Creative fonts!

Hello! I spent a little time this week searching for some new fonts. Thought I'd share what I found...my newest favorite is the sound box font. It lets you create items like this:

So great for the word wall, literacy center items, sight word practice....etc. It's called teacher helpers and you can find it here.  I've also pinned a link on my September pinterest board.

I also found a great tally mark font!!! If only I had known about this one sooner! I've spent a lot of time in the past trying to create tally marks....this font makes it super simple! You can download the tally mark font here.

The other font is called color font. You can download it here. If you have some time to search and browse there are so many fun fonts to spruce up those classroom materials! Thanks for checking in!

Summer Update = )

Hello! Needless to day, it's been a while since I've updated my blog...

I've been taking some time off from school projects. This past school year I had the worst schedule I've had in all of my years of teaching...I was burned out by the end of the year. Kids were great, super family support, but here's the deal...I had 14 children in my class in the morning. After lunch I picked up 6 students from another class (that teacher was part time). So I had 20 students in the afternoon. This made it extremely difficult to carry over any learning from the morning, since 1/3 of the students were not in my room, along with other expectation issues, management styles, etc...you get the idea. 5 and 6 year old children, in my opinion, are not ready to transition and handle this kind of schedule. Yuck. I tried my best to make it work, but I'm glad it's behind me. I'm not going to dwell in the past. So at the end of the school year, I focused on my family, home,  hobbies, and summer! It feels good to rejuvenate and be ready for the new school year ahead.

My older son graduated from high school this year. We had fun celebrating him and his success. I thought I'd share a good recipe with you, since I don't have much school related info to share. I made these lemon cookies  (from pinterest) for the grad party and they were a hit! Super easy and delicious and it made a lot. Recently, while grocery shopping, I came across this:

I thought it'd be great to make orange flavored cookies instead of lemon and this cake mix did not disappoint!

Here's the recipe:
1 box of cake mix
1 egg
1 container cool whip (I did not use the whole container of cool whip when I made these or the original lemon cookies.)
Juice from an orange.

Mix it all together and chill for an hour. Bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes. I baked them on parchment paper as recommended in the original recipe. They turned out great! I added enough cool whip to make the dough firm, but didn't use the whole container.

One of these days I will head back to my classroom to sort my learning center items...that was on my 'to do' list this summer. I've also printed a few items and have been pinning a lot of great inspiration for the new year. Stay tuned!

April Showers bring...snow days???

Ha! Ha! Unbelievable...but in the past 2 weeks we have had one snow day and 2 late starts! We should be sporting capri's by now...instead, I'm still wearing my winter coat! But there's light or should I say sunlight at the end of the tunnel. It looks like we'll hit 60 this coming weekend. Time is flying by! The countdown is on: only 36 days til my son graduates from high school! We've been working like crazy to update our kitchen before the big event. I'll try to post some pics when it's all done.

For now, here's a couple of charts we made while working on our animal unit:

We are working on insects this week...a parent generously volunteered to buy our class caterpillars so we can observe them transform into butterflies. But with the cold weather we are having, we postponed getting them for a few weeks. Hopefully spring will arrive soon! Thanks for checking in!

A Little Number Bond Work...

We've been working with number bonds the past couple of weeks. Here's how we practiced them today. (I saw this idea on pinterest, along with this printable. ) The children started with 5 unifix cubes in their bag and we practiced a few number bonds together.

Then they progressively added one cube to the bag to write number bonds for 6 and 7. To complete the activity, I gave them the choice of using 8, 9, or 10 blocks.

The children wrote 3 number bonds for each number.

This was a great hands on way to practice number bonds! I also love the idea of using divided plates to work with the part, part, whole concept. We'll work on that next week!

Shamrock Art 2

Hi again! I'm back with another fun, easy St. Patrick's Day project. I originally saw this on Pinterest, but here's the original source.  I gave the children 4 strips of green paper, all different shades of green. They tore the strips into pieces and then glued them to the traced shamrock shape.

They are hanging on the wall outside of our classroom door. 

We've been working on numbers in the teens and decomposing them into 1 group of ten and the correct number of ones. Here's a picture of some shamrock 10 frames I made. The children choose a shamrock and then dot the matching number on their paper.

We did a roll and color sight word page, too!

thanks for checking in and have a great night!

Shamrock Art

We did a little shamrock project today...crayon rubbings! These can be a little frustrating the first time children try to do them. I found that it helps to tape down the object you are using, in this case the shamrock, to the table. I also taped their paper on top to minimize shifting. I love the amazement at the process of this project...when the shamrock appears in the coloring...it's cool. = )

It's Been Busy!

Hello! It's been a busy few weeks....we did our second MAP test, celebrated the 100th day of kindergarten, had Kindergarten Round Up, and now parent teacher conferences are just a week away! Thought I just share a few random activities we've been working on in the classroom...

This is a caterpillar sight word game. The children start with all of the pieces turned over, so they cannot see the words. (They start with one caterpillar head face up.) They take turns turning over the words and adding them to the caterpillar. If they turn over a new head, they start another caterpillar. After all the words are read, they see which caterpillar is the longest.

We did the 100 Mystery Picture on the 100th day...always a fun activity! And, as seen on Pinterest, I created a "100 Days Smarter" frame:

The frame is just a photo mat that I found at Hobby Lobby on clearance for under a 1.00! I added precut letters to make it quick and easy.

I've had this cardboard cut out of George Washington for a    l  o  n  g    time!! I took each child's picture and then they wrote "If I were President of the United States...." Fun!

Lastly, here's a picture of our QR code center called "Scan and Read." The basket has QR codes with the color words (that I blogged about previously) and some word families that I downloaded (see the link in that post also).

Thanks for checking in on my little corner of the kindergarten world! Have a great weekend!