Why do you feel lucky?

For St. Patrick's Day,  we wrote about reasons we feel lucky.

Most kids wrote things like, "because I have a family," "because my mom makes me dinner," etc..

This was my favorite------ :)

Celebrating Easter

Color by Sight Word

We started off our Easter with a Color-By-Sight-Word page. This is free to download from A Pea in a Primary Pod on TpT.

Adopt a Peep

After morning meeting, the kiddos chose a peep, named it, and made a home/nest for it, by cutting a paper bag to about half size, and drawing windows and doors. Tissue paper was added inside. They left the room for recess, and upon return, it was discovered that the candy peeps had laid candy eggs! Some of the ideas for "Peep Day" came from The Shroeder Page on TpT.

Instead of having Guided Reading groups today, we rotated through three small group centers.

Group 1 - Easter Bunny Drawings

We worked on following directions and visual-spatial awareness while learning to draw a rabbit with sharpies. Later in the day, the kids filled in their drawings with watercolor. The template for this came from Artventurous.

 
Group 2 - Cookie Decorating

My aide helped children decorate Easter Egg cookies with frosting and sprinkles.

Group 3 - Egg Dying

In this center, the kids drew on their eggs with white crayons, and then dyed them. I had a 2nd aide help with this. Yes, I'm lucky enough to have 2 aides during an hour of the day!

In the afternoon, we had "snack time," where we got to eat our boiled eggs, egg cookies, and candy eggs. There are always a handful of kids who have never eaten a boiled egg before. Their reactions and questions are amusing!

"Can we eat the white stuff?"
"Why can't we eat the shell?"
"Look what I found inside! (the yolk)"
"The yolk is a sphere!"
"Can we eat the yellow part too?"

Egg Hunt

After lunch, we learned that the Easter Bunny had hidden 70 chocolate eggs around our room. It took less than 10 minutes for us to find them all though!

We counted up the candy, and then estimated how many pieces we could each have, for it to be fair. We distributed them by going around the circle, each taking one at a time, until we ran out. We didn't have enough for everyone on the fourth round, so the kids decided that we could share the leftovers with the preschoolers.

Peep Reading Time

After all the excitement, we needed some quiet time. The children chose a few books, found a quiet spot and read with their adopted peep.

Happy Easter!

Spring Fever!

It looks nothing like Spring outside right now, but both students and teachers here are starting to get antsy for summer vacation (5 more weeks!). 

We are at that point where we have more daylight than we know what to do with (sunrise before 8am and sunset after 10pm), which means I can start hiking in the morning before work. Over the weekend I also got my classroom set for Spring, and I love walking in and seeing this every day!

I found this pastel banner on Yellow Bliss Road.

The kite printable is from Tater Tots and Jello. I love adding bits of environmental print like this. The kids will stand around trying to read the words, and then determine the meaning of it. "Miss Sarah, is it Happy Spring now?"

I believe these adorable bunnies were from the same blog. I glued on cotton balls for tails.

It was snowing and blowing outside on this early April day, but the little birds are in fact returning! I added some to my window with strings of yarn and bird cutouts. The idea came from a photo I came across on Flickr.

Happy Spring!

Saint Patrick's Day

This is the first year we're celebrating St. Patrick's Day in the classroom. I found a great idea on Kindergarten Lifestyle that I thought would make some great memories for the kids, so I decided to run with it!

Here is what we found in my classroom Monday morning.

This note was waiting for us on my teacher chair at the circle area.

We found our calendar upside down..

And a big mess in the block center!

There was green glitter and shamrocks strewn across the tables.

And even the fish tank was decorated.

The glitter led right up to a tiny door on our wall...

Counting to 100 with Leprechaun Gold

 

After recess, we found this note.

Of course we needed to find this gold and count it to be sure we had 100 pieces! 

 

Subtraction Bracelets

We needed to make sure everyone was wearing some green, so next we made subtraction bracelets, with green beads strung onto pipe cleaner. We used these to tell story problems and write number sentences.

  

 

Happy St. Patrick's Day! 

100th Day of School

Last week we celebrated our 100th day of school! 

Instead of our normal morning work, we did a Color by Picture page with 100 objects. This is available for free on The Kinder Polka Dot Patch blog.

We made 100 Days Smarter Hats attached to sentence strips.

We played Roll the Dice to 100 with a partner. This game is really simple and gets them familiar with the 100 chart. They take turns rolling the dice and crossing out that number of squares. Make sure to model starting at the top and moving left to right.

We made pictures of When We're 100 Years Old. I had to post a bunch of examples because I think they all came out so hilarious and unique!

I created templates for the head, neck, and blue background. Each child also had an 1/8th sheet of red and a 1/2 sheet of white to use for a mouth and hair.

We made 100 Day Necklaces with Fruit Loops. I've always used Cheerios in the past, and will have to switch back to that next year. There weren't enough Fruit Loops in the box for each child to have 100!

Finally, I made a 100 Day Cake. :)