Shapes and more Shapes

I teach two math groups- one is working on first grade standards and the other is working on kindergarten standards. This month, my higher group has been focusing on subtraction skills while the lower group has been focusing on shapes.

We concluded this unit by making shape clowns. I got the idea from Cutting Tiny Bites. And, boy, did my kids love it! I started by giving them each a white piece of paper and having them draw a big circle on it for the face. Then they got to pick whatever color paper they wanted to make the various parts of their clown. It also double as fine motor skills practice which my kiddos sorely need. :)

 

 

Now, I know you don't know my kiddos, but each of these clowns shows their personalities perfectly. :)

I also came to the conclusion, that I needed a behavior plan for my kiddos (well, more accurately for their parents). Sadly most of my kids' parents aren't able to communicate with them (I don't even want to talk about that). There's been a ton of behavior issues between my boys- honestly, this group of boys is not a good combination. And my poor girls are getting stuck in the middle trying to keep the boys from acting out. So...I had to come up with something. I searched around on the internet (pinterest and TPT) and found this from The Kinder Polka Dot Patch. I needed to tweak it a little bit to better fit my needs...and I'm loving it! I also translated it into Spanish for a parent of mine that doesn't speak English (man that was fun...thanks Google Translate and my amazing aide, Christina!)
I made one for each month of the year and I know it's the end of January, but I'm starting to use them tomorrow! I hope this helps.

Fish in the Water

This year we were offered an awesome opportunity to participate in Swim Central. One  of the top (if not the top) causes of childhood deaths in Florida is drowning, so when this opportunity came up, we jumped on it. For two weeks we took 14 students ranging from Kindergarten to Fifth grade to a half hour swim lesson everyday. SO EXHAUSTING! The kids loved it and we got to see them improve so much over the course of the two weeks and so it was totally worth it. But let me tell you how hard it is to attempt to teach deaf kids how to swim when their faces are in the water, their eyes are shut, and they don't have cochlears or hearing aids on...I was going home and taking a nap every afternoon and then drinking an extra two cups of coffee just to make it until 11:00pm when it was acceptable for me to go to bed for the night. :)