Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Tuesday Randomness AGAIN!!

Happy almost Hump Day, Peeps!! Kerri here...

I apologize in advance for the randomness of this post, but I have all kinds of stuff to share today. I am feeling like a total blogging failure lately, but I promise to get back on the bandwagon soon!

We finished up our unit on owls and bats, and we had soooo much fun dissecting owl pellets. I got mine from discountowlpellets.com. The kids were seriously fascinated...


Poor little bird skull!
After learning about both owls and bats, we made our very first  double bubble thinking map comparing the 2 animals. They did a great job thinking of ways that owls and bats are alike and different!


We also did a direct drawing of a bat and wrote about them using our bat tree maps to help us...


Here are some silly jack-lantern faces inspired by Kacey over at Doodle Bugs Teaching. She made these last year and I just knew we had to make them too...I especially LOVE their snaggle teeth!


 And here's a look at all of our October projects hanging up in the room....So festive and Halloweeny!!

In other news, we have been working on writing juicy describing sentences. No more Kindergarten "I like the...and I see a...." for us!! The kids are really getting into it, and my thematic writing centers help them so much with this!

"Owls hunt a night cause there enemies can't see them" Love how she spelled "there"!

"One night a monster popped up. I was scared."
Another thing my kidlets are loving are our Word of the Week Printables that we do each Monday for lit. centers...Here is the one we did this week! This is helping their vocabulary lots and lots!




I am SUPER DUPER lucky to have a wonderful student teacher this year and she has AH-MAZING printing and art skills. Look at this poster she made us to help us remember all of our addition strategies... 


Lastly, guess whose classroom was #23 on Buzzfeed's article on Epic classroom decor?? MINE! I was sooo excited!



Later, Gators!!
Kerri B








Thursday, October 24, 2013

Gettin' my Halloween on!!

Hi Teacher Bits and Bobs Buddies!! Kerri B here...
Is anyone else excited about Halloween, like me? Usually, I am all bah humbug about this holiday, but for some reason this year, I am all kinds of excited about it! My daughter and her 2 friends are going to be ROCK, PAPER, and SCISSORS, so I will be making one FABULOUS rock costume next week! Any tips for me??

I found these ADORABLE mustache Converse on Journeys.com a few weeks ago...
so I have decided to have my costume be one giant mustache from head to toe! Mustache shirt, mustache PJ pants, mustache shoes, even mustache accessories! 

Here are some fun little centers to get your students into the spirit of All Hallows Eve- My "Spooktacular Literacy and Math Centers"!






I have to say that these centers are pretty darn cute, and my Firsties  love them! They went B-A-N-A-N-A-S last year for these bad boys!

Here's what you get...
I will be incorporating these little spookylicious centers into the next 2 weeks of the Halloween madness!!

Click on any picture above if you would like to embrace the madness as well! :)

Finally, here is a little Monster Catcher FREEBIE that I will be doing in Math Centers next week in order to promote Halloween a little bit more...It's a monster catcher! This 2 page math activity has students write addition sentences to show how many heads, eyes, arms, legs, etc. their monster will have, and then draw it in the jar. I think they will dig it, and they can practice their addition at the same time!! Click on the jar to get a copy~

See ya, Peeps!!
XOXO Kerri B




Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Fun With the Farm - and Countdown to Baby Charlie!

Hi folks!  It's me . . . Lindsay.

I know, you all probably thought my kindergarteners ate me alive or something, since its been  over a month TOO LONG since I last blogged.

All I can say is that I am wiped out.

I have a sweet lil class of kiddos this year, but having 4, 5 and 6 year olds all in the same class, PLUS a new Language Arts and math series to teach AND being 8 and a half months pregnant really, really stinks.  I feel like I just sweat and repeat myself. All. Day. Long.

But I have found in my last seven years of teaching kindergarten that typically the first six week or so are hellish  pretty darn hard . . . And then . . . you begin to see the light!  Your kiddos start picking up on all of the routines, no one is laying on the floor letting you know that they have decided to quit kindergarten (true story) OR laying outside of the classroom with one shoe off taking a nap (another true story . . .).

In fact, my little chitlens are starting to rock - we've started centers, they are keeping track of all of their finished and unfinished work in their work folders, and they've already filled up the "Warm Fuzzy Jar" with all their hard work!  Life is good in Room 17!  (Aside from all that pregnancy sweating  . . .)

One of my FAVORITE things I have been doing with my chitlens the past few weeks is working through our Farm Unit!  I used my Farm Friends {Math and Literacy Centers To Make You Go Hog Wild!} as a starting point and it has been a blast!

(click on image below to link to description in my TPT store)

 
(And here is a closer look at what's included . . .)
 


One of my kiddos' favorite activities was the Feedin' Time ABC Order.  Using an alphabet strip, my lil smarties practiced the order of the letters in the alphabet (along with their letter recognition!) to record what letters come before and after the letter on each card in the center.  They were SO proud of themselves and they were ALL able to complete this activity successfully!
 
