It’s a Give away! Let’s Wiggle, Giggle, and Sing!

Up in my neck of the woods, it’s not very often that we have celebrities living just down the road (by road, I mean I-29 – ha! But she is only an hour away!)  But seriously, this celebrity is the Midwest’s treasure of the elementary teaching world.  Who is it you might wonder??? It’s…..

 

Have you heard of Penny and Pals?  Most kids in this area know who she is as well as her crew of friends that travel with her.  In my classroom, we LOVE to sing and dance to her songs! She often travels around the area to give concerts at schools, churches, and community events.  Flocks of people gather to see her – she is FANTASTIC! I’ve seen her many times in person, and she is so energetic and fun!

Here is a video of Penny in action! The kids LOVE her! Notice how they are all up and moving! (Just what we need to get the squirmies out of our little friends!)

~Listen for the “Mosquito Swat” this is a favorite of us North Dakotans where the mosquito is the state bird ~

SO……Penny has GRACIOUSLY agreed to give away not one, but TWO of her awesome alphabet CD’s to one of my lucky blog readers!!!!  Isn’t she AMAZING?!!!

 

The kids in my classroom LOVE those songs – she has one for every letter of the alphabet and they get the kids up and moving and singing! 

So, do you want to win these CD’s????  I know you do!

There are a couple of EASY things you need to do…

1. Head on over to Facebook and ‘like’ her fan page.  Just click right {HERE} and you’ll go straight to the page.  Leave her a little note too – she’ll like that

2. I know you’re following if you’re reading this, but could you please just click that little FOLLOW button on my sidebar.  It would make me ever so happy!

3.  Make sure you leave a comment so I know you’ve done these things!

This contest will stay open for ONE WEEK – It will close on Saturday, June 18 @ midnight.  I will select a winner using random.org on Sunday, June 19. 

Be sure to check out Penny’s website  to see all of her other CD’s!  Click {HERE}

 

 

(Here’s Penny at my school a couple of years ago!)

Plants and Seeds

Wow, I can’t believe I am going back to April for postings!  How crazy is that?! Obviously I was busy writing my final paper at that time and had no time to do anything else!

So, here is a glimpse of what we did in our classroom when we learned about plants and seeds!

We made our adorable Plant Books – the kids used these crayons to decorate the cover:

 

I love how they make the colors just POP on construction paper.  They are also fun to add to the art center every now and then to spice things up a bit!

 

We read lots of fiction and non-fiction books this week about plants and seeds.  One of my favorite authors, Kevin Henkes, has this BEAUTIFUL story:

I love, love, love, love, love this book! His illustrations are stunningly beautiful and I love how imaginative it is!

After we read, we brainstormed what OUR gardens would look like if they could grow anything we wanted.  Here is a sample of their writing:

 

 

 

 

   

Here are some pictures of our plant journals.  We included observations about our plants, things we learned, as well as story responses.

Here are our sweet little plants we planted.  Each child got to pick their own seed, but they didn’t get to see which pack it came from.  They made predictions of which plant they think they planted.  These sweet little labels came from Kim Adsit’s pack.

{LITERACY CENTERS}

We pulled miniatures out of a can and wrote the word next to the correct long vowel.  Don’t ‘cha just love the Lakeshore Miniatures?! 

This page came from my blogging buddy Julie Lee.  She is a total rock star! I get a lot of ideas from her.  The cute little carrots were found at the dollar tree.  This center we found was quite challenging for some kiddos, so I put a green mini-dot on the back of the first letter and a red mini-dot on the back of the last letter.  Simplified things a bit for those that were having a tough time.

Another great center inspired by Julie.  The children chose a fruit or a veggie and write a sentence using that sight word.  Can you spot what’s missing from this sentence?

At this center the kids chose a stamp and filled in the missing vowel sound. 

This one came from Julie as well.  The kids matched up the flower pot blend to the correct picture.

{MATH CENTERS}

Most of these centers were inspired by or from Julie over at Mrs. Lee’s Kindergarten.

Counting by 10s with watermelons. 

Adding with fruits and veggies.

Patterning

Coin values and coin combinations.

Practicing with time to the hour and half-hour. 

Some other ideas: (These are from the head start room down the hall!)

Aren’t these just lovely?  They look so pretty hanging from the ceiling!