Happy Valentines Day Ya'll

Well yesterday was definitely a whirlwind! We had a very busy fun fill day packed with celebrations, sugar and of course lots of lovely valentines.

 

We started gearing up for Valentines this week by thinking about all the things we love about our school. *I found this idea on Pinterest (not my original idea).

It was so fun to have the whole community (K-12 students) contributing to our bulletin board.

We kicked off our morning with Donuts with Dads a fun community event that we do every year (we celebrate muffins with moms in may for Mother's day but since Father's day isn't until June we celebrate ours in February right around Valentines)

 Look at those cuties! 

I love my kindergarten love bugs :)

 We also had a Valentine's themed bake sale to raise money for our chick hatching fund.
I am happy to report we totally exceeded our financial goal and I'm ready to start adding items to my amazon cart and getting this ball rolling. 

*Mission baby chicks has officially commenced!

It's go time people :)

Bake Sale Success  

 Here are a few tips& tricks I have learned 

(the hard way) from experience over the years to help make a bake sale successful and stress free.

Here's my advice:

1. Raise money for something specific *baby chicks, butterfly larva, new playground toys etc. (it's a lot easier for people to give when they know where the money is going)

2. Recruit lots of parent helpers

I always send out a bake sale sign up sheet a week before the sale with suggestions of items we may need (brownies, cupcakes, cookies, cake pops, toys, bubbles, playdough etc.) as well as a schedule with available time slots for parent volunteers sign up to help sell. This helps me keep track of the items being sent in and make sure there is enough variety as well as making sure I have all the busy sale times covered throughout the day.
 

3. Pick a Popular Theme

I've found that when I give the bake sale a theme (usually close to a popular holiday) it makes the items that come in look much more  appealing and therefore we sell more. 

Give your sale a little curb appeal! 

4. Make Your Bake Sale Mobile!

I've started putting all my remaining items on a cart at the end of the day and rolling it out to the carpool area so we can continue selling when parents come to pick up their kiddos. 

Works like a charm.

5. Diversify your items 

I realized a few years ago that we could sell so much more than sugary treats. The possibilities are literally endless. We've added toys, pencils, erasers, tattoos, jello, candy bags and stickers to our sale items and the best part is, if they don't sell they don't go bad so we can just save them and sell them at our next bake sale. 

The other thing I do is usually mark down the items as the day progresses. It's always better to get something instead of nothing, am I right?

And lastly, I woke up to a fun surprise

~Breakfast in bed~

I'm a spoiled woman.

Happy Valentines Everyone!

It's Valentines Day Hip Hip Hooray!!

Wow, can I just say-what a complete whirlwind of a day! I always love class party days but I always feel really exhausted at the end of them. Its the beauty of kindergarten, such anticipation leading up to great events, but then sheer exhaustion sets in and I am ready for a beer and a bubble bath by 4:30pm.

So here is a little peek into our week leading up to Valentines, and of course all the fun stuff we did to celebrate all the LOVE that was in the air.

 We made Monster boxes! Aren't they just the CUTEST things you have ever seen? I thought so :)

 Of course I had to make one first so the kids would have an example. They thought it was hilarious!

Here are a couple of centers we enjoyed working with this week:

You can grab this download for free HERE

(Don't you just love that the girl frog has a big bow? So precious!!)

We read the story Froggy's First Kiss, which my kiddos thought was so funny.  Then we did a great follow up activity. My first graders had to read sentences (about the book) and decide what kind of punctuation mark to put at the end. The worksheet below has three sections for students to write a telling sentence, asking sentence and an excited sentence.

This super cute unit was a free download compliments of Cara Carroll at The First Grade Parade

Here is another fun center my students had a blast with!

I found these hearts at Dollar Tree and thought they would make a great valentines literacy activity. 

I wrote capitol letters on the front of the hearts and lowercase on the back. Then I had my kindergarteners match them together.

My firsties used these hearts to make CVC words. 

And for an extension assignment, we made challenge words (words that start with digraphs)

On Thursday, we learned about the 5 love languages (words of encouragement, quality time, physical touch, acts of service and gift giving) and the ways we give and receive love. After we talked about them, I had each of the kids identify what their love language is and then glue it on a heart with their name on it.

If you want to learn more about the 5 love languages check it out 

HERE

We displayed them in the hallway so everyone can see :)

And here is a fun little Pinterest find, I decided to use this year for my kiddos. It's hard to see, but the valentine's say "Happy Valentine's Day Love Bug," 

I liked the idea of giving my students a valentine that wasn't full of sugar.

Grab a free copy of these valentines HERE

And of course, Valentines wouldn't be complete without a fun little gift for my coworkers

 Last but not least, this posting wouldn't be complete without including a little personal touch.

I had a hard time thinking of something I could get my hubby since all the traditional valentines gifts are bent towards pleasing women (flowers, chocolate etc.) So of course, I had to hop on Pinterest and see what ideas were swirling around. 

Here's what I came up with:

I confess I took the pic after he started devouring the Frittos (they're his favorite, so he couldn't wait to eat them)

If you like the tag, you can download it HERE

So after the craziness of a fun filled week, I headed home and was greeted by a very sweet surprise

Tulips, Proseco and a Spanish love poem. Oh that's right, did I mention my husband is a Spanish teacher. 

His Spanish fluency always comes in handy when he wants to be romantic.

I'm a sucker for it every...single…time! :)

And so everyone, I must wish you adieu. I hope you all have a fabulous President's Day weekend!