A Look at February

Wow, February is over already?! February was a very busy month with Valentine's Day, 100th Day, Dental Health Month, and Winter Break. Here are some fun things we did in kindergarten. 

 I did my usual 100th Day t-shirt project. I am a pizza this year!! My husband gets full credit for that brilliant idea. 

I gave the kids the numbers 1, 0, and 0 and told them to make a picture from it. These are some of the creative portraits the kiddos made:

  A puppy!

  A butterfly!

Love <3

Also happening in February was Dental Health Month. Here are some of the fun projects we did:

We learned what enamel, dentin, and pulp are and how we feel pain. 

 "Whose smile is it?" bulletin board. Parents (and students!) loved guessing which smile was theirs! 

 And look at those adorable marshmallow teeth!

Now that February is over, I'm getting all my St. Patrick's Day and Easter centers out! If you haven't checked them out, they are on sale this month :)

And news on the school........ 

It's been an exhilarating and crazy couple of months at The Sara Marie School. We had our first Emerald Ball which was a great success. Here is a picture of me and another one of the co-founders Joanna from Love for Early Learners. 

Procedural Writing and A Toast to the New Year!

I hope everybody had a great holiday! Today is my designated workday which will consist of drinking diet coke, and eating cheeseburgers, pizza, and wings while I lesson plan! Mmm!

Anyways, my first order of business was preparing a couple of writing activities for the month of January (I'm curriculum mapping today!). In January we work on procedural writing. The first thing I do is bring in bread, peanut butter, and jelly and we do a "how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich" tutorial. The kids really see how important it is to be accurate with their explanations. I put together a packet of 4 writing assignments here and you can get them for 75 cents. Bargain! I end the month by doing a "how to blow a bubble" project which you can read about here. This is a super fun way to end the unit. 

If you missed my post last year, you can see it here and read about what I do with my kiddos after the holidays. They write "toasts to a New Year." Adorable.

Oh, and how do you like our Grinch Day celebration?? It was SO fun. 

 Shirt made by my husband!

Look at all that green food!! Pickles, yum!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

Well snow is in the forecast and I'm not going to lie.... I would LOVVVVE a snow day or even a delay! December is just all kinds of cah-razy! Here is a peek at what's been going on in 2nd grade. 

The kids wrote what they wanted for Christmas inside of their "gifts." Super adorable. This template and many more ideas are in my Winter Bundle packet on sale through Sunday. 

Welcome to our Gingerbread house! I LOVE those big candy canes. Dollar Tree! Woot.

Isn't the tree delightful?! I have to work on wrapping their gifts. I got these AWESOME calendars at Michaels for $1.00. 

Christmas stockings! Another Dollar Tree goodies. 2/$1.00!

Adorable rug from Target! $2.50... A cozy corner in the classroom library. 

What's new in blog land? It's been SOOO quiet on my blog lately. Do people still read it?? :X

Winter Bundle

Ok friends, my Winter Activity Bundle is up and running and is on sale all through November. I'm super proud of this one. Lots of great goodies! 

But...Becky, it's yours free, so email me durntm@gmail.com :D

Mother's Day

With Mother's Day approaching, I figured I would share what I did last year and plan on doing again this year. I had my students make coasters for their mom (or grandma) using bathroom tile. Only 17 cents each at Home Depot! The kids decorated using permanent marker then I sprayed it with acrylic spray to seal it. On the back I hot glued felt so that it doesn't scratch the surface. I had many moms go out of their way to tell me it was a wonderful project! 

I am also going to try something new this year. It's called breakfast in a bag. I'm going to pick up white lunch bags for the kids to decorate and glue this poem to the outside of the bag. Inside the bag will be a package of oatmeal, a tea bag, granola bar, and a banana. Also included in the bag will be a Mother's Day card and the above coaster. Another cute idea would be to put the breakfast items in a mug, but that would be a pricey project. 

A Busy Week of Learning and Fun!

I was thrilled to hear that my students' favorite part of the day was the St. Patrick's Day Unit that I created and they absolutely love the math centers from that unit, so I'm keeping them for another week until my Easter Unit is ready to go!

Here is the latest phonics graphic organizer. My kids went crazy over this guy!

The clouds add a nice touch to the classroom. We're studying weather right now. 

A few weeks ago the students learned about symmetry in math. I had them create symmetrical paintings just by squeezing paint onto cardstock then folding it in half. Then for writing I had the students write a story about their painting. They were incredibly creative! I told them short stories, but I still got some 6 pagers which is fantastic ;) They were enthusiastic about this project!

TpT St. Patrick's Sale!

To celebrate my new template,hopefully last snow day of the year, and in honor of St. Patrick's Day, everything in my TpT store is marked down 10% including my already marked down St. Patrick's Day Unit! Sale ends Thursday so check it out :) Thank you for your support! 

Leprechauns and Rainbows, Oh My!

