Happy New Year and a SALE

Stock up for the spring semester and enjoy 20% off everything in our store!

Ring in 2013 with a writing and craft activity

Ring in the New Year with this book and craft.  Your students will write and illustrate their resolutions on the pages.  The book includes three age appropriate writing prompts and room to illustrate.  Patterns for the ring and labels for the candy pop rings are included.  Click here to check it out.

Parent Gifts...Completed!!

We finished our parents gifts today.  I used the plastic balls from Wal-Mart and painted the students' tiny fingertips.  Each fingertip had a different color.  I pressed them to the ornament, slightly spaced apart.  Then, with a Sharpie, added the black details to resemble lights or ornaments hanging.  Then, added the green details for the tree needles and dots of red for holly berries.  I attached the little rhyme below...

No parent gift would be complete without a handprint reindeer!!

Class gifts...COMPLETED!!!

At the end of last year, I gave my students some old used  well-loved dry erase boards.  The class was THRILLED!!!  As most of you know, use white shower boards and have Home Depot cut them.  My local Home Depot cuts them for free.:)))  For 24 boards, it was $11 !! So, for Christmas gifts, I decided to give each child a personalized whiteboard.  I trimmed each board with duct tape... Camo for boys, zebra for girls.  For the marker, I added a pom-pom for the eraser (Pinterest) and a Velcro sticky dot to attach the marker to the board.  I wrote their name with a Sharpie.  I think they look great!! 

Kim Adist and Reagan Tunstall!!

Note the jackets...it was a low temperature of 29 in San Antonio that morning and the heat in the building was not on!

Heather and I attended Kim Adsit's workshop "DI for the Little Guy" in San Antonio last week.  She is a FABULOUS presenter!!! We drove three hours to see her and we were not disappointed.  Kim is SO organized, smart and funny.  My favorite saying of the day was "...stop beating the kids over the head with the alphabet stick."  Meaning MOVE ON!!! If you only have 5 or 6 that haven't mastered letters/sounds work with those students in a small group.  AMEN!!!!

We had lunch with sweet Reagan Tunstall and her A.P.  It was a great trip!

SIlence

12 in 12

I am so excited to be linking up with two of my favorite bloggers...Hadar and Kristin!

12.)   Favorite Movie

By far......Hunger Games!  I read EVERY book and could not wait for the movie!!  It was the first movie I ever stood in line for on premier day and it did not disappoint!  I can't wait for #2!!!!

11.)  New TV Series

I don't really know why but I am obsessed with watching this show!!!  I was loving Abby's Ultimate Dance Competition, too!  it ended last night! Bummer!!!

Not new......

CRIMINAL MINDS!!!!!!!  OMG!!!

10.)  Restaurant

LOOOVVEEE it!!

9.)  Favorite new thing you tried

Okay...there is a story behind this.  I QUIT drinking soda!!!!  I was addicted to Coke big time and I really wanted to stop so I tried this at Starbucks ('cause I'm also addicted to vanilla lattes!) and I really liked it!  I finally asked them which green tea they used and they showed me this.  Then they started making it for the Keurig! Yay! So now I make one to take with me to school (after my latte)  :)

8.) Favorite gift

My new Nissan Armada....for sure!!! We had one about 3 years ago that we drove until it had about 160,000 miles then traded it in!  We had 3 cars since then and finally got another Armada!!!!  I love it!!!!

7.)  Favorite thing you pinned

Ohmiword...there are sooo many!  But this had to be one of my favorites because I say this to my kids all the time!

6.)  Favorite blog post

Well.....I just love blogging!  So.....I can't pick one!!  

5.)  Best accomplishment

Renate and I were chosen to present our SMARTboard presentation at Frog Street Press SPLASH this past summer!  I had never done any presenting soooo......I was nervous!  It was wonderful and SPLASH is always a blast!  We were chosen to present again this summer...2013!!!  Yay!!!

4.)  Favorite Picture

I LOVE this picture!!!  These are my boys in Seaside, Florida this summer!  Seaside is our FAVORITE place!  It is seriously like another world!  It is soooo relaxing and such a wonderful time to be together as a family!!!  I think you can see all of that in this photo!!!!

