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Christmas & Ordinal Numbers

Can you believe it's Thanksgiving week?! We are SO excited for some fun with our little turkeys and our feast! But we're also planning ahead because it will be December when we get back to school! What?! Can you believe we're just a month away from Christmas Eve?

We put together this fun and festive ordinal number activity. You can use it in SO many ways for whatever the level of your kiddos!

It includes an ordinal number book!

And sentences! (Why are these gray?!)

And work mats for center practice!

AND we're giving one away! Just leave a comment that you follow our blog! We'll pick a winner on Tuesday evening! Happy Holidays! We are SO excited they're here and hope they fill you with much cheer! {Yep, we just made a rhyme!}

Leave a comment & good luck!

That Time We Met James Dean

Our Librarian (best one on the planet, by the way) got a phone call from Barnes and Noble that said James Dean was available and in the area to come visit our school. We were ecstatic!

He was SUPER fun! The kids absolutely thought he was the coolest. And let's face it, so did the teachers. He drew for us, let the kids draw, sang "I Love My White Shoes" and read us his newest book. He sat in the audience with the kids and was the most friendly down to earth guy you can imagine.

In case you don't know the story, he really did have a cat named Pete. He was an engineer, wasn't looking to be a children's author and always loved/did art and so did his father (his father was an artist I believe). This was his original drawing of his cat Pete, it didn't become a book until a man on the street told him he wrote him a song. When he sent James Dean the song it was none other than White Shoes. Put all that together and now we have Pete the Cat and his shoe song!

He was so kind to autograph books for us and we both had then autographed for our kids at home too ;) So that inspired our November illustrator study to be James Dean. (It's not an author study because he did not write all of the Pete the Cat books).

So we combined Thanksgiving and Pete the Cat!

Take this Starbucks/Mayflower craft Amber's done for several years (thank you to whoever posted this on their blog, we LOVE this!) 

And we combined it with a Pete directed drawing! 

And there you have one cutesie Pete saying "Land Ho!"

We love author/illustrator studies! Do you do them? How often? How do you tie yours in with curriculum, holidays, etc?

Activities Like....

We're linking up with Blog Hoppin' for a linky party!

So Activities Like this are good for our kiddos and practin' skills too!

There is just nothing better than engaging centers to practice all of the great skills we've learned!

Here is a quick little activity to practice greater/less! Below is also the work mat so students can have a colorful, hands on version ;)

Centers are HUGE in our classrooms. They are one of the biggest parts of our day. It's how we individualize instruction, do informal assessments to see what skills our students are mastering or not, and it's our time to work one on one. And what makes it even more fun is when it all works together with our theme and is meaningful too!

If you like this activity then check out our Thanksgiving center unit! Just click the picture to see it in our TPT store!

Thanks for visiting the blog! We'd love if you'd comment and follow and download the greater/less activity by clicking HERE!

Helpful Hints

We are linking up with Blog Hoppin' this week! We are SO thankful for our careers and are using this blog to share it with you!

Some of these could fall under time savers or helpful hints! But here are some of our favorites!

1. Door slings

Do you have to keep your door locked? With new safety procedures we need to have our doors locked at a moments notice. This sling allows up to keep our door locked and in a situation (which we pray NO ONE ever experiences) we can take the sling off and close the door. This is a lot faster than having to fumble with keys and locking and all of that. It's also perfect when students leave the classroom they do not have to knock to get back in just from going to the bathroom, Library, office, etc.

Of course we have a sign that asks guests to knock, but our own students know they can just come back in. 

2. Procedures! 

Have a procedure for EVERYTHING even how they will tell you they need to go visit the Library. Our kids have a clip with their name on it. One says "I am reading my book" the other says "I need to visit the Library." It stays on the reading ribbon until they move it to the Library ribbon. This is totally regulated by the kids and we don't have to worry about it. And the kids know not to keep saying "Can I go to the Library?" because when it's time we choose kids who have moved their clips over.

3. The BOX

This is the BEST thing I (Amber) have ever seen parents do at a school for their teachers.  The BOX is where we put all of our things that need copying, laminating, etc. We put it on the "To Do" shelf and come back later and it's done! Our parents volunteer in the workroom once a week to help us prepare materials! It's incredible! It's like magic. You can't really believe it until you see it work! But they are SO wonderful and they even decorate our cute boxes ;)

Helpful Hint-ASK PARENTS TO HELP! I'm sure that you have some who would be more than happy to! Use them! They are a great resource! And for once I don't worry about standing in front of the copy machine waiting for a weeks worth of activities! Even if you don't have parents that sprinkle magic fairy dust and make your work complete make yourself a cutsie box to put all of your things in that need to be copied, laminated, cut, etc. It makes hauling things around the school so much easier when it's all in one place. (These are the tops to the boxes our copy paper comes in. Our moms collect & decorate them for us. We might just have the BEST moms in our school EVA!)

What are your helpful hints that make your teaching life simpler?

Time Savers {Hallway Displays}

We're linking up with Blog Hoppin' for a week of Thankfulness!

This is one of the BIGGEST time savers! Hallway displays!

During the summer the Kindergarten teachers get together and choose a theme, aka shop Mardel to see what's cute! We all do the same theme so we are consistent. Then we pick and laminate scrapbook paper and use clothespin to hang the students' work.

This saves us LOADS of time! All we have to do is pull down their work and clip something new in. No more staples, sticky tack, hot glue, etc. We love to display our students work and this is the BEST way to do it without it being time consuming! Each star has a student's name and you can also put their picture by their clips!

What do you do to save time? Because we ALL know that teachers NEVER have enough time in the day!

At Bats, Can You Rhyme That?

We are doing our nocturnal animal study this week! We think it's a fun week! 

This activity is NOT new by any means or created by us! But we made our own version and thought we'd share it with you! (We used labels for the -at rime, then laminated them for durability)

This accountability sheet is perfect for the kids to form the words on! And of course read and reread over and over! To download, just click on the picture above!

Alright, it's BEDTIME! Exhausted already?! Not good!

Goodnight y'all!

Fireman Fun {FREEBIES}

Ok, well there is really nothing fun about fire. Unless you're talking about a bonfire or a fireplace fire. But nevertheless it's SO important to teach our kiddos about it! October is fire safety month so it was the perfect time to talk about it!

We had the firetruck visit and did some fire centers before fall break!AND because it was only a short three day week it was a very SMALL unit! But lucky for you, we're giving it away!

Just click the picture to download! In return we just ask that you follow our little blog!

Here is a quick peak at one of the math activities! (sorry it's small and blurry, we're having some trouble with it!)

If you want a GREAT whole group directed drawing activity watch this cute book and visit Mrs. Miner's blog for the cutest directed drawing. I've done this activity several times now and I'm never disappointed! The kids love it and their drawing are so cute. OH.MY.WORD. You'll be amazed at what they can do!

And get this fire FREEBIE on TPT! Thanks Jane for sharing! It's flippin' adorable and the kids' advice...well, it's just great!

NO PLAYING WITH FIRE!

FIRE! RUN!
{at least that's our interpretation!}

Hope you enjoy these fire FREEBIES!!