We had a lot of fun yesterday having our family over for dinner and egg hunting and making Easter Egg Cupcakes.
With these Easter Bunny Cupcakes, the ears are a large marshmallow cut on the diagonal and dipped in colored sugars.
My youngest granddaughter decorating her Easter cupcake. You GO GIRL!
Easter Cupcakes using colored coconut and jelly beans. The chicky beak is made from a fruit roll up.
Cute little Bunny and Chick cupcakes. We also made little “nests” using coconut and jelly beans.
I had 5 of my 6 grandkiddos there for Pin the tail on the bunny, and some bubble blowing too.
We just had them close their eyes and they were pretty good about keeping them closed while they tried to find the bunny’s behind.
Here we are adding the “tails” to the Pin the tail on the bunny. Megan was the winner! Yay. I found a freebie HERE at partydelights.
I loved watching the daddies help their youngest kiddos hunt for the eggs. It made me tear up a little. sniff…
My oldest son and his youngest daughter. It is neat to see him being a daddy.
And my son in law is also a great dad. Here he is with his youngest and my only grandson.
And I got a GREAT picture of all my grandkiddos after collecting all the eggs.
Here are my two youngest grandkids hunting together. Aren’t they sweet?
“Hey I think I’ve got more than you do. You better get busy dude!”
And I loved seeing the kids hunting for eggs, playing games, creating and loving it. We are all artists. The kids love to be artistic and create beautiful things. It gives them a sense of pride to create, no matter how old they are.
Coloring eggs is a yearly tradition in our family. We have always done it. And it is now the next generation carrying on the tradition for the 3rd generation. Traditions are great things to develop in your family.
These were my oldest granddaughter’s eggs.
And her sister’s eggs too.
I was feeling my creativity too on Easter Sunday. I made this cool veggie and dip platter shaped like a spring scene.
Hope you all had a fun Easter! We have one more day of Spring Break! Enjoy the day!
I know I will. I think I’ll go eat a cupcake now. 😀
Have you ever made terrariums out of 2 liter clear, plastic bottles? Just cut them in half, fill the bottom with some rocks and potting soil and plantings. I use ivy and creeping charlie out of my garden and placed them in water for a few days hoping they will grow roots. So, ivy will grow pretty much from a cutting. Or you can plant seeds.
Plants and Seeds Unit Activity was Making Terrariums out of a clear, 2 Liter Soda Bottle!
I like to read the kids the story Jack and the Beanstalk. And just for fun we read a different rendition of it in the form of a reader’s theater, which is ALWAYSfun! Some retelling picture cards to color I found are HERE at Sparklebox. Or you could make up your own creative writing titles (Jack and the potato plant,Jack and the Cornstalk, Jack and His Cow, etc.) That would be a hoot to write a creative story using Jack and the Beanstalk as a springboard!
Some kids added shells to their soda bottle terrariums, to make them look even prettier!
Also At Sparklebox.org are some PUPPET FACES for acting out the parts in the reader’s theater. HERE is a cute reader’s theater HERE at Grandview Library there is lots of other reader’s theaters. We will soon do The Little Red Hen too. It’s a fun one.
I think K loved doing this little science activity more than anybody else. She loved her terrarium! (notice the pride on her face). She would only put in one plant because she added some veggie seeds to hers and wasn’t sure they would have enough room to grow. I hope she isn’t expecting a bean stalk! 🙂
After reading the Jack and the Beanstalk, write out a question to ask the class. We have a big discussion about how honest Jack was, and if the Giant’s wife was nice or not, or why nobody comes down the beanstalk?
These girls loved making terrariums too.
BOOKS on PLANTS AND SEEDS
Flower Garden by Eve Bunting
Sunflower House by Eve Bunting
The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle
Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert
From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons Frog and Toad Together by Arnold Lobel Jack in the Beanstalk by Stephen Kellogg We are also trying to learn to find the “main idea” in stories. At Brainpop I found a powerpoint on how to find the main idea.
Plants and Seeds are fun to study. Making Terrariums is a great activity for plant units.
We added a few shells to these terrariums too for interest.
Some fun color and sequence cards to go with the story are HERE at Sparklebox. These could also be made into a retelling book to add some sentences to. HERE at Worknotes.com are some easy reader’s theaters to try.
