Tie Dye, a Freebie, and Looking Ahead

I took a small break from blogging this past week.  I had a lot going on at school and at home.  Well I'm back to tell you what we have been up to.

We did a little finger painting last week.  I put red and yellow paint on the paper and the students mixed the colors.  I gave each student a leaf to trace and cut out.  These turned out cute.  I'll have to remember to take a picture of the finished product tomorrow.

We learned about pandas and made a can, have, are chart about pandas.  The students used the chart to help them write about pandas.  We worked on writing 3 sentences about pandas.  One sentence for each section of the chart.  We also watch an online panda cam which was so cute.  We even found video that was taken of panda twins and how they changed in the first 100 days.  We loved the video so much that we watched it twice and invited the neighboring class over for the second viewing.  You can go here to check out the video.  Pandas are 100 days old before they get their name.

We made Indian Native American costumes last week.  Each student brought in a t-shirt and I took them home to tie dye brown.  I was told by the other K teachers that I did fancy tie dying.  Check out my fancy work below.

 After the shirts were dyed, we cut fringe on the bottom and the sleeves.  We added a paper and ribbon belt that the students decorated along with our headdress and our patterned bead necklace.  We worked on patterns while making the necklaces.  Last year we strung pasta, but this year we used pony beads.  I had a lot of pony beads in my cabinet so I thought we should use them.

 My new Smart Board was installed last Friday.  I am happy to have a Smart Board that works properly.  My last one had issues.  Oh, did I mention that I also got a new laptop?!  Now I don't have to worry about the virus the last one had.  Russian videos kept popping up.  At least I think they were speaking Russian.

 My wonderful principal walked in today carrying these echo mics.  I have 24 for of them now.  It so weird that he bought them for use because I was talking about them last week and how I use to have one to do my daily weather report with.  Now I just need to figure out how I am going to use 24 of them.  If you have ideas, please share them with me in a comment below.  I'm begging.

 Before I left school today, I got out my December books.  This is just a few of my books.  I actually have another tub of holiday books and more at home, but these are the ones I plan on using for the month of December.  Above you will see Hanuka.  Below you will see a stack of Christmas books.  The stack is bigger than it looks.

I only have three Kwanzaa books, but I plan on adding to this collection and my Hanuka collection too.  One more day of work and then I am off for Thanksgiving.  Tomorrow is a half day for the students.  If you are already beginning your December plans, then check out this freebie I posted last year.  Just click the picture below to get your freebie!

Oh yeah, I updated my Gingerbread Math and Literacy Centers pack and my Christmas Fun Literacy and Math Activities.

Freebie Friday and I am Featured!

Yay!  I was featured on Teaching Blog Addict!  Check out this week's link up to get great freebies from fellow bloggers!

Here is what we have been doing this week.

I really challenged my students this week during our guided reading time with a little rhyming cvc word bingo.  Talk about challenging!  Most of my kiddos could do this without any problems and it was more challenging for them.  I have about 3 kids out of 16 who really struggled and still need work on sounding and blending.  We will be playing this more.  This is from my Thanksgiving Small Group Reading Activities pack.  Click the picture to learn more about the pack.

We have been working on our writing.  The students dictated sentences to me about leaves.  Next week I will cut up their sentences on strips of paper and give it to them to put back together.  They will glue their sentence onto a piece of paper and illustrate.  We will use our illustrated sentences to make a class book about leaves.

We also wrote about bats.  I love some of the words they gave me for this chart!  Did you know that bats have a predator other than humans?  They are called cave crickets.  They look like a granddaddy long legs to me.  When a bat smacks against a cave wall and injures itself, the cave crickets will swarm around it and eat the bat.  Interesting?  Isn't it?  I learned that on a cave tour years ago so if you ever go spelunking, beware of the cave cricket.

My lovely assistant was absent today and I had a sub assistant.  She told me at the end of the day that she was really impressed with the reading ability of my class.  She hasn't been in a kindergarten class that is reading like mine.  It made me one proud teacher!  It made me think, what am I doing that is different from the other teachers?  I know what it is.  It's a little strategy that I use daily that I learned when I taught in a Reading First school.  I still use it the first 5 minutes of every day.  I'll share more about it tomorrow. ;)

This week, I made a new listening log.  You can get it here for free!  Just click the picture below.  Happy Friday!

Thanksgiving I-Spy Freebie

I survived Halloween 2013!!!  It wasn't that bad, but I will say having parents and kids in costumes for a Halloween celebration can be hectic!  I wish I took pictures this week of some of the things we have been doing, but my phone camera doesn't seem to be working correctly so I dug out my "regular" camera and I will be back to snapping pictures next week.

This week we studied bats and spiders.  Did I tell you I have a student in my class who likes to bring me spiders!?  Ummm, your teacher hates spiders kid!  Bring me a puppy, kitten, snake, but please don't bring me a spider.

