Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Prizes, Peeps and I'm Pooped!


Prizes!  
(YAY!)
Kimberly Ann over at Live, Laugh, I LOVE Kindergarten is having a fantastic giveaway to celebrate 300 followers!  Hop on over, enter her giveaways and leave her some love while you're there!


Peeps!
Not the cutest glyph ever but it was fun and it served it's purpose!
Question #1:  What is your favorite color of Peep?
(paint peep that color)

Question #2:  Which part of the Peep do you eat first (1 ear, 2 ears or the tummy?)
(cut that part of the peep off)

Question #3:  Do you like Peeps? 
Of course for this question we actually tasted a Peep so it was the kids' FAVORITE question.
(yes= draw on a face   no= no face)


adorable:  no!        Fun:  yes!

We hung them up and then analyzed our glyphs and recorded the data. 
 
Click HERE for your freebie.



I'm Pooped!
conferences
kindergarten screening
report card
budget
Peep art project
Daughter's birthday party
science fair
color eggs
clean house 
brunch with in-laws in newly cleaned house

The "TO DO" list is getting shorter but I still look and feel like this: 



And this is just SO true:




Monday, March 25, 2013

Duck or Rabibit& A Fantastic Blog Giveaway!

First of all, head over to Happy Teacher Heaven blog right away and sign up for her awesome 100 followers giveaway!  So many great prizes!  Leave Amy some love while you're there and sign up to follower her fabulous blog!  
Click the pic to go there now!


And now for some Easter love:
It never fails. . . this time of year by lovely kinders become as close as brothers and sisters.  Along with that fantastic bond comes. . . fighting, arguing, bossing and all other sorts of fun (haha) issues.

So, this is the PERFECT time of year to read the book Duck!  Rabbit!  by Amy Krouse.  

In the book 2 kids are fighting over whether the picture is of a duck or a rabbit.  (This book is on Tumblebooks if you have an account.)

We read the story and then graphed our opinion.
Of course, half way through the story the kids started to argue whether it was a duck or a rabbit!
After we graphed our opinion we found out that we are ALL right (or all wrong depending on how you look at it.)  We had a great discussion
on how arguing is silly and not very likable and that it's ok if we aren't always "right" and our friends aren't always "wrong."

Then we finished this art project to remind ourselves of this important lesson.
Sadly, I don't have a copy of this project saved to a file.  I got it from the wonderful teacher I student taught under 16 years ago! 

Later that day 2 of my cuties started to fight over something silly and inconsequential and all I had to say was, "Duck or rabbit?" and the fighting stopped immediately!  Woo hoo!  =)

Celebrate the little things!


Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Dinosaurs! (FREEBIE!)

This week we've been very engaged in Deanna Jump's Dinosaur pack.  It is fantastic. . . of course!  We added a few small activities to her pack and the kids had a blast!  Here are some pictures of our dinosaur exploration:

 Here is the worksheet we used when exploring dinosaur sizes.


We compared a T-Rex's footprint with a Triceratops footprint.

We compared our feet to a T-Rex's foot.


We put our shoes on the Triceratops footprint to see how many of our feet it would take to fill it up. 

We compared lengths of dinosaurs.  This is the the length of a Triceratops.

We laid down to see if we would be the same length of a Brontosaurus if we put all of our class together in a long line.  The answer. . . NO!  We were about 3/4 the length of a Brontosaurus.




Tomorrow we will be paleontologist.  We'll excavate chocolate chips from cookies and make dinosaur fossil impressions!

For a freebie of the worksheet you see at the top and a few more extras click HERE.


Sunday, March 3, 2013

What we've been up to...

I'm so thankful to HoJo for guest blogging for me this week!  I've been on a beautiful little island in Mexico called Holbox Island:



No cars, no cell phone reception, no work, no kids!
Sigh. . . it was a fantastic week and I got a little spoiled with no obligations. . .

BUT back to work I go!

Here's a little bit of what we did this week:

PIRATES!
We have another week of pirate fun and then I'll post more in detail and I'll have a Pirate Pack added to TPT!

HANDWRITING ANIMAL/SPELLING:
We spend the first 1/2 of the year learning to write the alphabet using our animals friends.  Now that we know all the letters we use our knowledge of the handwriting animals to practice our spelling words.  For more on these special animals you can click HERE to check out old blog posts about them and pick up a freebie of the page you see above.

MATH/CALENDAR BINDERS:
We're working hard on recognizing and ordering numbers to 20.  The kids are also having great time working in their Calendar Binders. You can check out my calendar binders on TPT by clicking HERE.  I plan on doing a little updating this summer to add more common core elements.

This week is Kindergarten Screening so I'll be out of the classroom for 2 days meeting all the new darlings that will be coming to K next year.  Another busy week.  Good thing I have this picture on my desktop to remind me to slow down and enjoy life: