Winter Wonderland


Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!
I woke up this morning to SO.MUCH.SNOW!  Yah!
I love it when it snows and I am at home!  Hence, I need to emphasize HOME!

I have been busy this past week finishing up my
Winter Wonderland unit, just in time for the snow!

You can check it out here.
I have jam-packed so much stuff into this unit...it's really cute!  I think you and your students will love it!
Inside you will find an original story (sung to Jingle Bells), lots of graphing activities, a booklet on the 5 Senses in the Winter, so many games for both literacy and math centres and lots more!

Click on the picture for your *freebie*.

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The Mixed-Up Cookies!

So I don't know about you but I L.O.V.E. the holidays because of the sweets!  Yes, I have been eating my little heart away this holiday season...gingerbread, shortbread cookies, rumballs, sugar-coated almonds...the list goes on and on!

That's when I got to thinking of this cute game for my kiddies to play when we go back in January, so I whipped something up (mind the pun!). 
The Mixed-Up Cookies game is so easy to assemble and play.  I'm sure you have an empty cookie jar or tin from the holidays that you can use to store the pieces (kinder kids just love things in cute containers, don't you find?).  Your students simply have to choose 2 consonant cookies (which are snowflakes) and 1 vowel cookie (which are stars) and see if a simple CVC word can be made.  I have included an easy to work with recording sheet too!


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Christmas Fun and a Penguin freebie!

Merry Christmas everyone! (Yes, I know I am a few days late, but keep reading and you will see why!)
We *FINALLY* finished for the holidays this past Friday and then before I knew it, Christmas was here!  I thought I would like finishing so late because it would give me a nice break in January.....well, ask me in January!  All I can say right now is I.AM.EXHAUSTED!

Sorry that I am posting this WAY after we did this (which was mid-December) but our Christmas crafts came out so cute!


This is the Rudolph bag.  We put all of our crafts inside of it to carry home.

This is our popsicle stick ornament.  Thank goodness that I had some Grade 8 helpers - we needed the glue gun to hold it all together!

 
This is our Christmas card.  It was so easy to make and looked beautiful!

This picture is hard to see - sorry!  It is our 5 Little Snowmen ornament we made using our hand!
So cute!

This is the poem and the saying (on the back) that we attached to each snowman ornament.  My teaching partner, Ms. Angelucci, found this craft and I LOVED it!  So did the parents!

Thank goodness it`s the winter break!
I think we all need (and deserve) a little time with our family and ourselves!
But before we know it (`cause this happens every year!) January will be here and that means...snowmen and penguins and mittens...oh, my!
So I`m getting ready for our penguin unit and thought I would share this little freebie that I made.

Click on the picture to download.

Please leave me a comment if you do download it...it`s nice to hear what you all have to say!

One more (* very important*) thing...
I have been awarded the Sunshine Award 2011 by my sweet (*Canadian*) blogger friend, Anita, at
Mrs. Bremer`s Kindergarten
Thank you Anita!  Be sure to stop by and visit her blog for some fabulous ideas!

Thanks for following my blog...happy holidays!


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A Snowman Freebie!

I am so excited to be hosting TBA's 25 Days of Gifts today with
I'm getting ready for a snowfall we are supposed to have early next week so I thought I would create a reader all about snowmen.  But first....

Oh my WORD!  Two more weeks of school!  We have sooo many things to do still!  Ahhh!
Half of the school (*including us, the Senior Kindergarten class*) is putting on a Christmas Play, Give, the last week of schoolIt's to raise awareness of the poor living conditions in parts of Africa, specifically the Horn of Africa region.  We have been practising our song and dance each day, in addition to creating Christmas crafts and, oh yah, doing our work!  HA!  Let me tell you - it's a VERY busy time for us.  Did I mention it was craft day yesterday!  More to come on that later.

I thought I would share this little freebie for you.  I know many of you only have this last week of school before the break.  I love teaching about all things winter (including snowmen!) in the new year.

Here is a teacher big book and an emergent reader for your students all about snowmen. 
If you download it, please leave feedback! 
It's so important for me to hear from you and let me know what you think.
I love creating my own books to read to my students and then having each of them read and colour their own copy.
I hope you find this useful too!

Click on the picture to download.
Enjoy the rest of the week (or two) you have before the break!
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It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!


My kinders worked like little elves this week, getting our classroom ready for Christmas!  I know it's still early but...yesterday we had our first snowfall! 
It definitely put me in a festive mood!

I wanted to share some of the activities we worked on this week. 

Here is our Write the Room Christmas activity.  I have various theme words scattered around the classroom for the kids to find and write on worksheets.  It's a great way to introduce new themes.  This was such a hit!


We made this cute handprint Santa and Christmas tree (which tied in so nicely with our unit on Spatial Relationships as we reviewed words like top, middle, bottom).  This idea came from Victoria in Kinder Korner.



We played Roll a Number game by matching numbers on a gingerbread man with bingo dabbers.

*Click on the picture of the gingerbread man for your FREE download of this game*


Here are some of the kiddies playing Silly Snake.  It's such a cute game where you roll the dice, match the game piece and try to build the longest snake.  All of these math activities were so much fun - and I love how my students are getting to know their numbers to 10!

Finally we wrapped up our Nursery Rhymes unit.  I can't believe how well the kids did reciting all of the rhymes!  We made this fun, tactile book too!

So glad it's Friday tomorrow!  We are getting ready for our Christmas craft day next week so be sure to check back for updates on that fun day!

Psssst......you have until Midnight tonight to purchase all of my units and activities in my TpT store at 20% off! 
Hurry on over there and check it out!

Happy teaching!

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A freebie and a sale...who could ask for more?


