The Easter Bunny's Assistant Activities

I can't wait to use this next week when we read The Easter Bunny's Assistant by Jan Thomas.  I know the activities and book will be a big hit with my sweeties!  You can check it out here. 

"Egg"Citing Fun and A Sale

Today has been one of those days friends.  I took my oldest daughter to the CVS Minute Clinic this morning for a sore throat (thinking I'd only be an hour late to school) and ended up being sent to have her foot x-rayed.  A foot she hurt over a week ago at gymnastics that she told NO ONE about! A hurt foot she's been practicing on everyday for 3 hours or longer!  And yes I got the LOOK! You know the one where they're not sure whether to call DSS because they think you're lying and that there's no way any decent parent would not know their child's foot was swollen and black and blue. After a 2 1/2 hour wait for the doctor to read the x-rays and then the radiologist to read the x-rays we finally found out that it's just a bad sprain which is good news considering her state meet is this Sunday. Needless to say I never made it to school today which stinks because I LOVE me some Fridays with my sweeties.  It's like the day I halfway feel like I'm able to catch my breath and just let them have fun being kiddos.  I know they still had fun with my assistant.  I'm just the one who missed out on it:(  Is that enough of the pity party or should I keep going?  

Here's a cheap little math activity you can put together easily.  I picked up the little bunny basket and egg tray at Dollar Tree for $1 each.  The tray holds 15 eggs.  This activity is really for a few of my 4K students that are still working on identifying numbers and counting out the quantity to correspond to the numeral.  I show them an egg card.  They have to read the number and count out that many eggs onto the tray. 

 

You can print the egg number cards here or by clicking the pic below.

 I went back and have added several things to my Hippity, Hoppity, Easter's On Its Way Unit.  This little chick craft is one thing that has been added.  The wing is too low in this one and it's looking a little duckish.  My OCD is telling me that's going to have to be fixed.  My tired brain is saying, "Not tonight."  Wonder which will win out??

  

You can get the unit by clicking the link above or the picture below.  The price did go up but it's on sale through Sunday if you want to grab it for $3.80.  Actually my entire store is 20% off right now PLUS whenever you buy 1 item you get one that's equal or less for FREE.  All you have to do is email me the item you purchased, the date (must be between now and Sunday thru 11:59 pm.), your username on TPT (so I can verify you purchased an item) and the FREE item you'd like. Those of you that already purchased can redownload to get all the newbies that have been added.  

Hippity, Hoppity, Easter's On Its Way

I love Easter and I had so much fun creating this unit and we're having so much fun using it in class right now.  Here's some of the things we're working on right now. 

 Counting By 10s

(Students velcro the bunnies in order.  They can also make their own strip using a black and white copy.)

 Sight Words

(Students read a word card, find the word and color it the same color as the bunny's clothes on the card.)

 Counting Arrays

(Students count the eggs and match the egg cards to the correct baskets.  They color in the eggs on the recording sheet to show how many are in each basket.)

 More/Less

(Students turn over 2 cards and count out eggs in cartons to compare the quantities and determine which is more.)

 Ordering Numbers

(Students order each set of chicks in numerical order.)

Right now this unit is only $3.00 but I've been adding to it all afternoon, and as soon as I finish and get it reuploaded to TPT, the price will go up.  If you get it now, you'll have access to any new things that are added to it at no additional cost. One super cute thing that I'm adding is how Roxy Rabbit has made her presence known in our classroom and how you can have her visit yours too.  LOTS of fun for me and my sweeties!  They're loving some Roxy.

Click here or the pic below.  

T-Shirt Download {FREEBIE}

Awhile back I saw this pin and kept thinking I need to do that.  It took me longer than I wanted but I finally got around to getting it together.  I bought a $1 pack of kids' size clothes hangers.  The wire ones may be easier to get the shirts on and off of though.  I made these little shirts and punched a hole in the top.

The original pin focused on making sums to 10.  Below you can see where we've practiced doing that but I also wanted to include the shirts with numbers 1-10 for preK and kinder friends that are still working on counting and matching the quantity to the number shown.  

 I chose to use 2 colors of clothespins so that students can get use to seeing numbers in relation to 5.  You can download a copy of the shirts here.  You'll have to load different colored paper in your printer if you want them to print in multi-colors.  Hope your sweeties have fun with them!