 
Another favorite was Cluck, Cluck Count 1-2-3.  My kiddos practiced counting and their concepts of print skills by sorting the farm words according to the number of letters in each word! (And look at that fabulous printing - makes my teacher heart proud!)


In addition to our fun farm centers, we also made barns for our end-of-the-year art book!  Click on the image below for a link to the file with all of the directions and measurements.


Totally adorable, right???

 
 
 Our fun farm unit culminated with a field trip to the pumpkin patch last Friday.  Unfortunately the day before I was having some MAJOR contractions and the doctor told me to take it easy (baby needs to cook for a few more weeks!)  . . . so no field trip for Mrs. Messyhair.  Boo!

My kids, of course, LOVED it!  The bus ride, the petting zoo, the tractor ride AND getting to pick their own pumpkin to bring home.  So. Much. Fun.

(Note: I did manage to get enough energy to take my own lil guy to the pumpkin patch over the weekend, however.  He had fun holding (and throwing??) the pumpkins . . . but in the end the only thing he wanted to bring home was a lovely rock collection that he had accumulated.  And so we did.)
 
 
 
So that's all that I have to share tonight . . . I'm off to go start sewing lil Jack's superhero Halloween costume (pictures to come) and then, of course, have my nightly slice of pumpkin pie.  That's right. I said nightly.  I'm pretty sure it helps with the growth and development of the baby.  Right??
 
Speaking of baby, here is a picture of the little one who is on the way.  At my last appointment the ultrasound tech used the 4-D wand and I got to see my little guy's sweet face.  I can already tell he looks JUST LIKE DAD!! 
 

                         
 
And . . . . we finally picked a name - Charlie!  We can't wait to our newest addition . . . just as soon as mommy is all done prepping for her maternity leave, of course!! :)
 
Hope you all have a great night! 
 
Lindsay

Saturday, October 12, 2013

Congrats TPT! Mega SALE!!

OH.MY.WORDY.BE!! It's SUPER SALE TIME...


Did you hear the stellar news?? TPT has 100,000 LIKES on Facebook. That is a ginormous amount of likes!!

To celebrate, they are offering a 10% discount (use discount code FB100K). YEEHAA!! 

But wait, there's more...Both Kerri and Lindsay's stores will be 20% off as well, meaning you can get 28% off all of the products in our stores! 

This is EPIC people. TPT hardly ever gives a promo code, so get on it while the gettin's good!! You can click on either of our store links above to see some of our favorite products. :)

Excuse me while I go shop til I drop on TPT!! :)
Kerri B

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

A little bit of random Tuesdayness...

Hola muchachos y muchachas!! (That's about the as far as my Spanish skills go, except for donde esta su lapis? and sietete por favor!) 

Kerri here...


Oh this poor little neglected blog!! Seriously, it is BAD NEWS BEARS how neglected she is right now (yes, she is a female blog, of course!!) I just don't know where my time is going to these days...well, actually that isn't totally true. From 7:30-8:30, I am slowly becoming the Ultimate Yogi (not really, but I'm trying to pump myself up here.) 

My Ultimate Yoga program is LOOONNNGGG man! Totally worth every minute, but LONG! BTW, I am on Day 64!! Only 7 more days and I will be doing 72 Sun salutations in.a.row. People, that is ALOT of sun salutations!!


If you are interested in becoming the Ultimate Yogi (just like me-HAHA) and having the muy guapo Travis Eliot be your Yoga instructor (RAWR...)...


You can click the picture below to check out the 12 disc DVD on Amazon. Best $85 I ever spent, and it is only $81.49 right now!!


                                                    




In other news, we have been having loads of fun learning all about OWLS! Here are a couple of little pictures of what's been going on...

We have been busily adding different types of thinking maps about owls to our science notebooks. We made a circle map and a bubble map about owls, and tomorrow we will make our tree map and then use the tree map to write all about them. We also made these owl diagrams today and labeled the body parts!


Of course, we had to make our adorable owlet art! I just heart these so much!!


Next week, we'll be learning all about bats. Can't wait!

In other news, I got this email last night...
Whoo hoo!! Thanks to Chevron and Donors Choose, I will be getting 2 mini iPads for our classroom. I can't wait to use them in small groups and for other educational type things. :)


I also have officially become the mother to a 14 year old girl. Yes, 14 years old. Holy Schnikeys, how is that possible?? Like, in 4 years she will be in college. Dang dude, I'm getting O.L.D. :)
Yes, this is my teenager taking a selfie!!

Finally,  Lindsay and I got this in the mail today...The Southern California Kindergarten and First Grade Conference is coming in February to Pasadena...
Deanna Jump is going to be there as the keynote speaker!! And Heidi from Heidi songs!! Oh yeah, gonna meet Mrs. Jump herself and Heidi too!

Guess what else??

Lindsay and I are going to be presenting at the Conference too! OHMAGERD!!!! Excuse me while I go throw up for a minute! 


Guess what else?? All these girls are presenting too...


I know, CRAZYTOWN right?? Yes, this is truly NUTS, but Lindsay and I are over the moon excited (and nervous as all get out!)

Later, Peeps! Off to my yoga mat!
Kerri B