plans

Here are a few of the pictures of the activities we completed through this week:

Our sixth week of at-home learning our theme was Ocean Here were our lesson plans: Ocean Lesson Plans

Here are a few of the pictures of the activities we completed through this week:

Our seventh week of at-home learning our theme was Cinco de Mayo and Mothers Day.  Here were our lesson plans: Cinco de Mayo and Mothers Day Lesson Plans

Here are a few of the pictures of the activities we completed through this week:

Our eight week and final week of at-home learning was all about the Ocean. Here are the lesson plans: Ocean Lesson Plans

Here are some of our pictures of activities from the week:

Homeschooling my children during quarantine was not always easy however I loved doing it (most) days. It was fun to see them learn alongside of me and see both of their growth that they demonstrated within the 8 weeks. If you made it this far I hope you enjoyed reading this blog post about my journey of homeschooling my preschool aged children.