Could you hear my kids squealing with excitement this afternoon? We love each other dearly, but we are all over the moon excited about spring break! The weather here is perfect and I can't wait to spend a week playing with my sweet girl!
For the past month or so, I have been reading The Wizard of Oz with my class. We finished it up a week ago and to say that they were obsessed with the book would be an understatement! They loved it, and they especially loved finding differences between the book and the movie most of them had seen. It was actually my first time reading it and I enjoyed it too! To celebrate finishing the book, we had a week of Oz and rainbow fun!
We started with some literacy workshops, which the kids were so engaged with {it's amazing what cute clipart can get a kid to do!}. We worked on word families, long and short vowel sounds, sight words, and good/wicked words {I didn't snap a picture of the last one, but they loved it!}. These are part of my Wizard of Oz mini pack, along with lots of graphic organizers and writing pages.




We also used my amazingly talented friend, Kristen's, Weather and Making Predictions packs to have some rainbow fun. My kids love any time I say that we're doing a science experiment and these were a hit!
First, we learned the colors of the rainbow with her cute Roy G Biv craft.

We started our experiments by seeing what would happen if we sprayed rainbow colored vinegar on baking soda...they loved that their predictions were close or right!



We also did a rainbow cloud experiment where we put shaving cream as our cloud on top of water and dropped colored water into it. The pictures turned out no so great because we were on the rug, but the kids loved this one also!

By far, the most favorite was probably the "Walking Water" experiment. We took two cups of colored water and put them on a bucket then put two cups underneath, with a paper towel between them. The kids loved going to check how far the water had walked and when they came in the next morning and the bottom cups were full of the water, they flipped. Total joy!!


Of course, we tied in St. Patrick's Day and talked about what we would do if we got to the end of a rainbow and found gold. Then, we made these cute torn paper rainbows that I love doing each year!


We also made these cute fruit loop rainbows and wrote a poem together to attach with it. This came from my sweet friend Alisha and it's free! Check it out here.


We couldn't do a Wizard of Oz unit and not watch the movie! It really is crazy how much different this movie is than the book {I know most are, but there are LOTS of differences and my kids made sure to point them out!}. One of my sweet moms got us this super cute cake and the kids were in heaven!!

Now, I'm off to enjoy this weather and get packed...we're going to Nashville tomorrow just as soon as I watch my sweet teacher neighbor {and mentee - is that a word??} get married tomorrow! :)
Happy Spring Break!!

We were so busy last week! We finished reading The Wizard of Oz and celebrated Friday {which I hope to blog about this week} and we also started some St. Patrick's Day fun! Every year word gets around that a leprechaun usually finds his way to Mrs. Plant's classroom and this year's sweet class has already asked me a million times if I think he'll come this year! So sweet!
We've been reading lots of St. Patrick's Day books and the kids love them! One of the favorites is always That's What Leprechauns Do...the kids think the leprechauns are so funny!
http://www.amazon.com/Thats-What-Leprechauns-Eve-Bunting/dp/0547076738/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395020501&sr=8-1-fkmr1&keywords=that%27s+what+leprechauns+do
After we read the story, we made a little leprechaun tree map and the kids made these cute leprechauns I've been making for a few years now {thanks to Cara over at The First Grade Parade} to hold their personal tree maps.

To follow up with our leprechaun story, we graphed whether we believed in leprechauns or not {this can be found in my St. Pat's pack}. All but one believes in leprechauns!

Another favorite story was There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Clover {these stories are always a hit} and of course, we sequenced the story! This activity came from my spring sequence pack.

I think the favorite activity of the week was using "gold" during math everyday. We used it along with these pots to practice base ten, addition, subtraction, and story problems. It was definitely a hit!

And, just for kicks, I wanted to share this picture. I love the way he's so focused on his workshop...makes my heart happy!
Now I'm off to bed...hoping I don't walk into a leprechaun mess tomorrow morning ;).


I can't even tell y'all how excited I am to be part of this amazing bright ideas blog hop again! I got so many great ideas last hop, and I can't wait to read all the ideas from this hop!
Today I want to share some ways I get my kids up, moving, and most importantly, engaged! Student engagement is huge at my school, as I'm sure it is at yours, and in kindergarten a great way to achieve 100% student engagement is with academic games!
Everyday, we start our math time with a quick game. Usually, we do one, but if time allows {and I give in to my kids begging ;)}, we do a few. One that I love is giving everyone a number and seeing how quickly they can line up in number order WITHOUT talking. Now notice, these numbers are super simple - cut cardstock in half and write the numbers! Sometimes we line up 1-18, and other times I split them into groups so that they have to figure out who has the first number and count on.



 {I love how they "guide" each other to the right place!}

Another one of our favorite games is called Cluck, Cluck Chicken. My friend Deeanna introduced me to it and the kids love it! The only real way to show you how we play is to show you a video, but you have to promise not to make fun of my horrible accent {I also apologize for the blurriness - I had the wrong lens and didn't realize it}!! The kids get in a circle, I call out a number, and they cluck until they make a group with that many kids. The whole scene is comical, but I never intervene! I make them do the problem solving! This would be a great way to introduce division to older kids.

Last, I started giving my kids plus and equal signs last week with their numbers. They work in groups to figure out how to make themselves into a correct equation. Most of the time, when we do this, I have a couple of kids left over and they act as "fact checkers." This is a challenge for my kids at first, but it gets easier and easier and really helps with fluency. Again, a no cost game! How much easier can it get? 




Although these games are math centered, you can easily adapt them to ELA. I break kids up in teams of 3 or 4, give them some letters and they have to make a word. Again, use letter flashcards or write letters on cardstock. As busy as things are this year, I'm all about easy {and cheap!}. You could also write words on cards and have them get in alphabetical order. Use your imagination.
I'd love to know some of your favorite, easy games to play with your class!
Now, keep hopping to find your next bright idea! Kerri over at Teacher Bits and Bobs has some great ideas about organizing student work folders.
http://teacherbitsandbobs.blogspot.com/2014/03/bright-ideas-blog-hop-copies-copies.html

If you'd rather browse the hop by topic, you can do that too!


Since there are sooooo many great Dr. Seuss books, we couldn't limit our fun to just one week! We've used more Seuss books this week to practice a variety of skills!
First, we read Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? and discuss onomatopoeia. The kids always love learning this word! After we charted the sound words, the kids wrote their own sentence using onomatopoeia as well as quotation marks {great time to throw in a mini-lesson!}.



You can get the writing page here as a freebie!

We also read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish and of course, did a little goldfish graphing. This activity is part of my Crazy Cat pack on TpT. 

One of my favorite Dr. Seuss books is one of his most simple, but I remember reading it as a child. In a People House is a great book to review labeling! We read it, then made our own houses with things we have in our houses.

In science, we used If I Ran the Zoo to kick off our study of zoo animals. We read the story, then charted zoo animals. We also took each day to learn about a different zoo animal {I let the kids vote on the ones we learned about}. We made an informational book about zoo animals {which we got a little behind on since I had to be out this week}, made a class organizer, and made a cute craft. The crafts can be found in Deanna Jump's zoo pack on TpT. You can get the zoo book here as a freebie! :) {The book only includes the animals my class voted to learn about, but it includes a blank page you could use for others}







Along with learning about real elephants, we also read Horton Hears A Who. We charted Horton's charactersitics along with evidence from the story that helped proved them. Then, we made our own Horton's with our writing of how we could be more like Horton. They turned out to be so cute! {Can you tell we like to be the best??}


Whew! What a week! Be sure to check back this weekend...there might be some bright ideas floating around!
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