It's That Time Again! B2S Sale 2013

 Sign Credit:  Dragonflies in First

It's that time again sweet friends .... Back to School Sale time!  Use code BTS13 to get 28% off at my store today and tomorrow.  Happy Shopping!

Boho BIrd Classroom Decor

This year I decided to decorate my classroom with the Boho Birds by Carson-Dellosa.  I loved how there were alot of primary and bright colors that I thought would be great for my kindergarten classroom and I love how it has turned out so far!  Here's a little peek inside my classroom.

 

 I have 2 bulletin boards on either side of my big white board/promethean board at the front of my room.  I decorated them both the same.  One will serve as my calendar board and this one will most likely be used to display anchor charts.

 

I bought the Boho Birds Birthday Set and used it to decorate one of our bathroom doors.  Thank goodness they fit perfectly.

 

 

Coming up with a behavior system to keep with the theme was more challenging.  I ended up using pieces from the Boho Birds Bulletin Board Set  , Boho Birds and Birdhouses Bulletin Board Set , and these bird cutouts.  I attached each little birdie to velcro.  I'll write everyone's name on a bird and each day they will start at the green birdhouse and move down to the next branch if needed.   And YES there are 27 little birdies because that's how many little friends I'll have next year.  That is if no more show up to register:)

 

Here's the outside of my classroom door that you see when you enter the room.

I reused my trees from last year and replaced the apples from last year with birds.  
 

 

On my back wall I have my word wall.  It's hard to see in this pic but each piece of colored paper has a letter above it.

I'll use these in my cubbies.  I made the name plates and added the bird stickers to each one.  
 

Here's a view above the board at the front of my room.  A letter set, number line and classroom helper cards are displayed.  Students' names will be added under the job cards using magnetic tape.  It's an editable file so you can insert your students' names if you want to check it out here or by clicking the product pic below.
 

Monday Made It: Kitchen and Fireplace Makeovers

 

I'm linking up for the first time with Tara at 4th Grade Frolics for Monday Made It.  Last summer this linky provided me with inspiration for making all sorts of things.  Now .... a year later... I'm ready to join in the fun. 

 I have a "home made" it this time to start off.  Today was my first day of summer break so I need a wee little time to get away from school thinking. I'm sure you saw the lovely kitchen at the beginning of the post.  When we bought our house we decided it had good "bones" but needed some cosmetic TLC.  That kitchen was too much for this gal to handle so we ripped off all of the rainbow fish tiles and pulled up the old countertops. 

 

And.... here's an after picture.  New tile, countertops and hardware for the cabinets completely transformed the kitchen. I did the backsplash all by myself and was sooooo proud. 

 

And to keep with the theme of the house and to unify the kitchen and living space, I'm assuming, the former owners tiled the fireplace in the lovely rainbow fish themed tile.  No kidding... neighbors have told us that they had fish rugs in front of the fireplace.  We took down all of the tile.....

 and I tiled it up with a more neutral color.  The tile was super cheap at Lowe's and I think it only cost around $200 to resurface the fireplace.  Now we have a made over kitchen and fireplace. 

Don't forget to go check out all the other Monday Made Its.

TPT Teacher Appreciation Sale

 

 

Don't forget the sale that starts tomorrow!  My entire store is 20% and by using the discount code TAD13 when you checkout you can save up to 28%.  Just click the pic above to head to my store.  I hope you get some great things at some great deals!  Happy shopping friends! 

 

 

 

Mrs. Wishy-Washy and Giveaway

One of the first books I ever "taught" a lesson with was Mrs. Wishy-Washy while doing a practicum in college.  I loved the book and the students did too.  Since then Mrs. Wishy-Washy has been dear to my heart and is always read each year with my kinder sweeties.  When Hameray Publishing contacted me about doing a review of a Mrs. Wishy-Washy book, I jumped at the chance. 

We began by reading Wishy-Washy Clothes.  Then it was time for a little acting to help us retell the story.  I made these little necklaces for the "actors" to wear to show their character from the story. 

After everyone got into character, we did a quick reread of the story to remind them of their parts and we got to acting.  They had a ball and it was amazing how quickly they were all able to retell the story after a couple of act it out sessions.

Wishy-Washy Clothes was also a great book for us to talk about onomatopoeia and practice it during the act it out sessions with "Moo!", "Oink!" and "Quack!".  We were also able to locate a few past tense verbs that went along great with our grammar lesson we've been working on.

The other book we read was Mrs. Wishy-Washy and the Big Wash.

We used this book to practice our summarizing skills by telling who the story was about, what happened, when it happened and where the story took place.  Here's our summarization chart for the book.  **Excuse the error in Washy on the chart please and the blurriness of the photo.  I didn't even notice that I had written Mrs. Wishy-Wishy instead of Wishy-Washy until I got home and uploaded the pic so I tried to "fix" it but it's not looking too great.  Sorry about that! 

Then we use the chart to write a one sentence summary. 
Our sentence was:  Mrs. Wishy-Washy, the cow, the pig, and the duck left the farm and went to find water during the day at the bookstore, music store, bakery and car wash.

You can also win a Mrs. Wishy-Washy big book by following my blog and leaving a comment.  Make sure you include your email address.  I will use random.org to choose a winner tomorrow, April 23rd. 

To find out more about Hameray Publishing, Mrs. Wishy-Washy, and other fun activities check out the following links:

http://pinterest.com/Hameray/

http://www.hameraypublishing.com/

https://www.facebook.com/Hameray

You can also enter the Joy Cowley Classroom Giveaway by clicking the picture below.

Hameray Publishing is also offering a 20% discount for anything on their website if you use the code ZJCC13.

Disclaimer:  I received complimentary products for this review;however, all opinions are my own and this is not a compensated post.

Butterflies in the Sky....

Or in math centers?  Whatever it takes to motivate and inspire learning!  Right?  Our butterfly larva will be arriving this Monday and it never fails to excite my kinder sweeties so I always try to tie in some of our centers to the theme that we are studying.  Here are our math centers for next week.

Counting Quantities on Double Ten Frame

Sums to 10

Patterning

Measuring Items from The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Building Addition Fluency to 5

You can pick these activities up here or by clicking the pic below.  Have a great weekend friends!

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.