Alphabet Book and an ABC Step by Step Freebie

Hello Friends,

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/ABCs-and-More-Lets-Make-a-Book-1285490

 One unit that we do all year is our Alphabet Book and More.....I cannot tell you how excited I get this time of year when I see how well my kiddos are doing on their book! Besides knowing the sounds of the letters, they are able to blend and recognize sight words AND the pictures that they create for their alphabet book are absolutely adorable! 

If you are a follower of my blog, you know that I am not a teacher who gives her students a lot of patterns. I truly believe that the knowledge that kids are required to learn is retained and cemented when they are actually creating something themselves rather than tracing a shape. Early in the year, I give them plenty of practice creating shapes; both drawing and then creating from paper. 

Here are some examples of the quail that they made just yesterday. 

First I projected the step by step directions upon my Promethean. We discussed the steps and then I gave them paper and they created. Yesterday was the first day that they followed the steps entirely by themselves with no directions. They actually cheered when I told them I wanted them to create their quail with no help from me! (I love kinders!) :)

Okay.... so here are the step by step directions for the quail.....


https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1ubUzeAYMczQkRxYWdhR1BORDQ/view?usp=sharing
Click the image above to get the step by step directions for the quail. Click HERE to take you to a tutorial that explains how to open a Google doc if you experience difficulties. 



Here are their adorable pictures....




This little girl came to me later in the year and missed much of the practice for creating shapes out of paper. Many tears were shed when she first started because the rest of my kiddos were becoming pros in their creations. But she persevered and look what she did yesterday! What a proud girl she was yesterday!


If you are interested in my ABC's and More pack, click the image below to take you there!


https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/ABCs-and-More-Lets-Make-a-Book-1285490

So, Happy February my Friends!

Until next time!

Blessings,

Turning our Hallway into a Winter Wonderland

 Hello Friends,This is Catholic School's Week and among the MANY activities planned, we turned our kindergarten hallway into a Winter Wonderland. Here are a few pictures...

To create the snowman, we took my wooden bag holder stand and wrapped it in two white double sheets; one at the top and one on the bottom. We used plenty of safety pins and stuffed newspaper inside. 
(These are my two amazing co-teachers, Lisa and Lea - love these two women!) 
 After much stuffing and primping, our snowman evolved! We sat him on top of two plastic crates and covered the crates with white paper and quilt batting.



Our students each created a likeness of themselves using construction and scrapbook paper to make winter clothing. We used the jumbo people shapes found HERE at Lakeshore. 

Here are our snowman making kids. 




 Here are our ice skating kids. 



 



Here is our snow hill. The sleds are made from Clementine orange crates. We found a clear plastic, polka dotted tablecloth to put over the snow hill.







 

These are our winter night silhouettes. We gave them only white and black oil crayons to create their snow scene. We told them at night, you really do not see colors. They used yellow construction paper for the windows and doors. They used white paint for the snow and then we sprinkled the whole picture with diamond dust glitter.









This cute snowman activity is from Kim Jordano which you can find HERE.



So that's it for now! Until next time!

Blessings,

A Short, Funny Story about How Teachers are not always right..... :)

Hello Friends,
I thought I would share this short, cute story about how no matter how hard we THINK we are right, sometimes, we just are not.... 

We have been studying what happens in winter and this week, we were talking about migration. 


One of the animals in our "What Happens in the Winter?" book that we draw is a robin. We read a non-fiction book about robins and in that book, it says that robins migrate to warmer climates in the winter. So, after we were finished reading the book, the children took out their science books and began to draw their robins. This was a directed drawing lesson and my kiddos did great! 


Here are a few examples of their pages......






