Back from Vacation and Working on the Challenge

My family just returned from our summer vacation yesterday.  We took the kids to Cancun (their first time out of the country) and we had an amazing time.  We went river rafting, snorkeling, zip lining, tubing, shopping and, of course, swimming!

Now I'm catching up on laundry, bills and blogging!  I'm also working on the Clipart Challenge and am excited to post my FREE pack for everyone on Friday!  Don't miss out on being introduced to a bunch of new clipart artists and some new products being created by some fantastic bloggers!  Check back on Friday!!

End of Year Gift for Kids

SUPER cheap SUPER easy end of year gifts for your class:

*Pop Rocks from dollar store (3 for $1.00!)

*Avery Stickers #5963

(or you could just print them off on paper and tape them on)

DONE!

(Click HERE for your FREE copy.)

I was surprised how many of my kids had never had Pop Rocks before.  It was cute to watch their expressions as they ate them!

Day 1 of Summer Break for me and enjoying every minute of it! 



End of Year, Decompression & A Challenge!

I have been the WORST blogger in the history of bloggers this year!  Confession:  Common Core is kicking my butt!  I haven't had time to do anything except eat, sleep, drink and dream Common Core.  I'm thinking of having them tattooed on my arm so that I can cross them off with a sharpie after I've taught them.  

But now. . . the year is over for me!  Kids are gone, walls are cleared and my desk is packed away! I can breathe, read for pleasure and of course start thinking about next year!  

To start the summer off I am participating in a Clip Art Challenge hosted by the wonderful ladies over at Primary Possibilities.  I have been asked to create a teaching product using Dancing Crayon Designs clip art.  The post with all the products will go live June 7 so keep checking back for updates!

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:

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!

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.

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:

Guest Blogger and Friend HoJo -- with FREEBIES!

Hey all! It's Heather - better known as HoJo - from HoJo's Teaching Adventures. Michelle has been a bit preoccupied lately with all things school (you can relate to that, right?) so I decided to step in for her.

I'm going to keep this short and sweet, but I want to share some amazing freebies with you! I currently have 58 products for Kindergarten in my Teachers Pay Teachers store, and 19 of them are FREE! I'm going to highlight a few of my favorites below. =)

Just click on any of the pictures below to get your free copy directly from TpT!

This product is one I created so student recognize a variety of fonts. It's perfect for centers, independent worksheets, and even for homeschooling parents!

This product with ask your Kindergarten students to differentiate between short and long A. They will cut the pictures apart and glue them into the correct column. This was a favorite of my Kindergarten students. {Heck - anything involving glue was!}

This activity was one my students used all year in centers. They had to cut and paste {I told you they loved glue!} the letters into the correct circles. Each circle ends up with the same amount of letters, so they're really easy for students to understand and to grade!

This is one of my Magic Square puzzles. Students match the correct short A word to the picture. The words around the outside are other short A words, but there are no pictures to match. These are great for gifted students or those who are ready for more of a challenge. 

If your students struggle with estimation, this is the packet for you! These six pictures allow you to have your students practice estimating the area or perimeter of each shape. They print great in color so you can laminate them and use them in centers for several weeks!

And finally here's another Magic Square product. This one has students match the lowercase letters with their uppercase partners. Again these are particularly good for your higher students.

There you have it folks! A few of my favorite freebies all located in one place! I'd love to hear what you think of them either below in the comments below in the feedback section on TpT.

Take care!

~HoJo~

100th Day has come and gone!

Our 100th day was last week.

We sorted beads (10 groups of 10 of different colors) and made 100 day necklaces.

We made 100 day masks and played "Race to 100" game.

We worked in our Zero the Hero books and he brought us a 100 day treat.

We also went to the computer lab and created 100 day art using a game found at ABCya.

We had a few more activities planned but ended up having a 2 hour late start because of the weather (which I can't complain about at all. . .who wouldn't love to sleep in 2 extra hours!!)

To check out lasts year's 100th day post click HERE

Numbers 11-20 (They are sooooo ready for this!)

After a LOT of number sense activities on numbers 0-10 my class is sooooo ready to move on to bigger numbers!  (To see some of our 0-10 activities click HERE.)

Now all our hard work has paid off and this next step has been easy breezy!

We start by singing this song at the beginning of each math lesson:

   

Then we practice writing, decomposing and find the number with this page:

Then the next day we sing the song again and then we do a circle map and practice writing the number again with this page:

Then we go to our math buckets and practice counting bigger numbers using our manipulatives and tens frames!
They are EXTREMELY independent with this!  All our number sense work has really paid off!

If you're interested in these pages they are on TPT for only $3.00!