31 on 31!

Today is my birthday!  I am 31 today - hip hip hooray!

I want to give all of you a little gift for being faithful blog followers.  Click the pick below to download my Number Puzzles for FREE until midnight tomorrow.

 I also have a new unit for learning about vowels called Very Busy Vowels.  You can get it for $2 for the next two days as well.  Click the pic to visit my store.

Oh, and I posted a new Donors Choose project.  Click the button below to learn more about it.

I will talk to you next year!!

Remembering...

Christmas Tree Measurement and a Little Freebie

This week we started learning about measurement.  One of the activities we did to understand non-standard measurement was measuring Christmas trees with our names on them.

After making these bedazzled trees, we measured them with snowflakes and wrote about them.

We also started our gifts for our families.  This will be my third year to make these special ornaments:

There is a similar idea floating around pinterest, but this is what we make for our loved ones.  I buy SHATTERPROOF ornaments at Wal-mart.  They are in a box of 40 for $8.96.  This allows you leftovers for next year.  Then you paint each student's hand with white acrylic paint.  The student then grabs the bottom of the ornament to make their hand print.  Let them dry overnight, then allow them to use sharpies to decorate the little snowmen.  I attach ribbon and this poem:

Click on it to download it for free!

Happy holidays, friends!

NUMBERS Math

I received an email the other day from a sweet follower asking if I did any small group math station.  The answer is - Yes.  

Each day my students do NUMBERs while I work with a small group.  

NUMBERs is an acronym for:

Number activities

Use technology

Meet with the teacher

Buddy games

Explore math tools

Reveiw   

Basically, students have their name on a clip and they place it on this ribbon with the letters for the acronym.

The only students who don't get to make a choice for the day are already placed on the ribbon prior to the day starting by me.  These students are on "M" for Meet with the Teacher.  These are the students I will work with during small group that day.

  

When students arrive in the morning they take their clip from these buckets

and place them on the ribbon.  The little dots on the ribbon allow my students to know how many clips can go on each section.  I also wrote their names so that girls go on one side and boys go on the other side.  When we first started, I just reminded them that their name couldn't be upside and that helped with making sure that boys clips went on one side and girls clips went on the other side.

  

Then, when our NUMBERS math small group starts, I read where the clips are located and students get their supplies from here:

I labeled each tub with a picture that matches what's inside.  I also make the frame around the NUMBERs letters match the color of the buckets that those materials are located in.  For example, everything that is in "N" for number practice is in the column of blue buckets and the frame around the letter "N" is blue.

While students are working, they are quiet and spread out around the room.  The only students who are talking are the students on "B" for Buddy Games.

If you're interested in your own NUMBERs labels, here they are:

Reindeer Games

Happy Saturday, peeps!  This was a super-dee-duper busy week in kindergarten.  Not only for my busy bees, but for me as well.  I had my formal observation by my two assistant principals on Tuesday.  I was so nervous, but it went REALLY well.  It helps that I have THE BEST class in the world!

This week we have been working on teen numbers, so we played a little reindeer game.  I told my cuties that Santa's reindeer needed to have energy to pull the sleigh, so we need to feed them.

I gave pairs of students a reindeer, reindeer food (puff balls), and a stack of teen number cards.  They drew a number then fed the reindeer that many reindeer pellets.

  

We also wore antlers while feeding them, just for a little extra fun! 

12 Days of Christmas Blog Hop : Day 3

Happy Holidays!  I LOVE this time of year oodles!  Everything about it makes me feel fuzzy inside.  

I have been trying to teach my kinders that the reason for Christmas is to give, rather than receive, so we have been working on gifts and cards to give to others.  One of my cuties even commented that she felt so happy to give her mom a card that she worked had on.  Yay!  That feeling of giving is starting to grow inside of them.

I want to give to you as a part of a mulit-blogger 12 Days of Christmas celebration!  Sprinkles to you!

Here is my freebie for you!

Check out the other day 3 bloggers with goodies for you:

What's in the Sky?

We started Thanksgiving break yesterday so I am doing one of my favorite things - staying up late, reading blogs, pinning, and lesson planning.  I would love to stay up late everyday, but this old gal wakes up at 4:00 each morning - Yikes!  So I save the late nights for holidays and summer.  

While planning this evening, I created a freebie for you.  It's a class sort and student sort about objects in the sky.  You can print it from my website here.

Enjoy!

A little late...

I know we are on Thanksgiving break, but I just had to share how our Mayflower hats turned out:

I thought they looked stinkin' cute!  You can get it in my store for FREE!

I am thankful for you!

Happy Thanksgiving week, friends!  I am so thankful for the blogging community and the fabulous peeps I meet through the internet.  

I have created some {last minute} Thanksgiving freebies for you.  

The first is Mayflower Hats on my TPT store.  They're nothing fancy, but they're fun!

I also have these little turkeys to create patterns.  We have been using them in math tubs.  Students draw a pattern card then pick the feathers to make that pattern.  Grab them on my website!

Click Mr. Turkey below to get your freebie.

Enjoy your week!

Turkey Dressing!

Take a look at these little gobblers:

(This one is a Mrs. Crowder turkey!!!)

These cuties are from my Turkey Dressing FREEBIE on TPT!

Fabulous Fifties Fun!

Yesterday was our 50th day of school!  

 

I have never celebrated this day, but I have always wanted to.  We dressed up in 50's clothing (but I never got a picture of my outfit, complete with a poodle skirt).  Here is one precious cuties all dolled up for the fun:

Our day was filled with learning and excitement.  We played sight word bowling.  I wrote sight words on several sets of bowling pins that I borrowed.

Then I placed my cuties into groups and they bowed away.  

They had to record the words that fell over using the recording sheet from my {FREE} Sight Word Bowling activity on TPT.

We also played a letter/sound game from Growing Kinders Rock Around the Clock unit from TPT.  Students spin a "record" and record the matching letter sound.  

For math we are working on patterns, so I die-cutted a bunch of "records" and we made different patterns with them.

Then we recorded our patterns on a recording sheet I grabbed from Little Warriors' blog.

Of course, we ended the day with a Sock Hop!

Winner and Pumpkin Fun!

How cute is this card one of my cuties made me during Daily 5 - Working on Writing?!?!

She told me that she drew a rainbow because she wanted to add Rainbow Dash to the card but didn't know how to draw her.  (How many of you have My Little Pony obsessed girlies?).  How precious!

Anyways...

Here's the winner of my little giveaway:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Congratulations Krissy!  I will email you.

I also wanted to share one thing that I did to help teach the life cycle of a pumpkin.  I created a seed, vine, yellow flower, green pumpkin, and orange pumpkin with butcher paper and construction paper.  Then I added a string to them for my cuties to wear.

I gave the pieces to them to wear and arrange themselves in the order of the life cycle.

Here they are working together to figure it out.

And they got it!

There is lots of pumpkin fun in my Playful Pumpkins unit on TPT.

I also had to share this pic of my wonderful team on Bat Night:

Bat Night is a fun night where we invite our students to meet us at the bat bridge here in Austin, TX.  At dusk, thousands of bats fly out.  It's so much fun and a great way to wrap up bat week.