100th Day Recap

Today is snow day #12 fir this school year. We did finally make it to the 100th day on Tuesday. I really wasn't as prepared as I like to be. Mainly because I wasn't convinced we were going to go to school on Tuesday and we've been out so much. But we had a good day. We spent the afternoon celebrating with a rotation of 4 activities.

1. Building something with 100 cups.

Once they realized they needed to work together they did a great job!

2. Making a design out of 100 pattern blocks.

3. Race to 100 

4. A hat - they used 10 strips of construction paper and bingo daubers to make 100 dots for the hats. I saw this on Pinterest.

I had wanted to make a necklace out of fruit loops but it didn't happen. A rotation of activities is my favorite way I've done the 100th day. It was easy to manage and they all got to do activities. I'll have my kids again for first grade so I'm already thinking about what I want to do then.

I'm thinking we won't go back to school this week. We have about 6 inches of snow. I was really not wanting anymore snow but I'm not feeling well so it is nice to have these days to rest up. 

Do you have snow where you live? 

Christmas Cheer!

I'm a little late in posting all our Christmas fun but I took a bunch of pictures that I wanted to share.

This is our elf, Arthur! The kids and I had so much fun with him. I think he's cuter than the Elf on the Shelf but I might be biased!

This was my favorite antic he pulled. He brought us Wrapped Christmas books one day and our leader each day unwrapped one. We read Aliens Love Panta Claus and then the next day Arthur decorated the tree in underpants.

This was Chris and I's third Christmas together. I had a prelit tree I put up before we got together. Now we go get a real one and decorate it together!

Here are some of the centers we did the last few weeks of school. Some had a Gingerbread theme!

I love my sensory bin this month. It was all holiday and Christmassy!

For math we read a poem 5 little Ornaments! Then they wrote their own subtraction problem.

More of Arthur's antics. The Gingerbread man showed up and stole our cookies. We had to go search for them.

This is my sweet niece elfed! She came and stayed with Chris and I one night which was a lot of fun. I took this picture and then elfed it. I. I took my iPad to school and let all the kids elf a picture of themselves. We then made Christmas cards for their families!

Arthur wrapped our door for his last hurrah!

I made these goodies for our class party. It was the calmest party ever. My sister brought my niece and it was a lot of fun.

We had our first annual tacky sweater contest. I should have won but I wasn't in it since I organized and got the prizes.

These are all the presents under our tree! I enjoyed all the wrapping and buying this year.

We got my dad a skateboard and my niece got a tricycle. They were funny trying them out on Christmas Eve!

Here is my fruit tray I made for Chris's grandmother's house. I think this is my new job. I made a turkey at Thanksgiving so I was asked to make another.

My hubby bought me this beautiful buttery leather for Christmas! I've been wanting my very own Micheal Kors purse! I love love love it!

This was the pic we used for our Christmas card! I hope you and yours had a very  merry Christmas! I am blessed beyond my wildest dreams!

You might remember me posting about a student at my school who was diagnosed with brain cancer almost a year ago. His dad teaches with me. We'll he passes away early Christmas morning. My heart is so heavy for the family even though I know Regan is with Jesus and suffering no more. Please say a prayer for this family!

Turkey Time! and a freebie

I haven't blogged in way too long! I hate it. I miss chatting with my bloggy friends. Life has just been too busy lately and I haven't had the energy to blog much. But I'm hoping to catch up over my Thanksgiving break. I'm so jealous of all you that have the whole week off. But I'm thankful for my 2 and a half days off I have. I was talking to one bloggy friend who only gets Thursday off. I am in need of this break badly. Anyway, this is just a quick post to share a freebie for those of you that are in school this week too. It's a color by sight word page that reviews some sight words from journeys. We just finished lesson 11.

You can click here to get the freebie on google docs. 

I also have a freebie in my tpt store that is a fun counting activity with a Thanksgiving theme. Check it out here. 
Even though it would be nice to have the whole week off I'm going to enjoy the days I've got with my kids. I sent home the Disguise a Turkey project a few weeks ago and it's suppose to come back tomorrow. I've gotten a few in and can't wait to see them all. So far they are looking good. Wednesday for our half day we're going to have a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Feast with our Fourth grade buddies. We'll watch the dvd and then compare it to a book. Then feast on popcorn, jelly beans and pretzels. It should be a good day. Hopefully over the break, I'll have the chance to share what we've been doing with our buddies. We've had a blast with them lately and learned a lot. So how long do you get for a break? If you are going to be in school this week, what do you have planned?

