Young & Lively Kindergarten

Turkey Freebie Update!

My little bits need a little more work on ten frames and number/color words so I added a couple more pages to my Turkey Roll, Count, and Color packet. Click on the pages below to download the updated copy, If this is the first time you have dropped in over here just click on the followers link over there on the right so you can be kept up to date on other Young & Lively Kindergarten News!

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Turkey-Roll-Count-and-Color-949168

Be Blessed!

Walking in Someone Else's Shoes!

When I got the dreaded call 2 months ago that Logan had been in a car accident, I had all of the emotions and reactions that you can imagine a mother might have after hearing something like that. However, from the beginning I knew God was doing something special and there was a peace that everything would be alright. Difficult, but alright.

Throughout this entire ordeal, God sent so many people into our lives to fill various needs. When I thought about sitting down to write out Thank You cards, the thought of doing so was overwhelming because there were just too many people that stepped up to be the hands & feet of Christ. My daddy always taught me to never pass up an opportunity to give to others and I was so blessed to see how collectively each person's contribution filled a desperate need for us. Friends gave money, cleaned our home, mowed our lawn, washed our clothes, took Jarod to and from school for us & helped him with homework, others brought food, snacks, several gave up their time to sit with us in the hospital, coworkers did my bus duty and carried the workload for me, and many others offered up prayers on our behalf. Every single act of kindness and every single prayer is & was appreciated more than we can ever express!

One such person is a stranger that I "met" through the educational blogging world. When I wrote a blog post about Logan's accident, there were many precious comments & emails from people all over the world. Barbara from Texas wrote to me asking if she could send me a book that helped her after she went through a terrible head on car crash 9 months earlier. Of course, I said yes but honestly never thought she would follow through. It is a lot of trouble to purchase a book and take it to the post office to mail for someone you do not even know. But just a few days later, a package from Barbara came with not only the book but there was also a $50 Visa Gift card enclosed! Keep in mind that my family falls in the middle income bracket so $50 is a lot of money, especially to be giving away to a total stranger!

After sitting a while in the floor and crying over the generosity of a complete stranger, I decided to pray about how to spend the money. My school coworkers had already given us $500 and EVERY bit of it went into my gas tank for the 45 minute drive to and from the hospital and/or fast food to eat along the way during those long 4 weeks. Not exactly how I would have wanted to spend the money but it was necessary. For some reason I just didn't feel like that was how I was supposed to spend this money.

Days later, Logan's physical therapist wanted him to wear a shoe on his "good" foot and that is when we remember his shoes were in the back of my car from the day of the wreck. When we got them out, we realized that they had been cut off of Logan's feet. A fairly new pair of Vans shoes ruined. He loved those shoes! So to ease the pain of yet one more loss, I told him about the Visa gift card and asked him if he wanted to order a new pair of shoes with it. And that's just what we did (along with a couple of music downloads)!

I wrote Barbara to thank her again and to let her know how we choose to spend the money and her response gave me goose bumps. Interestingly enough, Barbara is a school counselor and her theme has been empathy. She has been talking with her students about the importance of "walking in someone else's shoes" to get a new perspective and see how others may feel. How fitting that we used her generous gift to buy Logan a new pair of shoes!

Check out her blog post about this here!

Matthew 25:35-40 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. Then the righteous will answer him, Lord when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you? The King will reply,

Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

Be Blessed!

Superhero Teachers

My friend, Jayne from Smart Kids is hosting a Teacher Super Hero Linky Party and I thought I would join up while I waste away my afternoon watching Hallmark Christmas movies on this 2nd day of November! I would normally feel guilty about wasting an afternoon in front of TV but not this time! Today marks the 2 month anniversary of Logan's car accident and it finally feels like things are almost back to normal! Well, not so much...my father in law has suffered 2 strokes in the last 3 weeks and is now in a rehab hospital. Although the hospital is only 1 mile from their home, it is 45 minutes from ours. We are exhausted physically, emotionally, and just plain tired! These feel good Hallmark movies are therapy for me today!

http://www.bloglovin.com/frame?blog=6375051&group=0&frame_type=b&link=aHR0cDovL3NtYXJ0a2lkc2dhbW1vbnMuYmxvZ3Nwb3QuY29tLw&frame=1&click=0&user=0

Real Name/AKA: This is a bit complicated! My name is Kelly Christine Young. I was 'Christy' until I went to the first grade. There were 5 girls named Christy in the class so my mother said "just call her Kelly!" That was a HUGE mistake! All of my kindergarten friends thought I had a twin and later thought that maybe Christy had died since they never saw her again. My family, church family, neighbors, and family friends still called me Christy, but all of my school friends called me Kelly. My husband met me as Kelly since I was with school friends when we met. The strange thing is that if he calls me Christy, I will not respond. If my parents, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins call me Kelly, it just sounds strange. Therefore, my name depends on who you are, but let's just stick with Kelly!

