Weekend Warriors: Favorite EOY Activities

The Weekend Warriors are back with this month's post!


My absolute favorite day of the year is 

Author's Morning

My Kindergarteners work hard during Writer's Workshop throughout the year.  On the last Wednesday of the school year, we invite families to come and hear our published stories.
You can learn more about how we publish our books by reading

To get ready, the students practice reading their books to each other.


We also send an invitation to families.

I dress up our classroom to get ready for the big day.
 

As parents arrive, they are greeted by smiling authors and instructions on what to do.

The feeling of pride on my students' faces makes this day so wonderful!
(I wish I could show you how happy they are!)





Author's Morning is such a wonderful way to bring the classroom community together and to showcase the accomplishments of my Kinders.  

I am always so impressed with their work and so proud of them!
And once in a while, I even get a mention in one their books. :)

What is your favorite End of the Year activity?  
Link up and share!

Then hop on over to each of these blogs to check out their 
End of the Year fun!





6

Publishing Kindergarten Authors


Do you publish your students' writing?  

Each spring, we host an amazing event called Author's Morning.  It is an event to celebrate our Kindergarten authors and the amazing books they have created.  It's a ton of prep work for me but the end result is totally worth it.  

Here's what it looks like in my Kindergarten classroom...

We start around the end of April and review character, setting, problem, and solution.  We talk about beginning, middle, and endings.  We review what good author's do to keep their readers' interested in their stories, how illustrators create pictures to match the words to help readers understand the story, and all of that great stuff!

Then, we brainstorm story ideas.
I love this graphic organizer from Deanna & Deedee's Writing Units.

Once the kiddos have chosen an idea, they plan their stories.
We spend some time sharing our ideas with our writing partners, too.


I make books for each of the students with a cover page and over the next week or so, the kids write rough drafts of their stories.
 

When their stories are finished, I meet with each student to "edit" and type up their stories.  If any part of the story is confusing or unclear, I ask questions so my little authors can clarify with their own words.  Sometimes, there isn't a clear ending so we might work on that too during the editing process.

Next, we are ready to publish!

I print out the pages of each child's story.  I also make a blank title page, dedication page, and About the Author page.  We work on final drafts for about 2 weeks!





In the past, I've made the covers out of construction paper, laminated them, and stapled the pages inside.  But this year, I came across the most AMAZING book binding machine!

This machine is SO easy to use.  No more fighting with plastic combs or worrying about jamming things in the laminator.  This machine uses heat to bind books in just 90 seconds!  

You don't even have to wait for it to warm up...just plug it in and it's ready to go.
All you have to do is stack up the pages of your book, place them in a cover, and place the whole thing in the Book Creator.  Wait the 90 seconds (until the light turns green) and you're done!


I finished binding 20 student books in just over 30 minutes!

My Kinders were so excited to see their stories turned into real books!

Premier Binding has a variety of covers to choose from that you can see here.  They're great for class books, memory books, writer's workshop stories, and much more.

 Are you interested in getting one for yourself?

If you use the promo code ALWAYSKDG, you will receive 20% off anything sold at Premier Binding!  Or give them a call and ask for Jay.  He was wonderful to work with!  Be sure to mention the promo code to receive your 20% discount!


0

Wordless Wednesday: Kindergarten Love

It's Wednesday again so I've linked up with Miss DeCarbo at Sugar and Spice for her Wordless Wednesday linky party.

If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen this post today...

Today we celebrated our Kindergarten authors.  
My teacher heart just about burst when my student shared her dedication page.

I know I've done my job well when my students love school.


1

Five for Friday


We're in the home stretch people!  
Only one week (well, technically 4 days) to go!  
Here's my 5 for this week...

We celebrated my older daughter's 8th birthday on Sunday.  There were 17 girls between the ages of 5 and 11.  I managed to survive...and so did my husband!

To get ready for our end of the year celebration, we did this adorable craft and writing activity from Katie over at Little Warriors!  

Tuesday was Field Day!  It was downright C-O-L-D but the kids didn't seem to mind.  They had a blast!

My kinders used our Touchtronic Numbers this week to work on addition and subtraction fluency.  I can't say enough great things about Touchtronic letters and numbers.  They are so engaging and the kids just love them.

This week, we read one of my favorite baseball books, Players In Pigtails by Shana Corey.  My kinders then wrote their opinion on whether or not girls should play baseball.  I was so impressed with their writing!  This one says, "I think girls should be able to play baseball because baseball is not boy or girl baseball.  And girls should not be excluded just because they're girls."

Now we head into the final week of school!
How was your week?
Head over to Doodle Bugs Teaching to see what others have been up to this week.
1

Baseball Unit (Week 1) and a FREEBIE!


This is my grandfather.
He is one of the reasons I love baseball.  Like a lot.
Even more, I love to share my love of the game with my students.
Our baseball unit lasts 2-3 weeks.  Yep, I love it that much!

Katie over at Little Warriors has 2 fantastic baseball units 
and many of these activities came from
  here and here.

We always begin with learning about what you need to play the game.  
Then the kids label the items on their own.
We learned the words to Take Me Out to the Ballgame
I had to change "home team" to "Giants" of course.
 
Our centers were all baseball themed as well.
 
The response sheet is a freebie from

We also made these ADORABLE ballplayers.

We didn't stop there.  Our Math Stations had a baseball theme as well!

This activity is from Lanier's Lions.

Another great activity from Katie's units.

This activity is from KinderMyles.

And since you've stuck with me through all of this, I have a freebie for you!


You can find my Baseball Label It! activity here.

Please leave feedback if you download it!

0
Back to Top