Fall is Here {In my Home and In my Classroom}

I live in San Diego, so the weather doesn't really let us know that fall is coming. I know fall is here by the announcements of pumpkin spice lattes available at Starbucks, and most memorable: our two week fall break. I am at a year round school, so we begin the year very early in mid-July. By the end of September, I am in desperate need of a break. I love my little kinders, but the first three months of school are absolutely exhausting! This year has been particularly difficult for me. I hit the jackpot last year with 16 sweet kindergarteners, with only a few behavior difficulties. This year is completely different. I have 21 students, and only 5 of those are girls. Many of the students came in wild, loud, and difficult to motivate, but they are truly showing a lot of progress this quarter! They are giving me hope that this will be a great year, and they are ALL truly growing on me. Over fall break, one of my plans is to find or create more centers for when we return to school in October.

I have now had a week of break, which gave me much needed time to relax, clean my house, decorate for fall, and go on a short trip to Chicago!

Here are a few of my favorite places to decorate in my house: my kitchen and mantle. Although it is almost 80 degrees, so we cannot have a fire yet, I love decorating our mantle above the fireplace.

So, I am in the second week of my fall break now, and I am prepping fun fall activities for when we return to school next week.

My kindergarteners are becoming a lot more independent during center time, and before break, I introduced writing around the room. The kids loved that they got to use clipboards (these are the ones I use), and they got to move around the room. They were so engaged and focused during their independent centers. When we get back to school, I am going to show them our new set of writing AND counting around the room. Just in time for fall!

I love writing and counting around the room activities because they take so little prep. I use different versions of the same activity for weeks. The same cards can be used, but with different recording sheets.




I like to have the students started with just finding the cards and writing the words. When after that, I will have them do a more challenging task the following day. The next day, they will look for cards with sentences on them. They will choose a sentence to write and then draw a picture to go along with the sentence. If the students need a challenge, I will have them choose a word to create their own sentence using.

I do the same thing for counting around the room. I will post the pictures of the objects around the room, and the tasks will get more challenging each day.

Students will start just by finding the cards and writing the number of objects next to its picture. The following day, they will write the numbers and draw their own pictures of the objects. Then, they will write the numbers and compare them. They will decide which groups have less, more, or the same number of objects.

These are the activities I use:
Fall Write and Count Around the Room

If you have any questions about centers or write/count around the room activities, please let me know!

♥