Gardens!

We are still going strong with our farm unit. The kids went nuts over these gardens today. We started off by reading this emergent reader together and answering the questions on each page. Then I let them make their own gardens. They turned out so cute! When I made my example I glued all the vegetables down but the kids had the idea to make the soil into a pocket so they could pull the veggies out of the soil and plant them again. I snapped these pics before they added their writing but they wrote all about what veggies they put in their gardens.  Click here to grab the book.

Farm Morning Work Freebie

Happy Sunday friends! I am currently enjoying a much needed stress free weekend. I have gotten almost nothing accomplished other than some glorious r&r!! This semester has been packed full of crazy weekends for me and this teacher is pooped. I did create this one thing for my kiddos to use this week as we head into our second week of farm. We are going to be focusing more on gardens and food grown on farms this week after having tons of fun with the animals last week.  I made just 1 week of farm morning work to use this week (basically recycling some skills from the spring pack). Click the pictures to find it in my store :)

 

Enjoy the rest of your weekend. How many days do yall have left of school? We are getting down to the nitty gritty. Just dinosaurs and oceans left for us and then SUMMER TIME!

Fun on the Farm (Freebies)

We have been getting ready for our big field trip to the farm this week. This is one of my favorite units to teach especially because right in the middle of our unit we get to go to the actual farm and milk a cow and hold ducks and explore see tractors. I've been pretty bad at remembering to take pics this week but here's a few activities we have been doing.

These pigs and cow writing craftvities came out super cute. The cow is from my friend's class, the pigs were inspired by Michelle at Apples and Abc's and her cute farm craftivities.

 

Next week we are going to read "The Very Busy Spider" and make these books and webs to retell the story. One of my teammates made it today and they turned out super cute!

You can grab the book here.

I made these super simple math mats out of construction paper to be mud and grass for some pig addition stories. I forgot to snap a picture during our whole group lesson but we told different story problems, modeled them and then wrote the number sentences on a white board. Then I gave the kids a barn to glue to the mat and let them make their own story and they wrote the number sentence in the barn. They went CRAZY for these and were so excited to take them home.

Click here for the file. There are also some colored pigs for you to use.  It's hard to see in the pic but I copied the kids' pigs on pink.

 Tomorrow we head to the farm!! Leave me some love if you download the files...I love to know who is using my things in their rooms :)

Springtime fun :)

One year ago today I started this blogging adventure.  I am so so happy to have found this outlet to share with and learn from such talented inspiring teachers. It has been such a wild and blessed ride :)

It has been great to be back with my kiddos after spring break but boy and I pooped! I always forget how tired I am coming back after a break. It's not helping that my body doesn't like sleep this week :/
The kids have been loving our unit on plants. Their new favorite song is "Flower, Stem, Leaves and Roots" (to the tune of Head Shoulders Knees and Toes).  Tomorrow we are going to eat different parts of plants. (thanks Pinterest)  We are also going to plant lima beans and marigold seeds (this is the first time I will actually be GROWING flowers with the kids...wish me luck. Keeping plants alive Gardening has never been my strong suit.

I have been TERRIBLE at taking pictures this week. We have been using Caitlin Clabby's fantastic plant unit. This thing is packed. Check it out in her store here. Here are a few things we are going to be working on tomorrow and next week.

A few weeks ago we used Kim Adsit's unit on the presidents and made some ADORABLE flap books.

I decided to adapt the idea and make a sunflower book. We have been talking all week about how BIG sunflowers can get but I think this will really help them get it. Each flap has an unscrambled sentence about part of the life cycle with a picture inside.

You can grab the sentences and pictures here. 

I got the inspiration for this one from one of my teammates. She did the same thing with scrambled sight words in flower pots. I decided to make it a math activity with our teen numbers. After coloring the sample and putting it all together I came to a few realizations. I'm going to copy the leaves onto green paper, and we are not coloring the roots :) Also, I might just do 11-15 or 16-20. Either way I think it turned out really cute! Grab this activity here. 

