"Just another manic Monday"

I wonder if this song will be in my head every week when I do these posts.



OK so listen y'all, I know that this freebie is basically the same thing as the farm freebie that I did last week but 1) I really wanted to participate in Manic Mondays again and I don't have any other freebies polished and ready to share at the moment 2) I figure a lot of people will be doing Oceans around this time of year and 3) Who doesn't love a great thinking map?? I mean really :)

These are available in my TPT store, or you can just click below and grab it from scribd.

You can check out my other "Ocean/Summer" related products here here and here)


I'll be back later in the week to share some of our dinosaur centers. (Click here to find my Dinosaur Math Unit) My kids are were SO excited to start our dino unit today!!

Ocean Math Thinking Maps

More farm fun.

We have finally finished our farm unit. It has been a while since I spent 2 full weeks teaching 1 theme. It feels like we have been looking at pictures of pigs and cows and horses forever but I'd much rather have lots of time than not enough! We had a great week with lots of fun and LOTS of learning. I have a ton of pictures to share so I'll get right to them :)

The day after our field trip we made farm circle maps of all the things we saw. (The circle map is from the lovely Shannon Martin at Kindergarten Hoppenings and the pictures are from KPM Doodles)

Short vowel chicks and eggs. It's hard to see in this picture but the eggs made little flaps that lifted up to show the chicks underneath with the vowels.

We read Mrs Wishy Washy and had animal crackers in chocolate pudding for snack (I found farm animal crackers at the Dollar Store...win!!)

We made roosters with ten frames on their feathers to match the teen numbers on their backs (I will put ten frames on ANYTHING! haha)

We made these darling little sheep. One side showed them before they got sheared and the other side was after they were sheared and had the silly sentence.

The sheep were the final touch on our farm scene (my barn didn't turn out as cute as I had hoped but it worked)

When we were learning about how farmers grow food on the farm we tasted peas and carrots and graphed which ones we liked better.

Then they made their own version of the veggie they liked best and wrote about it. (I had a few that wanted to make both so they wrote about how much they DIDN'T like peas on their pea pods haha)

These sight word farms turned out so cute. I copied the animals and the barn with sight words on them. They got to build their farm and then wrote me 3 sentences using the words on the animals. It was a challenge for some of them to construct sentences with some of the new words but they did great!

My teaching partner next door got her chicken eggs today so we were talking all about chicks and eggs. I got this idea from Piterest originally but it came from Valerie over at All Students Can Shine . They LOVED getting to tear open the eggs after the glue dried!

I love how this guy is just barely peeking out :)

Making 10 circle maps...ten frames ON a circle map: these are a few of my favorite things ;)

I got this idea from Kinder by Kim

Whew!! I told you that was a lot! High five to you if you stayed with me through all that. To celebrate the end of a great 2 weeks both of my farm products are 20% off right now in my TPT store until Sunday.

Have a great weekend :)

Manic Mondays

Happy Monday friends! First of all, I love love love LOVE my new blog design. Alicia over at Dreamlike Magic is just fabulous :)

I am linking up with Classroom Freebies for Manic Monday's.



I am excited to share these thinking maps I made for my kiddos this week. We used the brace map today for our teen numbers and it went great. They are really getting good at understanding this base ten concept with the teen numbers! I just slid the barn brace map into a sheet protector (late night creation = no time to laminate) and projected it up on the board and we used different teen numbers to break apart into 10 and another number.

There is also a circle map for making ten, and some number bonds for ten. I hope you find these helpful :)

Farm Math Thinking Maps

The dinosaurs are coming...

Hello friends! Well the farm was AWESOME. We had a flat tire on the bus so we left school almost an hour late (for an hour long drive). But the staff was absolutely great and we were still able to do everything on our agenda. We milked cows, held chickens, rode horses, fed goats and pigs, rode a train and had a hay ride. It was such an awesome experience for my kids...they especially loved when the baby duck pooped all over my arm!!!


We still have one more week of farm fun planned, but wanted to share my brand new Dinosaur Math Unit.

The free preview shows everything (why don't more people take advantage of that feature??) I had planned on making this math and literacy, but so much math just kept pouring out of my head :) I'm excited to dive into dinosaurs in a few weeks...we didn't get to do our dinosaur unit last year so it will be my first time teaching about them.


I can NOT believe we only have 5 weeks of school left!! Are you all dealing with testing craziness in your schools?

Farm fun and an awesome giveaway!

We are going to the farm tomorrow!! My kids were off the WALL today with excitement! It is going to be a great day. We have been having a blast this week learning all about the farm and the kids are just going to be besides themselves tomorrow getting to see it all in person :)

Giveaway rules below...but first, here are pics of a few of the centers and other activities that we did this week.

TLC style pigs and cows

Farm animal stamping and animal names (these are from my farm book pack)

Scrambled sentences

Ok now to the giveaway!

Both my TPT store AND my blog hit 20 followers today so I am taking that as a sign to host my first giveaway (farm themed of course!!) I'm going to steal the rules from the fabulous Nicole over at Rowdy in Room 300 partly because I really loved her farm unit that I got from her giveaway last week, and party because I like the idea that everybody wins :)

This is very simple. Follow my blog and TPT store and leave me a comment (with your email) and I will send you my Fun on the Farm mini-unit! If you mention the giveaway on your blog I'll throw in my Spring math unit.

Easy right? You have until Friday at midnight!!

Bugs, bugs, bugs!

We had a blast learning about insects last week. Here are some pictures from our week.

