St. Patrick's Day Activities

It's Tuesday!!  St. Patrick's Day is less than a week away!!  Since it is my favorite holiday, as well as a reminder that spring is right around the corner, I wanted to make a few activities to incorporate the holiday into my classroom.  I needed a new activity for my Pocket Chart Center, so I made two that had a St. Pat's Day theme.  One is a Language Arts and the other is Math.

This activity has students reading sight words to check behind them to see if there's a leprechaun hiding there.  After I printed out the cards, I glued them onto sheets of construction paper.  I used colors that matched the groups I have.  Red, blue, and green are the colors of my groups.

My students pick the set of cards that match their group and put those into the pocket chart.  Then they hide the leprechauns behind them and take turns reading the cards to check behind them and see if they can catch the leprechaun!

The other activity I made for the pocket chart was for math. 

In this activity, students choose a numeral card and have to find the matching set.  Once found, they can check behind the set to see if there's a pot of gold hiding there.  They can continue searching for pots of gold until they find them all, and the one with the most cards is the winner!  :-)

Tomorrow I'll be sharing all about my newest rhyming activity.  On our kindergarten assessment, as a grade level we showed a deficit in rhyming skills, so I'll be making several activities to try and help address that need!!

The BIG TEST!

 Happy Monday all!!  For my neck of the woods, it looks like this might just end up being our 2nd full week of school since Christmas Break!  There is a rumor of more snow coming, but I choose to believe that it is only a rumor and we are done with snow and ready for spring!!

On Saturday, I had the most AWESOME opportunity!!  I went to the Read Aloud Delaware Conference, where the key-note speaker was Eric Litwin, the author of the awesome Pete the Cat books!!  I was BLOWN AWAY with how funny and engaging he is!  He has us all singing and dancing in our seats, and it was so much fun!  I was even able to get one of my books signed!!

He was such an amazing presenter!  I truly enjoyed his workshop, where we learned all about some BRAND-NEW characters he is coming out with in the summer of 2014!!  He is under strict contract obligations, so he asked us not to share any of his new stuff yet.  He also asked that no pictures, videos be taken during his presentation, except for one time where he let us record him performing his very first book I Love My White Shoes!  I CANNOT WAIT to show the video and the signed book to my littles on Monday!  They are going to love it!

I would highly recommend going to see him perform if you ever get the chance to!!





Last week our super-wonderful 5th Grade Buddies had to take our State Assessment, the MSA.  They had two days of Reading testing and two days of Math testing.  When I taught fourth grade, I remember how exhausting and stressful this test can be for the students and for the teachers!  Since our Buddies have done so very much this year to help us out, I wanted to take this opportunity to show them how much we appreciate them!  I made some simple treat tags with a small note of encouragement that I had my littles sign and taped them to a specific treat.  On Tuesday, we gave them Laffy Taffy.  Wednesday was NERDS, Thursday Gobstoppers, and Friday was Goldfish crackers.  My kinders hand-delivered the notes to their 5t Grade Buddies every day they tested last week.  I really think that both classes enjoyed the process!!

I am offering my treat tags up as a freebie, in case your littles partner with an older testing grade!  Just click on the picture to go to my TPT store and grab a copy for yourself!

Egg-citing News!

We had a very egg-citing delivery to our classroom today!  We partnered with our local 4-H program and they have delivered incubators to our classrooms with three eggs in each.  They cam to us well into their incubation process, and they should hatch sometime next week!!

The blue one in the middle is really interesting to my littles as they are DYING to know what hatches from the blue egg!!  4-H really hooked us up this year with the incubators!  They have a digital temperature display with a count down to the hatching date.  There is also a buzzer that lets me know when the incubator is running out of water.  This is my second year having an incubator in the classroom, but this is the first year we have the fancy incubators!

We have been learning all about the life cycle of a chicken and we will be observing the eggs until they hatch, and then we get to move the chicks into their 'brooding box', which will be their home until they are big enough to move to a local farm.  I have been working on a few activities to go with our awesome incubators.  So far, I have an Easy Reader to use during guided reading that contains an assessment on the life cycle.

I also have a few colorful signs to hand in the hallway and let the rest of the school know what's going on with our incubator and our chicks.

This one we use to let passerby know how long our eggs have been incubating for.  We learned that chicken eggs need to incubate for 21 days.

This sign helps with our countdown to the big day!

After they have hatched, we keep track of how many days old they are.  I also post a few pictures out in the hallway with these signs.

These products are not yet in my TPT store, but they will be by tomorrow night!  Until then, you have a chance to win them before you can buy them!  If you want to win a set of these materials before they go on sale, you will need to do three things.
      1. Follow my blog by clicking on the BlogLovin' button.
      2.  Follow my TPT store by clicking on the 'Follow Me' button under my name. 
      3.  Leave a comment that you have done the above two things.

The first five people to follow all three steps are the lucky winners!  Good luck, and I hope you win!!

Come On Spring!!