Andy Addition

Meet Andy Addition!

 He's helping my little kinder friends out with addition.  There's something about giving that plus sign a head and body that seems to make it instantly click that anytime we see a plus sign it tells us to add.  Hey!  Whatever it takes!  I've really been reinforcing the concept of addition with lots and lots of hands on addition.  Today each sweetie got a Ziploc baggie with numeral cards 0-5, a plus sign, and a equal sign along with 9 dinosaurs or teddy bear counters.  Working alongside their math partners, they turned over 2 number cards and created an addition sentence using the number cards and the plus and equal sign.  Then they solved the problem using the counters.    Boo to not having any pictures!  I never have my camera ready when I need it:( Oh well, I'll snap some next time. 

Leprechaun Loot

I've been playing this with some of my sweeties to work on mastering these sight words.  It's cheap and easy and they LOVE it!  The silver pots are from the Dollar Tree and came in a pack of 3 or 4.  Can't remember for sure.  The tape is green electrical tape and is just taped on the pot.  Then I just write down the words I want to focus on.  I tell them to close their eyes.  (For some reason this makes everything fun to them.)  While their eyes are closed, I slip the leprechaun coin under a pot.  They open their eyes and I slide the pots around on the tray.  They take turns reading a word off of a pot and turning the pot over to see if they can find the leprechaun's loot.  If they can't read the word correctly, they don't get to look under the pot.

St. Patty's Day

The following was supposed to post on Friday:  

This is going to be a quickie post.  I'm trying to do this from my iPhone for the first time ever.  We're traveling to Charleston for my sister-in-law's wedding this weekend so no school for this chick-a-dee today. School is still definitely on the brain apparently.  Isn't it always for us teachers though?  I worry like crazy about my sweeties when I'm not there.  Anyways just wanted to share  a couple of pics I have of some of our St. Patrick's Day Centers this week. I've not been great with taking pics this week:(.

And here it is Sunday evening so obviously it didn't get posted on Friday.  I couldn't get the pictures to upload to my blog post through my phone.  Sometimes technology makes me just wanna scream.  Lord knows I love it and couldn't live without it but many times I'm left feeling inept.  So courtesy of my trusty desktop computer I bring you the following pics.

Students reach in and pull out a gold coin, read the word, use it in a sentence and find it on the recording sheet and color it in.

Students roll the die, count the shamrocks, find the shamrock on the recording sheet with the number and dab it with the green bingo dabber.  It's perfect for my 4K students  and my 5s that struggle a bit with counting and cardinality.

Students count the owls on each card, find the owl on the recording sheet that corresponds to the number for the card  and colors in the quantity.

Find and color is pretty much a weekly tradition in our room. Students read the word off the card and see who can find it and color it in neatly first.  

 Our Write the Room for this week

All of these activities plus many more can be found in my St. Patty's Unit here.

New and Improved Blurt Chart and a Little Seuss Fun

The response to the blurt chart I posted last week has been CRAZY!  I decided to "purdy" (as we say in the south) it up a bit and ended up with this.

If you'd like to create your own Blurt Chart or Blurt Board for your classroom, you can get the printables here.

And here are some Seuss activities we did last week.  They are random and from different days during the week.

Truffula Trees 
These were made from Twizzlers and cotton candy and lasted all of about 2 seconds before the little sweeties had these sweets devoured. 

 
"Do You Like Green Eggs and Ham?" Graph 
My assistant cooked us up a big batch of green eggs to taste test.  I'd say they were a hit based on the data. Ha!  To make the eggs for the chart, I cut them out of green construction paper free handed so they're different shapes and sizes.  The yellow yolks were done the same way.  

  Fish Addition
I found these mats here and thought they were so adorable so I printed one off for each student and had them laminated. After reading One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, we used Goldfish crackers  to practice some addition and then ate our little fish right up.

Tomorrow is a big day in our classroom.  There's a letter waiting for us from Lyle the Leprechaun.  He's coming to visit with us until St. Patrick's Day and I'm sure he has some tricks he's going to be pulling on us.  To get your very own letter from Lyle and a list of leprechaun tricks plus lots of math and literacy activities, click here or the picture below.