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.
 

School's out for Summer!

Well, almost. Today was my last day with my kids. At least until August. I'll be teaching my same class for first grade next year.
I feel like I've dropped off the blogging radar. I have over 600 posts in my google reader and I haven't posted anything worthy of sharing. But today I have a few things to share and I hope to get back on a blogging schedule by this weekend. I am suppose to guest blog later this week. I hope my brain is working by then.
I've been seeing all kinds of cute end of the year gifts out there in blog land. I've never really done any end of the year gifts for my kids. I usually take them to the Donut Friar. I teach in downtown Gatlinburg, TN. If you ever come visit, you need to go to the Village. It has some of the best stores and shops in town. I worked at a shop there in high school and in college. We can walk there from the school. So Friday we walked over and the kids got donuts.

This bird was literally begging my kids for pieces of their donuts. It was funny and one of my kids insisted I take a picture.
Well, this weekend I decided I would do a gift for my parent volunteers and then decided I would also make something for my kids.
For my parent volunteers, I bagged up a sugar cookie bar and added a cute ribbon. I also made them a picture frame and added a picture of their child on the first day of school.

I added a tag I downloaded from The Teacher Wife that said it was a treat to have your help this year. I had some time to kill on Sunday while Chris was at the jail. He's a Gideon and does a church service at the jail once a month. There is a big lots really close. I shopped around in there and found some little cups. I ended up taking those and writing the kid's name and then "Kindergarten was all good." I added a cool straw, bubbles, a notepad and a pencil. They seemed to like them.

We had an end of the year party today. The kids enjoyed playing some games stacking cups and then using a straw to blow the cup across the table. It was a great way to end the school year. It usually isn't that sad since I'll have them again, but one of boys who I'll miss dearly is changing schools next year. I was sad to say goodbye to him.
So I've finally finished some of my clutter free classroom challenge. I usually don't clean stuff out very well at the end of the school year. It usually happens in the summer when I'm getting ready to go back. But this year, I cleaned out 2 of my cabinets and some files before the end of the year. Well I was going to share a couple of pictures but my computer is not cooperating. Oh well. Maybe I'll do a before and after post later this week. I'm getting so excited about summer. I still have 2 and a half days to get through before I'm truly free. I getting to keep my niece one day a week for the summer and I'm super excited. I hope to try some fun learning things with her. She's only 1 and a half but she's a little sponge. How's your summer shaping up?

Is it spring break yet?

Yesterday I was so cranky. I just wanted spring break to be here. I'm exhausted and my kids are exhausted. We haven't had a day off since February and they are tired of each other. Which is in turn making me cranky. I can not handle the fighting anymore. Monday and Tuesday were great days. But Wednesday they just couldn't hold it together. It could be because we spent about an hour and half at a play yesterday morning. It was an awesome play put on by the middle school kids at my school of Alice and Wonderland. But it was not their usual routine and they had to sit for a long time. And be quiet for a long time. So they took all this out of me and I was cranky by the end of the day. Luckily I had a date with my cutie pie niece, Sophie after school. That instantly brightened my day.

So I haven't gotten all the egg activities and insect activities finished that I wanted to this week. I think I'm going to continue some of the egg activities the week after we get back from Spring break. I think they'll make good Math centers. Is that awful of me? Will the kids be over Easter eggs when it's a week past Easter? I have such a hard time getting everything in. I plan stuff and then other things take too long.
We're still going to be working on ladybugs a bit since we're "raising" some. I'm hoping that they won't turn into full adult ladybugs until after we get back from Spring break. According to a book we read, we should be ok. We stared a life cycle picture. All we've done so far is the eggs and the larva stage. I wanted them to use the ladybugs we have to draw their pictures from.
Meanwhile, we're going to keep a ladybug journal. I've made a template to share with you. My new favorite way to share documents is scribd. I like that I can see how many times it's downloaded. The clipart is from Graphics from the pond and the 3 AM teacher.

Ladybug Journal It's amazing how many people download things and don't leave any comments. I use to be guilty of that. I'll admit it. When I first started blog stalking, I would download tons of free resources and never leave any love for the blogger. But I've turned over a new leaf. I try really hard to comment on all blogs I get things from. I know how happy it makes me to hear someone has used something I worked hard on. I say this not to toot my horn or beg for comments. But just to make you think. I really make a concious effort to comment on blogs I read and leave a word of encouragement. Of course I'm no where as viligant about it as Jennifer from First Grade Blue Skies. She's so awesome and always leaving a word of encouragement on my blog and others. So you should check her out and leave her some love if you haven't yet.








Please leave me some comment love if you download the ladybug journal or even if you don't. I love comments. They brighten my day. They make this last day and half before spring break bearable. If you don't leave me a comment, you should at least check Jennifer out and leave here some love.

Easter Egg Freebies

I had my currently scheduled to post today but I finished up some Easter egg activities and thought I'd share them before it got too late. I have seen tons of great ideas of how to use the plastic eggs so I was inspired to make some ways myself.
Here's how I'm using them:
I put sentences I found on someone's blog (I don't remember who and I feel really bad about that.) in one set o eggs. Tomorrow they are going to pass the Easter bucket around and then draw out an egg.
I made sight word strips and then  cut them apart. I put the pieces in a set of eggs. They are going to draw out eggs and then put the word together. They are going to use the sight word they got in a sentence in their journal. And then swap with a neighbor.
I also made some addition and subtraction sentences 0-5 to work on. I think I'm going to make that a math center later this week. They can use jellybeans and ten frames to solve the problems.
We're also working on even and odd numbers. So I'm going to put an even or odd number of jellybeans in the eggs and they kids have to use a ten frame to tell if they are even or odd. They will swap. I'm going to number the eggs and they will record it on a sheet.
So I have a few freebies to share with you.