Known To My Teacher Friends As: Kelly, the organized one

Proud Moment: Putting myself through college...it took me 9 years & 2 babies later to finish a 4 year degree!

Can't Live Without: Sugar and/or chocolate and salad.

Alternate Career Route: A school secretary. I would also love to work in an orphanage taking care of infants but we are still praying about that!

My happily ever after: I married my husband Brad just 3 weeks after turning 18 and we have been married for 23 years and have 3 wonderful boys. Corey is 20 and a junior in college majoring in accounting. Logan is 17, (recovering from a serious car accident) and is my non academically motivated child. We are all holding our breath until he graduates in May! He is on Homebound Schooling right now but will only have 2 classes when he gets to return to school in January. My baby, Jarod will turn 12 this week and is in his first year of middle school.

I love my boys (men) and I love my job! I have always wanted to be a kindergarten teacher and I had the smartest dolls and stuffed animals around when I was little because we played school every day!

This is my happily ever after!

Turkey Time Math!

I can't believe another month has already passed and it is almost time for Thanksgiving! My Pumpkin Roll, Count, & Color freebie was such a hit last month that I decided to put a Turkey twist on it for Thanksgiving. My little darlings still need a bit more work with ten frames before we move on to teen numbers. Just click on the pictures below if you want to download it and then pull out your dice and spinners and put your little ones to work!

Math in Motion

My school recently received a grant to purchase Learnercise Phone Mats. These things are amazing! The kids had so much fun and I could easily assess their number recognition skills. They were twisted up in knots and giggling the entire time. The instructional booklet had some great activity suggestions but I was also able to "free style" using a Twister Game style to meet my assessment needs. I didn't specify right/left hand or foot. We just used legs, hands, elbows, knees, bellies, and noses!

It was so fun to see how different the kids moved & problem solved their movements to follow my directions!

Elbow on 4, foot on 3 and another on 8

One hand on 3 and the other on 5!

Knee on 2, foot on 3, nose on 8, & hand on 2!

These mats can also be used for identifying colors, alphabet recognition, addition & subtraction, spelling words, and multiplication in the upper grades. We have to check the mats out and share with the entire school so I am seriously considering posting a grant on Donors Choose.org to get my own class supply of the mats since we could use them most every week for a variety of skills and would be perfect for rainy day recess! At $24 each, these mats would be a great investment and we would certainly get our money's worth out of them! I'm sure I could make these out of shower curtains or plastic table cloths but at this point in my life I am looking for the easy way to do things and these are good quality mats. I would love to hear from anyone else that uses these or have made their own "homemade" version.

Check the mats out here.

Pumpkins Everywhere!

It is that time again for our annual Pumpkin Decorating Contest! Each classroom is given a small pumpkin to decorate as they wish and all of the pumpkins are set up in the main hallway at school. During the month of October, students and parents can vote for their favorite pumpkin for a $1 donation. The classroom with the most "votes" wins a pizza party and the classroom teacher wins a half day off from work!

Here are a few of the pumpkins in the competition! I'll post the rest when they are finished.

Despicable Me Minion

Uncle Si from Duck Dynasty

Adorable Ladybug

Rainbow Fish

Spider

Lollipop Ghosts

Mr. Pumpkin Head

Cinderella

Basketball

Duck Dynasty

Mickey Mouse

A Hedgehog

Witch

Cute Girl

Curious George Goes to a Costume Party

Minion with a drum

Cowgirl

Which one would you vote for?

We're Not Afraid of Anything!

Ahhh, October! My most favorite time of the year! There are so many fun themes to use to teach the Common Core standards during the month of October and this activity is one of my favorites! To kick off our Scarecrow unit we read the book The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything and had the students make predictions using the text evidence and retell the story using the props below.