We made these cute ladybug books with L words on the inside.

We also made our click beetles after reading Eric Carle's book. I cannot remember for the life of me where I found this idea originally but I've made them every year since my internship and they are a blast every time. We made them with small paper plates and tissue paper squares. Then I hot glue a clothespin to the bottom and they start clicking and jumping away.

(A few click beetle tips: 1) Use GOOD clothespins that are fairly sturdy or they will twist and get stuck. Also, the sturdier the clothespin, the better the "click" 2) Put hot glue on the outside of the clothespins where the metal parts fit into the groves of the wood. This will limit clothespin malfunction. 3) Line up the clothespin right up to the edge of the paper plate (the part you squeeze is the part that goes on the outside)

On Friday we wrapped up our insect unit by making our candy bugs. The kids were singing "Head, Thorsx, Abdomen" to themselves over and over as they were making their bugs...too funny. My favorite is the one with the pretzel feet :)

I am thinking of doing a giveaway when I hit 20 followers. I'll keep you posted.

For now, here's one last bug freebie.

Bee Number Book

Leave me some love if you download :)

Tax day sale!

I have lots to share about our week on insects but I left my camera at school! So for now I'm joining the fun and throwing a Tax Day sale in my TPT store. Be sure to follow my store while you are there :)

Click here to go to my store!

Almost Thursday already??

Boy this week really is flying by! I was out at an inservice all day about the Common Core State Standards. My head is about ready to explode but I have to say I really like where they are going. Nothing's perfect of course, but I'm kind of excited to dive into these standards next year.

We are LOVING our unit on bugs right now. The kids are having so much fun learning about all the different kinds of insects and making comparisons between them. Our caterpillars and ladybug larva arrived on Tuesday. I had never seen ladybug larva before...I had to look on the package to figure out what I was holding in my hands ha!

On top of all our insect excitement the kids are literally counting the days until our farm field trip next week. I just posted a literacy mini unit in my TPT store

Click here to find it.


AND to celebrate making it to 10 followers (I'm all about celebrating the small stuff) I'm posting a farm freebie (I did this earlier in the week but my post mysteriously disappeared - which is fine in the end because the freebie I posted in that post had a mistake...oops)

I have been making these morning work sheets for a few weeks now and I love them! I can hit all kinds of different skills that I want my kids to practice and they really don't take much time at all. I usually copy them back to back with a math on one side and literacy on the other. This set is farm themed...all ready for next week :)

Farm Morning Work

Giveaway!

Nicole from Rowdy in Room 300 is having a super easy give away of her fabulous Year of Ten Frames pack. All you need to do is head over and follow her blog (which you should do anyway because it is great!) and leave a comment and she will send them to you. Blog about it and you she will throw in her Farming Unit!! Here's the link to the post :) Hurry it's only open until midnight!

http://rowdyinroom300.blogspot.com/2012/04/year-of-ten-frames-and-giveaway-where.html

Lightbulb moment

You know those moments when you come up with a great idea WHILE you are in the middle of a lesson? I had one of those moments on Friday. I was sitting down to sing a counting song with my kiddos and the whole idea came to me about a way to help them visualize base ten concepts with the teen numbers. Frantically I put on a silly song for them to sing with each other and started cutting up index cards, writing numbers and drawing dots.

In my right hand I held up a big index cards with a 10 written on it and ten dots drawn underneath. We talked about what number was there and how many dots were on the card. Next I held up in my left hand a smaller card with the number 1 and 1 dot. We talked about the number and how many dots were there. Then I said "What if I did this" and pulled the cards together placing the 1 card on top of the 0 of the ten and the kids all yelled "11!" So I asked them "What if you wanted to WRITE 11, what would you do?" and they said 1 and 1" Then I said "What if you want to BUILD 11, what would you do?" They thought about it for a second and one said "Put a 1 with the 10" Bingo! So we did this over and over with all the numbers from 11-19. Each time I would ask the process for writing vs the process for building. I would also show them with the number cards how to bring the numbers together to build the number.

I have since made a nicer set of cards (the index cards and marker dots got ruined pretty quickly) and they are up for sale in my TPT store along with a student flap book to go along with the activity.

Click here to find it :)

A mish mash week

We were a little all over the place this week. On Monday we finished up our plant unit with a few final activities that we just couldn't get to the week before, and we made these super cute flowers using coffee filters, cupcake holders, black beans, straws, and some Easter grass.

Tuesday and Wednesday we started talking about insects. I could honestly teach this unit for a month. The kids get SO excited about it and there are so many fun activities to be done. We started by talking about the basic characteristics of insects and sang Dr. Jean's song about the body parts "Head, thorax, abdomen" We also learned that honey is basically bee vomit (did you know this?? I learned it during my internship WHILE I was reading a book about insects to the class and we all exclaimed our disgust together!!)

These bees and ants were really easy to prep and turned out so cute.

I can't wait to add ladybugs and butterflies and click beetles next week!

Today we took a break from the insects for some Easter festivities including a gigantic egg hunt on the playground. It's amazing how quickly 7 Kindergarten classes can scoop up a couple hundred eggs!

Here's a buggy freebie for the weekend :)

"How many more" is one math concept that we still need LOTS of practice with.

How Many More Bugs

Here we go!

OK I am going to start this adventure of teacher blogging. Just starting to get the hang of this. Hopefully I will be back soon with some pictures of our fun week with bugs. Until then, here's a link to some Spring Freebies in my TPT store :)

Click here and here.