Love, Luck, and Lots of Kindergarteners!

Finally back after a very long hiatus!  This year has been a VERY busy year full of lots of fun activities and 28 kindergarteners!  I’ve found patience that I never knew I had with all these little ones.  I feel very LUCKY that I was able to get a compliance teacher: Her name is Mrs. Mendez and she is seriously a huge blessing to me and my little ones.  So moving on…I’m going to share some of the things we've been doing. 

I want to start with a few things that we did in February which include the valentines I made my kids and the 100^th day!  This class is OBSESSED with minions (from Despicable Me 1 & 2) so I found a really cute Pinterest project.  All had to was print the minions, cut them out and tape them to Twinkies.  They were a big hit!  All the extras like the cute bag and the pencil were from Dollar Tree.  Also, I included myself dressed up for the 100^th day!  I look like Willie Nelson, don’t you think?

 

A really cute President’s Day activity we did was to write about what they would do if they were president.  Last year they just drew themselves, this year I was looking for new ideas on Google and came across a picture of kids with a president hat and George Washington hair so we tried it out.  They looked hilarious!

March has been extremely busy to say the least.  We celebrated Dr. Seuss’s birthday with a celebration in the library and dressing up.  I love to dress up!  At work a lot of the girls call me Cindy Lou (thank you Laura Letts), so I decided to come as none other than…Cindy Lou Who!  I had to drive my boyfriend’s jeep to work because I didn’t fit in my car due to my huge hair.  Mrs. Mendez was Sam-I-Am.  There are some pictures of some of the other creative teachers at my school.

 

This month we also had our annual health fair and walk, every year I coordinate this with the help of an awesome committee and our amazing nurse.  It was a beautiful day and we had the highest attendance we’ve ever!  My sister and two nieces came out to walk one of the vendors brought Cookie monster with them, the girls were not thrilled at all, lol!  The fire fighters (a teacher favorite) also came and let the kids climb all over their truck.  It was really awesome!

Spring Break was a much needed break!  I used that time to relax and spend time with my family.  During that week my sweet little Tink turned 6.  I got on pinterest and found an easy dog cake recipe.  She loved it!  We shared with the neighbors!

This was our first year to be at school during St. Patrick’s Day!  We got on TPT and found some really neat craftivities. We read books about leprechauns and talked about how much they loved their gold.  I found a “Who is worth more to you than gold?” by The Teacher Wife on TPT!  The kids really took this activity to heart and did some of their best work, they had to draw and write about who was worth more than gold to them and put it on a pot of gold.  Then Sandra found a really cute and easy leprechaun activity on TPT as well called “Leapin’ Leprechaun!” by A Cupcake for the Teacher.  It has a leprechaun writing and craftivity.  I used the leprechaun from it and put it together with the pot of gold from the other and viola, this is what it looked like!

 Sandra also found a neat acrostic poem rainbow activity to do with her class.  They first made a list of adjectives that start with every letter of the alphabet!  She said that it was really hard, but totally worth it!  They had to write an adjective for 6 letters in their name!  They came out really cute!  I believe this is a TPT activity as well, but I’m not sure.  I’ll have to ask Sandra.

Last but not least for this post, Sandra and I saw Divergent and loved it!  The casting was great, especially…FOUR…Theo James is gorgeous!  It was a good time!  I found this fan made sign I would like to think this is me…lol!

Okay everyone can’t wait to share our Three Little Pigs and Red Riding Hood activities with everyone soon!  Also, next week is opening day for the Texas Rangers!!!  So excited!!!

Go Rangers!

-Cindy

Missing in Action!!

Hello friends!! We have totally been MIA this year, but teaching dual language with 25 kiddos for me and 28 kiddos in Cindy's class is no joke. We are completely overwhelmed and struggling to keep up with everything and unfortunately our blog and TPT store have been the ones to suffer the most.  I love my little babies and hope I'm doing all I can to prepare them for first grade and will let my personal stuff go by the wayside to make that happen. With that being said I'm going to try to be better about blogging for the rest of the school year...but I'm not making any promises lol.

This will be a quick post about a few things we did for Valentine's Day and the 100th day of school.

For Valentine's Day we made these cute monster mailboxes that I found on Pinterest. They were really easy to make after a parent volunteer covered the cereal boxes with red paper and cut out the monster mouth - haha! The hardest part for me was sticking in the pipe cleaner eyes. That took forever...I should have had the parent do that too. The kiddos really loved their mailboxes so I'm glad we made them this year. I usually have them decorate a paper bag.

 I found these Valentine cards for the kiddos on TPT from What the Teacher Wants and I gave them a bag filled with goodies. The cards turned out great!! The whoopie cushion was a big hit. I think the girls wanted them instead of the bubbles. I made the teachers and my bestest buddies the cards with Burts Bees also found on Pinterest. 

The next few pictures are some of the activities we did on the 100th day of school (I didn't take that many pictures though). We started the day by making our 100th day crown (which took forever), then we made a 100th day necklace, we made 100 with cookies, we did 100 day centers (making 100 piece puzzles, putting #'s in order to 100, 100th day snack, etc...). It was a very busy day and we got less accomplished than in previous years but it was still fun. The students dressed like 100 year olds and they looked amazing.

Cindy dressed up like a 100 year old man. She looked awesome!! Unfortunately I can't find the picture...I'll post it as soon as I do. 

Well friends that's it for now, but Ill be blogging again tomorrow...fingers crossed!! Cindy and I are going to watch Divergent tonight and I'm super excited. I hope the movie is as good as the book.

