Let’s Go to the Beach!

Okay, so we are in the middle of the midwest and there really isn’t a beach – unless you count the shorelines of the 10,000 lakes in Minnesota and the Red River of the North.  But, we can use our imaginations, right?
I needed something for this last week of school that would keep the kids engaged in centers! So far, after day 1, they are doing great!
Here is what is in my drawers for the week:

At this center, the children “dig” in the sand for shells and write the digraph that they here on each shell.

The children LOVE these mixed up sentences, so I knew that this one was a perfect center for this week.

And anytime we can use those fishing poles from Lakeshore!  Inside the fish tank are fish with sight words on them. They fish out the fish and write the sight word.

This center was a hit! The children sat on the floor and tossed the ball to one another.  They wrote the word that their hand was closest too.  Fun!

At this math center, the children scooped out some shells, counted them, and wrote the number and tallies.

We needed a little bit more practice with subtraction too!

Practicing time to the hour.

And the always popular count the room!

Stay tuned for some fun pirate activities we are also working on! The kids are having so much fun.  We have our field day tomorrow, and we are done on Thursday.  Phew!

Want to try these centers yourself? Click below to find them on TpT!
Just click on the image!

Plants and Seeds

We have just 4 days left until we are done for the year! I don’t have much for you – I guess I’ve been a slacker in taking pictures these last few weeks. 

We did our unit on plants a few weeks ago. I don’t have many pictures … sorry!  Here are a few that I had on my computer:

We did this fun painting project during free choice time at the art center. The kids just dipped a plastic cup in paint and then added the petals with a q-tip.  They just used a marker to add the stem, leaves, and grass.  Later in the week we measured the flowers with unifix cubes.  This project was inspired by an idea from Kim Adsit.

This writing project is one of my favorites of the year!  We read the book My Garden by Kevin Henkes, and the kids create their own gardens.  Love their creativity and imaginations!

Here are our cute little flower pots that we made.  It might be hard to see in the picture, but I cut up little squares of tissue paper and the children glued it to their cups (they painted it on with a mixture of glue and water).  I only used primary colors so the children could see the color mixing.  The signs came from Kim Adsit’s plant unit.

I’ll be back tomorrow with some pictures from my beach/summer unit! I forgot to snap pics on Friday!

Hear All Giveaway Ending Soon!

This giveaway ends soon!  You only have 2 days left to enter.  It’s super easy – just enter – nothing to do for this one!!  Quick – scroll down and enter!!

May Song and a Mother’s Day Idea!

Sorry for the delay in posting! It’s been cah-razy around here!!

Here is the May song for you! Hope you like it!

I also wanted to quickly share with you a super fun and easy mother’s day idea with you before it’s too late!

Aren’t they PRECIOUS!?!

These are actually mine :)  I had my girls make me some too so I could show you since we’re not done with them yet in class.

Here is what you need:

I LOVED Shrinky Dinks as a kid! My brother and I made all the pieces for a Christmas mobile one year! My mom hung it up every year for us.  I found my pack at Michaels. They are about $6 a pack.

You need a pretty good sized circle to start with – about 3 inches or so – I traced the lip of a styrofoam cup.  You could also use a big circle punch, but mine didn’t punch it out very well.

Cut out the circles and punch a hole in the top – you could do this after they have drawn their picture, but don’t forget! After you bake it, it’s too late to punch a hole. (Unless you use a dremel!)

Have your kiddos use a colored pencil to draw a picture of themselves and their mom.  I also used a sharpie marker to write their initals and the year on the back (the shiny side!)

Set your oven to 325.  Line a baking sheet with a piece of brown paper bag.  Set your pieces colored side up.  It goes super fast, so be ready!

Gather any children in your house to watch – they think it’s SUPER cool!

 

It only takes a minute or two.  They will shrink and curl up and then go flat.  Wait about 30 seconds after they get flat and take them out.  I used another cookie sheet and just pressed down on top of them for about a minute until they were cool.

SOOOOO CUTE!!!

Add a jump ring…

 

And some elastic cord and beads…. and voila!

