If You Give a Teacher a Gift Card, What will She Get ...... and a Fun Teacher Appreciation Giveaway!

Hello Friends!

Well, we are looking at the last week of April and the home stretch towards the end of the school year! It's just so hard to believe the end is drawing near and there is SO MUCH that has yet to be done! End of year assessments, filing all those papers that I MEANT to file as I finished, but actually are all stuffed into a plastic box, making sure that I have covered all curriculum goals, making End of Year digital scrapbooks..... The list goes on and on and when I think about it, I get stressed and soooo..... I try NOT to think about it and just take one day at a time.... It gets hard sometimes and I wish that I could just snap my fingers and it would be all be done!

Unless you are a teacher, many people do not realize all the "behind the scene" work that is done to ensure that your students learn. It is not unusual AT ALL for teachers to spend their entire weekend planning for the next week - laminating, writing lesson plans, finding links to websites that either bring learning to their students or help them to teach a subject..... So because teachers are often under appreciated, we at iTeach Kinder would LOVE for you to enter the giveaway that we are hosting on our NEW blog! We are giving away FOUR, yes FOUR $25 gift cards to Target, Amazon, Starbucks, and Teachers Pay Teachers! And in true Laura Numeroff fashion, I thought I would share what I would buy if I won those gift cards.......

Scentos markers (can NOT have enough of these!)

 laminating sheets.....

and a movie from Amazon Prime!

I don't have a Gazebo, but I DO have a patio and I would love to light it this way for the summer.....

Hands down, no questions asked...... Iced Chai Latte - the ENTIRE $25!

Sooooo many choices here.......

ALL of Deanna Jump and Deedee Will's Guiding Readers packs....

and.......Clip art, clip art, clip art.........

So now that you know what I would use those gift cards for, what would YOU use them for? All you have to do is head on over to our iTeach Kinder blog and you can enter our giveaway for a chance to win really big! WE APPRECIATE YOU!!!

Click the image below to take you there!

All our iTeach members have written a post describing what they would use the gift cards for.... Click on the links below to read more! :)

An InLinkz Link-up

Blessings,

Jungle Animal Unit Revisted! I love this unit!

Hello Friends!

Gosh... It's FINALLY Friday! Whew! It seemed like a LOOONG week! I think it is because the closer we get to the end of the year, the MORE there is to do that is not just teaching AND, we are still supposed to get meals ready, do laundry, clean our house, and everything else that needs to be done on the weekend - Yikes!

I thought I would share with you our latest jungle pictures. If you have been following my blog, you know that we do these every year and I NEVER get bored with doing this project! This year, my kiddos paired up with an 8th grade buddy who helped with their paper mache animal. It was AWESOME to see the littlest working with the biggest!

 

We do two African habitats - the Rainforest and the Savannah. My kiddos chose an African animal to research, wrote a report about their animal, and then did their paper mache animal with their buddy. Then they worked with a group to paint an African Rainforest and Savannah. They created their chosen African animal from paper and glued it to the correct habitat.

  This year, the kids created these cute Safari people for the background for their reports.

Of course, throughout this whole unit, my kiddos are illustrating their own animal book while learning about the animals of Africa as well as their habitats.

 The final project we do for our African unit is our giraffe portraits - love them! This mixed media project is so much fun! We use pencils to draw the outline of the giraffe. Trace with crayons and then sponge paint a jungle background. Fun and cute!

 If you are interested in my African Animal unit, you can click the link below to find it. I plan to revise it this summer by adding more animals and adding the templates for the Safari people above.

Until next time!

Blessings,

Five For Friday, Friend Art, Using Keynote, and Yay! It's Spring!

Hello Friends,

I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching with Five for Friday.... once again, I am joining the party late, but hey.... It's still Friday, right?

1. We are having an Art Festival at our school next week. We are blessed to have a wonderfully talented Art teacher! He teaches art to our K-8 students and I cannot even imagine the planning it must take to teach children with such a broad range in age. The art assignment for our kindergarten kids was to create a picture depicting yourself and a friend. The media used was simply marker and crayons. Aren't they just incredibly cute?

2.  It's that time again - paper mache African Jungle Animals! Here is the first batch of molded shapes. The kids pick out an animal that they would like to research, I create the shape from newspaper and masking tape, and they use paper mache and tissue paper to color their animal. 4 down; 11 to go!

3.  I love doing these colorful umbrellas! Besides looking cute hanging in the hallway, they also are a fun way to get kids to sort CVC and CVCe words. I wrote about this activity on Blog Hoppin. You can find that post by clicking the image below.

4.  I recently wrote a tutorial that shares  how to get started using Keynote for Macs. You can click the image below to take you to the You Tube video.

5.  It's a true sign of Spring in Central Illinois when you have beautiful Forsythia bushes blooming with pea-sized hail on the ground!

Hop on over to Doodle Bugs Teaching for some fun Five For Friday ideas! Click the image below to take you there!

Until next time!

Blessings,
Cindy

Easter Blessings! An Easter Gift From Me to You!

Hello Friends!

I am spending this wonderful weekend with my family! I hope you have the opportunity to enjoy some time with your family! Rejoice! He is risen!

Please enjoy these posters - my gift to you from me! :)

You can download this poster HERE. 

You can download this poster HERE.

Until next time!

Blessings,
Cindy