Laters, Sandra 

Fall Semester Recap!

Hello everyone out there in kinder land!  Yes we are still here working hard as ever.  As Sandra had said way back in...September, we are bursting at the seams with kindergartners and that is just the way its going to be this year.  Sandra has 25 students for the year and I have 28!  Lucky for me I am the overage teacher and as soon as I got my 27 little one, I was blessed with a compliance teacher, Mrs. Mendez.  She is going to be an amazing help to me and more importantly my little monsters.  She just started with us last week and I can't wait to get into the swing of having an extra set of hands in the classroom.  It just seems so foreign in kinder, lol!  Now for the recap!  It's been FOREVER since our last blog post so we're going to give you little snippets of our fall semester which in coming to a close faster than it ever has!

September:
This month we always do a big apple unit.  We wanted to make sure we shared some different ideas from last year.  We did some really fun activities with the students, we always start off by graphing what type of apple each student brings.  Next is a cut paper activity, where they made circles from squares and cut small stems.  Students then had to write the numbers 1-5 on the apples and make their own seeds.  We also made a Deanna Jump Craftivity in which the students make the life cycle of an apple using a poem.  I translated "Eat an apple, save the core, plant the seeds, grow some more!"

During this time we are studying the 5 senses and this a very cute morning message and informative morning message that Sandra made with her students.  As you can see on it she has a review if the apple life cycle of an apple as well as observing an apple using our 5 senses.

Another very fun and super exciting apple activity is to make apple sauce in the classroom.  Oh my gosh our room smells so amazing all day.  I love to see how excited they are about making apples sauce until...they taste it, lol!  It differs from year to year and for this group of kids they were disappointed.  It may have been my fault, I think I added too much cinnamon and it ended up being a little too spicy.  Ooops...

The week following our big apple unit we learn about Johnny Appleseed.  We spend all week talking about how good of a person he was, what he did for the first settlers, how he planted so many apple trees and what he wore, which my kids think is interesting.  This year after making a group tree map with information about Johnny Appleseed we did a directed draw activity.  We drew Johnny Appleseed step by step as a group, next the students added the setting and wrote facts that they thought were interesting about Johnny Appleseed.
 

October:
This month was busy as ever, almost as busy as Eric Carle's  "The Very Busy Spider" but unlike the spider we have had no time to rest.  So much fun to be had!  Our new librarian Ms. Patton brought us something new. She asked us if we would like to decorate a pumpkin like a storybook character, luckily I responded in time!  We decided to make a "Very Busy Spider" here are a few pictures of the process.  My kids we floored by our end result.

 Another fun October activity is our annual storybook parade.  My book this year was, "If You Take a Mouse to the Movies".  Honestly if it wasn't for my parents there is no way I could have done anything like this.  They did great! Check out our costumes.

Sandra did "Pete the Cat" so cute!  The kids made their own masks during art and she had some really awesome parents make a pair of shoes for all 25 of her students.  That's 50 shoes!!! Sandra's costume was my class's favorite!

Each year our adopters judge our costumes and a Pre-K and Kinder winner get a pizza party!  Here are the winners for this year!

 The pre-k winner was Piggie Pie by Mrs. Aguayo's class and the kinder winner was "The Lorax" by Miss Barajas' class.  Congrats ladies!

November:
I've always said that I was born during the wrong era.  I love 50's music, therefore I love the 50th Day!  Every year we make Root beer floats.  The top is mine and he second one is Sandra's, her's looks so pretty!  Also below is Sandra's flow map for how to make a root beer or coke float (that's for you Sandra).  Now we make a book about how to make a coke float book that we got from a TPT unit and I can't remember what it is at the moment, but it very possibly may be Deanna Jump.  Sadly this year I didn't get to it, I need to make sure and ask Sandra if she did.

 Here are some of my kids busting a move to some oldies jams as well as me and some of the bilingual gals dressed up for the 50th day!

 Field Trip!!! This year the Pumpkin Patch field trip that we usually take in October was postponed until November.  We didn't get pumpkins to take home, but we still had a blast and had perfect weather!  I was lucky to have as one of my chaperons Mrs. Hamilton our P.E. teacher! The kids love her and she is great with them.  My second was my aunt.  My parent chaperon got sick and couldn't make it.  My aunt saved me and had a blast with us!  That's her on the hay ride we get to go on and me and Jayden, he's family so adorable!

 This is Mrs. Colodney and me on this awesome stand up see-saw, oh my gosh, so fun!  They my some of my students racing to build a scarecrow!  The last station we go to go to was the giant sandbox!  There was sand EVERYWHERE especially on the bus floor on our way home!

 Don't let Miss Flores catch you snoozing, lol!

For thanksgiving we made a list of things we are thankful for and these cute little turkeys out of cut paper.  They used the list to write what they were thankful for on the turkey feathers.  No matter what I tried I could not get this picture of the list to turn!  Apologies...Here are a few samples.

December:
Four days of the gingerbread man and north Texas get hit by "Ice"magedon.  No school Friday and Monday!  I used this time to rest up, clean house and put my tree up, the mantel is in progress.  It was truly awful outside, so slippery and dangerous and I'm not just talking about to drive in.  I fell about 3 times just walking to the jeep!  The pictures from my porch are from Tuesday night!  Solid ice!  My front yard is a glacier!

We're hoping to finish some gingerbread man activities in this short week!  Until then...stay warm!
-Cindy :)