Holey Moley, yesterday was yet ANOTHER snow day for us!  I took advantage of the three-day weekend and spent my time making products for my TPT store.  Since I am heartily SICK of winter already, and MORE THAN READY  for spring to get here, I created some products with a more spring-time feel.  Since my very favorite holiday is only 13 days away (St. Patrick's Day) I made a freebie to help celebrate!  Plus, once St. Pat's Day gets here I know that spring only a few short days away!!

In my room, I have a small handful of students who have still not been able to master their alphabet recognition, by letter name or letter sound.  In my school we are SO VERY LUCKY to have a full-time RTI teacher.  For any of you who are unfamiliar with that acronym, RTI is Response to Intervention, and it is how our district addresses the varied needs of our student population.  Our RTI teacher, Mrs. Jeffers (or Jeffers and she is fondly known) takes our struggling littles for 30 minutes every day to reinforce their alphabet skills.  Since I figured she was probably getting a bit tired of going over the same four letters over and over again, I created an activity where those students can draw an alphabet card, ID it by name or sound, and then find the matching letter on a response sheet and dot it with a BINGO dotter.  They LOVE to use those dotters!  Follow the pic to my TPT store to grab a copy for yourself, if any of your littles still need help with alphabet skills.

I am also hard at work on some St. Patrick's Day activities, including having a very sneaky visitor who does lots of naughty things around the school!  This is one of my absolute FAVORITE STEM projects, and I can't wait to get started on trying to trap that sneaky guy!  Here is a St. Patrick's Day activity that will help you littles with their number partners for the numbers 5, 6, and 10!  It uses double-sided counters and those ever-so-wonderful double-sided counters!  Click on the pic to go to my TPT store to get a copy for yourselves!

Last, but certainly not least, is a little freebie I've cooked up for you!  Since I am so very ready for spring to get here, I made a St. Pat's Day themed activity where students match a teen number card to a set of shamrocks.  There are even two assessment pages included!  Click on the picture to go grab a copy for yourself, and PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE become one of my TPT followers! I only need 10 more to get to 100 followers, and then I have another freebie for you!

Stay tuned for more upcoming products and freebies!  My kinders are helping to encourage their 5th Grade Buddies on their State Assessment this week, so I will be sharing the cutsie treat labels we've used this week!

HUGE TPT SALE!!!

Hey there everyone!  Did you know that Teachers Pay Teachers is now 3 million teachers strong?  Yep, you read that right.  3 MILLION teachers!!!  In order to celebrate such a huge milestone, TPT is throwing a HUGE site-wide sale.  The sale lasts today and tomorrow only, and you can get up to 20% off your favorite items.  Time to clear out that Wish List!!  I hope you hop on over to my store to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime sale!! 

Coming soon to my TPT store: St. Patrick's Day activities.  I don't know about y'all, but I am SO READY for spring to hurry up and get here!!  In my neck of the woods, they're talking about another snow storm coming next week.  Ugh!!  This week has been our first full week of school since Christmas!!  How crazy is that??


Have a great rest of the week, and I'll be back soon!!!

Hip-Hip-Hooray It's the 100th Day!

Happy Monday all!  Super sorry about the sporadic posts lately!  I haven't had internet at home in a VERY LONG TIME, and it makes blogging a lot more difficult!  Been trying to make my posts from school, but our filter blocks a lot of things.  Hopefully my landlord will get some internet back soon, and I can get back to daily posting!!

Anywho, today was FINALLY our 100th Day of Kindergarten!!  We have missed A LOT of days this year because of winter weather, and our 100th Day kept getting pushed back.  It should have happened the same week as Valentine's Day, but we had LOTS of snow days this year! Also, in our district kindergarten starts 3 days after grades 1-12 so that we can have parent/teacher entrance conferences.  So the 'big kids' had their 100th Day last week and ours is FINALLY.  Everything we do today centers around the number 100, since counting to 100 is our goal for the end of the year.  We were very lucky this year and had our 5th Grade Buddies come up and help us complete some of the activities, which made it MUCH EASIER than last year when I tried to do it all by myself!  We started our day by reading one of my favorite 100th Day Stories.

Like most of my books, I got mine through Scholastic.  If you click on the picture it will take to you over to Amazon so you can get a copy of your own!  There are so many books about the 100th Day, and I bet you have a lot in your library.  This book is about a first grade girl (I change it to kindergarten when I'm reading it) whose teacher asked them to bring in 100 things from home for their 100th Day.  The little girl is worried because she can't figure out what to bring, and she has a hard time finding her 100 things.  So her family works together to make sure little Jessica has her 100 things to bring to school.  I read this story because I have my kids complete an at-home project where they are asked to make a shirt with 100 things on it.  Inevitably, someone comes without a 100 Day shirt, and this book allows me to talk about how it's okay to forget your shirt and it's no reason to worry about it.  Some of the shirts that were done by my kiddos were super cute today!  I'll share some pics of my faves at the end of this post.

