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 fun!


It was another colorful day in Kindergsrten today. I don't know what it is about rainbows but they make everything so much more bright and cheery even on an ugly rainy day :)

We made this rainbow brace map this morning with some interactive writing.

 Speaking of brace maps, I love how my partner teacher arranged her schedule cards into one.



We also made these cute sight word rainbows in one of our centers this week. They picked 6 different words written on shamrocks, and they practiced writing the words in rainbow colors. This was one of those golden center activities where nobody moves or talks or breathes until they are finished haha.

UPDATE: I do not have a digital file of this particular rainbow image but you can grab a version in google docs here if you need one. You will have to enlarge the image on your copy machine to get it to this size and the lines are not as straight as my original image but it's the best I can do :)


And they look so cute hanging up with our silly leprechauns.

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!!



I hope you are all having a great weekend. If you are already on Spring Break I am JEALOUS!! I have 2 more weeks! I am linking up with some of my friends and throwing a sale in my TPT store. Here's some new stuff you can pick up over there.



















Easter morning work is coming soon I swear it!! Until then, happy shopping :)






February recap

Happy Sunday friends :) I wanted to play catch up and share some things we have been working on for the last few weeks. Lots of pictures and ideas here but stick with me, there's a freebie at the end :)

I'm reaching way back to Valentine's Day first.

On the day AFTER Valentine's Day we had a TON of candy left over that I decided to put to good use. We did Hershey Kiss bingo. We are way past straight up abc bingo at this point but I didn't have any other boards handy so I just called out words and told them to find different sounds "what's the ending sound in cat?"  "what's the middle sound in box" ect.
 Then we moved on to using missing letters in words. They love these kinds of games and it's so good for making them think about the structure of words and where the sounds are.  And who doesn't love a game where you get to eat your bingo markers :)


Some fun with my February math books . For the first one we used MORE kisses to count up the first number and then count on to find the other number to make 10. Stay tuned for more seasonal math books coming soon :)



These kisses were inspired by the fabulous Julie Lee. We decided to add some tin foil on top of the brown paper. I also cut up rectangles of parchment paper and let the kids add their names (make sure you use sharpies or the ink will not stick!) ALSO, I recently discovered the idea of using small circle paper punchers to make white and black circles for eyes instead of googly eyes. OH MY GOODNESS I am obsessed with how cute they are making my crafts! :)

We made these giant Valentine's for our parents. They were HUGE and so fun to make. I have no idea where this idea came from originally.

Moving on to president fun, have I mentioned how much I am in LOVE with Maria Manore's interactive sight word readers?? They are only $1 each and I am still going to go broke in my quest to own them ALL.  The ones about George Washington and Abe Lincoln were perfect for introducing the presidents this week.

Kim Adsit is just brilliant. We have been loving her Presdients Unit. These Washington flap books were so cute and my kids did really really awesome with them :)




Some president fact writing with a directed drawing freebie I found here.




We have been working on base ten concepts with teen numbers. It's so easy to get confused with the difference between writing the teens "1 and 5" and MAKING them "10 and 5".  We used my teen number ten frame practice cards in our whole group lesson every day this week and that really helped them become more fluent with the vocabulary and concepts.  Then I gave the kids all a set of their own ten frames. After years ago our school printed and laminated class sets of these ten frames on different colors. I use these babies all the time, they are great. Each kid got a ten (I made this bigger and a different color than all the other cards to make it easy to distinguish) and then a set of 1-9 ten frames. On their write boards I had them build a teen number, tell me how they made it, and then write the number. It was a great concrete way for them to understand the concept of ten and ____  and the way that is different than the way we write the numbers.




Then we did this president book. Each page needed a number sentence and a set of ten frames. You can grab this freebie by clicking on the picture below. User tip: you MIGHT want to cut up the ten frame and number sentence pages in half (1-5 is on top). Give them 1-5 of ten frames and number sentences and then give them the other numbers. Some of my littles got overwhemled with 2 pages and 20 squares to look at and keep track of :)

Click on the picture to grab this book!



Congrats for making it through all that. Have a great week :)



Sale tomorrow!!

Who doesn't love a sale?? TPT is throwing a Superbowl Sunday sale tomorrow! The site is offering a 10% discount (just enter the code SUPER at checkout) and my store will be 20% off for a total of 28%!!  Here are some new goodies that you can pick up over in my store.








Happy Shopping :)