"Gray Squirrel, gray squirrel, swish your bushy tail!"

September is almost over! Wow, the beginning of school has flown!

One of our favorite songs, and has been for years, in K is "Gray Squirrel". You can find it on Dr. Jean's Happy Everything C.D. Again, this C.D. is a must have for any K classroom!

In honor of our "Gray Squirrel" song, we made a gray squirrel. :) This crazy teacher decided to paint 24 feet in glittery silver paint and put it on gray paper for the tail. The kids LOVED it!

I found a squirrel pattern that they had to follow directions to trace on the gray paper. They cut out several pieces and put them together.

After our tails dried, we cut around our toes to make a bushy tail. What a fun fall craft!

Fall is full of great craft ideas!

Happy fall!

Always teaching!!

Just had to share!! My 3 Nieces and I made Beach dessert at our slumber party. My K kiddos did this in an individual cup at school for Beach Day in Jan., but I had to show you how this one turned out! SO FUN!!







I did one package of vanilla jello pudding. After it set up, we sprinkled blue sprinkles for the ocean. The girls crushed up vanilla oreos for our sand. The beach chairs are gum. I had fun stripes for Beach Day, but couldn't find any this time, so we used pink gum. We put gummie lifesavers in the ocean with a few goldfish. To top it all off, three drink umbrellas! It was fun and yummy!!

Happy summer to all!!

Everybody needs their own spot!

Hope everyone is enjoying their summer!! It's been a great 3 weeks so far. ;) Of course, I'm already planning ahead for next year!
My co-teacher and I are always looking for space savers since we share our space! I found these in the Really Good Stuff catalog last year, and we are going to get them for this coming year!

I LOVE the Very Hungry Caterpillar rug in our room, but there isn't always room on it for everyone! So, I found these cute carpet circles in Really Good Stuff called "parking spots!" They will match the rug and be great if we need a "special place" for some students. :)





We have struggled with nametags on our tables for the last few years. Many kids and not enough room for names. I found these handy holders in Really Good Stuff as well!! We'll just have the kiddos change out their tags when it's there turn in the Learning Corral!!



Okay, enough school shopping for now!! Just had to share these great things!!
Happy summer!!

This is the month we say "goodbye"!

Wow, it must be spring because I haven't had time to blog in awhile!! Wow, April flew by, literally, and now it's May!!

I'm SO behind. ;)

In April we did one of my favorite book units, fairy tale, nursery rhymes, and fractured fairy tales and nursery rhymes. Our housekeeping center was The Little Red Hen bakery, if you don't work you don't eat. ;) Dress up had tons of fun fairy tale and nursery rhyme dress up possibilities. A mother, and good friend, bought our class a bunch of reduced priced costumes in Oct. The kids were SO excited to see so many fun new outfits! We read the fractured tale "The Little Red Hen makes a pizza" and after we read it, we made pizzas, with no eggplant. :) Such a fun unit!!






This month we've been studying one of my favorite things, dinosaurs! We've done it in our Bible class since dinosaurs are part of God's wonderful creation. A great movie for K and younger students is D is for Dinosaur. I believe it's put out by Creation Reasearch. We didn't get to everything this year, but some fun activities you can do with dinosaurs are, dino dig in sand table, make baby dinosaurs in eggs (jello eggs with plastic dino inside), trace and cut a long neck dino and paint him, and read "If the Dinosaurs came Back" and journal about it. I got some really fun dinosaur stamps from "Stamping Up" and we stamped the journal page. Dinosaurs are such a fun thing to learn about!

Our dress up center was actually transformed into a school room. I put up a chalk board and some small charts and calendars. It's so cute to hear the kiddos being Me and my Coteacher. They Love playing school and I love that they love school! ;) It's hard to believe it's almost time to say goodbye and get ready for a new group a kiddos next year!