There is also a crossword puzzle of Jack and the Beanstalk at this link from ABC teach. It was a fun activity for my kids to do after reading the story and acting out the reader’s theater. My students loved doing it.
Close up of our terrariums
Clear 2 liter bottles make pretty good terrariums. I was thinking if I wanted to really seal them up I could have wrapped the seam in some 2 inch book tape, but all of the kids wanted to water their plants! Oh well.A good step by step how to is found at this link toTeaching Tiny Tots HERE.
We added some rocks to the bottom, then about 3 inches of good potting soil, then the plants, and topped it with rocks again (and a few pellets of plant food).
TERRARIUMS (using empty 2 liter bottles) A good book to read is From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons.She is a master of children’s science books.
Another fun planting activity I’ve done in the past is doing “Sprout Houses” in a zip lock baggie. That’s what we did last year. I pass out Lima bean seeds that have been soaking overnight. Then I pass out wet cotton balls. A link to a fun lesson plan using Lima beans is HERE at A to Z Teacher Stuff. We use the Lima beans as our seeds for our sprout houses which are another kind of terrarium. Tape them up against a window for light. Watch what happens in a week! I really like the kids to plant radishes when we’ve done plantings in a clear plastic cup because they come up within about 2 to 3 weeks and you can see the roots growing.
Wet Lima Beans and cotton balls in a ziplock baggie make cute Sprout Houses.
MUSIC (use percussion instruments) A Seed Needs (To the tune of “Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay” ) I see you are a seed, Tell me what DO you need? I need some soil to grow, And then the sun to glow, Water to make me wet, Air for my leaves to get, Space for my roots to spread, I’ll make your flower bed!
by: Iram Khan POEMS I always look for a poem to put on the back of art to sing or read together for shared reading. This is a great one for the backs of our puffy pumpkins we made out of orange butcher paper in the fall. See them HERE. . CELERY SCIENCE EXPERIMENT –We’ll do THIS experiment at teaching tiny tots. We added red and blue food coloring to 2 stalks of celery in 2 jars and watched to see what would happen when the celery drinks up the colored water. Here are some pictures after a few days.
Celery and food coloring experiment – you can see the celery turned red (left) and blue (right) at the tips of the leaves!
Ask what would happen to plants if people put pollution items in lakes and streams like oil, paint and car fluids and it went downstream and plants used that water to survive. Do you think the plants might get sick?
Our Plant and Seed Journals have lots of interesting activities in them like labeling plants, writing out what part of the plant we eat, crosswords, fill in the blanks, and this celery experiment.
MATH ACTIVITIES
A fun MATH ACTIVITY designing a garden for Frog and Toad for their 24 plants can be found HERE at birdville.k12. It is a math exemplar which are great math problems to solve that are challenging and fun. I will give the kids a page of clip art plants to color with 6 of each plant and they will choose the number of plants and their own totals to map out a garden “array”. The book is called Frog and Toad Together by Arnold Lobel. The chapter is called The Garden. HERE at Virtual Vine are some other Frog and Toad activities like compound words which are great to print.
Here are some pictures of multiplication arrays we’ve done after reading Jack and the Beanstalk.
Making Multiplication Arrays with vegetables in rows and columns.
I turned it into a lesson on “arrays” and multiplication. They lined their garden veggies up and multiplied the “rows” times the “columns” of veggies. Here are a few finished ones. Some did larger arrays and some just did 2 x 4. So it is a great lesson for differentiation with that open ended aspect to it. I also modeled one on the board and wrote in “column 1, column 2 and Row 1, Row 2 etc. So they labeled their columns and rows. Everybody did their totals a little differently.
PARTS OF A PLANT – MAGNET CENTER
Parts of the Plant Magnet Center Idea….
This idea was taken from a Red Butte Garden docent that came into my 2nd grade classroom and did this magnetic parts of a plant one year. I loved it so much I made one that very day! I have the parts of a yellow sunflower plant I made up and laminated and put magnets on the backs of all the pieces, along with the labels that I place out at the magnet center. Kids love to put the flowers together and label them.
I hope you enjoyed my plant and seed unit! It’s been a very popular one with the kiddos!
