Goody, Goody Gumballs!

The TPT Super Bowl Sale is going great so to celebrate I created this quick freebie to practice composing and decomposing numbers 11-19 into ten and some ones. Click on the picture below to grab it!

 

I am so excited about starting our Post Office unit this week! All of the hard work of learning letter sounds, sight words, using correct capitalization, punctuation, and spacing between words will finally be evident when my students write one another letters and "mail" them in our classroom post office. They absolutely love getting mail from their friends that they are able to read all by themselves. Check out the new Post Office and Mail packet by clicking on the picture below!

 

 

Have an amazing week!

 

 

Super Bowl Sale

Sweetheart, Sweetheart, Who Stole Your Heart?

This school year is going by way to fast! I can't believe that January is already half over and it is already time to start thinking about February. I'm sure it will go just as quickly as January with Groundhog Day, President's Day, Dental Health, and of course Valentine's Day to fill the days.


 Here is a quick game that we play at our Valentine's Day party that I submitted and had published in The Mailbox Magazine several years ago. It is played like Doggy, Doggy, Who Stole Your Bone only using an empty chocolate heart box instead of a bone.

 


A student sits in a chair with their back to the class and the heart is placed under the chair. After a chosen student "steals" the heart and hides it behind their back, the class recites the chant and "sweetheart" will turn around and take 2-3 guesses as to who stole their heart. If sweetheart guesses correctly, he/she gets to be the sweetheart again. If they do not correctly guess the theif, then the heart theif gets to be the sweetheart. Continue playing until all students have had the chance to be the sweetheart.

I'll back back soon with more February ideas. In the meantime, check out some of these February things...

 

Enter to Win!

Counting to 100 for the 100th Day

Its almost time for the 100th Day at my school. The kids are so excited because we have been counting the days since day 1 of school. By now most of the kids are able to count to 100 by ones, fives, and tens. Here is cheap and easy activity that I use to  help students with learning to count to 100 and recognizing their numbers.  

 I copied several 100 charts onto different colors of cardstock and laminated them. Then I cut a couple of them up into puzzle pieces and had the kids put the puzzles back together on top of an uncut 100 chart. As the kids got better at it they had to put them together without using the uncut 100 chart as a guide. 

 

We started off just cutting them into straight strips by the tens families so the kids would notice the patterns. 

 

These games are so easy to store... I just put them into a clear sheet protector so the pieces stay together and they fit perfectly in a file cabinet.

 

New Store Freebie!

I finally took the plunge and created a store on Teacher's Notebook! I have been pleased with Teachers Pay Teachers but the quarterly payout seems so far away sometimes and Teacher's Notebook offers immediate payment so we'll see how it goes! I don't have much listed in there but I am working on it even now. 

Come check out & download my free Love to Learn in Kindergarten flipchart for ActivBoard!

Did you know that SMARTboard & other interactive whiteboard users can also use ActivBoard flipcharts. Just download their free software at http://www.prometheanworld.com/en-us/education/products/software/activinspire. The link is near the bottom of the page under Why ActivInspire? 

Go download the software & then download this free flipchart. Comment below with your email if you get it to work & I'll send you an additional flipchart for free!

Snowcones, Snowballs, or Snow Cream!

The best part of teaching kindergarten is that all you have to do is add a novel item to a learning activity and the kids think it is the greatest thing and do not even realize that they are no longer just playing. For example, these cheap ice cream scoops that I found at the Dollar Store, a styrofoam bowl, and some ping pong balls quickly become an ice cream parlor to practice beginning sounds. 

 

I found some cheap ping pong plastic golf balls and taped some pictures to them (stickers would have worked much better and maybe a coat of Decoupage). The kids then use the ice cream scoop to add the "snowballs" into the correct bowls. 

 I have also used paper snow cone cups with the the letters written on them to hold the "snowballs" but they didn't hold up as well. The kids really loved them but I had to rig something to hold them upright while the kids did the activity because they just weren't quite coordinated enough to manage them on their own without the balls rolling all over the place.

A snack of Snow Cream flavored ice cream (or real Snow Cream for those of you with real snow) makes the perfect end to this activity.

    

 

Snow Time!

If you haven't used any of this Instant Snow then you are really missing out! It only takes a small scoop and water and it instantly expands up to 100 times its original size. Although pricey ($16 for a small 8 oz jar), it does last a long time. It is cool to the touch and while it isn't good for making snowballs, the kids love playing with it and searching for white objects (arctic animals such as snowy owl, Snowshoe Hare, Polar Bear, Arctic Fox, etc) that are hidden in it. The best part of all is after everyone has played in it I let them know that this "snow" is the stuff that they put in baby diapers! Oh, the giggles, gags and laughs! If a diaper is handy, then we do a little water/diaper experiment to see how it works. Perfect way to have a Snow Day at school!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to you! This means that for the next 3 months everything I write the date on will most likely have a funny looking 13 from where I try to camouflage the 12 that I will write by mistake!

