MOA here I come!

Hello! Today I am spending the day here:

And while the 3 boys/men in my life go to places like the Apple Store, Best Buy, and Game Stop, I will be perfectly content for hours browsing here:

at Archivers...looking at paper, stickers, stamps, ink and dies! Ahhhh! I am feeling the time crunch to START my son's high school scrapbook...he's a junior.  I feel good about having the K-8 years scrapped for him...I'm just stuck on what to do for the high school book. I am debating whether or not to go with school colors as the theme to his book...or just school themed pages in general; and he's a runner (CC and track) and there are not many papers and stickers out there for those sports...so we'll see what today brings! Hope you have a great day, too, doing something you enjoy!

Classroom Update for January

Hello! I went to my classroom for a few hours this morning to make the switch from December to January. There's always so much to get done....I didn't accomplish everything on my "to-do" list, but feel good about it none the less.  (At least while I was working in my classroom,  I wasn't snacking all morning...like I have been at home!!)  Here are a few pictures of my room...

I have 6 of these pretty blue snowflakes hanging from the ceiling. I bought them at the Dollar Tree several years ago.  Ironically, I live in southern MN and we don't have even one single flake of snow on the ground!! This was our first "brown" Christmas since 2006 and today it's in the 40's. But hey, I am not complaining, because even though I live here, I do not like the COLD!

I put these snowmen on the door for "Read the Room." Each one has just the item in the sentence colored. These were super simple to make. I also have a smaller version for the children to color the items and fill in the color words. They can choose their own colors; they do not have to match the posters.

I made a "label the snowman" activity for my writing center...I saw this in December done with a Santa picture and thought it'd be great for January done with a snowman.

I have this one hanging up for the children to use as a model and blank pages in the writing area.

I have seen SO MANY great literacy ideas on Pinterest...like this:

 and this:

I've been working to create similar activities, but adapted them to meet my students' needs...so I am not going to share something that isn't my own idea; these teachers deserve the credit!! Thought you might be inspired by them, too.  I just LOVE all of the creativity and inspiration out there!! Thanks for checking in. Enjoy your day!

Cute January Pins

Hello! I hope everyone enjoyed Christmas and can relax over the next few days before heading back to school. My family and I had a wonderful holiday, blessed with lots of family time and good food. : ) I am taking a break from school things...at least I did for a bit...by baking and scrapbooking. I have, however, been Pinning some awesome ideas for January. Here are a few winter projects I am looking forward to doing...

Gotta love Pinterest!!! I've been working on a couple of winter printables of my own...here is an activity sheet I made to help my class practice printing lowercase letters.

 Thanks for checking in and have a great day!

How many cookies tall are you?

We did a few fun gingerbread activities over the past couple of weeks. We read The Gingerbread Boy and Gingerfriends (Jan Brett).  Here a few pictures of our activities:

Beginning sounds practice: Mrs. Lee style!!

Math activity: add the correct number of buttons

How many gingerbread cookies tall are you?

The children could measure "how many gingerbread cookies tall" they were (with help from a friend) and then complete the response sheet by coloring in the correct number of cookies and filling in their name. I printed out pictures of them to glue on the sheet, too.

ONE more day!

Good evening! Whew...just one more day until Christmas break. I am looking forward to it and I know many of you can relate!! We had our Christmas program today and it was beautiful; we do 2 performances for parents/families...one at 9 a.m. and the other at 1:30 p.m. So, basically, we don't do much else on program day!!! Yesterday we finished our calendar gifts. They turned out great! We wrapped them and they went home in backpacks. Hopefully, they are safe and sound under everyone's Christmas tree. Here are photos of each month and the cover:

The cover and January (children filled in their last name on the blank line.)

February and March

April and May

June and July

 

August and September

October and November

December

 

 

That's a lot of hand prints! I like this calendar because it was simple; everything was on one page and there was no extra gluing involved. I created a different cover, but all of the originals can be found here. I am so grateful for teachers who share!! This made our project pretty stress free...although if I do it again next year, I may get an earlier start.  We started when we got back after Thanksgiving break. That can be cutting it a little close, especially if you have children who are sick and need to make up pages. I hope the families like them. : ) Thanks for checking in and if you have one or two more days of school this week...hang in there!

Hope I am doing this right...

Happy Sunday! So...being rather new to all of this...I hope I am doing this right. I was nominated for this award by Ms. Lopez from Coloring Outside the Lines.  This award is for newbies, and its goal is to spotlight up-and-coming blogs with less than 200 followers. If awarded, you must:

♥ copy and paste the award on your blog

♥ thank the giver and link back to them

♥ reveal YOUR top five picks and leave a comment letting them know

THANK YOU, Ms. Lopez, for nominating my blog!

Here are my picks :

Miss Chamblee's Kinderfriends

The Kindergarten Chick

Krazy in Kindergarten

Crayons & Curls

Mrs. Bremer's Kindergarten

What a fun way to visit new sites and get to know what other teachers are doing...I love seeing all of the creativity out there!!