We made a can, have, are chart about bats and the students wrote a sentence using the chart.  I also gave them a little bat drawing lesson.  They think I should be an art teacher.  Lol!  I have also been told this week that I should be a music teacher.  That is more likely to happen than an art teacher.  I can read music and I do play a clarinet and an alto clarinet.  

Back to the bats.  My students learned some new vocabulary this week.  When we were creating our chart, I heard words like mammal, echolocation, and nocturnal.  Oh, this makes a teacher proud!  Let's hope those words stick.

I started working on this little freebie yesterday with the intention of posting it yesterday, but then I started watching television with the hubs so it didn't happen.  Here it is now!  Click the picture below to grab your freebie and thanks for stopping by.  Oh, by the way, I'm having a sale in both of my shops this weekend.  All items are 20% off through Monday.
Teachers Pay Teachers    Teachers Notebook 

What are topics are you studying this month?  Leave me a comment below and let me know!

Word Family Spiders

I finally took a picture with my IPhone of our word family spiders.  Ever since I updated my IPhone software, the camera only works 40% of the time.  The most annoying part is that I can no longer change songs using my car radio.  How safe is it to change your song with the phone?  It still comes through the speakers and the phone part works.  Apple, if you hear me, fix this issue ASAP or I'm switching to an Android!!!

Here is a picture of our spiders.

The -ig word family.

The -at word family.

We talked about two word families this week, -ig and -at.  I let them pick the word family and the words from the ones that we listed on the board.

If you are wondering how I explain word families, I relate it to their families.  I explain that word families end with the same letters and it's like a last name.  Just like they have a last name that tells who their family is.  Then I explain that the first letters are like a first name and they are different, just like family members have different first names.  They seems to understand and recognize word families quickly.  They also realize that they rhyme.

Tomorrow is our Halloween Celebration!  I love Halloween because of the free candy that I steal from my child my gives to me.  I am the official household candy thief!  Oh, I'm sure I'm not the only parent who does this when no one is protecting looking at the candy.

If you are wondering where I got the word family spider craftivity, it came from Susan Moran Jones-TGIF.  It's a freebie from her store.  Thank you Susan!

What are your plans for Halloween tomorrow?  I'm going trick-or-treating with my family.

My Listening Center and a Freebie

School has been in full force for 4 weeks now!  Last week, I had the idea to start a listening center.  So I headed over to Best Buy and bought 2 CD players, a 5 way headphone jack, and some blank CDs.  Then I drove over to the Dollar Tree and bought headphones.  That was my way of saving money on something.  So now I have two complete listening centers which works for me because most of the books in my room I only have one copy.  I wanted students to be able to listen in smaller groups and share the book.  My other plan is to use existing books in my classroom, but I am recording myself and others reading the books and then I am burning a CD to go with the listening center.  The kids love it.  I even got a little goofy with it by introducing myself at the beginning of the recording and welcoming them to story time.  Lol!  One of my kinders got a kick out of it too.  Here is a pic of what I bought.

My picture isn't the greatest.  I took this with my IPhone while sitting on my bed.

On to my freebie.  I decided to make new table labels for the table teams in my classroom.  I designed my table labels so that I could call on tables by number, shape, or color.  I'm trying to build in multiple skills here.    You can get my table labels by clicking on the image below.

 

I'm linking up with Classroom Freebies for their Manic Monday linky.

 

Froggie Freebie!!!

I have been working on a lot of stuff this week for the new school year and I am excited about one of my projects which I will unveil at another time, but for my followers and new followers I am linking up with Classroom Freebies for Manic Monday.
 

For this Manic Monday post, I am giving you my Froggy Number Match Game.  Students match the frogs with numbers to the lily pads with dots.  Simple, yet it is something that students can do at the beginning of the school year.  You can get your free copy here.   Well, I am going to go try to fall asleep again.  I'm trying going to get up earlier and go work in my classroom tomorrow.  I'll let you know later what I get accomplished.

Letter Sort Freebie!!!

Lately, I have not had the motivation to do everything I need to do.  I have all these great ideas, but I find myself surfing the net too much for more ideas.  I did end up making this sorting activity that I am posting here for free.  I know I have been slacking on my blog and I want to thank you for sticking with me.  You can get your freebie Here!  I also want to wish everyone a happy and safe Fourth of July!

Thanksgiving Writing Freebie!!!

I have been really working on my Teachers Pay Teachers store this week.  I have posted a new freebie.  This is a Thanksgiving writing prompt paper.  Check it out at my Teachers Pay Teachers Store here.

Friday Freebie!!!

So here it is.  I'm working on some new summer files so look for those soon if my Teachers Notebook and Teachers Pay Teachers Store.  Click here to download.  Enjoy!