It's SALE time in my Teachers Pay Teachers store!
You can stock up on some of my newest products just in time for the holidays. 
I have created a Christmas Literacy and Math Activities unit by popular demand as well as a new emergent reader,
The Winter.


Come by my store to save 20% off everything now through Monday at midnight. 
Oh, and don't forget about Cyber Monday - where you can save an additional 10% off
(yes, that would be a total of 30% off everything!) using code CMS28 at checkout.

Here's a little freebie for you...to get you in the Christmas mood...

(Just click on the picture to download)
Happy teaching!
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Math Centres!

What a busy week!  We had a wonderful Peace Week this past week - I was so proud of all of my students for being peacemakers.  I heard them say to each other "I love your drawing", and "I'll help you clean up!".  I really think the message got through that we should always try to the best we can be, no put downs, tattle-tailers, or "meanies" (as we call them) in our class! 

This week we also started focusing on numbers to 5.  My goal is to have students become familiar with numbers to 10 by Christmas - recognizing the numbers both in order and out of order, printing the numbers, and showing me how many of that number using manipulatives.

This was a fun and quick matching game we played as a class on my whiteboard.  I made these number and dot cards with a magnetic backing.  The students had to come up, choose a number, tell me what it was and match the dot card to it.  So much fun!  They wanted to play all day.  I only introduced numbers to 5 but if you click on the link below you can have all of the cards to 10.



I had one centre where students used clothpins and clipped them on to the matching number card.  I bought these number cards at the Dollar Store.



I will be introducing a new centre game next week, All About Numbers, where students will spin the spinner and match the number card to their game card.  You can find this game and 4 other centre games in my newest resource,
Math Center Fun on Tpt! 



Also included are centre games using addition, telling time to the hour, shape recognition and coin matching.

Happy teaching!

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Peace Week

I really love this time of year...the leaves are changing colours, the weather is cool but not freezing (yet!) and...most importantly...my students are *finally* on a routine that they are able to follow and understand on their own.  Yah!

I also love this time of year because our class gets to focus on being peacemakers.  Teaching about why we remember those that fought for us in the wars past and present is always difficult in kindergarten.  Mentioning the word "war" usually brings on lots of questions and sometimes emotions so strong for some kids that I would rather focus on how we can act kindly towards one another.  So when my teaching partner, Mrs. Angelucci (did I mention before that this is her first year in Kindergarten - she was a grade 1 teacher for years - and she is phenomenal!) found this amazing book to read with the kids I jumped right on it. 


I *LOVE* this book!
It's so perfect for my kiddies!  The story is all about how the students in Miss Fox's class try to be peacemakers for Peace Week.  We brainstormed in our class how we can be peacemakers and decided that starting Monday it will be "Peace Week" in our class too! 
I can't wait - I really hope that this will allow the kids to see that tattle-tailing and name calling are things we really don't need to do!

Tomorrow is Remembrance Day and the class has been busy this week preparing a cute dove craft to hang outside our door.
We wrote in our journals about our wishes for the world.  We brainstormed first and I was so proud of the answers the kids gave (well, you know, you always get one or two kids with the most outrageous and funny answers - at least it gave me a laugh!).  This one was so cute!  I love the picture of the kids sitting and being 'good'!

I will let you know how Peace Week goes next week!

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Catching up!

Oh my WORD!  Where has the time gone?!?  This school year is going by fast (well, that's not such a bad thing is it? Ha!).  Sorry for being such a slacker in the blogging world but I have been super tired lately.  Not sure if it's the weather - it's been really cold and rainy here this past week - but today is a sunny (still cold) day and I have a bit of energy in me (not sure how long this is going to last!).

Here's a bit of what we have been doing in my classroom these past few weeks.  We celebrated Thanksgiving and made this cute paper plate turkey.



This paper plate witch below is such a cute craft that we make every year.  This idea originated from my good friend and former teaching partner, Ms. Alves (who is just so creative!).  The kids painted the plate green in the morning, then in the afternoon they cut out her hat (which was already traced for them using white pencil crayon), cut out her eyes, painted red lips and curled her hair by wrapping the brown construction paper strip around their pencil.  Soooo cute!


This past week we read Going to the Park With Grandpa which is part of our Scholastic Literacy Place language curriculum.  The book focused on seasons so I decided to do an activity where students had to sort the cards according to season.

Click on the picture to download this activity for free.



Remember this...............??????
I made a crayon bulletin board outside my classroom for the beginning of school.  Felt like ages ago!

You can read about that post here.  I had a LOT of requests asking how I made the crayons.  All you need are empty 500ml water bottles (one per crayon) and the crayon template (click on picture to download).



Print out the template onto coloured construction paper.  You will need an additional 5x5 square piece of coloured construction paper per bottle to make the tips of the crayons - just roll them around to make a triangle shape and glue gun them to the bottle.  Then hot glue the crayon stencil (which is the download above).  To make the black oval names, simply create a black oval using the shapes button on Word and fill it in using black.  Then add a text box inside and type the child's name.  *Be sure to make the text colour white so it appears on black.*  That's it!  Pretty easy, huh? 
This is a short week for me - tomorrow is a PA Day (yah!) which gives me the opportunity to finally tidy up and organize a few things in my class that I have been meaning to get to for a while now!  I'll be back this week with updated class photos and an inside scoop on my Literacy Centres...which are going great!

Enjoy the rest of the weekend!

OH!!!!  I almost forgot........I need your help!  I am heading down to Buffalo, NY in the next few weeks.  I have read many posts about the dollar section at Target and Dollar Tree (which I always go to when I am in the USA).  Can anyone recommend any other hot spots to hit for teaching supplies when I'm down there?  Any and all help appreciated!  Thanks!



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