Monster Match Game!

I've created my first product on TeachersPayTeachers, and the best news is, it's FREE! Woohoo! I've created a monster-themed uppercase and lowercase letter match game. It's a great activity for the beginning of Kindergarten, which we all know will be upon us before we know it! It includes 10 uppercase/lowercase letter combinations on colored cards, a recording sheet, and full directions. Check out my TPT store HERE!

Check out a sneak peek!

Thanks for checking it out! :)

School's out for summer...

My last day of school was Thursday. Woohoo! I'm sad to see my kinder babies go, but am welcoming this break with open arms! Tuesday we had our Kindergarten Luau Promotion, and it was so stinkin' cute. My kiddos sang and danced to 6 songs and received their promotion certificate along with a lei. All of us teachers got a little lump in our throats when they ended the show with "Aloha Oe"; a Hawaiian farewell song. They've come so far in a year! I think that's one of the things I love most about teaching kinder. They come to you crying, having potty accidents, rolling around on the carpet, not knowing how to go to school... and then they leave you as little responsible students who can read and write like crazy. Love seeing how much growth they make! The hardest part is knowing you have to go back to square one in August with a new batch! Haha!

This summer I hope to start making a lot of my own supplemental activities and units to go along with what we have, especially since we have to implement common core standards (anyone else with me on that??) next year. They totally changed up our math standards so we need to get crackin' making our own materials since our math curriculum is terrible! If any of you guys have ideas you want to share that you will be doing with common core, I'd love to hear them!

Happy summer!

Animal Fun

My kids just wrapped up their unit on animals and they could not even get over finding all the facts they could about each one we studied. I used a few fabulous ideas from Ms. Deanna Jump's Zoo Unit from TPT and the kids loved every activity, especially the Alligator Pie poem activities. Every time kids finished with their work early, they BEGGED me to let them get pointers and read the poem aloud to each other. Before we actually made and ate the alligator pie, the kids added the poem to their interactive notebooks, rewrote it, and circled sight words they could read in the poem. Then, they had to draw a picture of what they thought the alligator pie was going to look like. Some of their ideas cracked me up!

We also learned about elephants by creating a schema chart. I love this idea because it really gets the kids thinking about facts and non-fiction concepts. They love to find out if their idea was true or not!

We also did a rhyming word sort activity right before reading The Three Little Pigs. Each student had a card with a word that they had to find around the room, read, and sort into the correct part of the chart:

We finished up the unit with a field trip to the zoo! So fun to see my kinder babies all excited to see everything. I can't believe we are winding down the end of the year so soon.. is it just me, or does every year fly by?

The Wind Blew

Last week was my final week using the reading theme "Spring is Here" with my kiddos. Usually during the 3rd week of the unit theme, my team and I create our own reading activities/stories to do that go along with the theme simply because we get tired of reading the same stories over and over again!

We read the story The Wind Blew by Pat Hutchins (classic!) and focused on the rhyming words in the story, so I came up with a Rhyming Word Kite for my kids to make and record all the rhyming words we heard in the story. They loved making the kites and were so getting into all the rhyming words they found!

Here are the templates for your downloading happiness :D -- The Wind Blew rhyming kites (Google Doc)

This week we launch head on into our World of Animals theme. Should be fun! We take our first field trip to the zoo on Friday...

Hello, blogland.

Hello, everyone! I've been inspired by some of you fantastic teaching bloggers such as Mrs. Jump and The First Grade Parade to start my own blog to share ideas, gather ideas, and give a glimpse into the wonderful (and sometimes not so wonderful!) world of Kindergarten! I admire you all who give up your time to share ideas for teachers everywhere, so hopefully I can at least be a small part of that, too.

This is my second year teaching Kindergarten and I love love LOVE it! There is never a dull moment with those 5-year olds! It is challenging, to be sure, but there is nothing better than seeing their excitement over learning and their extreme love for their teacher and their school at such a young age! The team of teachers I work with is amazing and I feel so lucky to be a part of it.

Got any questions for me, new readers? Feel free to shoot 'em over and I'll answer as best I can. :)

--Miss O.