What A View

Take a bird's-eye look into our classroom to see what we have been up to. One of our favorites is the framed owls. If you click on your mouse and move it around you will see the panoramic view.

Do You Have a Passion for Fashion?

Who says Kindergarten teachers can't be fashionable?  We deserve to look our best while mixing paint, jumping rope, wiping tears, bandaging up boo boos and being on our feet for over 6 hours a day.  

We are two moms who love teaching and LOVE shopping.   

The challenge is.... how do you get the look you want on a teacher's salary?  Check in each week to see our favorite outfits that don't break the bank.

 

Details:
Shirt, Tucker for Target
Jeans, American Rag Macy's
Boots, Nickels at Famous Footwear
Necklace, gift
Bracelet, Forever 21
Belt, Forever 21(similar)

Details:
Shirt, Ross (similar , similar)
Skirt, Loft
Peep Toe Buckle Flats, Steve Madden (similar, similar)
Necklace, Forever 21 (similar, similar)
Bracelets, Target & Nordstrom (South Sun Chain Knot)

Pumpkin Vocabulary Cards Freebie

We just found these great pumpkin vocabulary cards from TPT for free! We have the cards posted in our pumpkin science center and plan on using them for Quiz-Quiz-Trade. The labeled pictures are really well done!

Get your Pumpkin Vocabulary Cards from TPT

Smart Board Pumpkins Exploration

Here is a Smart Board file we created to go along with our Pumpkin Exploration these next few weeks! These are a few examples of the pages.

You can get the Pumpkin Exploration for the Smart Board at TPT for free!

Smart Board Sight Word Games!

So far our students have learned the following sight words: I, a, the, go, to, my, like

These fun games can be used to reinforce the sight words using the Smart Board. 

These games are available for free from our TPT store!

Kooshball Sight Word Game for the Smart Board

Sight Word Tiles Game for the Smart Board

Sight Word Cookie Monster Game for the Smart Board

Pumpkin Exploration Book Freebie!

We can't wait to start our Pumpkin Unit!

We asked for each student to bring to class a small (cantaloupe) sized pumpkin with their child's name labeled on the bottom. Each day, students will "explore" different aspects of their pumpkins and record in their Pumpkin Exploration Books.

The Pumpkin Exploration Book is 7 pages and available at TPT.

Teen Numbers Math Game!

We noticed that some of our students were having trouble with learning the "tricky teens" so thought this would be a great game for them to play in class. For further practice, after teaching the students how to play the game, let each child make their own "Flying Ghost" game and take it home!

Students take turns guessing the mystery number. As students guess, depending on whether the number guessed is too big or too small, the ghosts are moved to cover that number. The game is played until a student guesses the mystery number or the ghosts “fly and catch” the mystery number and it is revealed. 

The Flying Ghosts Math Game is available at TPT.

Cute Collage Owls!

Little Owl's Night is by Divya Srinivasan and the first thing you will notice are the beautiful illustrations!

The book description is the following:

"It's evening in the forest and Little Owl wakes up from his day-long sleep to watch his friends enjoying the night. A full moon rises and Little Owl can't understand why anyone would want to miss it. Could the daytime be nearly as wonderful?"

Here is a short trailer of the book:

This cute little owl inspired us to have the kids make their own "little owls".

We used scrapbook paper to add visual texture to the owls as well as oil pastels to add the final details.

Here is a photo of the front cover of the book:

Take a look at how our little owls turned out!

Didn't they turn out great?

Here are the dimensions for you!

Black background paper 9" x 12"

Head (scrapbook paper) 4" x 6"

Body (scrapbook paper) 2" x 3"

White Eyes 3" x 3"

Green Eyes 2 1/2" x 2 1/2"

Black Eyes 2" x 2"

Yellow Beak and Talons 1" x 1 1/2"

Feathers on Head (scrapbook paper) 1" x 1"

Scarecrow Directed Draw

One of our most favorite books to read this time of year is the story 

The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams. 

If you are familiar with the story, you know that at the end there is a scary scarecrow!

We decided to do a directed draw of a scarecrow with the kids using the SmartBoard. The kids sat on the rug with lapboards and pencils and drew a scarecrow step-by-step while watching the teacher. We emphasized the use of shapes in our drawings.

After the students "sketched" with their pencils they outlined the lines they wanted to "keep" with a black Sharpie. The lines they didn't want were erased after tracing.

The next day, the students used oil pastels to color in their drawings.  Before they started coloring, we talked about the soft consistency of the pastels and how they had a tendency to smear if the kids were not careful. 

Once the drawings were colored in, the students did a crayon-resist wash using watered down tempera paint. 

We think they came out great!

Parts of a Pumpkin Freebie

Just found this Parts of a Pumpkin Freebie from 'Lil Country Kindergarten!

Sight Word Fun

It is hard to believe we are nearing mid-October.  Wow, time flies when you are having fun!  We have been so busy learning to read and write our kindergarten sight words and we are well on our way to meeting our end of the year goal of reading and writing 31 words.  

Since August, the students have learned 7 new sight words:

 I, a, the, my, go, can, see

This week was a review week.  We always look forward to these weeks because we can actually take a breath and change things up a bit.  We played a fun game called Sight Word Roll a Dice.  The students absolutely LOVED it!  Each student was engaged and excited.   It was one of those great teacher moments.  

We also paired up students and gave them a bag of sight word cards.  One day they played Sight Word Go Fish.  The next day, they read the sight word cards to their partner and made sentences with their words.  You can find these free sight word cards HERE.

Spooky Halloween Patterning!

Take a look at our Spooky AB Patterns!
We used cookie cutters in Halloween shapes and a paint recipe called Shiny Paint.
The recipe calls for the following:
liquid tempera paint for color, 4 tablespoons corn syrup and 1 1/2 teaspoons liquid dishwashing soap
The recipe was not clear on how much paint to use, so I just went by the consistency I wanted (a little thicker so the paint sticks to the edge of the cookie cutter). The recipe also stated that the paint is very sticky and dries slower than regular paint.

The kids loved doing this, and the best part was popping the bubbles that would be left behind on the paper after they lifted off the cookie cutter. It would splatter a little and left behind a nice texture.

Our display

Sight Word Medals!

What a fun way to help kids remember the sight words! 

Sight Word Medals are available at our TPT store!

Look how happy this cute guy is to wear his medal!

Smart Board Seasons Art Lesson

This week we are learning about the Four Seasons by starting off with some Fall fun!

We decided to start with our Scarecrow Project from our Fall Pack and then we are going to make some really cute pattern Owls. Photos will be posted as soon as we make them in class. We are also going to make our Seasons Book this year which you can see in a previous post.

For those of you who are teaching about the Seasons as well, we wanted to share this SmartBoard lesson we created that integrates paintings by famous artists and the music of Vivaldi with the Seasons.

The Seasons Art Lesson is available for free from TPT.

Secondary Colors Lesson

We learned about Secondary Colors this week . . . using our Primary & Secondary Notebook file for the Smartboard. We started off by reviewing the Primary Colors the students learned about while looking at a painting by Mondrian. Then we explained how the secondary colors are created by mixing the primary colors. We looked at two paintings by Seurat which have mostly secondary colors.

After the lesson I did a quick assessment  by asking the students to draw a picture (anything they like) using all three of the secondary colors.

Here is the Notebook file we used:

The Primary & Secondary Colors Notebook file for the SmartBoard is available for free from our TPT store!

Here are some examples of their work:

Here are four different examples of what the students chose to draw using only secondary colors.

We especially love this one!

This is the rubric that we created using irubric and stapled to the back.