My Christmas break has wonderful and I have been blessed much more than I deserve! The break has been so wonderful in fact that when I got to the dentist office this afternoon for a cleaning, I realized I had forgotten to finish putting on my makeup and fixing my hair! I guess the jeans were squeezing the oxygen to my brain after spending the last week in pajamas and yoga pants. The weather has been so gloomy and rainy here that the very thought of getting dressed up and leaving the house has had absolutely no appeal to me. My boys have been content to stay home and play their new board games, video games, and have Ping Pong battles so it was an easy choice to stay home and be lazy productive! I have officially watched EVERY Hallmark Channel Christmas movie multiple times, cleaned out and organized closets and cabinets (the garage sale pile is taking over the garage), redecorated my bedroom and bathroom, read a few books, and did tons of work on my Teachers Pay Teachers store. I finally feel like I am catching up on "life"! I am sure I will be ready to go full force when we get back to school on January 7th!

We are planning to do a unit on Jan Brett books when we get back from break. Here is a picture of the story masks that I printed out years ago from the Jan Brett website and attached to paint stir sticks.  Aren't they adorable?! Click the link above to visit her website or click on the picture below to go directly to the story masks/puppets.

 We will use them to retell The Mitten....that reminds me that I need to buy a new white sheet and cut it into the shape of a mitten for the kids to crawl into when retelling the story. The kids always love this activity and they always fight over who gets to be the bear because they want to be the one to let out a very big "sneeze" and blow all of the animals out of the mitten.  

In my home living center, the kids will "sew" mittens like Matti's Grandma (from the book) using plastic canvas that has been cut into mitten shapes and these very dull, plastic needles with yarn attached to them. I have had these for about 15 years and only paid 75 cents for 3 sheets of plastic canvas and $1 for 12 of the large plastic safety needles....a $1.75 well spent!

 

Some of the kids get quite creative and "sew" letters, shapes, or  other designs in their mittens

while others just practice outlining the mitten 

and then there is the "talented" child that leaves you wondering how did they do that?!?!  The good news is that yarn is so inexpensive that you can just cut it off and not worry about untangling the mess!

 

Dice and Ice Fishing Freebie

'Tis the Season for blog neglect!

 

It is that most wonderful time of the year to be a kindergarten teacher but a very exhausting time! No time to blog! Every day is so much fun with the little ones but I got so busy that I forget to take pictures to share! They get so excited just talking about Christmas & then an elf shows up and the excitement is just too much to contain!

 

 This past week, we have been on a "trip around the world" and exploring how Christmas is celebrated in other countries. Can you believe this is my first year exploring Christmas in different cultures?!?! I have learned so much!

 

For many years our district required us follow our curriculum with "fidelity" which did not allow much room for creativity on the teacher's part. Now we did have great success with the required curriculum but it was quite boring for the students and teachers. Thank goodness Common Core Curriculum Standards came along and now we have finally been allowed and even encouraged to venture away from the curriculum in order to meet the new standards.  I don't think I have ever worked so hard, but hear me say I AM HAVING THE TIME OF MY LIFE! My kindergarten team and I have fallen in love with teaching again! We plan together every single day, during our lunch, during recess, after school and even on the phone at night! Good thing we love each other so much! TeachersPayTeachers.com has been a life saver for us... there are so many great teaching resources to help us fill in the gaps in our curriculum and they are all great ideas because they come directly from teachers in the classroom and have been used with real, live children!  Although we have spent a small fortune buying many of the thematic units, there are so many free resources available that are great. While planning for January tonight, I was reminded how useful those freebies are and threw together a quick dice game freebie. Just copy onto cardstock and laminate or print a black & white copy for each child and add 2 dice. The kids roll the dice, add the dots together (or numbers if you have number dice) and color the fish with the number on it or use counters to cover the numbers if you plan to reuse the gameboard. Now, this is my first attempt at loading a Google Doc so please let me know if you have trouble getting it!  Click on the picture below to open it.

 

 

May you have a very blessed Christmas season!

 

 

Christmas Shopping for Beginning Sounds

My little darlings love this literacy center activity! I found these adorable mini gift box ornaments at Hobby Lobby and attached pictures cards to the sides of the boxes. (removed the hooks too!)

 I put the corresponding letters on small gift bags that I had in my gift bag stash and/or from Dollar Tree.

When students go to this center they will sort the gifts into the correct bag by finding the beginning sounds of the pictures on the gifts.  Click here to get your free downloads! 

Getting Ready for Christmas

Although Thanksgiving is over, I'm loving the Cornbread Dressing leftovers! I've made good progress on getting my home decorated for Christmas and for the first time ever, I know how good it feels to have a big part of my Christmas shopping already finished!  My goal for the rest of the weekend is to finish working on some more Winter and Christmas products for my TPT store. 

We spent the two days of school during Thanksgiving week doing our annual Christmas Craft days.  Our students rotate through all four kindergarten classes and make an ornament in each classroom. By the end of the two days, each student had a total of 8 ornaments.  With the creation of Pinterest, the four of us decided to find new ornaments to make this year and get away from our outdated ornaments. 