Rudolph...

Hello! I couldn't resist using the "grow a Rudolph" this month. We put it in water on Monday...he's actually grown quite a bit since then...and the children are very excited to check his progress every morning. I can't help but feel a little guilty looking at him...he looks like he's trapped in the jar of water!!!  : ) Thanks for checking in...hope your days before Christmas are going well.

Candy cane writing

Hello! It's been a busy week...and it's only Tuesday!! Ha!! I'm sure many of you feel the same way! We have school through Dec. 21st...so about one more week to go until Christmas break. Last week we focused on the sound of letter "c." We did descriptive writing about candy canes and made candy canes out of circles. We are working on patterning in math, so this fit together perfectly.

 We also did this pattern activity; the children had to color 3 different patterns on the candy canes.

The Christmas spirit is alive and well in our classroom. : ) These cute Christmas trees are hanging from our ceiling.

We made Christmas stockings to decorate our lockers...

I feel fortunate to be able to celebrate and share the true meaning of Christmas with my students; here are pictures of our door and our prayer table.

Each week of Advent we are focusing on a different aspect of waiting...week one was about waiting patiently. Week 2 focused on working hard while we are waiting. This week we are working on letting our light shine by being kind and helpful.  We are coloring an Advent calendar (the number on the calendar matches the date) each morning as part of our calendar activities.

(clip art by DJ Inkers)

The children will be able to take the Advent calendar home next Wednesday and finish coloring it at home. They are excited to color Baby Jesus on his birthday!! One of my students told me today she is going to draw a smile on Baby Jesus, too! I thought that was so sweet! We are working on this hand print calendar as a parent gift. I will post pics of it when we finish!  Thanks for checking in!

December Center Ideas

Hello! I thought I'd share a few fun December center ideas with you. Here is the writing center I shared in my last post, all set and ready for the students to use.

This is a fun math idea....I bought this Christmas jar filler last year at Hobby Lobby and have been waiting to use it! I printed some Christmas trees and punched holes in them. The children have to roll a die and put the number of decorations on the tree. The holes help the little balls stay in place.

The last one is a memory game I downloaded from Musings of Me...she has such wonderful stuff on her site! This week's she's posting a bunch of free holiday games to go along with the alphabet. I put the game in t his cute Christmas container....just to make it more fun! Thanks for looking and have a great day!

December Writing Center Idea

Hello! I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving break! Today, we hit the ground running...until Christmas break. : ) I have a December writing center idea to share with you. I found the original idea for this activity with fall pictures on Musings of Me. My kids LOVED this! I knew I wanted to keep their enthusiasm for writing going, so I made 12 cards using DJ Inkers clip art and have 2 writing response sheets to go along with them.

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Here are a few more projects....

Pinterest Inspired Fish

Hello! Last week we worked with the sound of letter "Ff." I saw this project on Pinterest:

Click on picture for source.

We made the fish, glued on eyes and added a sentence: "I am a _____(insert color word) fish."

We just made eyes out of paper; the wiggly eyes in the original project are much cuter! We have school tomorrow; our last day before Thanksgiving break. I plan on posting all of our Thanksgiving projects. Thanks for checking in and have a great day!

Nativity Puppets

It's hard to believe December is just around the corner! I've had the idea of making Nativity puppets for my classroom for a long time, just had not gotten around to doing it (you know how that goes!). Someone donated a box of felt to our school a couple of weeks ago, so I seized the moment and brought some home. I found this great pattern and started sewing.  These are the puppets I have done so far:

I adapted them a little bit, as you can see. I made the sheep a little different. I sewed the "glove" part first, then embellished them. That's the fun part! I just used white thread to sew all of them to save time, instead of changing colors for each puppet. You could match the thread if you wanted a professional look. I don't think the kids will care if they are sewed with white thread or not! I hope they have fun re-telling the story of the first Christmas. Thanks for looking!

Shapes!

Hello! We started working on our shapes unit this week.  We made shape hats (forgot to take pics!) and did this "roll and trace" activity. I saw this idea ( I think...when I tried to find it again, I couldn't!) on Mrs. Lee's sight a while back....I made a cube with shape stickers on it for the children to roll, then trace and color the shape. They had fun doing this with a partner....I love partner work!

Click here to download.

I think next time I will make a spinner and call it "spin and trace" simply because of storage. Flat spinners are easier to store. : )

There are some great shape video links here on Kindergarten Works.

Thanks for checking in and have a great day!

Capture a Bubble!

Hi! We did bubble prints this week....love doing these! The kids literally capture a bubble on paper. I do these with my class every year.

It can be a little bit messy...

 But when they are done...WOW!

I've added the poem as a free download...it's on 2 pages; I just stapled them close together on the bulletin board. Have a great day!

Wear blue Fridays in November for diabetes awareness! If you've helped a type 1child in your classroom...Thank You!