Landforms

We have been learning about landforms this week and I wanted to share our little project that we created to show our learning.

We made these little landform models with salt dough.  To make salt dough, mix 1/2 cup of salt with 1 cup of flour.  Then mix 1/2 water with food coloring.  Then mix the colored water with the dough/salt mixture.  It's super fast and super easy.

I gave each child six colors to make six different types of landforms that we learned about.  Then I gave them this label to make a map key:

That's all... just a little post today.  :)

Check us out!

So I am the technology person for my campus, which I do not feel adequate enough for the job.  I really do try to integrate technology into learning, but it is hard to do all of the time.  I have to admit, though, that I have fallen in love with using QR codes to make student learning more engaging.  Here is a video of us on a sight word hunt.

We called it Robot Sight Words.  My kids are very obsessed with robots, so when I met Moby from BrainPop, they totally went bonkers.

 

Anyways, I told my cuties that we were going to go on a sight word hunt, but that Moby wanted to help.  Then next thing I knew, he turned our sight words into robot words!  That crazy robot!  So then I showed them how to use a QR code reader and they hunted for the sight words from this document:

They loved finding robot sight words!

Here is one more video, just for fun:

If you want to learn more about QR codes, check out my presentation document below from when I presented to my campus.

Happy weekend!

Hall Pass

Hi friends!  Happy Friday!  I am linking up with Reagan (TX gal!!) to share my Hall Pass:

Product

I love my Very Busy Vowels unit the most.  My cuties really learned a lot from it.

Area

I love my calendar area.  I love to teach calendar.  This pic from the beginning of the year.  I change out the activities a lot, so we cover lots of concepts.  I also have a calendar caper who visits and messes things up.

Signal

I use "Tootsie roll, lollypop.  We've been talking, now let's stop."  It works everytime.  

Sanity

I love to bake!  i make a lot of cakes and cupcakes for parties for peeps.  Here are some of my creations:

Some look better than others.  I try, though, and it's fun to me.  

Daily Five Video

Hi friends!  So I have a fabulous volunteer in my room and she recorded my class checking for Daily 5 and working while I taught a guided reading group.  It's not much, but it shows how to check in and my cuties working.

During the video, I check in my students by calling the reading group friends first (after making a mistake - this gal was nervous!), then I call the friends who have the iPads for the day.  Last I check in the other students.  They quickly told me what daily they would do and I marked their response on this recording sheet.

If you want to learn more about the iPads and the apps I use, check out my presentation materials by clicking on the pic below.

This document also explains how I choose the students to use the iPads each day.

I hope this was helpful!  Have a happy Thursday!

Using QR Codes

I don't know if you are familiar with QR (quick response) codes, but I am becoming a fan of them.  They are so easy to use and kinders love using the iPads for anything, so I have been creating fun activities that use QR codes.  Here is a sight word scavenger hunt for you.  It uses the sight words be, good, go, she, said, will, play, and for.  Place the cards around the room and let students scan them with a QR reader on a iPad.  Then they record the word on the recording sheet.

 I also created this document that walks you through creating them and other uses for them.

I am also working on adding a QR codes page to my website.  Here is a very rough draft of it.  It will look better soon and have tons of resources, I promise.

Wish me luck because tomorrow I am presenting on QR codes for my campus after school.  EEKK!

Free iPad apps for Daily 5

Hi there!  Happy Presidents' Day!  We had a day of professional development and I was one of the presenters.  I presented on using {free} apps with our iPads during Daily 5.  Here is my little handout that went along with it.  I hope it's useful for some of you.

Happy Valentine's Week!

What a fun week we had!  I just love Valentine's Day oodles!  Before I tell you all about our fun, take a look at a gift one of my cuties gave to me:

 I got a giant, pink, fluffy dog!  How cute is he?!?

Anyways, we really enjoyed a lot of activities from Mrs. Maya's Valentine's Unit that I snagged during to Super Bowl sale.

We also worked on more CVC words with a Valentine's twist.

 I put my cuties in pairs.  Each pair received a bag with 10 heart shaped boxes from the Dollar Tree (of course).  Each box was numbered 1-10 and inside had a CVC picture.

 

 They opened them up and recorded the word on a recording sheet.

Click the pic below to grab it from my website.

We also created Valentine's glyphs.

Click here to get this glyph from my website.

On Valentine's day, we enjoyed searching for our missing candy that the Sweetheart Snatcher stole.

We found them in the tissue box!

We also enjoyed delivering Valentine's cards dressed as post office workers.  

(I received these from a Donors Choose grant.  You can see my completed projects here.)

We also played Valentine's bingo.

You can grab it here from my website.

For our yummies, we made parfaits.

Also, if you want to share the love, please consider donating to my Donors Choose project and use the match code HEART to have your donation matched.  We only need$61, which is actually only $31 with the match code.  Click below to donate.

I have to get ready now for my presentation on Monday.  I am teaching my campus on our PD day.  Yikes!  Have a happy weekend!

100th day - Hooray!

Yesterday was out 100th day of school!  What a blast we had - literally!  We blasted off as Zero the Hero:

 

We loved exercising to Jack Hartman's Zero the Hero song on this CD.

We also made Zero the Hero puppets.

 

These guys came from a sweet Texas gal that I met last summer, Crystal at Kreative in Kinder.

We created ourselves at 100 year olds.

 

We predicted and graphed if we could walk around our school in 100 steps.  Womp womp!  We barely made it to the front entrance.

At our school we have seven kindergarten classes.  We all went outside to take an aerial view of all of us standing in the formation of the number 100.  That pic is not here yet.  I will have to post it later.

 

Other fun we had included writing about what we would do with $100 and all the kinder teacher ran a different activity station for 100 seconds, such as hopping for 100 seconds, dancing for 100 seconds, etc.

"buy color feathers like red, yellow, purple, green, orange."

"I will buy a motorcycle if I had 100 dollars."

"I'm giving my 100 dollars to my dad."

We also brought 100 items from home to compare weights on a pan balance.  I introduced the activity by explaining that a pan balance helps us understand objects that are heavy and light in comparison to each other.  I used Penelope the hedgehog to help us understand better.

Thanks Penelope!

We then compared our items to other friends' items and recorded our learning on this recording sheet.

You can click on the pic above to snag it from my website.

The kinder teachers all dressed up like we were 100 years old.

We may have pulled a few pranks while the kids were at specials.

I hope you have or had a fabulous 100th day!