Math Practice for Easter Eggs

I'm also sharing a recording sheet for the jellybean activity. Hopefully you can use some of these before Easter. The frame in the document came from The 3 AM teacher. If you haven't checked her clipart out, you need to. She's awesome.
Even and Odd Jellybeans

If you download any of these activities, please leave me some comment love. I'm always looking for some feedback on the things I create.
Been meaning to blog about the fact that I've won two giveaways lately. I won second prize in Ms. Patterson's giveaway. I got some good loot. Including some new graphics from the 3 AM teacher that I have a ton of ideas for using. I also won a giveaway of some books from the Waddlee-ah-chee blog. So exciting. I only have 3 and a half more days of school before spring break. Woo Hoo!

Spring has sprung

This is the lady bug home with a few larvae crawling around.

Spring has definitely sprung in my room. We finished up our plant unit this week on Monday by planting our seeds. I used Abby's Mystery box activity to add some mystery to the seed planting project. I wish I had taken a picture of my box. It's super cute. I used the box my Blogging Exchange Friend, Amy, sent me during the valentine's day exchange. It was perfect. I'll have to take a picture this week. I'm using it again on Monday to introduce my kids to our new friends, the ladybugs. This week we started our unit on insects. Our reading series had us read a book about Beetles and then we read The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle. I had other books I wanted to read but we just didn't seem to get to them. So I decided to extend insects into another week. This week is our last week before Spring break so I thought it would be ok to take a break from our usual reading series. I figured it out and we finish up our reading series by the first of May so an extra week won't be a big deal. I ordered the ladybug larvae from Insectlore and it came on Friday. I was expecting eggs but instead go a few baby ladybugs. I really hope they haven't transform med into the ladybugs over the weekend. I haven't introduced them to the kids yet.
We made some ladybugs and incorporated a little math into it. They had to make an addition sentence out of the number of dots they put on the bug. I've been so inspired by several blogs to incorporate more art into my day. But I'm a firm believer that it needs to be student created. I don't do patterns but have the students follow directions to create things. This is my way of incorporating some common core into the art projects. The listening standards apply well here. I also don't have a lot of copies to use on creating patterns for the students.

This coming week I plan to do a little more with The Grouchy Ladybug and hopefully a nonfiction book about ladybugs. I guess I need to hope they have one in the library. We're also going to read The Hungry Caterpillar and The Lonely Firefly. I also have some fun Easter activities planned with the plastic Easter eggs from the dollar tree. I hoped to have made the activities and post them today. But those freebies will have to come later. I do want to tell you about my newest item in Teacher's Notebook and Teachers Pay Teachers. It's Buggy for Words. Included in this packet are a game with Fry's phrases on it, some letter cards for word building and a some word cards for sentence building. They all have a bug themed. I made something similar for Valentine's day and used it with my kids I tutor. This time around I included a star e for a little magic e work for some of my higher kids. I busted the letter cards out last week and you would have thought it was something so cool just because I changed the clipart. Here are a couple of pictures of what is included and the item in action:

If you are interested in purchasing these items, click here for Teacher's Notebook and here for Teachers Pay Teachers. ** Update ** I added a free preview you can download of one of the games. So check it out!
I would love to get some feedback on my items. So the first 3 people to check out one of my stores and leave a comment with one of my items you would like, I'll send it to you for free. But you are committing to giving me some feedback on my items. I probably won't get anything out to you until tomorrow morning. How has spring sprung in your room?

Cooperative learning lesson and freebie

Aren't my titles so creative? I've always struggled with coming up with cute and clever titles for things. This week and last we've been studying plants. It's part of our reading series and it works great for this time of year. I don't like to toot my own horn but we did this great lesson on plants and working in groups. Our book that we read for the week was called Seed Secrets. I tried to find a picture of it on Amazon but I couldn't. Any book about seeds and plants would work. We discussed the parts of the plants and the ways seeds travel that we learned about from the book. As a class we made a list of important words with this topic. I gave each group a large piece of white paper and they had to draw a plant on their paper and then label it. I told them they needed to take turns drawing the picture and working together. I circled around the room and for the most part they were sharing the pencil. They worked for maybe 8 minutes this day. The next day we read From Seed to Plants by Gail Gibbons.

 After reading this book, we discussed what plants needed to grow and they added that to their pictures. They were labeling everything they drew. We reviewed how seeds traveled and how pollen travels. This information was also gained from the books we read. The third day they finished adding all the things we knew about plants to their pictures and coloring them. I made a rubric for the students to use when going over their pictures. They had a checklist to make sure they had done everything that was required. At the bottom of the page, they added up their check marks and colored in the stars to match.
Click here to get your copy of the rubric.

They then presented their pictures to the class. It was a great informal assessment for me to see what all they had learned about plants. They did a great job explaining their pictures and their thinking. Here are some pictures to show how their pictures turned out.

What are ways you have your students work cooperatively?

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.