I love to decorate for the seasons and for all the holidays. Easter is coming up and so I put away all the St. Patrick’s day decor and got out the stuff for my Easter Table Decorating. Easter Table Decorating – I love all the spring colors and baby chicks and bunnies here on my kitchen table. My Kitchen buffet has some new pictures and cute little eggs everywhere. I always start my Easter decorating in the kitchen, and do the Easter Table Decorating there first. Gotta have a lovely Easter Dinner table, now dontcha? Next I go into the entry way and decorate the little table there. Those are two
areas I fuss over the most.
Easter Decorating is about done at my house. Yay Next I do my formal dining room Easter Table Decorating. I We got a new rustic, whitewashed, dining table and these cute blue nailhead trim chairs for the formal dining room. We hardly ever use this room except on holidays. Formal Dining Room table. I love the yellow and green and coral decor in here. I love to decorate the entry table with these cute bunnies, eggs and chicks. This sad Mr. Bunny lost his eye in a doggie-bunny stand off. Our bad boy Bruce bit it off. We called him Brucifer THAT day. snicker…
I do the coffee and end tables last. I have gobs of stuff. I have to stay away from Hobby Lobby this month! Eek!
I love this little bunny pair on my family room end table. It goes with the brown/neutral decor in there. Darling little “Chickies” and bunnies. My grandkids love this light up Easter Bunny house. Great Room table has some of the leftover doo-dads. My 3 Easter bins are almost empty! Woot!
The kitchen island always has some bright and cheery flowers of some sort. These have some egg pics along with the florals. These mercury mirror glass eggs are my favorites. I used to have more of them. But since the grandkids…..well….you know how that goes. 😀
I think I’ll add some Easter Egg picks to the greenery all over the house. Maybe there IS an excuse to go look at Hobby Lobby tomorrow after all!! I’m getting ready to spray paint these old chairs and this cute bench. But for now, they are covered in stuffed animals for the grands to play with.
Josie girl was 3 in this picture.
Easter Egg Hunt last year at our house. I love my little grandkiddos and watching them hunt for eggs.
Next I’ll do the grandkids’ two tables for Easter Sunday Dinner. I’ll have my Chicago peeps here sometime around Easter. So I will need two tables for all the 6 grandkiddos to sit. And THAT will be such fun! Happy decorating! And Happy Easter!
Springtime Poetry and Kite art and Weather Activities.
Well, Springtime in my classroom means we do some weather activities.
We write about things that happen in the spring including flowers, sports, bugs, baby animals, and all kinds of weather!
We sing the song below about Clouds to the tune of “Itsy Bitsy Spider”.
We will be starting our weather unit when we go back on track. Spring is the perfect time to start since we get all types of crazy weather in springtime.
Weather activities are really interesting and fun to kids of all ages.
We will make some Cloud Flip Books and write facts underneath each type of cloud picture. Then we’ll add the cotton balls to depict each type of cloud.
Here are the cotton ball clouds and the name of each type of cloud.
Cloud flip books…they turn out really neat.
CLOUD TYPES FLIP BOOKS AND CLOUD ACTIVITIES….
This poem I typed up and we put one on the back of our Cloud Flap Books. I always do poems on the back of art for shared reading. It is so good for kids to practice those sight words while singing. We will sing them to a familiar tune like ABC song, Jimmy Crack Corn, or Row Row Row your Boat.
. Check out the Scholastic News website for great info and pictures on Clouds. I order the Scholastic News every year. A lot of times I save the science ones to use with my units.
For more Weather Activities we read this Cloud Choral Reading and these 2 books on Clouds and the Cloud Poem too!
The Weekly Reader/Scholastic News have a product called Science Spin that I’ve saved over the years. I order that every year for an extra dollar or so per student. I use them because I have no science textbooks. I also order a lot of science reading literature and always keep it at the SCIENCE CENTER. It is the most popular center most days.
Cloudette By Lichtenheld, Tom I’ve accumulated quite an array of weather books over my 20 years of teaching. Here are a few. The two above are my favorites.
Some of the Weather Books and Scholatic News on weather we read during weather week…..
The next day we did some Water Cycle Activities. We Read a Weekly Reader on the Water Cycle that had a cool diagram.
We made these Water Cycle Wheels too…I like the vocabulary listed …we test on two of these words; evaporation and precipitation on our weekly vocab quiz. A Cloud and Weather Vocabulary word sort can be found HERE free at TPT.
