Counting Down

This week has been nuts. (Is there ever a week in Kindergarten that isn't?) For some reason the fact that Thanksgiving and Christmas are so close seems to make the days go by slower than ever and the kids seem to "forget how to be Kindergartners" as I like to say. We finished up our first trimester last Friday and report cards were finalized this week and will be sent home tomorrow. So, that means the past two weeks were spent testing, grading, and entering while still trying to teach.

Since I haven't had time to be very creative and come up with my own activities, I have been relying on some amazing Kindergarten teachers to help me out and thought I would share a few things that I have used recently.

I am all about progress monitoring! I like to test the kids on their foundational skills at least every two weeks and send home results to their parents along with resources for them to either provide extra practice or challenge their child with something new. I used these easy Kindergarten Becnhmark Assessments from Rebecca at Darlin' Little Learners this time around to help me complete report cards and have something to give parents an update on their little one's progress since our last conferences.

I also used these freebies:

I made a copy of all of the assessments to keep for my records and will be sending the whole packet home with report cards on Friday.

In other news, Thanksgiving is less than a week away! Although I am feeling quite worn out after these past few weeks, I am really looking forward to a nice, relaxing (almost) week off with my best friend down in wine country to celebrate the Holiday and, of course, my birthday.

I got this perfect little Turkey book set by Steve Metzger in my last Scholastic order and found this fabulous freebie to go along with the stories. For each book there is a different activity that reviews plot, sequencing, retelling, predicting and more. Also, the books are kind of hilarious (at least to 4-6 year olds) and my students ate up every minute of them!

We have one and a half days of school next week which sounds so nice, but will be a struggle to get through when vacation is calling my name. Wish me luck!