Thank You God for Winter!

I saw these ideas on Pinterest and knew I had to do them with my kindergartners.  I teach at a Catholic school and I changed the projects to tie in with the religion curriculum. 

Polar Animal Extravaganza!

During our polar animal unit, we created an igloo with sight word ice blocks (silver paper taped onto a cardboard base).  During math, I had the students bring in a stuffed polar animal.  I loved that so many of my students had creative polar animals.  The penguin was a hit and it scared me everytime I walked into my classroom!  We  measured, weighed, sorted, and compared the animals.  The recording sheet will be avaliable soon! 

Sight Word Gingerbread House

This is our class gingerbread house.  On the outside, are sight word gum drops (sight words on paper plates covered in glitter glue).  We created gingerbread people and during centers the students could create their own puppet shows and flannel board stories using gingerbread story characters.

Christmas is the season of giving!

Every year my students create a little gift for our school staff and classroom volunteers.  This year we created cinnamon applesauce ornaments.

Recipe for Cinnamon Applesauce Ornaments

1 cup ground cinnamon

3/4 cup applesauce

1/4 cup glue

Mix all ingredients together and roll into round balls.  The recipe makes about 8 medium sized round balls.  Flatten on wax paper and make cookie cutter shapes.  Use a straw to poke a hole at the top to add a string.  Let dry for 48 hours.  When completed you can hang them or set them on the stove.

We wrapped up the ornaments and added a sweet thank you and holiday greetings card that the students created.  Then we wore these cute elf hats and caroled as we distributed our gifts!  Christmas is about giving after all!

We may be obesessed with the Pigeon!!

We have loved studying Mo Willems and the character Pigeon!  Along with listening to our pigeon blabbers over and over again, we have been playing this game.  I created this game to help practice sight words and use them in context.  Each Pigeon card has a sight word on it and the student's say the word and a sentence containing the word.  When they finish they look at the back of the Pigeon card.  On the back of one of the cards is the hot dog taped on.  The name of the game is Help the Pigeon Find the Hot Dog.  I also taped on the sight words to the cards, so I could differentiate the words with various reading levels! 

Liebster Blog

Thank you so much Dee over at First Impressions for giving my blog an award. I love blogging and it is a great distraction from the sadness our school is going through right now! I'm so excited to share my ideas and gain new followers!


This award is given to spotlight up-and-coming blogs with less than 200 followers. The rules are:
1. Copy and paste the award on your blog.
2. Thank the giver and link back to them.
3. Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.
4. Hope that your followers will spread the love to other bloggers!!


Here are my top 5 blogs that deserve this award!
First Grade Exploration 
A First Grade Fairy Tale
Classroom Creations
Creative Classroom
Pocketful of Centers

Kindergarten Preview Night - Preschool Pigeon Party!

We are trying to increase enrollment for kindergarten next year, and my principal asked me what I thought we could do.  At that time, I was starting an author study on Mo Willems with my current students, and I thought of having a Preschool Pigeon Party to invite preschool families to check out kindergarten and kindergarten literacy.  I had a literacy board set up as families entered and could see the process and some activities used to promote literacy.  With the help of the first grade teacher and the preschool teacher, we came up with some fun stations for the  Pigeon Party. 

Prior to the party, the preschoolers came to kindergarten and created a pigeon hat with the current kindergarteners and heard some pigeon stories written by Mo Willems!

Here are some pictures of the stations!

Exploration Station!

Game Station!  The children could pick a game piece and try to help the Pigeon find the hot dog.  They also could read a story that the kindergartners wrote about what the pigeon would top his hot dog with.

Cooking Station!  The children followed step by step directions to create a Pigeon cookie.

Writing Station!  I think the Pigeon wants a ... (girlfriend)haha

Along with the stations, I had a video about Kindergarten and my web page slideshow playing.  During our author study, the kids made pigeon blabbers and those were playing on our classroom computers.  The kids drew their own picture of the pigeon and we loaded them on to blabberize.com and the kids became the voice and tried to persuade the audience to let them drive a form of transportation.  They were hilarious!

Overall, I thought the night was a SUCCESS!

A Reason Why You Should Play With Your Food!!

My mind is constantly on teaching no matter where I am!  It is a sickness or an obsession!  At the grocery store I spotted the Cheez-It letters and instantly I thought of building CVC words.  As my kids are getting extremely excited for break and need work on blending letter sounds to create words, I thought these would be perfect to engage them during guided reading!  Whoever said playing with your food was rude!

(Now if they only came in lowercase letters.)

FINGASAURS!!!!!!!

If I had a dime for everytime an employee at the Dollar Store looked at me funny, I would be rich!!  I was so excited about this $1 buy.  Yes, it was Fingasaurs (and I am pretty sure I shouted it out when I saw them)!!  I have some boys that love dinosaurs, but do not care for reading.  When I saw the dinosaur finger pointers, I knew I had to buy them.  The results...the boys LOVE them!

We read an emergent reader about dinosaurs and added some of our own describing words during our guided reading time!  They helped with one-to-one correspondence and word recognition!!  My heart broke when one of the boys asked if they could keep them and I had to say no!  However, we did end up making our own dinosaur pointers.

SUNSHINE AWARD!!

I am thankful that Cora from First Grade Exploration gave me the Sunshine Award!  This award has brighten my day!!!!

Here are the rules-

1. Thank the person(s) who gave this award and write a post about it.
2. Answer the following questions below.
3. And pass the award to 10~12 fabulous bloggers, link their blogs and let them know I awarded them.

• Favorite Color? Periwinkle
• Favorite Animal?  Monkey
• Favorite Number? 1
• Favorite Drink?  Dr. Pepper!!
• Facebook or Twitter? Facebook
• Your Passion? Getting kids excited about learning!!!!!  Every minute I strive to do this in my classroom!
• Giving or Getting Presents?  Giving
• Favorite day? Friday
• Favorite flowers? Orchid

My SUNSHINE AWARDs go to:

1. Classroom Freebies
2. Fun in First
3. Kindergarten Smiles
4. Create Teach Share
5. Seusstastic Classroom Inspirations
6. For the Love of Kindergarten
7. Mrs. Spatafora's Kindergarten


Happy Blogging!