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!

Away We Go…A Peek into Our Travels Around the World!

We just recently started a new unit that is near and dear to my heart- Traveling Around the World.
I love to travel, see new places, try new foods and meet new friends. The promise of an adventure always sparks excitement and wonder in me and it is something I would love to impart to my students.

This is the third time I have taught this unit, and boy oh boy does it get better (and easier) each time I tackle it!

This time around, I decided to create some handouts/worksheets that would help the unit go smoothly and also teach my students to synthesize information and pull out the important facts from what we learn.

One of the key elements to making this unit engaging is to have guest speakers from different countries come into our class and share. I encourage families to share with us about their heritage and countries of origin. We are very fortunate to have such a diverse student population, so there are usually quite a few families who have relatives that live in other countries.  Each time we travel, our focus countries change depending on where the students and their families come from.

This year I created a handout for all our guest speakers to help them organize the information they would share.  It also offered ideas of things they could bring in which include: food, games, pictures, money and books. Here is what it looks like:

The other elements I created to help the students feel like they were really "traveling" were suitcases and tickets.

The students get to decorate and glue a "stamp" on their suitcase for every continent we travel to, and they love it!

I found this Delta ticket template online. I printed them out and laminated them so we could use them for each plane ride we take.

The biggest and best part of the unit is the in-class airplane.

 I arranged the students chairs in rows "inside" the airplane. When its time for our plane trip, I have the class line up outside the classroom and I disperse the tickets. Then I lead them in and escort them to their seats on the plane.

When its time for our flight, we always kick things off with a little fun and informative video about safety :)

The first time I played this, my kids were completely mesmerized and totally engrossed! I have to admit I was a little swept up by the music as well! : )

After our safety video, I usually show a short presentation about the country we are studying by using a combination of web resources.

Some of my favorite places to find information are:

National Geographic Kids

Time For Kids-Around The World

After our "trip", we take time to review and record the information we just learned. Here are some samples of my students work summarizing what we have learned so far...

We started our trip by exploring the continent of North America. We kicked off our unit by having one of my student's parents come into our class and talk about Mexico (one of my student's dad is from Mexico). His mom made Mayan hot chocolate and sweet bread that she shared with our class. The students were fascinated by all the interesting facts. They especially liked learning about the snake pyramid.

 We spent a little time learning about our own country and reviewing our national symbols and historic landmarks.

 This student drew a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge, since it is something well known you will find in America.

 Next we traveled to the continent of South America. We only had time to visit one country so we focused on the biggest one-Brazil. We had a blast learning all about Brazilian culture and traditions. 

It just so happened my kids were super students last week and filled the marble jar so we got to celebrate by watching the movie Rio. It was a great way to wrap up our trip to Brazil.

This week we traveled to Europe. One of my students parents are from England. His mom came into our class and shared all about her country. She even made some tea and homemade scones for us to sample. The students thoroughly enjoyed having "tea time" at the end of the day.

If you wanna grab a travel journal and start your own adventure, feel free to download it 

HERE

We learned that there are two different flags, one for England and one for the United Kingdom.

Tomorrow we are traveling to Italy and on Friday we will be learning about Scotland from a special guest. It will be quite the production.  

Stay tuned to hear about the rest of our adventures.

Happy Travels!

Kindergarten Open House

This weekend my school had a kindergarten open house for incoming kindergarteners and their parents.  We offered an informational session for the parents while the kiddos were preoccupied reading, doing crafts and eating cupcakes. It was a great way for the kids to feel excited about starting school and the parents to learn a little more about our kindergarten program. 

Since this was the first time I was in charge of planning the event I thought I would hop on over to Teachers Pay Teachers for a little inspiration. I wanted to find a cute powerpoint template that I could use as well as something fun for the visitors to take with them when they left.

Here are some ideas I found that helped the event go off without a hitch!

If you like this powerpoint template, click HERE to download your own!

 I shared a little about our school and kindergarten program. Here are just a few of the talking points.

Some tasty treats and fun favors to help the visitors feel appreciated and excited about kindergarten next year.

If you like these tags, feel free to download them. I'd like to give a BIG THANK YOU to Peace Love and Learning! You can check out their blog and grab the free resource HERE

The popcorn tags were a free download courtesy of Crayons in the City. You can download their tags for free HERE

I also thought it would be helpful to give each family a folder which included a packet of handouts to help guide them through the enrollment process. The handouts also offered tips to help prepare their kids for kindergarten. 

