Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there!  I've already had a great start to Mother's Day with my daughter's Mother's Day Tea.  She and her classmates put on a very heart-warming presentation of poems and songs, including Mamma Mia!  Afterwards, we drank tea and ate wraps and cookies!  The kids had iced-tea, of course!  All the moms were presented with their gifts, beautiful broaches!  They are made from plastic champagne glasses from the dollar store.  The kids colored the base with marker, then they were placed upside down and melted for a few seconds.

My kiddos also made their moms a cool gift.  We had a whole bunch of quartz small tiles donated to us, so I put them to good use.  The kids drew their moms and we podged their mom photos on the tiles to make coasters.  The students wrote messages to their moms inside the martini glass card.

Wishing all the moms out there a Happy Mother's Day with your little or big munchkins!

Time for a Sale (and Living Things)

As part of our study of Spring we have been learning about living things.  All the kids in my class could easily tell the difference between something that was living versus something that was non-living.  The tricky part came when I asked them how they knew that particular object was alive or not.  Crickets.  That's when I brought out my posters of the characteristics of living things and we went through and discussed them.  The kids were fascinated!  We got into such great discussions about how fish breathe, where animals excrete and what animals are born by hatching out of an egg versus being born alive. 

We then sorted picture cards into the categories of Living and Non-living and gave proof for how we knew it belonged in that category (using the vocabulary we had learned from our posters).

The kids then sorted pictures onto their own sorting mats and glued them into the proper place.  They had to tell the friend beside them why the objects were living and non-living.  No crickets this time!  They were using all the vocabulary from the posters in their explanations.  In overhearing one of my littles speak she was saying to the friend beside her that she would have to ask me if the picture of the person (on the living side) was a girl or a mermaid, because if it was a mermaid then it was not real!  Vera, the Tutu teacher used this product in her classroom during our product swap and had the same story to tell!  Check out how she used these posters and activities in her room here.  

To check out my Living Things Posters, click the image below.

The great news is that all the products in my TPT store will be on sale for the Teacher's Appreciation Sale from May 7th to the 8th.  It's a great time to stock up on all the items on your wish list!  

Thank you to Beth from Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah Designs for the graphics.

Happy Shopping!

Graduation

It's that time of year again!  It's time to start preparing for graduation since the end of the school year is right around the corner!  The invitations have been sent, the readings have been assigned, the crafts are being made, and it's time to start practising our songs!  Graduation is always a lot of work, but I love doing it because it really ends up being a special celebration of all that the kiddos have learned throughout their time in Kindergarten.  Parents always love it and compliment (sometimes through teary eyes) how beautiful all the crafts are!  I have teamed up with my teaching partner and good friend, Alessia Albanese from Mrs. Albanese's Kindergarten Class, to create... Con'GRAD'ulations - A Graduation Unit, which has Literacy and Math Activities and so much more! It really does take the guess work out of this special day!  (Click the image to check it out!)

This pack is loaded with end of year skills for your centers:  skip counting, telling time, identifying coins and their value, sentence writing, blends, syllables, sight words and so much more.  

We have four Graduation themes that we rotate through in various years.  Each theme is included in the pack with specific crafts and writing paper.  Also included are Graduation certificates/diplomas, student gifts, a pocket chart activity, bulletin board idea and so much more.  It has everything you need to send your kiddos off to First Grade with a smile on their face!  

Con'grad'ulations on making it to May!

Happy Teaching!