I loved this water cycle activity pack that I found FREE from TPT. Check it out HERE. It was easy for my kiddos. The water cycle wheel I got from another teacher I believe she got it from a book.
Another thing I usually do is have the kids make a wind pinwheel for an ART ACTIVITY as part of learning about tornadoes and hurricanes. It is just made with a square, and we curl up each triangle and pin it to the top of a new pencil eraser with a straight pin. Get a mom helper to go around and help with this for young kids
. Then we go outside on a windy day and watch our creations twirl. This one had some cute stars and swirls kids colored on it. Print up your pinwheel on regular colors of paper (not cardstock, too heavy to twirl) and let them decorate them.
I got this from another teacher, but I’ve done them just with a square too. You do the cutting before passing them out.
Pinwheels are a fun way to start the day learning about wind and all the types of windy weather and the damage it can do.
Some free weather stationery is HERE. And HERE is a printable of all types of weather in a cute blackline from Scholastic that you could use to make your own magnet matching game like mine below. You do have to subscribe to Scholastic and pay a small fee to get these though. I bought my game below from a teacher supply store.
This was a WEATHER center game I added magnets to the back. I have a magnet center made butting two filing cabinets together at the backs. I left all the weather books at the Science Center along with this game.
I’ll also begin talking about taking care of our world and being a part of Earth Day which is coming up in a month. That will be our next unit.
I have an auto harp I play and the kids love singing songs to the music. HERE was a water cycle song we sang to the tune of “IT’S RAINING IT’S POURING”. I also have about 2 dozen types of instruments and some drums and xylophones so we never lose interest in singing to science texts.
Check out my store above to see some great deals on musical instruments. I especially love the blue boxed xylophone. It was only $20.00 and I bought 3 for my classroom. The kids love to get them out when we sing and 2 kids will pay them to keep the rhythm with bells. Here is a pack of freebies from TPT Check it out!
The Water Cycle poster I keep up while we are doing our water cycle wheels and singing our songs.
Here is another Water Cycle Song: Tune: Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush Here we go round the water cycle, water cycle, water cycle. Here we go round the water cycle, each and every day. The ocean water evaporates, evaporates, evaporates, The ocean water evaporates and makes tiny drops. The clouds condense to make a raincloud, make a raincloud, make a raincloud, The clouds condense to make a raincloud, and some feel heavy! The heavy drops precipitate, precipitate, precipitate, The heavy drops precipitate, to make water accumulate. (puddles, lakes, rivers, and underground wells) Then it’s time to start again, start again, start again, Then it’s time to start again, the never ending Water Cycle!
I have lots of books on the results of Wicked Weather. And Tornados and Typhoons come along right when we are discussing weather damage. SCIENCE EXPERIMENT: TORNADO TUBE
This is a Tornado Tube. I put 2 empty 2 liter bottles together with one of them filled with water. The kids loved coming up and twirling it around till it made a tornado. You can get the Tornado Tube from Steve Spangler Science. I think it is about $3.00 plus shipping.
If we have time a fun weather puzzle with the 3 types of violent weather types (lightening, tornadoes and hurricanes) is lots of fun. We glue them down after discussing safety during each one.
I had the kids put together a page of 3 cool puzzles; tornadoes, hurricanes and lightening. This is what it looks like before .
The last thing we do is make a thermometer with paper. Check it out HERE. We talk about hot and cold, cool and freezing weather and what temperature each type of weather would be. (Hot 80 to 100, Cool 50 to 60, Warm 70 to 80ish, Freezing 30 and below. Then I showed them lots of coats, sweaters, bathing suits etc. and asked what temperature each would be. They hold up the little pictures with the words hot, warm, cold etc.
We made thermometers and learned what temperature spring, summer, winter and fall weather would be….
Above is a fun WATER CYCLE SONG. A cool reader’s theater script I found on the story of the water cycle can be printed free HERE at Grandview Library. It is from Enchanted Learning. It’s cute and would make the kids use their imagination. These are some cool Youtubes I found that the kids like. I have a hard time choosing between them but I usually show one or two during the 2 week unit.
Weather videos from Youtube great for learning about Weather and introducing vocabulary for the unit.
Water Cycle Youtube with some fun singing.
Another cute song….on CLOUDS! In the book CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS there are lots of bad weather days, where food rains all over the city. It is fun to write funny stories about our favorite foods raining on our city in Utah.