3.) Favorite Memory

 SEASIDE, FLORIDA!!!!!

2.)  Goal for 2013

RUN!!!!

and learn to LOVE it!  :)

1.)  One Little Word for 2013

I will remember I am blessed!  Too blessed to be stressed!  I will be counting my many blessings as the year ticks on and cherishing everyone!

Have a blessed 2013

Heather

Reindeer and Kim Adsit

Reindeer's cousin

Rudolph at the window

The rhyme on the back

This week, with some help from Pinterest, we created some cute reindeer craftivities.

Heather and I are leaving for San Antonio to attend Kim Adsit's workshop!  We're so excited!

Turkeys, Mayflower and a Sale

"I am thankful I can read these words!"  The students wrote their favorite words on the turkey feathers.

Our class spent nine days on Thanksgiving activities and we could have spent nine more!  Here are some photos of just a few...

The students wrote the words, we, tree, see.

The students LOVED the YouTube video "Five Fat Turkeys".  If you haven't seen it, you've got to watch it!

Mayflower Fact Book

I saw this idea on First Grade Parade...gotta love Cara Carroll!  The book has blank pages for the students to write and illustrate their favorite facts.

Finally, stock up!!  Our entire store is on sale Monday and Tuesday!

BOOOOO!

I had to show you my Pinterest inspired bulletin board!  The hanging bats have a bat fact book on the bellies.  I used orange bulletin board paper and the students created their our silly jack-o-lanterns.

This was the weekly graph for our bat unit.  I love the illustrations!

Each week, my class breaks into learning groups to illustrate the beginning, middle, end and favorite part of our focus story.  This week, the story was Stellaluna.  This picture shows Stellaluna carrying the birds.

Brown Bear and Teddy Bears

 For the last 2 weeks we have been doing Brown Bear, Brown Bear activities and having fun with Teddy Bears.

The children brought in their favorite Teddy Bear to spend a couple weeks at school with them!  I love how this little sweetie did not bring a bear but instead brought his monkey!  Hey....he is an AMAZING MONKEY so why not?

We made bears (to work on our cutting skills and then we patterned little di-cut bears on their ties.  Then we wrote about what two colors we used.

We had a Teddy Bear picnic with treats brought by our parents.

We had Honey Combs, Honey Nut Cheerios, Honey Graham Teddy Grahams, Gummy Bears, and juice boxes.

It was super fun!  We watched the Teddy Bear Picnic Youtube, and the Gummy Bear song!!

We made our "bear bags".  Last year I called them "purses" and the boys did not like that much so this year they are bags!

Inside our bags were our Brown Bear Brown Bear sequencing strips so we could retell our parents the story!

We measured our teddy bears using this Exploring My Bear sheet I stole off of some cute blog!  Probably Julie Lee!

This is my favorite Baylor Bear!  

All of our math workstations for the past 2 weeks have been Julie Lee's Brown Bear centers and 

a Brown Bear unit I bought from KinderKids!  They both are fabulous!

 Roll the die and put that many bear counters on your mat.

Match the number to the correct Brown Bear animal and record.

This a pic of our work jobs.  I am using the format from Kim Adsit where we follow along all year!  

They start with me telling them a number and they had to put on that many fruit loops.

The actual mats and counters change with our theme but the concept and number they are working on

stays the same until they master it.  I started last year and it was AWESOME!

They roll the shape cube and trace the shape.

 They count the dots on the Brown Bear animal and record.

They roll the die and trace the number.

They read the ten frame and record.

They pull out a brown bear card and color a square above the correct animal the correct color until

one column reaches the top!

I had an idea to feature one section of our daily schedule in pictures and tell you in depth how we do our day in K.  If I can figure out how to host a linky party I will do that too!  We will see!

Have a great weekend!  The weather is awesome today in Texas!  To celebrate the season of Fall all of our TPT product prices have FALLEN 20 % !  For this weekend only!  Go grab our 

APPLE SMARTboard file or our OCTOBER calendar file while they are on sale!!

Peace & Love,

Heather