Now, my kiddos at school certainly won’t be using these fancy beads! They are from my personal stash, and are a bit too spendy to use.  I have a TON of pony beads that I’ll let my kiddos use.  I don’t think their mom’s will mind! 

Hint:  When you tie your elastic cord, add a tiny drop of super glue to the knot to keep it tight!

I’ll be sure to post the finished product!  What fun crafty things are your kiddos making for the special lady in their lives?

Hear All Assessment Recorder

Here we go! Part 2 of 3 of my Learning Resources product reviews!  If you missed it, I blogged about Learning Resources’ Easi Speak USB Recorder…you can read about that {here}.  PS – I’m STILL trying to find a winner – I’ve contacted two people and neither have responded, so PLEASE if you sign up for this contest, make sure you check your e-mail and get back to me!!

This time, I’m going to tall you about the Hear All Assessment Recorder.

This gadget is very similar to the Easi Speak, except that you don’t have to hold it.  You can set it down on the table to leave hands free for taking a reading record, helping a student or whatever!

The Hear All has 4 speakers in each corner and it picks up sound just as well as the Easi Speak.  This makes it great for group work.  I tried it out during a guided reading lesson and put it in front of 3 kiddos while I focused my attention on another kiddo.  This definitely kept them on task – they knew that I could go back and listen to it!  The children love to hear themselves read, and it is such a confidence booster for them!

I also used the Hear All during partner reading.  I gave it to a group of 2 kiddos and they took turns reading their books to each other and, of course, the Hear All picked up everything!

I even used the Hear All as a behavior monitoring device!  I had a group that was being especially noisy during literacy centers, and I set the Hear All at their table….got’cha!  They knew that they were being monitored….loved it!

The device is small and light weight, and best of all – it doesn’t require batteries! LOVE LOVE LOVE this!  It has a USB cord that you can connect to your PC/Mac to download and charge.

I think this device would be fantastic to use during assessment time as well!  You could set up a sight word, letter/letter sound, number, or counting assessment for a kiddo – hit record and then go and help someone else!  This would be great even if you wanted to stay right next to the child – sometimes it’s hard for kids to really open up and be confident if you are writing down every word they say and every mistake they make! You could just record them, and go back and listen later. LOVING it!

Okay, on to the good part! You could win one of these fun little gadgets!  YIIPPPEEEE!  Nothing like a great giveaway during teacher’s appreciation week!

So here’s your chance! Use Rafflecopter below to sign up! Nothing to do here, although following my TpT store and Blog would make me very happy :) a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

 

If you want to learn more check out Learning Resources and all of their great products at these places:

Learning Resource's FACEBOOK page 

Learning Resource’s TWITTER page 

And, their YOUTUBE page 

Thanks friends!

I’m a Shopping Fool!

Especially when it comes to great teaching products! I’m linking up with Erica’s linky party to share some of the goodies that I have purchased over the last couple of days. 

I love finding great teaching resources that really help me out in the classroom, and my kinder friends never disappoint!

Here are some of the goodies that I am excited to tell you about (and use – if not this year, then next!)

I love Kim Adsit’s: What Can You Play With A Deck of Cards.  There are lots of great activities any here for math games – these will be great for the end of the year wiggles!

 

I’ve had lots of birthday in my classroom over the last couple of weeks, and my birthday bag is looking a bit “blah.”  I was excited to find this fun Birthday Take-Home Pack pick me up from Erica Bohrer.

and I’m also going to add a fun tooth tote to my take home bags next year!  This Lost Tooth Club pack is adorable! (also from Erica!)

And of course, I am a big fan of Deedee’s Writing Work Stations.  The kiddos LOVE these!

Oh, my cart is still full. I need to stop! Here are a couple of  other things that are in my cart!

Deanna Jump’s Pete the Cat Activities

I’m loading up on all of Abby’s Short Vowel Word Work Packs!

Ahhh! I might need an intervention!I love that Teachers Pay Teachers makes it so easy to implement QUALITY and FUN into teaching!  Now, I need to GO.TO.BED!  I’ll try to be back with more goodies soon.