Some Weekly Readers and Language Arts writing we d0…. Some years I’ve done the I Can poem above.
We used THIS STORY WEB to begin with problem, solution, setting and characters. A fun website that has lots of fun online graphics and activities is at Webweather’s site.
weather
hailstorms
hurricane
tornado
funnel
fog
cloudy
water vapor
cirrus cloud
stratus cloud
nimbus rain cloud
cumulus cloud
evaporation
precipitation
violent weather
lightening
Here were some of the WEATHER vocabulary words we studied for the week and added to our science pocket chart too. Weather is one of my favorite units to teach. The kids all love learning about it.
St. Patrick’s Day Leprechauns we did last week sure turned out CUTE!
We did some OPINION WRITING since it is on our report card. What is YOUR opinion? Do you believe there are real Leprechauns or not? Hmmm?
Last week we did a fun activity making green and orange Leprechauns with curly beards and then doing a Graph on whether we believe in Leprechauns or not.
It was 18 to 5 in favor of believing in Leprechauns, of course.
Here is some of our great kindergarten writing! Gotta love it.
Do you Believe?
Then they had to write what they would do if they found one. Most of them would trap it with something…….
This kindergartener did NOT believe in Leprechauns.
Cute little Leprechaun beards and glittery hats.
A poem we read about Looking for the Leprechauns. Lots of the kids had already “seen one”. tee hee.
Some of the books we read about St. Patrick’s Day leprechauns.
Then we shared leprechaun traps we had invented. They sure were great!
I wish I had done a close up of all of the traps. They were all done so well, and were so pretty!
Great job everybody! I loved seeing your St. Patrick’s Day Leprechaun Traps. I hope you all catch one and get 3 wishes! (If you believe in them of course…..) 😀
Check out our cute penguin art and acrostic poems.
Last week We learned about Macaroni Penguins, Emperor Penguins, and Chinstrap Penguins. And then we read lots of penguin books and stories. I got the information I read the kids from this freebie at TPT. It also had a wordsearch and a cute dot to dot and some vocabulary cards we cut and used.
Then I had the kids brainstorm words that began with PENGUIN. And we wrote them in a big list across the whiteboard. Some of the kids came up with phrases such as “up on an iceberg” or “noisy birds” or “not at the North Pole”.
Then we wrote our own Penguin Acrostic poems on this cute paper I found and added the PENGUIN to. I love how they turned out.
Penguin Art and Acrostic Poems
Penguin Art and Acrostic Poems
The kids did a great job on their Penguin Arcrostic Poems!!
I also read the class my favorite Children’s book; Tacky the Penguin. He is an odd bird that is not accepted in his group, but he ends up saving the other penguins from Hunters. He saves the day. And everybody loves him after that. Kind of like the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer story. He saved the day too!
Penguin Art and Acrostic Poems
Very nice Job on these poems guys! I am so proud of you all!
Add caption
This cute penguins art and acrostic poems made a darling bulletin board
ANYHOO, we had to make some cute Penguins to go with our little Penguin Acrostic Poetry. Here is what I came up with. The kids are not really great at cutting yet, but I think they did a fabulous job. These little eyeballs were very tricky too! I made a bunch of bow ties like Tacky the Penguin wears, using some scrapbook paper scraps I had at home. When they were done we did a cute wordsearch.
This is our cute bulletin board for February. I just love it!
Put on your tux was my favorite phrase. Super cute!
Lots of penguins make lots of noise, don’t ya know?
These kindergarteners had really good handwriting too. Awesome!
Then they chose little ski caps from scrapbook and colored paper and topped them with some fuzzy balls. The eyeballs I got on TPT in a kit of freebies on the Penguin theme. Check them out HERE. I had them do this addition and subtraction page using the cute counters I have on every desk. We have lots of fun with the cute variety of math mats and math counters I’ve put together. Check some of them out HERE. And we did this for a center during Penguins Day. It is a cute math matching activity. HERE.
We also did this math game where you roll 2 dice, add together, then ADD 1 or TAKE AWAY 1 and then cover THAT number! It was a little more challenging! But the kids loved it!
I used this stencil of a penguin to cut out the black body, the white belly and the arms (sort of). I actually used this one and then made a slimmer version, and then a short version. Then the kids weren’t all exactly alike. They just chose the two they liked and put them together and glued them down on pretty brights papers. I used blue, green, purple, pink, orange and red and yellow backgrounds.
