Five For Friday and a Spring Sale!

Hello Friends!

I am linking up once again with Doodle Bugs Teaching with Five for Friday...

1.  We had spring break and we were all set to return to school and then we had a snow day! Yep, our first snow day on March 25! Who would have thought we would have all that snow in March!

2, My beautiful, talented daughter had a few free days and came home to spend them with us! Woo hoo! She still melts my heart!
3.  I love my classroom reading corner! I do not know why exactly.... just love it and I especially love it when my students are in there reading!
4.  I spent my snow day on Monday revising some old products! I am proud of the revisions! My wonderful friends from Blog Hoppin have helped me soooo much!! Here are the most recent revisions and two of them are FREEBIES!


 5.  This was in our local paper this week! I am so humbled by this award. I love to teach and the reward of my effort has always been the month of May when my little kinders are ready to become BIG first graders. The happiness on their faces when they reach a milestone is such a joy for me. So...... this type of acknowledgement of what I do feels surreal..... My high school friend said to me "Cindy, if I remember right, it was me who wanted to be a teacher and YOU who wanted to be a wife and Mom." God knows more than we because as we grew away from each other, it was SHE who became the wife and Mom EARLY and ME who went to college and began a career. She is so happy with her life and I am too! I am blessed to have become a wife, mother, and teacher!
And finally......... I am joining Krysta Lyn for a Spring Cleaning sale! Woo hoo! I am highlighting 5 of my favorite Spring centers here, but everything will be on sale for Saturday (3/30) and Sunday (3/31).   Scroll down to find all the other stores on sale this Saturday and Sunday! Also, Mel From the Pond is also hosting a sale this weekend - wow! HERE is the link to her list of stores having sales!








Until next time!!

Blessings, Cindy



This is Spring Break Week and I Have Been Busy! A Spring Literacy Pack and a Freebie!

Hello!
I was thinking that last year at this time, I was enjoying the sweet climate of Rome! Wow! This year, no such luck for travel.... this has been my spring break and my husband and I have had a quiet week at home. I have been busy - REALLY busy! I have been doing  little things that I have put off for MANY months and now have had time to tackle!

On Tuesday, I had my taped interview for the Women of Distinction award. I was BEYOND nervous and cannot remember anything that I said! I am definitely a behind the scenes type of person! I would so much rather be in front of a HUNDRED five year olds than even 2 adults! So, so, so glad that is over!

I was in the Kindergarten study for Daily 5 this past summer and have implemented many parts of it. I hope to write a blog post soon about the changes that I have made to suit the needs of my classroom. One thing that I could not give up was fun literacy center work. I enjoy adding seasonal games to the Word Work rotation and I think my students enjoy it, too! I have 4 reading groups that rotate through 4 centers daily. One rotation is always a seasonal literacy game. Every one of my students do the same seasonal center each day i.e. I only put out one new game daily which all students rotate through the same day. I love doing this because now I can keep track of who has finished their center every day instead of waiting for 4 days to do the checking! The following week, I put the seasonal game into their CHOICE center and it stays there for the entire month and sometimes into the following month.

Because I was home this week, I had a chance to create a new Spring Literacy center packet AND an Easter Bunny Word game freebie. Both are based on the Reading Foundational Skills for Kindergarten. The Spring packet includes a Bunny Sight Word Mix Up game, a CVCe Flower Fun game, a Chick Syllable Sort, and a Short Vowel Search and Find game.
Here is the preview for the Spring Literacy packet; although Blogger has cropped the picture a little.... so sorry about that!
The Easter Bunny Word Game is a freebie that can be put into your early finisher tub. All you need are buttons or mini erasers for game pieces; everything else is included and easy to implement! The clip art is from DJ Inkers and  I have a license to use it. It has been a joy to utilize some of their cute, cute clip art! I named it Easter Bunny Word game, but it can be used after Easter, I think! Click the image above for the Spring Literacy pack and the image at the beginning of this post for the Easter Bunny freebie!

Until next time!

Blessings, Cindy

Tooth Fairies and a New Religious Easter Product

Hello!
I thought I would share our tooth fairy craftivities and a new religion product....

First the the tooth fairy.... My kids LOVED doing this project - even my tough little boys had a great time! This is mainly a writing project. The goal was to draw a picture that matched your words and to try to write 3 thoughts. My kiddos have so much trouble understanding what 3 sentences are! They usually think that if they use up 3 lines on the paper that they have written 3 sentences! So I have started saying "3 thoughts" to get them to understand that it doesn't matter how many lines you use; what matters is how many "thoughts" you write. It is kind of kicking in, but not really.......

Anyway here are some examples of their crafts and their writing. This is a mix of examples from my students and from my sweet co-partner, Lisa's, class. If you would like the step by steps for creating the tooth fairy, click here to get the google doc.

Also, I just completed my second religion resource. I still am not sure if this is something that interests other teachers, but I plan to try it for awhile and see.... There just does not seem to be very many CUTE religious products for little kids, so I have been creating products for my students to use for many years. As I get them "store ready" I will post them here.

This newest one is called "The Passion of Jesus for Little Kids Let's Make a Book."  Here is a preview of the components.


