A Terrific Last Day Before Spring Break!

Happy Middle of the Week!

Who doesn't love a 2 day week?  I know my students did.  (I still have to go to school for 2 more days.  Tomorrow is Records Day and Thursday is a PD day.)

It is a little difficult to keep 21 kindergartners interested in learning when they are ready for a vacation.  It helps that it snowed yesterday and sleet/snowed this afternoon.  Then it doesn't really feel like Spring Break is coming.  

Thanks to a terrific freebie, the students completed a Peeps experiment this morning.  They had fun and were learning at the same time.  My student teacher did a terrific job of guiding the students through the experiment and teaching the students the word "hypothesis".  How impressive is it when a 5 year old says that word?

I found the freebie at the Happy Teacher Happy Kids TpT store.

This afternoon we had an egg hunt.  However, you can't hunt eggs without a bunny hat and a bunny basket.  I used the patterns from on of my favorite blogs, Heidisongs.  You can click {here} to find the blog entry with the patterns.

Aren't they adorable?

Thank you for stopping by my blog.  I just love sharing good teaching days with all of you.

It is Friday and it is a Snow Day!

Happy Snow Day!

It is a snow day in northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan!  I swear I didn't become a teacher because of snow days.  But I love feeling like a kid on snow mornings, watching the television to see if my school goes across before I get a phone call from our phone tree.  Usually, I see the name of our school scroll across before my phone call.  We have a very chatty close knit group of teachers, so sometimes we chat a little before calling the next person.  This is our second snow day this winter.

Since I have a little extra time today, I decided to create a freebie and link up with Teaching Blog Addicts Freebie Friday.




I created a strip booklet that uses color words, and the sight words here and is.  I don't know about your school, but at my school we have a copy count each month, so I create strip books for the students to read.  The booklet don't use as much paper, but my students are still able to get reading practice.  This one is about socks.  I am going to use it next week when we do our Dr. Seuss theme.  It goes with the "Fox in Socks" book.  Just click below to get the freebie.

Click {here} to download the freebie from Google Drive.

Thank you for stopping by on this snowy day!

A Snapshot of My Classroom (#1)

Soooo...  It has been a long time since I have found time to write for my blog.  After some careful thinking (and feeling guilty), I have decided that I don't have to have a huge amount of time to write something.  And I don't have to write a long entry.  In fact, the teachers who read my blog don't have a huge amount of time to read what I write.  So if I can give all of you a tiny bit of information at a time, that may make all of you happier too.  

After all of this thinking, an idea was born.  I have decided to post 3 or 4 times a week about an activity that my class is doing that week.  I just have to write a few sentences, include a few pictures and TAAA DAAA, a blog post is born.

So here is a snapshot from Lake Ontario (each of our classrooms is named after one of the Great Lakes at my school).

This week we are doing a few leftover Valentine's Day centers and some President's Day centers.

One of the centers the students have been working on is, making shapes with snap cubes, counting the snap cubes and recording the number of snap cubes.

Here is one of my students hard at work:

I found this center on Teachers Pay Teachers at Simply Kinder"s store.  Click here to see the center.

Thank you for visiting.

My First Manic Monday Freebie of 2013

Happy Monday!

If you read my previous post, you know that I started back to school last Thursday.  Today was our first "real" day back, where we followed a normal schedule.  The kids seemed to be in shock at first, but they were soon back to normal.  I needed something for my measurement center this week.  So I made a center with some of my winter clip art.  I decided that it would be perfect to share with you for Manic Monday.

Click {here} to get to my Winter Measurement Center.

Tomorrow is my student teacher's first day.  Keep your fingers crossed for me that it goes well.  this is my 2nd time to have a student teacher.  My 1st one was wonderful.  I am hoping this time goes as well.  I will keep you posted on how it goes.

Thank you for visiting my blog.  Have a great week!

Returning to School on January 3rd

I hope that all of you had a wonderful Holiday!  I was very blessed this Christmas.  Besides spending quality time with my family, my husband surprised me with a new laptop for Christmas.  So,  I am typing this blog post on my new laptop.  My old laptop was at least 5 years old and "died" in October.  Since then,  I have been using my teenagers' laptops.  But sometimes they need their laptops for homework, so I'm not always able to get to use a computer.  I love my new laptop but it is taking me a little bit to get used to Windows 8.  You see, I'm not always good with change.  But, I'm making an effort (and trying not to bug my 18 year old with too many questions).

Like many of you, I return to school on January 3rd.  So I have had to plan for a day and a half of school with my kinders.  (At my school, the students only attend school until noon on Fridays.  Because we teach our own specials during the week, we use Friday afternoons for planning and professional development.)

Since it will be a very short week, I have planned some fun New Year's activities for the students to do.  I thought I would share some of the freebies that I found on Teachers Pay Teachers with all of you, in hopes that you can use them also.

First, I found a New Year's banner for my students to make on the Teaching with Love and Laughter blog.



Click here to see the blog post with the activity.
I am also going to have my students make New Year's necklaces by stringing noodles that have been dyed different colors on yarn and using the "favors" from this "Happy New Year Poem and Printables" freebie by Shelley Rolston.  Click here to find the freebie in her store.
Our New Year's fun won't be complete without hats.  I found this freebie to make headband hats with paper strips in Marta Almiron's Teachers Pay Teachers store.  Click here to get to her free download.
Besides making hats and necklaces, I am going to have a "New Year's Eve" party in the afternoon.  We are going to countdown from 10 to 1 and then jump on bubble wrap.  I think my little ones will love it.  Then we are going to have a small snack, popcorn and juice and play Bingo.
I hope these ideas will help you to make returning to school at the end of a week a little bit easier.
Happy New Year! to all of my friends and followers.

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

Happy December Everyone!

I love the month of December in my kindergarten classroom.  My own kids are teenagers and even though they are excited about Christmas, it just doesn't compare to the excitement of young children.  I feel very blessed to share in my 5 year olds' spirit of Christmas each year.

This year I decided to have an "Elf on the Shelf" in my classroom.  (I received a free one from the company.)  I have a very well-behaved class.  So I figured that they could handle the craziness of finding the elf in a different place each morning.

They love finding the elf each morning.  I love seeing their smiles when they find him.  They also love to share his escapades with the teachers across the hall.

Here are some pictures of our elf from last week:

Our elf, Red, played in the magnetic letters on Tuesday night.....

 

and he left the students a message.

On Thursday, he brought the class a special treat from the North Pole, to celebrate 

the last day our student from the local college was with the class.  (He began eating

one before the class came in.)

Thank you for stopping by to visit and see the Adventures of Red The Elf,

My First Freebielicious Freebie

Happy December!

Good Saturday morning everyone!  I hope your weekend is off to a great start.  I know mine is, I love creating freebies to share instead of cleaning my house.  This past week, I had a Gingerbread theme.  So I made this Memory Game for my students to play during Math centers.  I hope that your students like it also.

Click here to get my Gingerbread Memory Game.

I also linked up with Freebielicious Freebies on the First.  Visit them to get more freebies.

 

Thank you for taking time out of your busy weekend to visit me.