Everyone loves a sale!!!

Happy Cyber Monday!!  We are having a sale along with all the other great teachers out there!  Click HERE to check out our store!  I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and were able to count your blessings!!

Rainy Day Songs!

My class this year has struggled learning the name and sounds of the vowels!  I asked Kim to help me out and she whipped up a couple of great songs to help reinforce the vowel sounds....She made the songs to go with our letter Uu week and umbrella day!  Well....little did I know that it would work so well!  As you know, my niece is in my class and my sister was asking her about the sounds of the letters and Sedley bursts into song!  I was so excited I just had to share the songs with you....You can find our complete unit HERE! (including 2 more songs) But I always love a freebie so feel free to copy and use this wonderful song!  Thank you to my talented and amazing teacher in crime KIM!!

Umbrella Day!

This last week we explored the letter Uu. We started the week making pineapple upside down cake and then on Friday the kids brought their umbrellas to school. We start by giving the students rain name tags and showcasing their umbrellas.  We do math and literacy centers and an umbrella craftivity. We then head outside for an umbrella parade  and umbrella relay races.   We eat umbrella snacks under our umbrellas of course. We also sing some great songs that Kim made up!  We put all of these ideas, songs, and centers together in an umbrella unit on our TPT and our teachers notebook store!

Matching upper to lower case letters. Matching numbers together. Included are dice dots and number words for a bigger challenge. 

Umbrella Bingo. Use "rain drops" as markers. 

Umbrella relay races

My niece Is in my class and she's proud of her Bingo!

Umbrella snack. Marshmallow clouds, sunflower raindrops, orange umbrella, cheese stick handle. Yum!!

My friends son is in my class too and he is loving umbrella day!

This is Umbrella Twister!  "Put your left foot on letter Ww" picture below is part of the umbrella unit. 

He matched all his letters and numbers!  Way to go!  I love that learning can be fun and engaging!
You can pick up our whole unit HERE!

Big books

Each week in class we work on a letter. I know there is a lot of different thoughts concerning this but I have found it to be very successful in my classroom. We start with the vowels and at the end of five weeks we review the vowels. Each week we do a craftivity to go with the particular vowel we are working on. I glue the projects on long paper and put together a big book for each student. On review week each student will read their book to the class. A is for:... 

Here are a couple of the pages. I love how they turn out!

I would love to hear how done of you feel about a vowel a week. 

Have a great weekend!

Circus of Colors and Shapes

This week was our Circus of Colors and Shapes!  The students rotate through a series of centers and reinforce their knowledge of colors and shapes...We had one of our teachers dress up like a clown and take pictures.

Bean Bag Toss Center!  The students throw a bean bag and then tell what shape it landed on.

Tightrope Center!  The students pull a shape card and then walk on the tight rope!

I Spy Center!  The Students match the circus pictures to the correct plate

This is their sticker chart for each center.  Once they complete an area they put a sticker on their chart.  I bring in parents to help run my centers but if you don't want to do that you could do a couple of centers each day and make the unit a week long.

Face Painting Center!  I paint shapes on their face with washable paint and then take their picture.

Having fun on the tight rope!  Don't fall off....

We end our circus with popcorn and ice cream that make into clowns with m&ms!  Sedley says the circus of shapes and colors was super fun and she loved the snack the best!

If you would like the entire Circus of Colors and Shapes from TPT you can click HERE!  If you like Teachers Notebook you can get it HERE!
You can pick up our circus bingo unit Here!  I added bingo to the rotation this year and it was great for circus vocabulary.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom!

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Look Who's in our room!

I always love the beginning of a new year!  Seeing the new little ones and their faces as they begin to learn what school is all about!  They can be tiring days but in about 2 weeks they have the routine and we are rockin'. The first activity I do with them is a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Glyph!

Teaches students to make choices, listen carefully, make tally marks and graph and count!  Great math activity!

Classroom Table

I have had this little red table from a teacher friend of mine and it really needed a makeover!  Finally I painted it!

I used chalkboard paint and duck tape!  It is so cute with my new crate seats!  I'm going to use it for my art center!

Numbers

In my classroom I have tried to come up with some ways to help my students with number sense. One of my favorite things (my kids love it too) is:  can you guess my number?

I only reveal the numbers we have worked on. Each day my teachers helper gets to whisper a number in my ear. Then he/she will call on students to guess what number was chosen. I use little sticky notes to cover up the numbers. When the number is guessed, the helper writes the number on the board. I am never allowed to miss this activity, and my kids are learning. 👏

The picture above is part of my jungle/safari math centers. I will have it in my stores early this week, this is just one of the ideas. Hope you all check it out!

Crate seats!

So, I caved and had to make those adorable crate seats that is blowing up Pinterest!  I made zebra print and it was so easy I am going back for the giraffe print and making 4 more!  

This is. How I did it: 

Figuring out what color crate and what color print you want is the hardest part. I got all the supplies at Walmart except for the wood at Home Depot. I bought hot pink crate and zebra print.  The fabric comes in 2 yards. 2 yards make 4 seats. I bought foam to pad the seat. Then I went to Home Depot and got the wood.  The nice man there cut it for me and showed me how I could get the cheapest deal! (Always love the deals).  I bought one sheet which is enough for 8 seats!  All you need is a staple gun and you are set!

I put fabric on a table, then placed the foam down, and then the wood, pulled taut and stapled all the way around. The edges I wrapped like a package. Best part is I can use the crates to store things in. 

As we say in my classroom:  easy peasy lemon squeezey!!

Teachers Notebook

Yippee!!  We finally got our store up and running on teacher's notebook!!!  We have several units for sale there and would love for you to check us out...
Also we are loving instagram and we decided to have a contest there.  If you give us a shout out and follow us on instagram, you will be entered in a drawing to win anything in our teacher's notebook or Teacher's pay teacher's store.
Here is what we were working on this week....

You can pick up the unit HERE!

I also have a jungle/safari word wall as a freebie!

Click HERE for the freebie!

Made it Monday!

 So I made those adorable name sticks for my classroom!  I am going to use them to take turns with the iPad During group instruction. They could be used for all kinds of different things.   

First start with the larger popsicle sticks and some cute paper

cut the paper to the size of the  stick.  I wrap the paper around the stick.  paint on mod podge. (my nieces wanted to help).

Wrap the sticks with the paper and let dry.  When dry, cut rounded edges  and stick or glue on your favorite character or thematic element.

Ta da!!!  We are done....cute monkey sticks!!