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FIve for Friday (4-26-13)

It is Friday again!!  Whoo hooo!!  We only have 18 school days left until summer vacation....  But who's counting?

1)  First, we need to take care of a few little giveaways we had this week.  The winner of Stephany's Summer Awards are Liz & Mrs. Wheeler!

 

The winners of Stephanie's Chip Awards are Diving Into Learning & Crystal Shepherd

 

2) Our kindergarten classes celebrated Earth Day with a field trip to Hoosier Energy Environmental Education Center this week.  The kiddos made solar jars.  It was super messy, but super cool!  Students put stickers on the jars and painted with a glue/food coloring mixture.  While the jars were drying, students went on an educational Earth Day scavenger hunt.

3) Stephany's first grade class celebrated Earth Day by picking up the school's playground and sidewalks. Each child wore gloves and collected trash to be sorted and recycled.

4) Our school is located less than 1 mile from the Wabash River.  It is expected to crest on Saturday.  This is what it looks like just a few blocks down from our school.  The levee is holding it out of the neighborhoods.  This is just behind the levee in a little park that on the banks of the Wabash.

 

5)    Here is a little freebie font for you all!  I was just trying to come up with a cute little font for a project I was working on... this is called "Good Doggy."  I will be adding it to my Super Cute Fonts pack soon!  Click on the picture below to go download it for free!  

 

Stephany, Stephanie, & Kathi

End of the Year Awards

Last year, I posted about these awards and included Chips...  You know...  the motorcycle duo!!  Lol!!  It makes me laugh every time a think about it.   So funny...

I plan on using the "Combos" award for three different students this year.  I have three kiddos who really work well in groups and "include everybody" with a good attitude.

Last year, I printed these awards on cardstock in black and white.  This year, I plan on doing the same thing.  I think they look just as good and saves on colored ink.

Stephany posted about her Summer Fun Awards here.  Click... to read about all the fun awards available.

If you would like a chance to win these awards, leave a comment about where you blogged, pinned, or Facebook'd this post.  Stephany and I will both announce our winners of the awards tomorrow on Five for Friday!!

Endless Possibilities,
Stephanie 

Winding Down~ Year End Awards!

Can you see the light at the end of the tunnel?  That's the summer sun and it's getting brighter and brighter!  It is definitely very bittersweet as you send your kiddos on and realize that they won't ever be "your" students again.  So to celebrate the end of the year and all of my students personalities and awesomeness I came up with summer themed awards.  These are healthy, fun awards for the end of the year.  The great thing is that you can get all of the "awards" at the dollar store or at Wal-Mart in the summer toys section for around a dollar.  I picked up all of my awards for less than I did last year when I did a candy themed awards set.  Here are a few of the awards all made up.  I haven't put the names on yet because I don't want to spoil anything (one of my co-blogger's son is in my class). 

Pin-It-2-Win-It...
Pin any of the pictures above, leave a link to the pin, and I will pick one lucky person to get the awards for free. (Remember to leave your e-mail so I can contact you if you win, I will announce the winner on Wednesday evening!)

And here is a little freebie for your end of the year classroom volunteers!  Click HERE to go download this freebie in Google Docs!  Attach it to a little bottle of hand lotion and you can show your gratitude to any helpers, aides, parents, or volunteer readers that have worked in your room this year!

Stephany

Product Swap Beach Fun

It is Product Swap time again!!  I feel very fortunate to have been paired up with such an amazing teacher and blogger.

I decided to do this entire post in polka dots.  If you visit her blog, http://jenskinderkids.blogspot.com/, you will know exactly why I chose polka dots!!
I had soooo many products to choose from.  Jen's store is filled with so many fantastic products.  At first, I was going to feature her Dinosaur Unit.  Then, I thought about the May Math Journals.  Finally, I decided on Beach Time Fun!!  I am so glad that I did too.  My students had a blast with the stations and were very engaged in learning.

Here are a few pictures of my kinders engaged in Jen's Common Core aligned beach-themed literacy stations.  Jen recommended letter tiles to use with the activity below; however, I used magnetic letters.  They were something that I already had in my classroom and worked very well with the activity.  Not only did the kids learn from this station, it also had an accountability sheet included.

The second station was called "Beach Ball Blends".  In this activity, students were to find the beginning blend that matched the picture.  The beach balls were outlined in a color.  Students had to color the beach ball the color of the outline.  Students cut and pasted the correct answer onto the accountability sheet.

Another group of students worked on "Sailboat Syllables".  I am sooo glad that Jen included a syllable activity in this packet.  My students need practice with this skill.  The accountability sheet was easy to use and the activity was very engaging.

Another literacy station included was called "Digging Up Rhymes".  Students were instructed to match the shovel to the bucket.  Each pair were sets of rhyming words.

My students enjoyed these activities so much.  They were engaged and on task too.  There are so many other activities included with the beach-themed packet.  I have listed all the activites and literacy stations included in Beach Time Fun.

