What is Not Wrong!

So I'm a little late linking up on this one but better late than never. It's been kind of a wild week and I've had a few rough days so I thought I needed to stop and look at what is not wrong.

So here are 5 things that are not wrong:
1. It's not wrong that we're going on  a field trip today to the aquarium. This is one of my favorites. Here are a couple of pictures of what we saw.

2. It's not wrong that I only have one more teacher evaluation left this year and I've now gotten the one I was dreading out of the way.
3. It's not wrong that my wedding is basically planned.
4. It's not wrong that my kids love my new game that I created. The Hammer game. Here's a couple of pictures of them playing this game.

I found these hammers in the dollar section at Target because I knew I could come up with a game. So I made some cards with nails on them and different popcorn words and word family words. My kids are loving it. I started tutoring yesterday with a few kids and we played in the afternoon. I call out a word and who ever hits it first with the hammer gets to keep it. You can purchase this in my Teacher's Notebook store. It's the Tools for Word Work packet. You can get it for $2.50.
5. It's not wrong that some of my kids are reading and writing up a storm. One of my kids outside today wrote about 13 different superhero and villain names. He did a decent job spelling them all too.
Anyway, link up with Carried Away in Kindergarten to celebrate what is not wrong.

A peek at my week

I have not keep with my blogging this week. I've been sooooo busy. I had my first evaluation and it went really well but I was still stressed out about it. I'm having some trouble balancing all the things I want to do with my kids. I see so many good ideas out in the blogging world that I want to try and I get a little too gung ho. We just had a lot going on this week. Our unit in reading is about friendship. Our letter is s, so I wanted to do some spider activities. Then we had a field trip on Tuesday about our five senses.
Here's a couple of pictures from our trip:

This is the talking chimeny. The kids get the funniest look on their faces when it talks to them.

One of their finds when using their sense of sight like the owls.

One of the students using his sense of touch to hug a tree.

Three units is kind of hard to pull off. Luckily friendship is a 3 week unit in reading so I can pull a few of the ideas I've been wanting to do. This week we worked on a kind word lesson. I can't find where I saw the original idea. I've looked several times so if you know the source please let me know. I like to give credit. I drew a picture of Fred, the friendly guy. After talking about what friends do together, we talked about what kind of words friends say to each other. I let them say all the negative things and they crinkled up Fred. Then we said kind words and they smoothed him down. We talked about how those unkind words stick around. I hung Fred up by our clip chart. I overheard one of the girls say that every time they go back there they should smooth Fred out a little bit more. It was so cute.

Here's our Fred the friendly guy. Sorry the picture is so dark.

 My big Friday plan was to work on some spider activities. But as it turned out, my day was completely derailed by a health fair.  Which during this health fair, one of my students turned blue because he was having trouble breathing. We finally made it back to the classroom with about 30 minutes of instruction time and we did a few of the spider activities quickly. We did an awesome experiment from Deanna Jump's Simple Science Volume 1. We talked about why spider don't stick to their webs and read Eric Carle's The Busy Spider. We also completed a tree map about spiders. I had plans of us making webs and drawing and labeling a spider. Maybe we'll get to finish up next week.

Here's are tree map of spiders. I thought the kids came up with good ideas for our first one.

After art, we went outside and one of kids fell off  and hurt himself. I dropped him off at the nurse because he's usually pretty capable of making it back to the classroom. It was time for my 12:30 kids to go home and I go to the nurse to get him and he's not there. I see the nurse and she said she had sent him back to the classroom. He never made it and he wasn't in the hallway. I checked the office and he wasn't there either. I was in full panic mode at this point. It turned out he had gone outside the school and was just standing and crying. His mom happened to be picking him up early today so she was there. I'm pretty sure I had years take off my life today. Anyway, that's a peek into my crazy week.
I hope to get some scheduled posts written this weekend with some freebies. So check back later. I'm only 6 followers away from my first giveaway.

Check out what other bloggers have done in their classroom this week by going to The Clutter-Free Classroom's Linky Party. 

Monday, Monday!

I was lucky enough to spend the weekend with a good teaching friend. She and I started teaching together 8 years ago (I think.) We've both been at different schools and had different jobs since then but it's so fun how you can be away from someone for a while and nothing really change. Because she was here and I forgot my school laptop at school, I didn't get my s flipchart done until tonight. If you would like to download it, click here. You have to have the active inspire software to download and use it. I wish I knew how to make it in other formats for those without the software but I don't know.
Tomorrow we go on our second field trip. I'm pretty excited. It's usually the kids' favorite. It focuses on using their five senses and they get to see the talking chimney. Hopefully I'll have a few pictures to share later this week. We've been talking a little about our five senses and I'd love to do some of those cool projects I've seen in blog land. I especially like the projects over at Pencils, Glue and Tying Shoes. Since it's s week, we're going to do some science from Deanna Jump's science kit about spiders. I can't wait.
One last random thought, I'm at 43 followers and have decided once I reach 50 I'm going to have a giveaway. My new favorite store to get all stuff wonderful and teaching related to help me with ideas from blogs is Dollar Tree. So when I get to 50 followers, I'll be giving away a $10.00 give card for Dollar Tree. So spread the word. Hope you had a happy Monday.

First Field Trip!

Yesterday was our first field trip. We are lucky enough to be right down the road from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and we have an incredible partnership with the park. Each grade level gets to go on 3 field trips as parks as a classroom. The trips incorporate both science and social studies units and are aligned with our standards. In kindergarten, we do two trips in the Fall and one in the Spring. Our first one was to the headquarters to learn about the different community helper jobs the park rangers have. Here are a  couple of books I like to read with my kids to get them ready for the National Park. I also like the book Troublesome Cub but couldn't get an image of it.

We start out by talking about how the National Park is not like an amusement park or playground. We also spend a lot of time talking about Leave No Trace ethics. It is an important part of our partnership to instill stewardship and a love for the park from an early age. 

The students got to hear from a Tennessee Wildlife Resource agent about bears. They sorted some different foods as to what is healthy for a bear and what is not. Then they talked about what to do if you see a bear. Where we live, it is a good chance you could come across a bear. Then they got to touch a "bear carpet" as one of the kids called it.

The next part of the trip, they got to hear about the law enforcement and paramedic part of the park. They were shown what happens if someone gets hurt on a trail and how they get them out. They also got to try on handcuffs and hear the sirens. All in all, it was a fun morning. I was so proud of how well they behaved and it was a good first field trip. Our next one is next week and we learn about our 5 senses with a talking chimney. What kind of field trips do you go on with your class?