As my kiddos were finishing up their pages, one of them said, "There's a robin in that tree right now, Mrs. Feeney !" And I said, "Oh no, Sweetie, you don't see a robin. Remember robins fly to warmer places in the winter. Our weather is cold now. That is why we did not have school for 2 days." And I continued to walk around the classroom NOT looking out the window. Once again I heard a kiddo say, "But, Mrs. Feeney, there really IS a robin in that tree." So....... I did my "I will humor you, Honey" walk, and proceeded over to the window and....... BY GOLLY, my kiddos were right! There were THREE robins in that tree! THREE! They were FREEZING - poor things - but they were there. 



So, my students were right! I have no idea why those robins were in our tree in FREEZING weather, but they were. Maybe they were on their way to parts farther south. My brother-in-law says that robins actually DO start to settle in our area in the winter searching for their spring breeding grounds. They just usually hide when the weather is so nasty.

Who knows? But it was nice for a couple of reasons to see them..... 1.  How wonderful to be talking about something and be able to look out the window and SEE it and 2.  Robins have always been a sign of Spring to me, so they showed me that despite our frigid temperatures, spring WILL come...... and of course, seeing the robins at a time when I was not expecting them showed my students that sometimes teachers are NOT always right and it is okay to respectfully disagree!

Until next time!

Blessings,

New Year's Resolutions!

Hello Friends,
http://ericabohrer.blogspot.com/2015/01/new-years-resolutions-linky.html

Besides being New Year's Day, January 1st is also my birthday.  There are pros and cons to having your birthday on a holiday. My son  told me how cool it is to have your birthday on a holiday because everybody remembers it! I have always said that having my birthday on January 1st means that people are either recovering from New Year's Eve or watching football!

Either way, a birthday is a birthday and New Year's is New Year's and BOTH can mean a fresh start...... So, I thought I would join with Erica's Ed-Ventures with a New Year's resolution post.....


 My professional goals are to continue to be the best teacher that I can be; to stay up on the latest educational trends and to make sure that my students receive all that I can give them. I love collaborating with my teaching partners. Tossing ideas back and forth with each other brings me much joy as well as benefiting my students with the best of all of us. I am also hoping to meet in person some of the awesome TPT people I have had the pleasure to meet virtually. I am such a chicken when it comes to traveling, but hopefully I will be able to pull up some "brave" and get to some meet-ups this year!


My health goals are simply to remain healthy. I am blessed with genes that have allowed me to continue to enjoy life and all it has to offer. One area that I am going to try to work on is cutting down on my carbs and increase my fruit and vegetable eating. Sweets have never been my temptation BUT give me popcorn, chips and salsa, crackers and cheese, warm bread....... arggghhhh......... too much! Also.... I need to change the way I drink my liquids. I gave up soda a long time ago and started drinking flavored carbonated water. Then my daughter-in-law told me that the ingredients added to the brand of water I was drinking have been known to be cancerous... sigh...... So.... then I started adding flavoring to my water. Presently I am using Skinny Girl water enhancer because it is sweetened with natural sugar. Of course, this adds calories and sugar to my diet, so that is not a good choice, either..... THEN, today, my brother-in-law gave me a fruit infuser that can be used to flavor my water with natural fruit. My goal is to try to get used to drinking water flavored this way. I know it will be an adjustment because I think the sweetener is what I enjoy the most.... but, I intend to try it and hopefully, THIS will be my drink of choice!


This is the year of ORGANIZATION for me...... Because I have taught for over 25 years, I have accumulated so much stuff; both at school and at home. There is NO NEED for one person to have so much stuff. Clutter is really starting to bother me BIG TIME, so my goal this year is to clean up the clutter in my life! 


My financial goals are to continue paying our bills and loans. I would LOVE to be able to pay off some of our large loans, but as long as we can continue to make the monthly payments, I will be content! We re-finished half our house with wood flooring a year ago and I would love to be able to finish the rest of the house. 

So.... those are my New Year's resolutions...... I wish all of you a healthy and blessed 2015! Click the image at the beginning of this post to read Erica's New Year's resolutions or to link up yourself!

Until next time!

Blessings,