We completed many activities today centered around the number 100.  The completed a writing prompt about what they would like to have 100 of and why.  I think my favorite responses today included '100 marshmallows to build a house so the kittens can stay warm' and '100 limousines so I can crash test them'.  They also made hats, which were ten strips of paper stapled to a sentence strip, and then they added 10 dots to each strip to make 100 dots.  I let them dot with BINGO dotters, but I know that other teachers have used stickers.

They also wrote on the sentence strip 'It's the 100th Day of School!'.  The students worked with their 5th Grade Buddies to make a necklace with 100 Fruit Loops.

The kindergarteners filled up a ten-frame with Fruit Loops and their Buddies helped them string them on the yarn.  We used Cheerios for spacers between each 10, but I think next year I'll make some small tags with the numbers on them that they can use as spacers.

Our Buddies also helped us make a gumball machine with 100 gumballs.  We used Q-Tips to dot the paint, and they needed to have 10 groups of 10 dots, and I provided 10 different colors of paint.  The 5th Graders were a big help with reminding them to group their 'gumballs' by ten.

Their favorite activity of the day is to make our 100 piece snack mix.  I made these mats last year and they have been a big help with this activity.  There are 10 different snacks, and the students need to count out 10 pieces of each snack and put them in a circle.  Once they have filled up all 10 of their circles, they put all of their pieces into a Ziploc baggie and then shake it 100 times before they can eat it.

I would very much love to hear how you celebrate the 100th Day!  I'm always looking for new and fun ideas to try with my kinders!

My Little Lilly!!

Happy Friday blogging friends!!  Even though the Super Bowl has passed, I am still sporting my Purple Friday Ravens shirt today!!  :-)  So very, very much has happened since my last post, can't wait to fill you in!!

  First and foremost, the most AMAZING thing happened!!  On Tuesday, January 21, my niece was born!  I was lucky enough to be with my sister throughout the whole entire delivery.  At 1:05 AM Lilly Adelaide Castanon entered the world at 6.5 lbs and 19 inches long.  I am SO IN LOVE!!

How stinkin' cute is she!!  I bought that outfit for her to come home in, and it was HUGE on her tiny little self!!  I didn't get home to 4 in the morning on Tuesday, so luckily for me that was one of the many snow days we had!

    During the many snow days we have had this year (including the past two days) I have been working on a lot of different activities.  Keep reading and at the end there's a special offer to celebrate my Little Lilly's Birthday!!

   One of the activities I made is to help my kinders practice identifying the partners of 5.  Since there's been so very much snow this winter, I themed it around that.  It's called the Snowy Shake and Spill, and my kiddos LOVED it!  After spilling out their double-sided counters and sorting them on the 10-frame, they find that number sentence on their recording sheet and dot it with a BINGO dotter.  I don't know about y'all, but my kinders LOVE everything to do with using BINGO dotters.

Once the spill out their 5 double-sided counters (I made some to go with the activity, in case you don't have any in your room) they sorted them on the ten-frame and then used a dry-erase marker to write the number partner.

Once they wrote their sentence, they found the matching number partner on their recording sheet and used the BINGO dotter to mark it off.  This activity does involve multiple tools and steps, but my Dragons ROCKED it!!  It comes in color as well as black and white, cause we all know ink is expensive!!  Follow the link above or click on the picture to go to my TPT store and snag a copy for yourself!

Besides using BINGO dotters, my kinders LOVE to play BUMP!  There are so many different versions of this classic game, and there are lots of teachers out there who use it and love it.  In case you're not familiar with BUMP!, students play in pairs to try and put two counters on an answer to make that space 'safe'.  If there's only one counter on the answer, they can get BUMPED! off.  I created a version to go along with all this lovely snow we've been having.  Since my favorite thing to do after shoveling myself out is to have a cup of hot cocoa, I decided to make the activity centered around hot chocolate and the toppings we put on it.  So, I call this activity Topping Hot Chocolate: Number BUMP and DOT for the Numbers 1-18.

There are two activities in this packet, one BUMP! and one DOT IT!  Both activities are differentiated into three levels.  For Level 1, students roll 1 die and find the numbers 1-6 to DOT or cover up with a counter when playing BUMP.  Level 2 uses 2 dice, and Level 3 uses 3 dice.  I made up some counters that can be used to cover up the numbers when playing BUMP, but I think that using mini-chocolate bars and mini-marshmallows as counters would be SO MUCH MORE FUN!!

Finally, something I came up with while I was waiting for Lilly to make her appearance.  I have always loved to color, ever since I was a little kid.  I am able to forget about things for a while and be as creative as I want.  Since ink is getting so expensive, I thought I would try something new.  I am working on a new series of activities called 'Color Your Own!'  For this series, every activity I create will be done in black and white so that you can use your own creativity to color the pieces.  Or you can have your students color them.  OR, like my fabulous friends in first grade, you can keep them black and white and laminate them that way.  So many possibilities!!

I am in the process of making several more 'Color Your Own!' activities, so please keep checking back with me!!  To celebrate the arrival of my Little Lilly, I am throwing a SALE!!!  From today through Monday, EVERYTHING in my store will be 20% off!  So stock up while you can!!  Check back with me tomorrow, when I share with you all about our Snowman STEM project!!