First week back...

So the first week back from break is over. And I must say, it has happened. Yes, again. What is it, you ask? Christmas. Break. Magic. Perhaps you all have heard of this wonderful occurrence. Christmas Break Magic is the thing that happens while the students are gone so that when they come back, they are ready to rock and roll and get down to business in class. I don't know what it is, but it always happens! The first or second day back I'll find myself looking around the classroom and realizing, "WOW! Everyone is in their seats! WOW, I am not running myself ragged going around to nearly every student who is needing help or off task! WOW, they can do more independent work and are doing it quietly!"

It's amazing, it really is.

I love Kindergarten, but I REALLY love post-December kindergarten. I can do so many more cool things with my kiddos just because they are finally ready to do them!

We are in our weather reading theme for the next 3 weeks, so that's what most of my posts will be about in the meantime. We started weather observation journals and their writing has grown so much! Every morning we've been brainstorming different weather describing words to put in a sentence stem: "I like _________ days." They nearly filled up the whole big pocket chart with their words they came up with. They've been using a ton of them in their writing as well, so I'm loving what the chart has done for their vocabulary.

On Thursday we watched a video about temperature on brainpopjr.com and then went outside with real thermometers to check our own weather temperature that day. They were having the best discussions with each other about what was happening and why.

I have no pictures this time, sadly! I never think about it until after the activity is done. I've gotta be better at that!

Have a great long weekend! And hello to my new followers! :)

"Currently" linky party!

Oh Boy 4th Grade is having a linky party about all of the things that are "currently" going on in your life!

Go join in the fun at Oh Boy 4th Grade!

Happy New Year!

Oh, I've neglected my sad little blog for two months. But now I'm back, hoping to get ahead of myself to post on a more consistent basis. I start school again on Monday after a rather glorious break and I am hoping that my little kinders will come back, calmed down, and ready to be more independent workers! It has happened that way the past 2 years with my kiddos, so I am keeping my fingers crossed. It really is an amazing thing. All of a sudden I'll set the kids to a task, then look around and realize no one has come up to ask me a million questions, no one is out of their seats, and I am not having to whirl around the room 24/7 helping every student with something different. It's a wonderful thing, I tell you. They grow up over Christmas!

Here's an overview of what I did with my kinder kids during the month of December:

Our entire Kinder team decided the do the Elf on the Shelf with our classes, and it was such a blast. The kids LOVED it... and "Jordan" (as my kids voted on for his name) was a good motivator for good behavior! Every day the elf moves to a different location (after he returns from the North Pole to tell Santa who was naughty and nice, of course) so the kids would pile into the room in the morning on a desperate search for Jordan. And it didn't matter where he was, they laughed hysterically about it. You can register your elf's information online, so we thought up facts and descriptions to say about our elf and watched a video from Santa about what his job was. Every so often, I'd have "Jordan" bring a special surprise or treat from the North Pole. We made peppermint floats one Friday afternoon - combine ginger ale and vanilla ice cream, shake green or red sugar crystals on top and then stick a small candy cane on the side of the cup. So fun! Another day he brought a box of candy canes, and on the last day before break, he brought a huge present - a package of play food for our kitchen/home living center, since it had literally nothing but the scraggly toys that came with whoever the previous owner was. Haha. We also kept a journal to write about where our elf was each day. There are so many fun things you can do with it! I highly recommend it to any moms or teachers out there.

                                       

The day Jordan the Elf dropped off some candy canes, I decided to do a little candy cane activity that can be found in Deanna Jump's Christmas unit on TPT (which is fantastic, by the way). We taste-tested our candy canes and then made a web of all the different words we could use to describe our candy canes - I was so impressed at the words they came up with! We then completed the candy cane graph/poem from Deanna's packet - I love how it turned out! Only one student didn't like how they tasted! We analyzed our data (sorry, didn't get a pic of that) and made our own graphs to go along with the big one.

Since we were in school an extra week longer than usual, it gave me tons more time to plan holiday-themed centers. I used a couple of activities that I got last year from Cara Carroll - Santa number word match and gingerbread word family game. The kids loved them, Cara, so thank you for sharing! They also created candy cane patterns using paper squares.