 

Thanks to Ashley Hughes, and KPM Doodles for the cute spring graphics!

Don't forget to check out some of my resources for spring in my store :)

Spring Cleaning

Hi friends. I am closing out my Spring break and gearing up for lots and lots of teaching heading into our last quarter. This is my FAVORITE time of year to teach. I just love all of the activities and learning that happens during our plant and insect units. I've been working hard the last few days to create some things to be ready for when I go back next week and I wanted to share with you.

I haven't made a set of interactive emergent readers since the Winter so I'm excited about these! There are 5 different books each with a color version and student version.
Click on the pictures to find them in my store!

I also finally finished my Spring Morning Work. I have been doing smaller theme based packs for a while but this pack has 4 weeks of common core goodness. Here's a preview of some of the pages:

Rainbow teen numbers freebie

We are celebrating St Patrick's day this week in my room. We started talking about leprechauns this morning...it's always funny to me to hear them recount the havoc that leprechauns caused in their VPK rooms the year before. We read Jack and the Leprechaun and then talked about what kind of treasure we would want a pot filled with other than gold. Then we did this super cute crafitvity (thank you Pinterest) from Peace, Love & Learning. I forgot to snap pics of their writing but some of my favorites were "spiderman toys" "monster trucks" and "donuts".  

We also did a  directed drawing activity for a leprechaun. They turned out hilarious. You can download the instructions here.

 We have been working a LOT with hammering in the base ten concept with teen numbers. It seems like they get comfortable with it but it doesn't always stick. Today we built the numbers together using some base ten blocks and then I set them loose with their own set to build and record the numbers. It was great to see the ones that couldn't be bothered with the blocks because they could decompose the numbers fluently, but the others really benefited from using the manipulatives. Hello differentiation :)

You can grab a copy of the activity from google docs by clicking on the picture below.

 Don't forget to head over to TPT to take advantage of some March Maddness savings!!

Winter recap and moving on into outer space!!

Hi friends...I hope you all are living and teaching well! I cannot believe it's almost February. We started our space unit today getting ready for our field trip to the planetarium on Thursday...I could teach this unit for a month...we always have a blast with it! Before I get into our space stuff I'm going to do a photo dump of some of our wintery fun over the last few weeks. There's lots of pictures but also some freebies along the way :)

Cute name snowmen.

Short 0 hot chocolate mugs

Snowball painting with wine corks. This went so well! Giving 18 kids paint all at the same time always terrifies me a little bit but it went great and the wine corks created perfectly formed snowballs :) They are my new favorite art supply...a friend of mine bought me a whole box full for Christmas.

More snowman fun! We did this cute Snowman Buttons book from Shannon Martin at Kindergarten Hoppenings. Then we made these snowmen with pom pom buttons and they wrote their own number sentences.

One of our favorite fun Friday activities is sight word 4 corners outside in the atrium. The kids love this game! And living in Florida, we can do this in January :)

Some addition fun with hot chocolate. We worked together to write the addition sentences using the cards and then I gave them their own books and marshmallows to model the problems and find the answer. This was a blast (and of course they got to eat the manipulatives at the end :) You can grab a copy of this freebie here.

More fun with Deedee's January Poetry Stations.

Some good old snowmen painting. I thought this guy turned out hilarious!!

Snowman brace map writing. 

Some roll and write fun with counting on practice (grab these dice here). 

Some winter math books work with making 10.

Every year we read the book Snowballs by Lois Ehlert and then send the kids home with 3 paper plates to build and decorate a snowman with things they find around their house. I modified this a bit one afternoon when I had to sub for an after school art program last minute. I pulled out all kinds of random stuff from my art cabinet, cut some white die cut circles, and got these great little guys!

I ended up having to be out a few days last week and our penguin unit never really got off the ground which was SO sad and depressing to me. These guys really turned out great though. I love art projects where I just give them paper and say "Make me a ___"  How funny is that guy in the middle??

I will be back later this week to share some space fun. Happy Monday everyone :)