Thanksgiving Morning Work and a Spooky Sale :)

I finally finished my Thanksgiving morning work pack. I had such a great response from the fall pack and I am excited to keep sharing them with you as the year goes on. Last year I used them every morning for morning work but this year I have actually been sending them home 1 week at a time as homework and my parents are loving them. Since Thanksgiving is the 22 this year I only made 3 weeks. Below you can see a math and a reading sheet from each week. Click any of the pictures to find it in my store :)

I'm also throwing a 20% off sale in my store to celebrate Halloween. Click on the picture below to hop over and start shopping  :)

Bats, bats, bats.

I am so excited because we FINALLY started our 9 center rotations this week. It has taken me FOREVER to get these up and running this year mostly due to our severe overcrowding this year and the fact that we have been shifting students basically since the start of the year. Our second new Kindergarten class is being formed on Thursday.  I  blogged all about how I do my literacy stations here. I love love love this method. The kids did SO great. They get so much accomplished and are really engaged...it's awesome :)

I didn't get pictures of all our stations, but I do have some shots of a few things we've done so far this week.


The bats turned out super cute. It's just 2 die cut circles, one of them cut in half to make wings. This guy hadn't finished his silly sentence yet when I shot this picture :)

A few of the great activities in Caitlin's awesome bat unit. 

This brace map activity went great...it was a perfect assessment so see that my kiddos were finally comfortable enough with decomposing 4. We are moving on to 5 this week. You can grab these brace maps here. 

The playdoh center was supposed to have the sight words on bats but I ran out of laminating sheets last night (and I can't even talk about the drama that is our laminator at school!!) Luckily I found these babies already prepped from last year and we had a little preview of pumpkins next week ha.  This was the first time I broke out the playdoh letter stamps from Lakeshore and my kids went nuts over them!!

Found this great song today on Youtube. My kids had a blast learning about echolocation with this song.





As a side note, we had some scheduling shifts today and didn't get to do our writer's workshop and I had 2 kids complain that they missed it...WIN :)

Fun stuff for October.

This is my absolute favorite time of year. One day I will get to teach about fall things while living in fall weather and wearing boots and scarves instead of shorts and sandals in October. But all the same, I love this time of year. My brain has been exploding with new ideas for October. Here's a few new resources you can grab in my store.

The first one is a freebie stamping book. My kids LOVE these stamping books and they hit so many great skills. We stamp every week in my room. We are going to use this one next week when we start our pumpkin unit.

I also made a pack of pumpkin themed number bonds. Click either picture to find them in my store. They are on sale right now!!

Fun little pumpkin math center. I'm all about the subitizing :)

My fall morning work has actually become my fall homework packs. My morning routine has shifted a bit and I started sending these home as homework in 1 week packs. When/if the pack comes back to me, they get the next week. This way I save paper and I know exactly who is doing what.

Finally, looking ahead to Halloween, some fun interactive emergent readers. These come with full color versions of each book.

Hope your Monday was fabulous...can't wait to share some of the fun we are having with bats this week :)

Getting ready for bats!

Wow...October 14th already?? This fall is FLYING BY. I am so so so excited to start my bat unit this week! It's ironic because I had a "run in" with a bat a few years ago that resulted in my sister and I needing a round of rabies vaccinations. The sounds of live bats still kind of give me the creeps so I might have to plug my ears for some of the the discovery streaming videos I found to use this week ha! We will be using Caitlin Clabby's AMAZING bat unit. Go check out her post with her cute activities here.

I made another set of number bonds to use in math. We are just finishing up decomposing the number 4 and moving on to 5 this week. I'm moving slower through the numbers this year because last year I started to rush it a bit and my kids fell apart when we started decomposing 5 and 6. You can find some number bonds and brace maps for 4 and 5 below. I made a color teacher version of the number bonds also. I usually use these and just stick a post it note over one of the numbers and we talk about what number is "hiding". I think half the reason I'm excited about teaching bats is that KPM Doodles' clip art is just so darn cute! I am trying to use Google Docs again. PLEASE let me know if you have trouble downloading or accessing the file. You SHOULD be able to click on the picture and get to it :)

Scarecrow Number Bonds

Just wanted to share this cute number bond activity for decomposing 4. I started using these last year and they are a great assessment to really see where the kids are in terms of working with a particular number. I copy the two pages next to each other on an 11 x 17 paper so they are nice and big. Stay tuned for more of these as we move through the year and let me know if you download :)


Scarecrow Number Bonds

Apple Fun

We had a blast learning about apples the last 2 weeks. This is my third year teaching but the first time I've actually been able to do my Apple unit. My first year I got my job late and it was all I could do to hold my head above water. And last year I broke my ankle in September and was out of school for 7 days (followed by 6 weeks on a knee scooter). The best part was on Friday my kids came RUSHING up to me after lunch all excited. They had broken open the cores of their apples that they bought at lunch and found seeds and could not stop talking about how they were going to go home and plant their own apple trees. My favorite part was overhearing "I'm going to put these in the dirt and then there will be a sapling and then buds and blossoms and then APPLES". I just wanted to fall on the floor and laugh out of pure happiness haha. 

Here's some pictures of our apple fun :)


I found this idea on Pinterest. They turned out SO CUTE. (Ignore the white rectangle, a sticker sheet fell while I was taking the picture)

After we tasted apples I had them draw their favorite kind and we graphed it. I love how they turned out haha. 

I got this idea from Mrs Hodge and Her Kindergarten Kids 

Apple labeling. 

We had some fun introducing the concept of decomposing. We started off small using 3 and the kids did GREAT. 

Matching numbers to dice and ten frames. This is from my Apple Unit

Simple writing practice. Also in the Apple Unit.

They did SO great with these. This was the first time I pulled out the interactive books with these kiddos and I only had 1 out of 20 glued shut! Success :)

Click the picture to find the apple math unit in my store.

We are having a great time this week learning about fall and scarecrows. Happy Tuesday :)