Near the end of our holiday unit, I came up with an Elf on the Shelf writing craftivity. The kids had to write a letter to our Elf to tell him why he should tell Santa that they should be on the "good list". Some of their responses were hilarious! One kid said, "Because I never get spankin's at home!" and others included "I get a green light every day!" and "I won't hit my sister anymore." HA! Very persuasive. ;)

 Here is an "in-progress" elf. They turned out SO cute. When I get a chance, I'll post the tracers for you guys.

I'm putting together a weather unit that I'm hoping to get posted for my first product to sell. You can do so many fun things with weather; I love it every year!

I am going to enjoy my last day off tomorrow with some church, football, and friends. Oh and as an aside, I am still relishing my amazing night at the Phoenix Coyotes game tonight - I got to witness our captain, Shane Doan, score his first ever hat trick. It was an epic night! Go Yotes!

"I'm thankful!"...for this linky party!

The lovely ladies over at the fabulous blog What the Teacher Wants are hosting a Thankful linky party! Such a perfect idea for connecting with others with Thanksgiving only 3 days away (um...what?!).

1. What are you thankful for in your classroom?
I am super thankful for my amazing, wonderful kinder team. We have so much fun and work so well together that it makes this job much easier! I don't know what I'd have done without them my first few years of teaching; they are wonderful. As far as actually IN the classroom, I am so thankful for my projector and my document camera. I don't know HOW I ever taught kindergarten without a document camera with all the modeling that is required. It's my lifesaver. My projector allows me to use technology with my kiddos to my little heart's content! I am also so thankful for my students. They can drive me crazy at times, but I love 'em to bits.

2. What person are you most thankful for?
I'm going to cheat and change person to <b>people</b>, because I am so blessed to have the most amazing family in the world. My mom, dad, brother and I love spending time together and we laugh about all our little inside jokes we have about everything. God has definitely blessed me with my great family and I'm so thankful that we are so close with one another.


3. What 3 blogs are you most thankful for?
I am definitely thankful for Deanna Jump's blog. Hers was the first teaching blog I ever came across and I was so amazed by her incredible activities and lessons she did with her students. It opened me up to a whole new world of ideas and things to do with my kinder kiddos and I thank her greatly for sharing with us!

I'm also thankful for Cara's blog at The First Grade Parade. Her creations are really second to none. I'm so grateful that she has shared so many wonderful things with us for free and I REALLY wish she taught kindergarten because I totally love all of her ideas but can't use them all in kindergarten! ;) She inspires me to make fabulous supplemental materials for my class and I love seeing what new activity/craftivity she comes up with next. Love, love her ideas.

I'm also thankful for Fran over at Kindergarten Crayons. How she finds time to teach AND make fabulous resources is beyond me! I'm so thankful that she is so generous with her wonderful creations and allows us to download them all. And the thing is... every single thing she creates is FANTASTIC!

I love so many other great blogs, so this is just a little highlight of the best of the best. Thanks to everyone out there in teaching blogland for sharing, talking, and laughing!

4. What guilty pleasure are you most thankful for?
I must say, I am a girl who is a sucker for sports. HUGE Diamondbacks and Coyotes fan. My family has Cardinals season tickets. I live for March Madness. I watch NHL on the Fly and MLB Tonight for fun. If I am at home and one of my beloved teams is playing on TV, I'll be the first one turning it to that channel. Sports are such an amazing thing to be a part of; and I love both watching and attending the games. I love it and am so thankful for it! And another one that is even more of a guilty pleasure, but I'm not sure I'm thankful for it... BRAVO reality TV shows. Seriously every single one. Real Housewives? Sucked in. Flipped Out? Gotta watch. Top Chef... don't even get me started, love love it.

5. What are you most thankful for? 
I'm most thankful for my God who blesses me beyond measure and loves me. I'm thankful for my family, friends, my job, co-workers, and every single student that has ever walked through my classroom door.


Go join the linky party over at What the Teacher Wants! Super fun! Happy Thanksgiving. :)

Fun With Color Words!

My class just wrapped up their "colors" theme last week and we have done so many activities with color words and color-themed stories.

My district uses the Houghton Mifflin reading program, so all of our kinder themes last 3 weeks. I'll do the stories from the reading program for the first 2 weeks, and then the third week provides me with a little more freedom to use my own themed books that I love. During that week we read stories like Harold and the Purple Crayon, Pinkalicious, Caps for Sale, Go Away Big Green Monster, & The Crayon Box That Talked.

