First Blog in 2014- Penguins

How many of you were suppose to start back to school today? Yep, me too. Here in Tennessee it is so cold that we have today and tomorrow off. I know all you up north are laughing that 6 degrees is nothing compared to what you have, but to us.... IT'S COLD!!

Today is also a special day, my oldest turned 10 today. OMG.. where has the time gone.

 

He was complaining (like any typical 10 year old boy) that he wanted to stay home for his birthday and why wouldn't I take the day off so he could. Ha, he got his wish.

 

Anyways, we had a teacher day last Friday so I had a chance to get things ready for our Penguin theme when we go back to school. Here are a few things we will be doing.

Dramatic Play center- In the black bins are supplies for
"How to make Hot Chocolate" &
"How to make soup"

Here is the sign... Click on the picture

The how to make soup is still in the works today ;)

a little compare and contrast with the Fairy Penguin and Emperor Penguin



Have you ever made "Fake" Snow!! OMG it is the coolest thing. I found it here



My daughter and I had to try it out

This will go into my Science/Social Studies center with some magnifying glasses to look at the penguins. By the way, I got the penguins at Hobby Lobby in a Penguin Toob. Use a 40% off coupon and you pay a little over $5. My daughter had to look up each penguin also.

I made this to go along with the station so they could copy down the recipe incase they wanted to try it at home and of course what better way to get them reading at the station.

 

I have some more exciting things going on at my centers this week, but of course I forgot to take pictures. I cant promise you, but I'll really try to get those so you can see some other ideas.

 

Hope you all are staying warm today!!

 

Kindergarten Back to School Freebies

I can hardly believe my summer is OVER. Yes, panic attack, we go back to school TOMORROW. Fortunately, I still have another two days to actually be "ready" for kiddos.

Here is how our school does "Kindergarten." We have two Registration Nights for the whole school where 1st-5th go to meet their teachers and fill out paper work (they find out their students in the summer) and all Kindergarten students come to one room to fill out papers and get a 30 minute testing time for the first day back to school. So we had 101 kindergarteners register on those nights and we'll see them tomorrow. {Another panic attack.}

Once us, K-teachers (5 of us) test them tomorrow, we divide the kids up into classrooms based on scores, age, gender, and ethnicity. We like to have a diverse class. However, parents are aloud to request teachers- which we had a lot of this year :). Then we call parents Tuesday to let them know who their teacher will be and give them an orientation day.

Orientation days are Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. We take 1/3 of the class each of those days to phase them in. Then they all start full time the next Monday.

I LOVE this because we are a Title One school and students come in at all different levels which allows us a little more one on one time.

So do you all have something like this or do they throw them all in and see if you survive the first week? ;)

Now on to some freebies!!
I have used a clip chart for How We Go Home in the past, but it didn't work for me since I never knew what bus the kiddos rode, if I just clipped their name under the bus tag, so I made these posters to put in a picture frame and write on the glass with a dry erase marker. There are a few different versions.

 

 

 

I was also looking for something different for Birthdays and came up with these...

 

 

What do you think?! Birthday Bling Pops!!!! Click pic for freebie

 

 

Leave me a comment to what you think and share some love- follow me on Bloglovin and Facebook.



 



 

 

 

 

Much needed update

Like many of you that are just getting started with Blogging, I too am learning how to manage my blog. After seeing how many of you have put all your freebies into one spot, I definitely wanted to try this. So, over the last week, I have managed to put all (most) of my freebies in one area. (Yeah, I know I am so SLOW at this blog management stuff)

Because  I haven't posted a freebie in a while, here is something I hope you can use in any grade level.

You can add a magnet to the back or leave them as is. Some ideas I use them for are:

1. any type of word works: spelling names, CVC words, spelling words, sight words

2. ABC Order

3. Letter Sound Correspondence

4. Capital Letter Lowercase Letter Match up

What are some other ways that you would use these in your classroom?