March Madness

I can't believe it is March already. It blows my mind that we are so far into the school year. We got an email from our assistant principal today saying there were only 52 more days left of school. What!? I still have so much to do. Plus I love this group of students and their families. I've had them for almost 2 years now. It will be so hard to say good bye to them. I think I have worked this group harder and expected more than I ever had. This is in part due to the discovery of blogging and Teachers Pay Teachers. I've said it before but it really has made me a much better teacher. The best part of blogging is all the friends I've made through it. Chris is always trying to figure out if I'm talking about friends that I've actually met or ones that I just know through the computer. It's even better when I've met them in real life and we're friends through the computer. I'm so thankful for my Kinderland friends. If you don't follow this pinterest board or haven't checked out the google + community yet, you need to. There are some great ideas there.
We are currently having a sale on our TPT stores.


There was also a product swap but I was a slacker this weekend and didn't get my stuff together. Chris and I went to Bluegrass Underground. (It was a bluegrass concert in a cave. They air it on PBS and they were taping for their November shows this past weekend. I have some cool pictures I'm planning an activity for) It was so fun but about 3 and a half hours away and we spent Sunday getting caught up. I was paired up with Greg from Kindergarten Smorgasbord. If you haven't checked his blog out, you need to stop reading this post and head over there right now. He's got great ideas and great stuff. And he's a fellow Tennessean.
He sent me his Basketball Math and Literacy Madness pack. This pack has so much in it that I'm not ready to post about it fully. I don't have enough pictures to do it justice yet. But today we used his addition fact cards to play around the world and the kids had a blast.

Click Here to Check this out on TPT

So sometime this week, I'll be showing you all the basketball fun we're having in class. We're going to be using some of the literacy activities in small groups.  So stayed tune!
I spent some time today updating a couple of the packs I made last year. I worked on my Buggy for Words and my Sweet Treats. Buggy for Words just needed a little cleaning up but the Sweet Treats was a hot mess. It was the first unit I made. It has some good activities but it looks a lot cleaner and more put together now.

Click here to check out this activity on TPT.  

I am getting these activities out this week to use with my small groups. I have one group that still needs to be working on blending words so we're going to use the letter cards.

Click Here to check this activity out on TPT

This is a whole math unit that has a lot of problem solving activities. There is addition, number order, graphing and a glyph activity. Be sure to check it out. I'm having a sale through tomorrow so check out the new stuff I have in my store.
I'll be back later this week with some freebies and more information on Greg's awesome Basketball Activities.
 

What a seusstastic week!

Oh my gosh. We had so much fun this week with Dr. Seuss. It was a busy week though and I didn't have time to post all week when I had tons to share. I've got to start scheduling some posts on the weekend. Here's what we did this week: Monday we read The Cat in the Hat and made our own Things. I was inspired by a pin I had pinned and could never find the original source. I like to do art projects with writing usually but this one was just an art project. I know there is a lot of debate about doing art for the sake of art. But I think it ties into listening and following directions. I gave my students the colors of construction paper they needed and then they had to follow my directions to cut it correctly. They all turned out differently. I forgot to take a picture of all of them completed, but here's a picture of my example. 
Tuesday we read Green Eggs and Ham. We played a fun rhyming game that I got from Preschool Printables. We also completed the freebie that Jennifer from Blue Skies in First Grade posted from her labeling packet.
Wednesday we read Horton Hears a Who and completed text to self connections about how we were good friends. We started the book If I Ran the Zoo on Wednesday and then finished it on Thursday. It was not a book I planned to read but we needed a time filler. On Thursday we finished the book and then they drew their own animals for the zoo. They did a good job with being creative and coming up with different animals than your usual zoo animals.
Friday was The Lorax day. We read the Lorax and then made our own mustaches. I have pictures but my computer is not cooperating with me and let me upload the pictures from my camera. I loved the mustaches that I had seen on Pinterest and other blogs. I had them write a sentence about what they could do to help the environment. They loved the mustaches. Then they made Lorax backgrounds and added truffula trees with straws and Easter grass. They turned out really cute. I had planned on making those blue jello with the red gummy fish I had seen on pinterest for the kids as a snack. But I couldn't find any gummy fish. So I made strawberry jello and bought some cool whip. We had cat in the hat parfaits. They were yummy but I didn't get a picture of them.