For the latter book, I created a center where my kids had to write the color word on the game pieces, match it to the same color on the game board, and then, when they were done, use it to fill out and color the recording sheet.

I posted it in my last entry, but I'll put it here again for your free downloading pleasure if you missed it! Click on the link below to download the center from Google Docs.

The Crayon Box That Talked Color Words Center

To help the kids learn to read and write their color words, my kinder team and I have them sing color word songs. I noticed such a difference between my first year class, when I didn't have the songs, and my second year class, who did, with how quickly they remembered and were able to read all the words. I swear, there is a song for everything! But it's more fun that way!

Another book we read for this theme was A Color of His Own by Leo Leonni. After we read the story, I have my kids write their own sentence stem to tell what color their chameleon turned and what object made it do so. I give them the sentence stem, "My chameleon turned ________________ when it sat on a _____________." They make their own chameleon (I just found a template online), glue it to the writing sheet, and then draw the object that it stood on to make it change colors. I got some cute and creative ones this year! One kid said a tiger, so he drew orange and black stripes on his chameleon. Other kids chose rainbows, leaves, cherries, and strawberries. I love how excited they get for this activity! Unfortunately I don't have my writing sheet available to download, but you can feel free to use this idea and make it your own. I'll try to take some pictures of the finished writing... I don't know how anyone takes pictures in their class, kindergarten is too exhausting for that! Haha!

Even though we have moved on from our colors reading theme, I don't stop integrating those activities with the color words. We're onto a families theme - what stories or activities do you guys like to do with colors and/or families? I've seen some great ideas out there in blogland already. Till next time!

Back in action... finally!

Phew! So I finally hunkered down and set up/installed the internet at my new place. I've been about a month and a half without... hence the sparse updates. But I've been taking loads of pictures at school in hopes that I would one day be able to share them with you... and I have some freebies for you to make up for lost time!

This year's class is exhausting, but I love 'em. I love getting into this part of the year where I don't have to dwell as much on teaching them every single routine and I can start on a lot more fun projects for them to do now that they're "used" to going to school.

Here's a little update on what's been going on. Sorry for the poor quality; all I've had is my phone to take pics!:

So when school started a little over a month ago, my room began like this.....

And then slowly added these next pieces to finally all come together...

 

 And a sweet parent brought me these cake pops at meet the teacher night! Aren't they cute? And they were SO yummy... I was so surprised, I've never gotten a gift right off the bat before! So thoughtful!

I love how every year, my kids just adore center time. It's the most fun for me, too! They get so into the little stations each week. Last week I set up the "Mixed Up Alphabet" center. I had a big basket of magnetic letters that they had to put in order on a magnetic shelf. Once they ordered it, they filled out the recording sheet with the missing letters. Click the picture of the worksheet below to download! (Graphics courtesy of Scrappin' Doodles)

And here are my kids actually completing the center... they loved using the big letters. :)

Finally, we just started our Colors unit in reading, so I made a color word center to go along with it. Click here to go to Google Docs and download!

Next time I'll share a little bit more about some of the activities I've been doing in my classroom. I can't believe it's already the end of September! Where have these first 2 months gone??

Free For All Friday!...

...Even though it's really Saturday. :) Internet access is a no-go at my new place as of yet, so I have to update whenever I have wi-fi access at the moment. Besides, isn't it always a good day for free stuff?

I made these after school pick-up signs to put on my door... feel free to download! And if there's another program/pick-up you'd like me to make one for, just shoot me a comment and I'd be happy to oblige! Click the picture to go to the Google Doc, there are 3 more pages to view. :)

I also made this color & sort shapes activity sheet that I'm having my kids use next week. Have your students color each shape with the corresponding color word; then cut out and sort into the table above. One of my teammates used it with her class already and said they were so into it! (Again, click the picture to go to the Google Doc!)

This one's made to be printed on legal size paper, but I'm sure you could finagle it to be printed on regular sized paper if you don't have any available!

I've just finished up my 3rd week of school, and things are rockin' and rollin' with my kinders. They are a CHATTY group this year! And I think 6 of them have megaphones permanently attached to their vocal chords... love 'em, though. It's gonna be a fun year!

Hop on over to Blog Hoppin' to join in on the fun! Teacher Week is over, but you can still link to your posts for another couple of days. :)