My coworker found this adorable picture on Pinterest but the link to it was no longer valid so we had to use the picture to figure out how to create them. Ours looked very similar to these except we could not figure out what they put in the clear balls to make them colored...we tried glitter paint but it didn't turn out right so we ended up filling the reindeer, elf & Santa with brown and red shredded paper and the snowman with snow confetti.  

  

My second ornament was these adorable cupcake ornaments that I found on YouTube! I found pastel pink ornaments at Hobby Lobby and used tacky glue to paint glue from the hanger to about half way down the ornament. We then sprinkled snow confetti (irredescent) to the glue and then hot glued it into a silver mini cupcake foil liner at an angle. The cherries on top were cut from a floral pick that I also found at Hobby Lobby and hot glue on. The pretty hangers made these so elegant looking. The pastel pink was so pretty but we had trouble finding 100 of the pink ornaments so we offered the boys a choice of turquoise blue or pale green and they turned out pretty good too.

 

I plan to make an entire set of the pink for my little 3 foot tree in my house and add a candy garland to make my own "sweet" little Christmas tree!

 

Now back to the classroom...My kids will be so excited to go to the Home Living center next week. They will be sorting Christmas cookies by beginning sounds using the Gingerbread men from my Cooking Christmas cookies package, some small spatulas, cookie sheets, and some gingerbread man plates I found at Dollar Tree many years ago.

 

         

 

 

Click on the pictures above to check it out! 

 

 

I can't wait to read all of the different versions of the Gingerbread Man stories soon! Here is the Gingerbread Man is on the Loose package that we will also do during Gingerbread Man week!

 

Click on the picture to take you to this product.

 

 

 

 

Naughty or Nice? It Doesn't Matter!

 

It's that time again! Several times a year, the administrators of the Teachers Pay Teachers website host a sale in which they give up a portion of their profits in addition to any discounts that the individual sellers offer. If you use the PROMO code: CMT12 at checkout you will get a total of 25% off of your total price from my store! Go NOW and fill up your wish lists and shopping carts and then go back on Monday or Tuesday to check out while on your planning or lunch time!  I have been revising & improving most of my Christmas products so be sure to check those out!

Christmas is Coming!

I did the unthinkable! Yes, I pulled out a few of my Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving! I never do that but the Hallmark Channel keeps playing all of those Christmas movies all weekend long and I just couldn't help myself! Just a few though.  I decided to distract myself from decking the halls all of the way by revising all of my Christmas products on TPT. This time last year I was just getting started and learning all about creating things to sell so the quality just wasn't the best. Boy have I learned alot in the past year and made many revisions to my things but I'm not finished just yet. Here are some of the new and/or improved things I have so far... If you have bought any of these (any of my things really) then go to My Purchases on the TPT homepage and check for any updates. You can also click on the pictures to take you directly to the product. The weekend isn't over yet so check back again in a few days!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Have a Blessed Thanksgiving!

 

 

 

Winter: Hibernate, Migrate, or Stay Active?

We spent last week learning about how animals get ready for the winter! With the new time change and it getting dark much earlier, I have been getting ready for winter a little myself! I love coming home from school and putting on my warm, fuzzy pajamas and enjoying soup that is waiting on me in the crockpot. To make it even better, the Hallmark channel has already been showing Christmas movies all weekend. No better way to get ready for winter for me!

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Now back to the animals... we started talking about how animals that stay active in the winter prepare for winter by growing thicker fur and storing up food. Our math activity was supposed to have my little "squirrels" search the room for nuts such as acorns, walnuts, and pecans and then sort, count, and graph them. (I had a little "nut" issue so we didn't get to do this activity yet).

Then we talked about how some animals hibernate and sleep the winter away (that would be me!) When we talked about how some animals migrate, we watched a short BrainPop Jr. video that showed how the geese fly to the south in a V formation so they can find food. I taught the kids Dr. Jean's song called Directions to learn about North, South, East, & West and pulled out a map & globe to show where we are (Southeast TN) and where the North & South would be. Good to bring in the discussion of where the North & South Poles are since Christmas is coming soon. I also have magnets in my science center which brought up a good teachable moment to talk about the North & South Poles of a magnet.

I hung up a sign in the North side of the classroom where my little "geese" shivered in the cold and had trouble finding fish to eat because the lakes were frozen.

 

 It took a little team work to get my geese into a V formation (masking tape on the floor made this a bit easier to organize) and then we talked about how the leader had the hardest job of flying against the wind and then practiced "flying" across the room in our V formation.

 

 

 Once we got to the South, the kids easily found fish to eat (Goldfish crackers) and loved using their "beaks" to eat them.

 

 

I found some of these fun ideas from http://www.littlegiraffes.com/animalsinwinter.html. She has a great unit for Animals Getting Ready for Winter, just wish we had more time to do more of the activities!