Ok now say it with me…”THAT IS SO ADORABLE!” One of my kindergarten coworkers has a toddler that is always dressed so cute and she brought in some of his hand-me downs. They are so cute and are the perfect size for our PVC frame!

Here is the frame we started with. My handy man husband only spent $6 on the PVC pipes & elbow pieces (easy to take apart for storage.) He also drilled a hole in the bottom of my pumpkin bucket so that it fit perfectly on the frame.

I think he is too cute to spook & the kids loved it!

3D Shapes Don't Scare Me!

Let me be honest up front! The truth is, I threw together this 3D Shape Scarecrow freebie really quick to share just so I could write a blog post and share a little more about Logan's road to recovery. You are more than welcome to just grab your freebie and then go on about your way without having to stick around to read the rest of the blog post about my personal life:)

We will be doing an awesome Scarecrow unit next week and I don't have a lot of 3D shape practice pages so I hope this will work out well for me. Click on the picture below to download it.

Enjoy!

Now to those that chose to stick around....

Today has been a surprisingly wonderful day! I only got a couple hours of sleep last night but somehow I woke up bright eyed and ready to tackle another day. When I got to school and looked at my lesson plans, I wasn't too impressed with what I was supposed to teach so I decided to "wing it".

Best teaching day ever!

The lesson fell together and flowed wonderfully. The kids were engaged, had a blast, AND I still covered the standards for the day! The lesson wasn't anything new or fancy but I just felt "adventurous" and "free". Yep, I even pulled out the clay for each child to create their own 3D shapes! While it took some time for the little ones to figure out how to make a sphere, cube, cone, and cylinder, they did it and were so proud of their masterpieces!

Then I got THE phone call! It was Logan so yes, I did step outside my classroom door to answer it. He said "bet you can't guess where I am". My mind goes wild... did he go outside and get the wheelchair stuck in the grass? Did he fall trying to use the toilet?

Nope! None of the above!

He said "I am UPSTAIRS in my room!" (with the help of his physical therapist of course). My tears could not be contained! It felt like a toddler taking his first steps. My heart was swelling up inside my chest. The therapist let me know that Logan had a great attitude today (no more anger or frustration) and was working harder than ever before. By the time I got home, his homebound teacher said he WALKED to the door to answer (using his walker) rather than sitting in the wheelchair. His Facebook status said that "Today is the day that I start working extra hard to be able to walk again. I'm going to stop waiting and hoping to get better. It is time to move on. I'm done with sitting in this wheelchair."

There is the determination that we have prayed so desperately for! The road to recovery just took a turn onto a much smoother route!

Friends, it's a good day indeed!

P.S. Come back soon! In the next couple of days I hope to find time to tell you about an experience that we had on this journey that involved a fellow teacher that was once a stranger! It will give you goose bumps!

...and then I will try to keep my posts more educational and less personal!

Be Blessed!

Surprise! A TPT Sale!

I spent a beautiful fall day in the mountains with my family today with no cell phone service. In light of all of the chaos the last 6 weeks of life threw at us, it was so nice and peaceful to be "unplugged" and with family for a little while. Now imagine my surprise to come home tonight to check my email and find out that TPT is having a surprise sale! The sale is running Saturday & Sunday, but since I missed Saturday, I am all in for Sunday! Use the code FB100K at checkout and get 10% off everything in your cart! I am also adding an additional 10% off of everything in my store to help you rake in some extra savings! Click on my blog button below & Enjoy!

Blessed Beyond Measure!

Kelly

An Unbe"LEAF"able Blog Hop of Freebies!

Grab your virtual rake and get ready to bag up some "tree-rrific" freebies! Just float through all ELEVEN blogs to catch ELEVEN fall items. In addition, every time you "fall-ow" a blog, you can enter to win the grand prize. It's a bushel basket full of October goodies. The winner will be announced next Friday, October 18.

You'll have to visit each blog to see the freebies, but here's a peek at the items in the grand prize. If you just can't wait to see if you'll win, you can click each pic to go straight to TPT and make your purchase.

I actually have 2 freebies for you to choose from! The first is Pumpkin Patch Fun that includes games for numbers 1-10 using ten frames and color words.

The 2nd freebie is a set of sight word worksheets that go along with the McGraw Hill Wonders Reading Series. These are also Dolch & Frye Sight Words so maybe you will be able to use them even if you are not using Wonders. This includes units 1-3 right now but units 4-10 is still under construction.