This title page for our bulletin board I found HERE. A really cute GRAPHING activity that is also a freebie is HERE.
I used astro bright paper to back the black and white penguins with. I think that always adds a little zing to the art project. It also would have been cute with a watercolored blue and purple and white background.
Then we put on these cute eyeballs after cutting them out. I think this was the hardest part for the kiddos. Many an eyeball got cut to pieces before all 23 of them had a good pair. haha. They added their flippers in any sort of way. Some are flipping theirs up high like their penguin is waving. So cute!
Penguin art and Acrostic Poems
They DO use their beaks a lot, don’t they?
If you have older students, I have read the play as a choral read together when I taught 1st and 2nd grade. Most of the kids can read the words by now. The Grandview Library has a freebie copy of the play HERE.
And penguins have lots of new chicks every year. For G she wrote Graceful. So sweet.
Penguin Art and Acrostic Poems
Then we made our own beaks folding a piece of orange bright paper and cutting out a triangle. This way it looks 3D like the penguins are quacking. Then I cut out a bunch of sets of feet and everybody chose ones they liked. Another grade could probably cut their own out but we wanted to save some time. Then they added the hats and bow ties. The hats I just freehand cut, and then they glued down a band over the top with the corresponding color, and we all chose a fuzzy ball to glue on top of the sweater hats.
Lastly I punched out some little snowflakes and they glued 2 down wherever they wanted. Here these little men are! I love them so much!
I always make a giant Penguin and write facts the kids remember from what I’ve read to them. Then we use this as a mini report starter. Kids can copy some of the facts they see. This year I decided to do an acrostic instead. But this is also great to use for brainstorming words with the P E N G U I N letters.
Some years I’ve had the kids write their own Penguin Stories using Tacky the Penguin as the Stencil Story. I start with a story frame and the kids fill in the missing parts according to their character.
One year we did Winter Poetry. That gave me the idea to do some Penguin Acrostics. That is a very EASY way to have young kids start writing. They can copy words to go with the acrostic letters.
We have to sing a bunch of fun songs too of course. This one is to the ABC Tune or Itsy Bitsy Spider or Jimmy Cracked Corn or whatever fits.
Last year I had 2nd graders so we painted footprints and made our Penguin art out of our black footprints. It was very messy. The baby penguins are out of thumbprints. It took a few tote trays of water on the floor and lots of paper towels to wash and dry those little feet off! The hats and scarves are painted on. You would have to be sure your kids are old enough to design a penguin.
One year I had them do a funny story and some tear art penguins. That is my favorite, but I can’t find the time with half day kindergarten. It takes a lot of time to do tear art. And these penguin stories were soooooo cute. I loved them so much.
They had to have a problem that matched one their character would have. Then they had to have 1 friend, and a solution, and a setting. My favorite was the Katy Perry Penguin who broker her microphone while doing a concert. It was a hoot.
This penguin was also a singer. Lots of rock stars started out in my classroom. tee hee.
Here’s my hubs and I at the Ice Castles last year in Midway, Utah. They were awesome. This year they are in Park City right near Soldier Hollow HERE. It is so fun to do winter activities in the snow. And it is fun to be creative using penguins as your theme.
We were in the mood for some sweets at my house today. And we decided that maybe we’d take a trip in the car down to the new SWIG drive through in Draper. They have the most maaaaaavelous Swig Sugar Cookies there. They are soft and big and covered in pink, sour cream icing. But we were kind of lazy. Correction, I was kind of lazy. So I roped my daughter into making some. HERE they are on my cooking blog.
Valentines Cookies and Valentines Cootie Catchers…..which one sounds like more fun? Hmmmm……
Kids LOVE these fun little fortune tellers. Mine all did. So what luck to stumble across this cute one you could make for a Valentines Day craft or to make up at home and play.
Valentines Day Decor I have in my classroom and at home.
I like that this one at Design Mom has cute Valentines in all the 4 corners along with some sight words and numbers for the kids to choose. Number recognition is still hard for some kiddos even this late in the year. The more practice they get with numbers the better.
Make these up just for fun at home! It is kind of a fun mommy and me project.
