Thank You!

To my surprise I saw two comments on my previous post letting me know that awesome teachers and authors of their own fabulous blogs had given me an award!

A BIG thank you to:

Ms. McBee's Kinder Bugs

and

For the Love of Kindergarten

This award is for newbies, and it's goal is to spotlight up-and-coming blogs with less than 200 followers.  If awarded, you must:

♥ copy and paste the award on your blog

♥ thank the giver and link back to them

♥ reveal YOUR top five picks and leave a comment letting them know

♥ hope your followers will share the love with them :)

Here are my five newbie picks. Enjoy!!

1.  Coloring Outside the Lines

2.

 3.     4.   5.  Paste and Pearls 

 

CVC Words

Here is a quick post on our some CVC word that I did with the kids today.  We played a great freebie Gingerbread Race game from Kinder is a Hoot!  While students waited their turn, they used the Twist a Word Builders to practice CVC and nonsense words.  The yellow sheet is used when the twists are used as a literacy station.  Have a great weekend!

December Happenings

Well, I am working on posting more often, but life has not allowed that!  Here are a few pictures of some recent activities.


I is for igloo.....

and for ice cream!  We made ice cream in Ziploc Bags.  If you would like a copy of our recipe page that I send home with the kids, leave me a comment with your email.

                                                                             

Here are our adoreable reindeer that we made!  Aren't they cute!  This was a Reindeer Glyph that I purchased from First Grade Blue Skies TPT Store!  We will be using more from this packet next week as we study the letter R!

Here are our stockings!!!   Each year I grab the 50 cent stocking at the Dollar Tree at 50% off the day after Christmas.  The following year, I have a parent volunteer puffy paint their names on them.  We then hang them in the room for about two weeks.  Each child is invited to bring a SMALL item to place in each child's stocking.  Such ideas include a wrapped piece of candy, candy cane, holiday pencil, eraser, bubbles, bouncy ball, etc.  We also have a Writing Station that kids make cards for their classmates.  It is set up so that each child will get two cards from classmates.  Bringing in items for the stockings is OPTIONAL.  The nice thing about this is that if someone does not bring in an item, nobody will ever know.  At the party, they get to open their stockings.  It is so much fun for all of us to watch them ooooh and aaaah over all of their trinkets!


Here is our current bulletin board.  We decorated the trees in class and the gingerbread men were done at home as a family project.

I hope you are all doing well!  I will hopefully be back again posting soon!

Wow! It's Been A LONG Time!

Wow, I can't believe it has been like three weeks since my last post!  We have been in the middle of our kitchen remodel (so close to being done!), my dad had Triple Bypass Surgery (he is recovering well), my Grandma had been ill (she is now better!), it was the end of the trimester, and of course the usual craziness of being a mom and teacher!


So, I am finally able to post...I am not sure when I will EVER be caught up with my Google Reader!  I have over 1,000 blog posts to read....NUTTY, I know, but I do want to miss a thing!


I hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving with their families!  Last week we were very busy learning about the First Thanksgiving and discussing all of the things that we are thankful for!

Here are a few highlights:
                        We baked cornbread using a skillet.

We made pilgrim hats and bracelets to wear as we celebrated Thanksgiving together during lunch in our classroom.  Our bracelets helped us remember the story of the First Thanksgiving.

We created a book about the pilgrims, the Mayflower and Native Americans.

We also made our own butter using whipping cream for our cornbread:

          Each child made Indian corn in the Creation Station:

To go back a few weeks earlier...here are a few projects from studying the letter Cc:

                                             Clifford art project and hats

                                                       Decorating Cupcakes

Sunday School

I like to occassionally share the things that we are doing in Sunday School at my small church. I am the direct and teach the 1st and 2nd graders.  I also bring all of the children together on certain occassions to do whole group activities.

Here are some things that we have done recently.

We had recently studied about Noah's Ark.  We learned about the significance of the rainbow.  We also used an idea from Oriental Trading to make these fun hats.  I have posted about Rainbow Hair in the past.  I used this idea in Sunday School using the theme of "Follow and obey God's Way.

Last week we completed this fall project.  We used torn paper to create the trees.  The bottom portion says:  Fall down on your knees and pray.  God will never leave you. 
 I also did this project with my kindergarteners using a short fall poem where they were able to fill in the sight word "the."  I had these on display for conferences.

Finally, I wanted to share about our participation in Operation Christmas Child.  Individual people/families can fill their own shoeboxes and bring them to church.  A church member then delivers them to a "drop off" location.  They are then shipped to children all over the world that are in need.  Another way we do this is by collecting different items each month.  We begin in July (Christmas in July).  Then, in November (today for us) I have the Sunday School kids 1st grade and up, Catechism kids and the youth help assemble and pack the boxes.  Lifeway Christian Book Store had boxes for free that we could assemble and they worked great!  We also use regular shoeboxes that are wrapped in wrapping paper and the plastic shoeboxes.  Today we packed 36 boxes!  For our small church, we were proud!