Please head on over to Jen's Kinder Kids Blog or TpT store.  You won't regret it!!  Leave some love below and head on over to check out Jen's Kinder Kids Blog!!

Endless Possibilities,
Stephanie

Product Swap- Max the Math Muncher!

I am super excited today to be participating in the Product Swap hosted by Jessica Stanford.  I have been really fortunate to get some great products through these swaps that I have been able to use in my classroom.  This time, I was able to pick up Ashley Reed’s “Max the Math Monster” unit.  It couldn’t have come at a better time because greater than and less than is the skill we are working on right now in class!

I love this unit because it is so EASY to create and implement into your greater than and less than unit.  Not only that but it has just about everything you could think of to do whole group instruction and math stations.  Plus it is FUN!  Who doesn't love a fun math lesson?

First, you start off by reading Max’s story.  Basically he is a monster whose parents realize he will ONLY eat the bigger number in a pair of numbers.  After several tries (monster food, people food, zoo food) they discover he is a math muncher!  This little story sets the tone for the whole unit.  You get tons of signs with this unit that you can use for reference and for your math word wall.

There is even a template for a craftivity to make your own math muncher.  I LOVED THIS.. mostly because it was easy to make, didn’t take a lot of paper, was super cute and the kids loved it.  But even “more mostly” (hehe) because it WORKED!  The kids were engaged when they were using their math munchers, they couldn’t wait to use them and in the end they actually picked up this skill super fast.  We used them on the white board.  I wrote two numbers and the kids came up and placed their math muncher the correct way to make a true statement.  

Another great thing about this unit is there are tons of things to put in a math tub or station.  I stuck one of the emergent readers in my math station along with smaller scaled versions of the signs, laminated versions of the math worksheets (so they can be wiped off an used again and again) and the math activity.  This gives kids tons of different options to keep them engaged and learning during the station work. 

You can find Ashley by clicking the button below!  She is featuring my Real & Nonsense Word Mega Pack!

You can Max the Math Muncher by clicking on the picture below!

Go check out all of the other great products that are being swapped by clicking on the Product Swap button below.

Have a great Saturday night!
Stephany

Five For Friday 4-12-13 & a Freebie

Another Friday is here!  We are linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching again to share five random things from this past week.

1.  Our school principal is a HUGE St. Louis Cardinals fan.  Living in in southern Indiana, families are either St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago Cubs, or Cincinnati Reds fans.  We are smack dab in the middle of them all.  It makes for some interesting rivalries.  With all of this being said, my family and I are HUGE Cubs fans.  So, when Monday rolled around, I was sure to wear blue.  ~ Stephanie

To celebrate, I finished my Baseball Math Stations for kindergarten.  If you are interested, check them out below.

2.  It finally warmed up here enough to get one of these at the local coffee shop.  I have to say that I felt a little guilty when I saw that they put ice cream in it.  I worked at a coffee shop for years and we didn't make ours with ice cream.  It was wonderful though so who cares! ~Stephany

 3.  Look at what was delivered to my classroom this week!  I asked for tubs for math stations from Donor's Choose and... wow... I  got them.  I wanted to be able to have enough to store my stations without having to remove them from the containers.  So with just a small amount of tweaking, my math stations will be ready for the whole year.... no switching them out, losing pieces, and finding another place to store them!  Now I just have to get all the materials made to put in them! ~Stephany

4.  We are having our 2nd annual 5k run at our school to raise money for a 5th grade overnight field trip.  I (StephanY) volunteered to work it instead of run it!  Now that is it going to be about 45 degrees tomorrow morning I think I would have been better off running it than sitting at one of the spots on the course! ~Stephany

5. This week we HAD a glimpse of spring...of course it is back to cold, but it inspired me to make a spring FREEBIE.  It covers the 2nd grade common core time standard and is great for stations! You can click on the picture below to go grab it up!~Kathi

Click below to go check out all the other great freebie at Teaching Blog Addict by clicking on the button below!

Hope you all had a great week and will have an ever better weekend!

Stephanie, Stephany, & Kathi

Is it Summer Yet??

Well...here in Indiana we had snow 2 weeks ago (during Spring Break) and today I broke down and turned the air conditioning on in my classroom!!  My question is...Where did spring go?  I am a lover of HOT, HUMID summers...I know, I know...I'm a little odd :) but I am really looking forward to this summer, even if it is showing up a little early. 
 Last year my son was in Kindergarten and I didn't want him to loose all of that knowledge over the summer, so I created Summer Brain Food.   Well now he is in first grade so he needs another Summer Brain Food. Since I was on a roll I made one for 2nd grade as well:)

 

 

Each of these packets contains a half page quick activity to help your kiddos review the Common Core Standards.  Here is a preview of each Summer Brain Food:

 

If you leave a blog post comment, I will choose two random winners to win a Summer Brain Food packet of your choice.  I will post the winners Friday!

And the WINNERS are.....

 Congrats Ladies!  I will contact you today to see which packet you would like to have!  Thanks :)

Kathi