And, YES. The May song is coming! I Promise! (and journals too!)

I appreciate you!

We appreciate you. We think you are great!
We appreciate you. Yeah, you really rate!
You make us so happy with the things you say and do.
Oh we appreciate you!

You can get 20% off from my items and an additional 10% with TpT's code: TAD12 starting May 6th and going all the way until May 8th! Just click on the picture above to take you Teachers Pay Teachers!

Here is a little of what I’ve been up to this week (which is my excuse for the lack of posts!)

Tomorrow is my daughter’s 10th birthday as well! I can’t believe I have have been lucky enough to be a mom for 10 years!  Love these girls :)

So, load up your cart! and get shopping! I’m off to make some Butterbeer and some Butterbeer cupcakes!  Can you tell it’s a Harry Potter birthday?

Happy Shopping!

It’s A Royal Wedding!

We celebrated the wedding of Q and U on Friday.  The kiddos LOVE this day – especially the girls! They love getting dressed up, and the boys think it’s pretty darn cool to dress up as quarterbacks!

The kiddos marched down the aisle together to “The Wedding March”, and I read the script to our Q and U wedding!

We also read the story I wrote to explain how they met, fell in love, and learned about the surprise ending!

We reviewed Qu vocabulary, sorted /kw/ and /k/ words and made our special wedding gift – a quilt!

 

(They are not quite done with the quilt yet!)

 

Aren’t these quarterback helmets great! I need to trace and scan the pattern, and I will add it to the Q and U Wedding pack as soon as I can! You will  just need to re-download!

I have also just uploaded some fun new interactive games for spring! You can take a peek at those {here} if you are interested.

A Couple More Behavior Ideas…

This is an idea that I learned from my wonderful friend, Kim Adsit!  She spoke about it at the Minnesota Early Childhood Conference that I attended last summer.

It’s super simple, all you need are some wooden cut outs like this:

You can find them at Michael’s or Wal-Mart, they are about $1 each, I think.  I bought 5 because that’s how many they had! You’ll want all of the same design.  You will also need a cookie sheet, and some magnetic tape (or magnets).

Put the magnets on the back of your cutouts and place them on the cookie sheet in your teaching area.  (I put some velcro on the back of the cookie sheet and stuck it to my easel!) Focus on one behavior at a time.  I needed to focus {BIG TIME} on blurting and interrupting.  These behaviors got really bad from when I was out on sick leave. ugh.  Each time someone does the negative behavior, you simply take one piece off of the cookie sheet.  I started with all 5 pieces on the cookie sheet, and as they continued to end each day  (or lesson) with pieces left, I started taking them away.  The behavior was improving, so they were getting fewer chances to blurt.

If they kept all 5 smiley’s on the cookie sheet, they got to add a piece to Mr. Potato Head!

When Mr. Potato head had all of his pieces, the whole class received some sort of incentive – extra recess, extra free choice, a special treat, etc. I found this fun idea {here!}

Kim wrote a post about this system back in September.  You can read it {here}

Two other ideas I use to reinforce positive behavior are Happy Rocks and Power Pellets!  Kim and I must have been on the same wave length with Happy Rocks – I have been using them before I even saw them on her blog! I saw the idea for Power Pellets on Rachelle’s blog! You can read about those {here}.

Here are my versions:

The power pellets are just skittles ;)  I like to use the sour ones! I just used a paint pen to decorate the jar.

I use glass gems for the Happy Rocks.  Again, i use a paint pen and just draw a smiley face on them.  There is a LOT of gems in a bag, but it goes really fast to add the smiley face.  If a child is caught doing the right thing, or going above and beyond, he gets to take a Happy Rock home!  The kids LOVE collecting them!  Next year, I think I’ll buy them in seasonal colors!

I’m also IN LOVE with this idea from Katie over at Little Kinder Warriors.

She uses these awesome Scentos Scented Bubbles:

 

and a bubble blaster:

and blasts her kiddos with bubbles when the whole class is doing the right thing! HOW FUN IS THAT?!!  I am heading to Michaels TOMORROW to pick up some scented bubbles!