One of the other teacher's mom came dressed as the Cat in the Hat and read to the kids. And then the afternoon got crazy. We were sent back to our classrooms to practice tornado drills and were not allowed to leave the room. Luckily the storms blew over us without a lot happening. Other than some terrified kindergartners because they kept hearing the word tornado over and over. They were so hyped up on thinking something bad was going to happen that one of my students when it was time to go home asked me "Is there really a missile coming to the school?" I had no idea what he was talking about. He then said she said that on the intercom. Turns out he heard the assistant principal say the word mission and thought she said missile. It was a little crazy.
I have received two awards this week and I hope to post about them tomorrow. Meanwhile, I have a few freebies for you. I love doing literacy bags with my kids. The next few weeks we're going to be doing a Dr. Seuss literacy bag. Here's the information I'm sending with the bag. Even if you don't use the bag idea, you can use the sheet to have your students write about their favorite Dr. Seuss book. The graphics are from the 3 AM teacher. I'm also giving you my homework from last week as a freebie. The graphics are from 3 AM teacher and scrappin doodles. I used part of One Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, Two Fish as their reading homework.   If you download these let me know and leave me a comment on how you spent your week. I think we're going to continue a few more Dr. Seuss activities next week in  centers and our homework.
Dr. Seuss Literacy Bag
One Fish, Red Fish Homework

Read Across America Freebies

I'm so excited about this week. I love Read Across America week. We have a dress up day associated with a Dr. Seuss book each day. Today is multicolored clothes day for the book My Many Multicolored Days; Tuesday is green day for Green Eggs and Ham; Wednesday is Who hair day for Horton Hears a Who; Thursday is crazy sock day for Fox in Socks; Friday is crazy hat day for the Cat in the Hat. On Friday, our librarian has arranged a variety of readers from the community and school system to read to our classes. My wonderful fiance Chris is going to read to the 7th and 8th graders. Last year he did The Tell Tell Heart and they loved it. This is just another one of his many talents. He's pretty good at drama type things.
I'm going to read a different Dr. Seuss book each day and do a craftivity to go with it. I haven't quite decided what I'm doing for each book. I've seen so many great ideas on other blogs and pinterest. Our weekly reading homework is even Dr. Seuss. I took an excerpt from Red Fish, Blue Fish, One Fish, Two Fish.  a

I've updated the freebie to some clipart that is acceptable with copyright issues. I hope you can use it.
Click here to get that freebie. 
I'm even wanting to do some Seuss themed snacks. I'm so excited. What do you do at your school for Read Across America? Please leave me some comment love if you download this packet. I'm hoping to do some similar games with other themes so I would love some feedback.

Freebie Friday (A day late)

I had every intention of posting this yesterday afternoon, but I was not feeling well yesterday. I think I have a sinus infection and I was feeling awful yesterday. I just came home and crashed.
We had a teddy bear day yesterday. One of letters of the week last week was b. So we read different things about bears all week long.
We started the day by doing our read to self as read to our bear. The kids have reached 15 minutes which was our goal for this year. I'm really proud of how well they are doing. I need to spend a little more time in some mini lessons before letting them read. I have one little girl who gets really upset during read to self. She was crying but seems to be adjusting. We haven't quite figured out what was going on with the tears. But hopefully she'll get used to it. Our poem of the week came from Kristin at A Teeny Tiny Teacher. The kids did an awesome job with it this week. They were able to read it pretty fluently by the end of the week. We read A Bear Snores On and discussed some Text to Text connections.

Click Here to get your own copy.

Kristin had some other great ideas for Teddy Bear activities. I was inspired by her gummy bear activity to create my own. I was going to use hers but then I remembered my kids don't know how to subtract. So I gave my students 10 gummy bears to use as counters to solve the addition problems. So check it out here. The graphics are from KPM Doodles.
I'm working on one more post for my praise challenge to post hopefully tomorrow. But if you have a praise you want to share please comment below. If you grab my Teddy bear sheet, leave me a comment as well.