O Is For Owls

Wow, I am having a tough time posting like I used to!  It has been so busy at school and with our kitchen remodel...well, it has been hectic!

We made these owls this week for the letter O!  They are made of paper plates!  We sponge painted them and then added eyes, feet and a beak with construction paper.

Here is a picture of what the owls look like before painting them:

This is an activity that we did to practice our sight words!  It is from Fran over at Kindergarten Crayons.  Here is the link to her TPT Store.

I Am So Honored!

Laura from Kindergarten Kraziness has graciously given me the Blog On Fire Award!  I am so honored to be recognized!!!  I just love all of you out there is Blogland!
So, how this works is I am supposed tell 7 things about myself and then give the award to 7 other blogs.  So, here it goes!

1.  I live on a farm.  We raise cattle.

2.  We are in the middle of a kitchen remodel!  We are doing this ourselves and it will take all winter!!

3.  I LOVE to camp with my family.  We are always sad when it is time to put the camper away!

4.  I also have a class blog, Mrs. Bella's Kindergarten Kids.  I share many of the same acitivities and pictures but it is geared toward my students' parents.

5.  My husband's mother was a nurse at the same hospital where I was born.  She was currently pregnant with my future husband as she weighed and measured me right after I was born!  AMAZING!

6.  My family also loves to snow mobile!

7.  I am the director of our Sunday School program and church.  I will occassionally post about our activities!

I nomiate the following blogs!

Kristen's Kindergarten

http://kpoindexter.wordpress.com/

KinderPond

http://kinderpond.blogspot.com/

 

Halloween Stations

Here is a glimpse at some of our stations from last week.  Some were Halloween related.

This matching activity was a free download.  I can't seem to figure out the site that it came from.  If you know, please let me know!!!  I did find a colored version from Mrs.Freshwater's Class Blog.  The version that I used had colored pictures and I cut and laminated onto construction paper.

This was a counting activity that we did using Halloween cups from the Dollar General and pumpkin erasers from Target.  I usually use plastic pumpkins instead of cups.  I could not find them!  So, this was my backup plan!

We are blessed with MANY resources from Lakeshore!  This is a Beginning Sound matching activity that we worked on!

These are just a set of rhyming cards that I grabbed at some point from a Dollar store somewhere.  They love using the pocket chart.  So, viola!  Another station!

So, what have you been up to??

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

H is For Halloween!

Hi everyone!  We are studying about letter H this week.  It is always fun to combine it with our Halloween activities!  Here are a few activites from today!

I LOVE this book and the kids love it when I hand out the stick puppets to make the sound effects! 

We have been learning about bats and read Stellaluna today.  We then made paper bag bats.  I got the idea from Kinder By Kim.  I love her sight!!!  We used sight words to finish the bat facts on the back and then stapled a Bat Fact booklet to a wing.

This is a page (front and back) for their Kindergarten Scrapbooks!  They colored a Haunted House (for letter h) and then wrote two things they might see inside.  On the other side a parent helped them make handprint spiders.  We then completed these sentences about their spider.

Finally, these are the Hh hats that they made yesterday and wore today!  I got this idea here.  They have a craft page for each letter and holiday!  Great ideas!

Well, that is it for today!  Day 2 of the kitchen remodel was even messier!  It will get better...right?

YIKES! It's Been Awhile!

Oh BOY!  It has been a long time!!!  We had Conferences last week and then a busy weekend!  We started our kitchen remodel.  I am sure that you can imagine what that is like!  The refrigerator and microwave are now in the sun room!  Cupboards are emptied and loaded into tubs!  I now have a hole in the wall!  See some photos at the end of this post!

Today, we began some of our Halloween Activities!



This is an Itsy Bitsy Spider project that we completed today!  They loved pointing to the words and pictures as they sang the song and then moving the spider up and down the "spout!"

We sorted and graphed leaves!

This week we will also learn about bats and spiders! 

Our house is over 100 years old.  Over the past 14 years we have made many upgrades and changes to our farm house.  We are FINALLY doing the kitchen!  I wish I had rememered to take some before pics!

                                                 This will soon be my walk in pantry!!

That whole in the wall used to be my built in China cabinet.  It was on the other side of the wall (dining room)  I will miss it!!  This wall on this side was a wall of cupboards.  More of the wall will be coming out tomorrow!

WINNER!

Sorry to not post my winner yesterday!  My roomate from college got married and it was a 3 hour drive there and then again to get home pretty late last night!  So glad that I went though!  I am so happy for her!

On to the winner! 

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Crayons and Curls said...

I follow your cute blog! :)
Cheryl

October 11, 2011 6:55 PM

Cheryl!  Congrats!  Please email me so that we can arrange the delivery of your prize!  bearcom1000@msn.com