The link to my cooking blog is here at Weekday Chef. Go make some cookies! They are creamy good! Bad me. I keep saying I’m going to give up sweets, but do I ever mind myself? NO!
Another fun writing activity I found on TPT for freebies! It is a Valentines Read the Room activity. It has Valentine monsters to match to the word, then write the word in the correct space. HERE it is on TPT. Thanks Camp Kindergarten! It’s super cute!
I’ve almost got all of my Valentines Decorations up around the house. I changed the classroom calendar and put up some hearts and fuzzy bears and I Love You wall hangings.
My students will all love the little light up LOVE light I bring into class each year. Isn’t it sweet? I keep it lit up during the day.
I bought all kinds of fun stuff at the dollar store for our Valentines Day Party. I have plates, napkins, heart counters for math, candy, pencils and a goodie bag, and some tic tac toe games we can play at a center. Cootie Catchers will be a hit too! I have lots of other fun things in mind too.
For our Halloween Party we’ll be making cookies like these darling Valentines heart cookies. I have a gazillion little jars of sprinkles we can have fun with. I might need some tiny candies too. Maybe I can get a few donations.
And we’ll be making bead bracelets for our craft. The kids always love that. And the tic tac toe will be fun. We should do some kind of relay race too. That always adds to the chaos of a kindergarten party!!
I have a few other fun ideas up my sleeve too. It will be a fun month. I always love February. And the kids always Love the fun Valentines Day par-tay.
I have been looking for lots of sight word games for center activities these next few weeks. A very cute one I found is a Snowball Sight Word Writing Game. It is HERE at Mrs. Lirettes Learning Detectives.
The kids could stamp the words into playdough, or write the words in flour. That is always fun. My recipe is HERE.
We also did these superheroes last year with “ing” words. I could have kids write sight words inside the “pow” shapes instead.
Another fun game was a fly swatter attached to a picture of a cat. Then fish with the sight words are spread all over the floor and the kids take turns “swatting” one of the fish with the fly. I know, it doesn’t make sense to me too, except that I know kids will find it engaging. And hopefully they will read the word on the fish as they play. You could also just use a magnet and a string on a stick and make a “fishpole”. That is what I will use to play the game with the fish laminated and with a paper clip on each one for the magnet to stick to. This game is HERE.
A game I made up a long time ago is a Spider match game for compound words. I may just use the webs for sight words too! I’ll have to come up with a sticky spider of some sort to “stick” to the webs.
Another cute one was a colorful gumball machine with gumball sight words to read and cover. And this site also had cute little fried eggs with sight words inside, that kids could pick up with a black, plastic spatula from the Dollar Store. I loved these HERE at TPT. They are free.
I also found a cute Princess and Dinosaur Bingo Gameboard pack at Walmart for only a $1.00. I cut out the calling card pictures and wrote a sight word on each one, then wrote the matching word on each board. It took me some time but I just plugged in a DVD and did it while I watched the movie.
Any Bingo game with words would be helpful for K-2 Kids during centers.
It was cheap and the kids have fun playing it. The last thing I used for this week is a sight word wall. It is really cute with little pictures along with the words. This would be great for kids to use with Magna Doodles of any kind. They can choose words and write them on chalkboards with colored chalk or even on paper or whiteboards. The link is HERE on TPT.
I have kindergarteners this year. So I wanted to do a little bit of the activities I’ve done in the past but just make them a little simpler. My Martin Luther King posts from the last few years are HERE and HERE.
These little guys did such a good job. I told them some of the stories of the civil rights movement, and nobody thought anything sounded AT ALL FAIR. It is amazing the adults of the time thought things were when 5 and 6 year olds can tell they weren’t.
They did a great job writing some Dr. King quotes and phrases for Martin Luther King Day.
I will put their art and writing up on the bulletin board! It is awesome!
I can’t believe these kiddos are only 5 and 6 years old.
I told the kids all about how blacks had to ride in the back of the bus, drink out of their own drinking fountains, and be refused service in restaurants. Nobody thought it was fair at all!
I told them about the fire hoses that were sprayed on people who were marching peacefully with signs because they didn’t like the unfairness of it all. They didn’t think that was very nice either.
I told them about the marching people did in large groups holding signs. They wanted to change things for blacks. It wasn’t fair the way things were. The key was that the marches were peaceful. Dr. King helped people to dissent without violence. Boy do we need some of Dr. King’s influence these days!!!