Click on the image to find it in my TPT store.

Until next time! Cindy


Five For Friday and other random thoughts for this week!

Hello!
I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching again this week to list 5 Fabulous (and Random) things about my week!

1.  Today is the first day of my spring break - woo hoo! We had an articulation day this morning that was over at noon and now I am completely free for 10 days! This is the first year for awhile that my husband and I have not planned a trip over these days. It seems a little weird to be staying here at home, but I think that once I get used to it, I will enjoy these unscheduled days. I have SOOOO many household tasks that need to be done and it will be nice to have a big chunk of time to accomplish them. Also, the University of Illinois is  on break this week, too, so my husband and I might sneak over to some of the restaurants on campus that we usually do not go to because of the awful parking! Also, my garden is calling to me and I am hoping, hoping that there might or two when I will be able to get out there and start something. This is a picture of part of my garden last year... CANNOT wait to get back out there!

2.  I love my March door and this picture does NOT do justice to it! Also, there is a leprechaun note still attached to the door that I did not notice when I was taking the picture - oh well! I like this door because the kites remind me of spring and the kids did a FANTASTIC job painting them! They used foam letters to put their names on the tails and glued their photos in the middle of the kite. I know to many teachers this looks a bit cluttered, but for some reason, it makes me smile every time I enter the room.

3.  When I woke up this morning, there was a Mallard duck pair in my front yard! A sure sign of Spring!






 4.  My kiddos are flying through our Math core! Wow! I truly believe it is because of all the hands-on experience they get in their math groups. This week, when they finished their tubs, they had to go to the Tangrams tub and use those to solve shape puzzles. At first, they did NOT like being told that they HAD to do Tangrams; after all Tangrams take a lot of mathematical reasoning. But by the end of the week, they were flying through the puzzles and I think I might have to put out some new ones when we return from break. If you would like to have your students do the EASY counting fish activity that we did in one of our math tub this week, click on the picture to get the Google doc.

5.  Finally, I received word that I was awarded the Girl Scouts Women of Distinction honor for our area. I am truly humbled by this award as I feel that I do no more than any other teacher does on a daily basis. Teachers are an amazing group of people and I proud to call myself one of them!

Until next time!

Blessings,
Cindy

Good bye Leprechauns - We Love you!

Hello!
Well, our leprechauns made their last visit and we did not trap a single one! I thought my students would be a bit distraught, but it actually seemed that they were relieved that they had not caught one! I think the idea of trapping something that left them such sweet gifts bothered them!

Here is what they saw when they came to school this morning...
During Work on Writing, the children wrote about what they would do if they had caught a leprechaun. (This is from Erica Bohrer's St. Patrick's Day packet.) After reading their stories, I could tell that they thought of the leprechauns as pets and really would not want to trap them at all!
A game in Word Work that they really enjoyed was "Draw a Leprechaun High Frequency and CVC " game. They had a blast reading their words and then drawing leprechauns!


So, good-bye to our leprechaun friends! We had a wonderful week! I received an email this morning from a parent saying this:  "She speaks so fondly of you and I absolutely love to hear all the things she shares that "Mrs. Feeney teaches me"
But hands down this week has been her favorite week. So much so that at 5:10am this morning she woke (us) up asking  "do you think the leprechaun had safety scissors?"




Sigh..... So why do we do this job? The email above says it all!

Until next time!

Blessings, Cindy
 

Leprechauns in our Classroom - again!

Oh those naughty little leprechauns! They have been all over our classroom this week! They hid our chair bags, changed around our supply boxes, spilled our leprechaun projects on the rug, changed the color of our water, and danced in green paint all over the floor!

Our March Family project was to create a trap to catch these little guys... So right before dismissal today, the kids shared their traps with each other and then set them up with the hopes of catching one of these little creatures! (We do not have school on Friday, so we had to set them a little early this year!)


Here are reasons why I like to do this project and why I believe it is educational!

1.  This is a wonderful project to get kids spending time with their Dads. Dads love this project! Nine times out of ten, when I ask who helped you build your trap, my kiddos say "Dad!" I LOVE this! AND, when kiddos are working with their Dads to come up with an idea, they are following a Common Core Standard!
SL.K.6  I can speak clearly my thoughts, feelings, and ideas. 

2.  This project stimulates sooooo much writing! Oh my goodness...... children are writing letters to leprechauns, making signs, formulating plans to catch them........ What better way to get the writing process going in kids?! Does this project follow the Common Core? You bet! The writing projects that we did this week all centered on the Common Core for writing!
W.K.1 I can write about something I like or do not like.
W.K.2  I can write to tell someone about a topic.
W.K.3  I can write about an event or a series of events.
W.K.7  I can research and write about on a topic.
W.K.8  I can write to answer a question.



3.  My kiddos are writing books! Yep, they are taking scrap paper and writing books about their leprechaun experiences! Awesome! The bottom picture is taken from Kim Adsit's St. Patrick's Day resource.

Here are some examples of their delightful traps!









For those kiddos who do not want to build a trap, they have the option to create a rainbow. Here are examples of their rainbows.
That's it for now! More to come later!

Blessings, Cindy