This week in Ms. Kerri's Room

I'm having a much better week this week. I think an attitude adjustment on my part has helped. Last week I was so cranky and the kids were awful. This week (I know it's only been 2 days) has been a lot better. I think it helps that we're doing a review week in reading. We started our Gingerbread Unit this week. This is the first time I'm doing this unit with my kindergartners. I only had the standard gingerbread books, then Stinky Cheese Man and the Runaway Tortilla. But last week I placed a Scholastic order and added to my collection. These are the books we're reading this week: The Gingerbread Man (Jan Brett), The Gingerbread Boy, The Gingerbread Baby, The Stinky Cheese Man, The Runaway Tortilla, The Gingerbread Girl, and The Gingerbread Pirates. We have to go to school 3 days next week so we're going to continue reading them. My kids have been so excited about it. When I told them Monday what books we were reading, one of my more enthusiastic students exclaimed, "Oh Man! This is going to be Awesome!" We're then making a chart to compare the stories. Currently the chart is just a table on my promethean board. But after seeing some really cool anchor charts out there, I might have to spruce mine up a bit.  Friday the kids are going to decorate a real cookie and we're making a bean gingerbread man. I took the foam gingerbread men from the dollar section at target and a bunch of beans I've had for a variety of things and turned into this week's art center. Here's my example:
Elf on a shelf update. Monday Rainbow returned from the North Pole. The kids were worried he wasn't going to come back after they had a rough day on Friday. I had my best inspiration for a place for him yesterday. He was ziplining on a ribbon from the light to the flag pole. The kids went crazy over it when they came in. But during center time he fell. It was awful. The kids were freaking out hoping he was ok. Luckily while they were taking a bathroom break he climbed back up on the flag pole. It was a close one. Tomorrow, my boyfriend thinks Rainbow should be camping in a tent. We will see. He wants to set up his big tent. I think maybe we should just make a small tent for him. We've been writing in our Elf journals everyday and it's a great opportunity to work on some writing skills. I'm trying to train them to be more independent writers and sound words out. It's working out ok. But I can see I need to work more on some writing instruction after Christmas. Does anyone else have a list of things to implement after the break? (I'm thinking that's a whole post in itself.)
Anyway, I leave you with a picture of our Elf Rainbow. How's your week going? We have five more days of school before the holidays and I can't wait.

Long Term Planning

Does anyone else get caught up in reading all the wonderful blogs out there and want to do it all in their classroom? I get so many ideas and it's so hard to include it all in. I sat down today to looked at what I was suppose to do for the next nine weeks until Christmas break. I think I figured out ways to fit in what I want to do. Here's a rough outline of my plan:

Oct. 24-28 - The Letter t and transportation - I'm going to work on tractors and trucks and hopefully the at and am word families.
Oct. 31-Nov. 4 - The letter i and more transportation is what I'm suppose to do. I want to fit in Mo Williams and his pigeon books to work on writing. And also the it word family
Nov. 7 - 11 - Review week for letter i and t and still more transportation. We're suppose to read the David Shannon book - Duck on a bike so I'm thinking a David Shannon author study.
Nov. 14-18 - the letter N and food. I have been dying to do a farm unit after seeing all the cute stuff online. My boyfriend is a vet and he's been through a lot of agriculture classes and is a big advocate for agriculture education for students. an and in word families
Nov. 21-23 - Thanksgiving Unit
Nov. 28-Dec. 2 the letter c and food. I'm thinking a cupcake unit that would lead into healthy eating habits
Dec. 5-9 - Review of n and c, food - nutrition and noodles
Dec. 12-16 - The letter o and animals - A living organism unit
Dec. 19-21 - Christmas/Gingerbread Man
I recognize these are super ambitious plans. But it seems a little more manageable to see it written out with a plan. I think some of it flows well into each other. The David Shannon book Duck on  Bike takes place on a farm so it will lead into a farm unit well. Food and Thanksgiving seem to go hand in hand. The hardest thing I've had to try to fit in was a Mo Williams author study. I have really been wanting to include this somewhere in my plans. I thought about the letter p but then I got caught up in pumpkins and Pete the cat. But I think buses go with transportation and we really need to be working on our writing skills.
I also have been working on literacy stations and small groups. I'm hoping to start having the kids rotate to two different stations a day and meet with 3 reading groups a day. This week will be an interesting trial in it. I'm going to be out Monday and Tuesday. I'm really excited because I'm going camping with my boyfriend. No school or thinking about school for a couple of days. Well at least I can't be on the computer working on school stuff. I wish I could get it out of my mind sometimes.
How do you cope with all the fantastic ideas out there in blog land? Do you do long range plans? This is my first go at it in this kind of detail. Hopefully I'll be able to carry it out. If you have any advice, I'd love to hear it.

P is for Pumpkin

P flipchart

P book

Pumpkin Glyph Activity

If you use any of activities or freebies, please leave a comment. It's nice to know someone is using what I'm working on.