Tomorrow is our end of the year program in K. We are going to be showing off many of the songs and poems we've learned this year. One of my favorites is "Leaving Kindergarten" sung to the tune of the Beverly Hillbillies. "Come and listen to a story 'bout what we've learned this year. We've been working very hard and we think it's clear. We've learned a lot of stuff, and we've made some real good friends... Now we're leaving Kindergarten, but the learning doesn't end. (spoken)~ 1st grade, Bigger numbers, Bigger words, Busy day! That's all, Bye folks, see ya later!!"
Our kiddos LOVE this! They do such a cute job too. ;) Another thing we are doing is an idea from Dr. Jean, my hero, tweaked by us. On her "All Day Long" cd there is a "What did you learn today" song. We changed it to, "Hey, hey, what do you hear? What did you like about school this year? When the teacher points your way what will you say?" Then we'll call on the children on the stage to share a favorite K memory. Then we end it with, "Hey, hey what a great year. We learned a lot we think it's clear. We're so glad you came to hear what we did this year."

It has been a great year in K!! Today, when I told the kids we only had 5 more days, they were sad. That makes this teacher happy, they love school! That's what this is all about, teaching these kids and helping learn and grow and LOVE IT!!!

Enjoy your last days, the finish line is in sight!

M-A-R-C-H 1st month of the spring!

March is here! Spring is just around the corner.

Spring is springing in our classroom too! When we get back from spring break we'll be making blooming flowers and brids nest with candy eggs. Signs of spring are popping up everywhere!



Both these projects are easy and fun! Buy multicolored cupcake liners and Easter grass. The non-shiny type of grass works best! I have a copy of the stems and then the kids just glue the cupcake liners on as flowers and glue the grass on the bottom. To glam it up, you can buy yellow sugar crystals and glue in the middle of the flower. :)
The bird nest are easy too. I bought the cheaper malted milk ball eggs for the center. I found the pretty blue paper at Lakeshore. The brown "grass" is from dollar tree!



I found a CUTE flower, I guess it's a mask, at DTLK kids too. We may have to try that out as well!

For directions google DTLK kids and look under spring flowers! Lots of darling ideas on that site too! Enjoy!


We started singing spring songs and doing spring poems as soon as March started! Here's another plug for Dr. Jean's "Happy Everything" cd. My kiddos LOVE the songs on it! The spring section has a St. Patrick's day song, 5 Little Kites, and the all time favorite Birds song. If it's not in your collection of cds for the classroom, I highly encourage you to get it!

Another one of our favorite poems is called "March Winds"

"The March wind roars loudly, winter can't stay!! (yell that part)
Wind murmers through branches as sun warms the day.
Wind whips through treetops as branches sway.
Wind whispers this secret, springs not far away!" (whisper this part)

Enjoy the spring changes wherever you are!

Happy b-day Dr. Seuss!

Here is our dress up day!! It was full of "nonsense", imagination, and fun!!!

A Seussical Extravaganzaful March!!

Wow, we hope spring is right around the corner. February was hardly there due to all the snow days we had! We are looking forward to some fun and FULL weeks in March.

March begins our unit on Dr. Seuss. We begin our month dressing up as our favorite Seuss character and celebrating Dr. Seuss's birthday. Last year we made Pink ink drink that the Yink drinks. This year we are going to make "Fun is Good" Milk Cow drink. I found the recipe in the "Green Eggs and Ham Cookbook".




It has LOTS of fun ideas!! Too bad we don't have more time! For the drink: 1 large scoop of vanlla ice cream, 8 oz bottle of chocolate soda, whipped cream, and a cherry. If I can't find chocolate soda, I'm going to mix up seltzer in a pitcher and put in chocolate syurp. I'm going to look for some crazy straws to drink out of too. Fun times!! This summer, the target $ spot had lots of fun Dr. Seuss things. My co-teacher and I stocked up for this time of year. Our kiddos will get some fun party loot to celebrate this CRAZY author.

Our Housekeeping and dressup have also been transformed into Seussville! Housekeeping is the Green Eggs and Ham Cafe and dress up has lots of crazy outfits to act out Seuss books.




For math, we have a 1 fish, 2 fish, red fish, blue fish counting/sorting/patterning center. For our craft, we are going to make the cat in the hat.



Books is full of Seuss books, and our journal writing will be rhyming!

One of my favorite Seuss quotes is, "I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells!" How true! Let's make learning fun, exciting, and full of imagination!!