I made this version of the popular Snakes and Ladders game but with a differentiated and St. Patrick's Day twist! I want my students working on numbers above 100, so this game board will help them practice. For game pieces you can either use snapping cubes or Lucky Charm marshmallows. I use either 2 dice or 1 die and 1 spinner and have my students add the two numbers together to determine how many spaces they move. We'll be working on subtraction this month, so I'll probably have them roll 2 dice and subtract the smaller number from the larger number. Either way, I know they'll love playing it! Click here to download the file, print, then laminate for durability. Enjoy :)

**Giveaway** St. Patrick's Day Math and Literacy Activities

It's FINALLY done. I've been working on this for DAYSSSS. I'm excited to give a copy away. It is 60 slides and here's what it includes: 

-Lucky Charms Graphing by 1’s

-Lucky Charms Graphing by 2’s (for advanced learners)

-Lucky Charms Estimation

-Lucky Charms Estimation (with pictures for ELL or emergent learners)

-Tally Mark Charms

-Tally Mark Charms (with pictures for ELL or emergent learners)

-Charming Fractions

-Lucky Charms Addition

-Lucky Charms Addition (with pictures for ELL or emergent learners)

-Marshmallow Pie Graph (for advanced learners)

-Greater than/less than

-Greater than/less than (with pictures for ELL or emergent learners)

-St. Patrick’s Day Bump Game

(in color for laminating and B&W)

-St. Patrick’s Day Subtraction Bump Game (in color for laminating and B&W)

-Gold Coin Grid Dice Game (in color for laminating and B&W)

-Shamrock Bingo Board

-St. Patrick’s Day War (emergent and advanced suggestions in color to print on card stock or laminate)

-Poems and songs for fluency

- “We’re Going on a Leprechaun Hunt” reader

-ick, ock, ack, uck sort

-Synonym Matching Game

-Fact VS Opinion sort

-Abbreviations Matching Game

-Antonym Game

-Writing Prompt Task Cards

I will announce the winner on Tuesday night around 6PM. You can submit 2 entries.. 1 for following my tPt store and 1 for following my blog. If there are more than 30 entries I will choose 2 winners :) 

If you don't wish to participate but want the unit, you can purchase it here on sale

P.S. The file really doesn't have the Word grammatical swirls underlining it. I always forget that when I take a screen shot of the computer it shows those pesky lines. Hehe! ;)

Valentines/100th Day Duo!

You might think I'm crazy, but I was so thrilled that the 100th Day AND Valentine's Day both landed on the same day. It was one crazy day instead of 2! I assigned my students a t-shirt project. They were supposed to create a t-shirt with 100 items on it. So cute! You can download the family letter here.

I love blogging, however, it's hard to keep track of where I get some of my great ideas. This next project was not my original idea. I tweaked it from a great blog that I follow. If it's you, let me know and I'll give you credit :) First, I read The Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza. Now I don't have a large class so I just sponge painted 1 large circle cut from poster board. If you have a large class I would suggest making a couple of pizzas. (You can have the kids sponge paint, but just don't do it on the same day since it needs to dry!) Each pizza pie should have a total of 100 toppings, so I had my 6 students color 16 toppings each and then I colored 4. This is the topping template I made. Just a classroom management tip: I had my students glue the toppings on THEN we counted how many of each topping. We had to count several times before our fractions equaled 100. I would recommend laying them out first, counting the toppings and creating the fractions, THEN glue the toppings on the pizza. After we created the fraction for each topping I had the students add all the numerators together to show that it equals 100. 

I took one of my follower's ideas on creating a Valentine carrier. The kids decorate the back of 2 paper plates then I staple them together in a heart shape and added string. They were super easy and came out super cute! 

Our door display this month was candies and lollipops! The kids decorated small paper plates with paint and glitter and when the paint dried I wrapped them in cellophane and added ribbon. We received many compliments on it's cuteness! 

Any great ideas for President's Day? I'm going to have the kids write to President Obama (last year we got a letter and photos back!) and we'll read a little bit about Lincoln and Washington and fill in a Venn diagram. I cannot upload the template, but if you comment with your email, I'd be happy to direct you to where it came from. Then I enlarged it onto poster board with my amazing tracer!

**Last Chance to Win Candy Heart Math**

Click here to enter! I will announce the winner at 4PM tomorrow. You can also purchase it here. Thank you so much for those of you who already have purchased it. It means more than you can imagine right now. I also had so much fun putting it together that I'm going to start on a St. Patrick Day activity file this weekend.

And... I thought I'd share this with you all. The kids are making Valentine cards for their parents this week so I made special paper for them to glue on the inside of the card. Please let me know if you can't view it because I've had so many issues with Google documents. Happy Monday :)

Candy Heart Math Giveaway

I've been working on ways to make Valentine's Day academic AND fun. My Candy Heart Math file is a whole afternoon of fun math activities and games, which include: 
addition
graphing
tallying 
fractions
pie chart making
greater than less than 
estimation 
bingo game board
bump game (both color and black and white) I like to laminate and use over and over
grid game (both color and black and white) 


You can purchase it here for 5.00 or you can win it :) 
To win it you must follow me and tell me how your kids collect their Valentines (do you make boxes, decorate bags, etc.) I'll announce the winner on Tuesday evening!

$5.00 can get this little trouble maker some Fancy Feast. Meow!!