I found these wonderful handouts from Simply Kinder Grab your packet HERE

The free packet includes: a list of tasks to work on before starting school, a list of what we learn of kindergarten, flashcards to help them learn their letters, numbers and shapes.

I also included a kindergarten readiness checklist and an article about

 the importance of play. 

Now the last thing I want to share with you is a picture of our cute bulletin board. I felt like we needed to spruce things up for winter and after pursuing TPT I found a wonderful idea.

Here it is:

My students had so much fun making their snow people and writing recommendations of books they loved. 

If you like this bulletin board idea, you can purchase it on TPT HERE

Thanks so much for stopping by. Oh and I wanted to wish you all a Happy Belated Groundhogs Day!

Christmas Craziness and Elf on the Shelf

So I must apologize for how long it has been since I last posted. As you can imagine, the Christmas season is always incredibly busy, but this year (for some reason) felt like it snuck up and flew by before I had time to catch my breath!

Although it was really busy, I did manage to take some pictures of our classroom adventures with Elf on the Shelf.  I saw so many cute ideas on interest last year that I really wanted to try but I didn't have enough time to get everything together until this year.

So without further ado….Here are our classroom adventures with Buddy the elf:

 This is how he introduced himself. When the kiddos came into the classroom they were very excited to meet him!

I picked up the cutest Elf on the Shelf unit on TPT thanks to Jaimie Knudson, and do you wanna hear the best news, its completely FREE!! That's right, not a penny and you can download a whole unit that has a great intro letter and cute (daily) letters from the elf. She even included a list of ideas of what your elf can do. I loved that everything was so neat and organized and that it was formatted to fit the classroom setting.

You can find it HERE 

Here are some of the ways our Elf entertained us!

 Sleeping in the tissue box...

 Making snow angels with flour on one of our class tables...

 "Fishing" for  goldfish in our sink...

 Drinking his favorite drink- syrup- You know how elves love their sweets :)

 Reading to our tattling turtle

 We were in desperate need of erasers and pencils (they get a little sparse by the end of the year)

And for our grand finale, our elf brought us mini pancakes to celebrate our 70th day of school as well as our class Christmas party. I told the kiddos that our elf teamed up with Zero the Hero (more on him later) and together they made pancakes for us. 

Overall we had an amazing visit with Buddy and it helped build our anticipation for Christmas to arrive. I will definitely be doing this again next year! :)

Harvest is in Full Swing and Thanksgiving is almost here!! Yippee!

We had a wonderful Monday in my K/1 classroom. I've really been enjoying a Thanksgiving unit I picked up on TPT created by Kristen Smith. It has wonderful resources including two great printable books about the Wampanoag Indians and the Pilgrims.

You can find Kristen's unit at her TPT store:

All About Thanksgiving Unit

 Our Indian corn and tissue paper pumpkins! (They made the pumpkins and paint dot corns in art class)

 Our Pilgrim quilts :) We didn't have fabric so I just cut up paper squares and had them glue them in different patterns.

 Look at how our pumpkin seeds have grown!! We can't wait to take them home tomorrow!

This is included in the Thanksgiving Unit. It was a fun way to show students a visual representation of our class findings. We all voted "YES" that we loved crockpot pumpkin bread! It was so tasty!


Last week we made an Indian corn tissue paper craft and feather headbands (also found in Kristen's unit) and today we made crockpot pumpkin bread and pilgrim quilts. All of these activities were a blast!
After all of our studying and crafting and learning about the first Thanksgiving, I can say I CAN NOT WAIT for Thanksgiving to get here next week.

On another note, has anyone ever tried cooking a whole chicken in a crockpot?
I did it yesterday for the first time and I all I have to say is WOW! What an amazing discovery I just made.
It was awesome! I prepped my chicken (rubbed it with spices, salt, pepper, etc.) then stuck it in the crockpot (I forgot to add any extra stuff like water or onions) and cooked it on low for 8+ hours.
When we got home, I peeked inside the crockpot and when I poked the meat, it fell completely off the bone. BEST MEAL EVER… Not to mention, cooking a whole chicken will provide meat for several meals, so I am all set and prepped for the rest of the week. Thank you Jesus!
It wasn't super fancy, just tried and true- Here is the recipe I used to make my chicken:

Crockpot Roast Chicken

If I don't happen to post again before Thanksgiving, I hope you have a wonderful holiday with all the people you love!