Kindergarten Alligators

This lesson (another I borrowed from my student teaching experience) made use of the shapes students had already learned and made something BIG out of them! That's right, alligators!! The students LOVED these (and the teachers even commented on how cute they are!)

Each section was executed in a similar way. I cut strips of paper (yellow for squares and circles, green for feet) and figured out how many times they would have to be folded in order to create squares. We folded our paper together as a class. I had students cut out each square by cutting on the fold mark. The squares were glued on as is. For circles, I had students draw circles on each square.

Here is a visual for the face and teeth. I drew and photocopied the eyes/teeth paper. When I taught students how to create toes, I related it to letters (V, W) they had been learning (woo!)

My kindergartners did SUCH a good job following directions on how to glue the teeth/feet on! Their end products were even cuter than my example! But isn't that always the case?

Kindergarten: Ovals

This shape unit took up the entire nine weeks! Week 8, I did a lesson with ovals. It was a little different than the rest of the shape lessons because I had a specific picture for the students to make.

To start out, I asked students to tell me what is a shape that kind of looks like a circle. I got a few that answered "square," and one student even answered "octagon." The students answer "oval" pretty quickly though.

I then held up the sheet with the ovals on them and asked what the ovals kind of looked like. The answer was unanimous: our ovals were EGGS! I photocopied three eggs per sheet. I passed out the sheets and asked the students to color them in however they wanted. Many students wanted theirs to look like Easter eggs.

After the students finished coloring, they cut out the eggs. Each student got a blue paper.

I did not pass out glue at this point because I wanted students to draw a nest for the eggs! I instructed students to first draw a long oval (like a hot dog), then to scribble the inside so it looks like grass. Kinders love to scribble and are very confident in their scribbling abilities, ha!

I then taught the students how to draw a bird on the side of the nest. Before each part (head, body, tail, etc.) I asked students what shape that was. This served as a review over the past lessons!

Students were then told to glue their eggs on their nest. I asked students to overlap their eggs, but not all of them did this. After gluing, students finished coloring their pictures. How cute are these?!

Kindergarten Triangles

Kindergartners FINALLY got to use their scissors in class! I pre-cut three different colors of squares and demonstrated to the students how to cut a square into TWO triangles. Not all of them get it, but that's why teachers walk around between instructions, right?!

Each student should end up with 6 triangles; however, some mess up and throw pieces away (without the teacher even seeing! Sneaky!!) The students have the freedom to make whatever they would like with their triangles.

Here is my visual demonstration on the chalkboard! I also demonstrated with scissors and a square. Students can draw a line if they choose to. Some students use gluesticks, which is the reason for the second triangle within a triangle.

I reviewed with the students how to glue (3 corners = 3 small dots of glue). Students are told to use their crayons to finish the picture after gluing down their triangles. These turned out very well!

Wow! Look at the creativity!

So many houses!!

This was a very sunshine-y day!

Some students glue their triangles back into squares.

Kindergartners love rainbows!

Another rainbow!

I'm not sure what this is supposed to be, but I LOVE it!

This student threw away half of his triangles, but his end product still turned out nicely (complete with a rainbow, of course!).