Hoppin good week...

"Hoppy" Easter!  I hope you all were able to celebrate our risen Savior with family and loved ones. 

My week with my 21 favorite little people celebrated the "bunny part" of Easter.  We enjoyed having this little guy spend the week with us.  He belongs to one of my church peeps and were able to have him as a borrowed class pet.

During Writer's Workshop, we wrote rabbit pop-up books.  I guided their writing with my rabbit tree map.

Even the bunny helped us write!

I also added a few bunny-themed items to our Daily 5 activities.  Nothing quite like a pair of rabbit glasses added to a simple Working on Words activity or a stuffed bunny to Listen to Reading with - it's so easy to spice things up with a holiday theme!

Have a "hoppy" week!

Second Best Day Ever!

Hi again, peeps!  Today was too crazy and fun!  My student teacher returned to continue her total teach time - and what a day we all had together.  I am not supposed to help out during her total teach, but I didn't want to miss out on the fun!

We had our annual egg hunt today so my cuties decorated little Easter tubs that I bought them at Dollar Tree.  We made them look like bunnies.

 

Then we enjoyed our egg hunt.

 

Today was also the Kindergarten Egg Drop.  Each child designed a case to protect an egg.  Then we dropped the cases off the building.

 

Here's one of the cases.

Mrs. Montgomery and Mrs. Ramsour are throwing the eggs off the building.

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall...

Watching and waiting...

When we returned to the classroom, Miss Checkley, my student teacher, opened up the cases to see which eggs survived.

Here are the four kiddos in my room whose eggs survived. 

I also wanted to share an anchor chart I created to help us with story maps.  I am not an artist at all, so I was proud of how the little girl turned out. You can print the words here.

 Happy Easter!

BEST Day Ever!

Today rocked in too many ways to count.  I got to teach all day!  I have a student teacher and she has slowly been picking up each subject as the weeks carried on and she officially started her total teach this past Monday.  She was out today for a job fair and I was the guest teacher.  My kids had no idea I would be the guest teacher and they were sooooo excited when they saw me.  Our day together was awesome x 100!

We started the day with calendar, but stopped quickly when we saw there was a note on the calendar wall.

When we opened it, we learned that it was from the calendar caper.

 

He stated he came and took something from our calendar wall and that my students needed to figure out what was missing.

 

 

We learned he took some of our coins from our piggy bank.

He also stated that he messed up the calendar wall and my kiddos needed to help me fix everything.  The calendar caper said he did all this because my class is too smart and he wanted to see if he could trick them.  My kids had a blast playing detective.

We also had a mystery to solve in science using our Mystery Box, inspired by Abby. 

 

After our inferring and predicting, we learned there was a bunny in the mystery box, along with the lyrics to The Bunny Pokey.

 

After doing The Bunny Pokey, we read a book about bunnies.  The bunny book and dance can be found in Randi's Bunny Ears pack.

 

We then completed a guided drawing activity to learn how to draw bunnies.  My cuties then had to add to their picture what their bunny would need to survive.

Then we completed a tree map about bunnies.

These activities helped kick off our animal study.

We also enjoyed playing Michelle's sight word game using this big carrot.  My cuties tossed it back and forth and read the sight words on the carrot.

 

We also did some carrot eating subtraction.  I showed carrots and my bunny basket.  The bunny ate some carrots and my cuties had to write the subtraction problem.

I found the eggs at Dollar Tree and the basket at Target.

 

We also enjoyed a visit from our favorite old lady who read us The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Chick.  They love seeing my puppets sitting in my chair after lunch with our read aloud.

 

We sequenced the story using these cards from Wild About Teaching!

Love, love, love my cuties!

Once the school day was finished, I headed to McDonald's for McTeacher Night.  It was a blast of a fundraiser!

 

I am the cheeseburger!  He he he!

Enjoy your Wednesday!

Yippee for Randomness!

Hi friends!  My post is all over the place today.  It has been an exciting week! Here in Texas, grades 4 and 5 had the STAAR test - which means all of the other grades walk on pins and needles to stay quiet (which is so hard in Kindergarten, by the way).  Since it is so hard to stay quiet, we decided we would take a field trip to the dinosaur park.  It was a blast and we could be loud!

 

Field trips are also one of the few days that I pull out one of my favorite pairs of shoes.

 

 Yep, my bedazzled teal sneakers.  I have had teal as my classroom shirt color for several years now, so I about died when I found these on clearance a year ago.  My cuties think it's so funny when I wear them.

I also wanted to share how crazy proud I am of my cuties and their ability to add now.  Wow!  Who would've thought. I was pulling my hair out a week and a half ago thinking we would never get it.  We did do this quick little review today of addition using the giant ten frame I taped to the floor. 

My student teacher actually taught this review lesson.  She placed several "Easter" objects on the ten frame and then placed more "Easter" objects into the rest of the frame.  My kiddies wrote a number sentence to tell what we added together.  In the pic below is bunnies plus chicks.

 

 

 

Another bit of randomness is that my 31 Organizing Utility tote came in the mail, thanks to my new friend Katie!

 

Love, love, love!

Last bit of exciting randomness - I am taking the day off tomorrow!  Because I am a mentor teacher this semester to a student teacher, we get a free day off WITHOUT writing plans as a thank you.  Another mentor teacher is also taking her free day tomorrow and we are going to see Mirror, Mirror together.  Sprinkles to us! 

Happy Friday Eve!