As the months go on during distance learning, I am often asked about my monthly curriculum: what I send home with my students, what I do during Zooms, and what they work on asynchronously.
When my district decided to begin the year fully remote, I knew it was important to me to have my students writing on paper with pencils, just as they would in the classroom. There is just no “digital” substitute to the process of writing. So the first thing I created was my Personal Word Wall. I wanted a “one-stop” stop for my students when writing: alphabet charts, word banks, sight words, and an easy-to-use writing rubric. I printed and bound these for my students in August. And every other month or so, I am printing and hole punching more word bank pages for them to add to their books.
Most often with emergent writers, coming up with writing ideas can be the trickiest part. So in September I began creating my Build-a-Story bundles. In these units, I have word banks, clip art for characters and “things” to cut and paste, backgrounds to color and use as settings, and various writing pages. My students use these to create their own stories, and what I have seen is unbelievable. They are not only loving writing stories, but they are writing more than I have ever seen in the fall of kindergarten. This month, I printed a Holidays Around the World set for them.
And to round out my writing for the month, we will be beginning our expository “how-to” writing next week. I have made Winter How-to readers for my students to read and write. Specifically, I prepped the “How-to Make a Gingerbread Man” and “How-to Make Hot Chocolate” books for them to color and write. We will be using the Google Slides™ readers as a model before writing our own books.
In addition to writing, it is important to me that my students have projects at home to color, cut, glue, and create. I printed my Wish Wreath Craft and my Snow Globe Name Crafts on cardstock and sent home. I also just added student and parent-friendly instructions so they are all extra clear on the directions. My students absolutely love sharing their crafts on our Zooms. And I especially can’t wait to see how their wreaths and snow globes turn out.
And to top off my December curriculum, I added six new holiday Boom Card™ decks to my rotation. These are math and literacy decks that my students use to practice new skills and work on fluency of essential skills. And I’ll be adding SIX new decks for the months of January through May, so this growing bundle is an amazing deal right now.
December is such a fun month to spend with littles in the classroom, and I’m hoping to bring some of the holiday magic into my virtual classroom! As always, email me at missmskindergarten@gmail.com or DM me on Instagram if you have any questions or want to see more!
Happy learning!
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