First Snow Day!

Today is our first snow day of the year. Where I live, we get out a lot for snow. Usually by this time we've been out several days. But our winter has been really mild. I live in the mountains so it doesn't take a lot of snow to get us out of school. But I didn't get to sleep in. I still got up around 6 like I usually do. I've been catching up on my blog stalking and pinning. I can tell I'm back in school because I just don't seem to have time to blog like I want to. I've seen several linky parties I'd like to participate in and have a few ideas to blog about. So maybe I'll spend some of my day writing some posts to schedule to publish. I've got to go into school and get my external hard drive to finish working on my valentine's day packet and my lesson plans for the week.
Report cards were suppose to go out today. I'm glad I got all my assessments done and the report cards done so I don't have to worry about that. When doing our math assessments, I noticed a few areas that some of my kids still need to work on. They don't seem to have a great concept of number still. I'm really struggling with figuring out common core and our new math series. The unit I should be on in math is about fractions and ordinal numbers. This isn't in common core. At least not that I can see. I've looked and looked through them. And after doing assessments I think we need to work more on our numbers 11-20 and composing and decomposing those numbers. I also have some kids that need to work on one to one correspondence still. My math instruction seems to be suffering this year and I need to get a handle on it. I've focused so much on reading and writing that my time seems to get away from me. Then I'm left with like 20 minutes or so to teach math. I do review a lot of math concepts during morning meeting so maybe I need to add more in there. I also have a couple of math centers in my center rotation. I'd love to do math stations but I just don't have the time in my schedule. Because about 5 of my students leave at 12:30 I can't teach new concepts after this time. I guess that doesn't mean that I can't do some math stations then. Now that I've rambled on about where I'm at in math, I'd love to hear your take on it. Those of you that have adopted common core what are you doing about concepts that aren't included in common core but seem important. Like fractions, patterns, calendar, ordinal numbers. I would love to hear what you do in your class with math.
I also have a freebie for you for practicing writing numbers. There are five documents included in this freebie. Different way to practice the numbers and a blank one for differentiation. This meets this common core standard:

• K.CC.3. Write numbers from 0 to 20. Represent a number of objects with a written numeral 0-20 (with 0 representing a count of no objects).

Click here to get this file.

Please leave me some comment love if you download this document. I'd love to hear about your math.

Common Core and Patterns

This year Tennessee like a lot of other states have adopted common core in Kindergarten and first grade. We also adopted a new math series and a new teacher evaluation system. It is definitely the year of change. I'm trying to keep an open mind about our math series. I'm not sure what I think about it and probably won't know for sure until I've taught it a year. (Although next year I'll be teaching First grade so it could be two years.) The next unit we're on is patterns. I was sitting down to work on my plans and started looking though the common core standards to get my I can statement. Patterns is no where to be found in the common core. I double checked on the pacing guide from the county and they don't have this chapter listed anywhere in it. I'm a little torn. I know that I'm responsible for the common core and I want to give my students all the skills they need for the next school year. Patterns are an important building block for math. I think if kids can see patterns they can do so much with math. In first grade, we work a lot of number patterns and patterns in adding and subtracting. I'm not sure they're going to get this foundation if I skip patterns all together. I know that calendar skills are no longer part of the standards I'm expected to teach and I haven't given up calendar because that's a life skill. I'm a little perplexed about what to do.
I would love to hear about what others are doing or any suggestions/