So maybe Dr. King day comes at a good time in our country. America needs to feel more unified and peaceful after the recent events in Ferguson and other places in our world. There is so much violence!
Show that you care……what a great sentiment!
Dr. King would be proud of these students who really got his message.
This one kind of resembles Al Sharpton! How did that happen? lol
I thought this one turned out great too.
We had a good day learning about a Great American Hero. Dr. King lives on even though he was assassinated.
Treat people kindly. That is one of his messages and a great take away from today’s discussions.
Happy Martin Luther King Day!
We will try to follow his example this week and this month and always!
Martin Luther King day is this coming Monday, January 19th.
I like this writing paper I found on TPT as a freebie. I like the dotted lines for my little kinders to help them form good habits and proper handwriting. It is HERE at TPT. There were some cute coloring pages also.
Martin Luther King, Jr. art and writing for K-2. We read the poem and wrote phrases from it in Kindergarten today.
I liked these activities for Dr. King Day too. Check them out HERE at TPT. Another cute one with an “I Have a Dream” header for a bulletin board or a shared writing is HERE from TPT. A cute wordsearch is HERE too. Some writing stationery is HERE. All are freebies.
Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream quote was a springboard for writing our dreams for the world.
DIRECTED DRAWING of Dr. King…….INSTRUCTIONS: I do it on the board then turn and walk around to see who needs help. Some kids will have to try the head a few times to get the right shape.
The directed drawing I did was easy. Tell the kids to use a brown, black, red and blue crayon only. Tell them to watch you do it first and listen carefully. Then they do what you did and WAIT for you to go on to the next instruction. Tell them to color in light even strokes using the side of the crayon.
1. First draw a large oval with the brown crayon. Find the middle of the oval and Add a nose that is like 2 small mountains or a capital M with a C on the left and a backwards C on the right. NO top on the nose. 2. Then in between the top of the head and the nose draw in 2 black eyes dark and round, but leave a little circle of white in the very middle. Then draw a half-circle arch above each eye in black. 3. Then above the eyes draw 2 bushy black eyebrows kind of like a caterpillar. 4. Then under the nose draw bushy black mustache like a caterpillar. 5. Then in between the nose and chin we will do a mouth kind of shaped like a rounded-at-the-bottom heart. Color it in light brown with a hint of light red. 6. Then put 2 ears on each side of the head even with the nose and color them in with brown. 7. Then use black and make circular swirls of black hair all around the head like a short afro cut. 8. Then draw a suit coat with a V neck in black but then color it in with blue, in an even direction. Be sure it is BLUE and not aqua. 9. Inside the v neck draw a red tie kind of diamond shaped. Then draw a small black W right under the chin, so it will look like a white shirt collar. 10. Then add some fireworks shaped like a plus sign and an X in blue and then go over it also in red. 11. Then put the name on top Dr. King. 12. Older kids can also draw an American flag on a pole.
Martin Luther King was a great American leader. We have so few that really stand out these days don’t we. I hope all the kids catch a glimpse of him on T.V. this weekend. Happy Martin Luther King Day!
We’ve been having a lot of fun with this VERY NEW and VERY COOL musical toy my hubs got me for Christmas, and I just had to share! It just came in the mail on Friday. It is called the Amazon Echo. We can talk to it just like the iphone’s Siri. It answers your questions in a fun way. It can save your grocery list and help your kids spell their spelling words. But the best part is that it will play you your favorite music. It can be left on your kitchen or desk. It will play anything you feel like listening to. It will start and stop when you tell it to. It is amazing! Check it out!
Dylan in his Little Superman Jogger with a cape. Superman is pretty awesome too, as is James Blunt. At least we think so in this house.
Superman taking off as he is rather camera shy…..snicker….
I am in wonder of modern technology. I am living the life of the Jetsons (a childhood cartoon…lots of robots and spaceships). Marty McFly was right in Back to the Future. It is not out yet in general distribution. We won an invitation lottery and were invited to purchase it for half off the $199 price. What a great gift. I love my new Amazon Echo. It’s the bomb.
Another cute song….on CLOUDS! In the book CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS there are lots of bad weather days, where food rains all over the city. It is fun to write funny stories about our favorite foods raining on our city in Utah. 
