Valentine's Day Symmetrical Hearts

Whew!  My kids were SO excited for Valentine's Day this year!

We could not wait for our party to start.

After lunch is a long time to wait when you're five/six.

A few days before, we decorated our room with 

Symmetrical Hearts.

They are always so colorful and perfect for the holiday!

I copied half of a heart on a large piece of 

white construction paper and folded it in half.

Then I showed the kids how to paint on one half of their heart.  

And quickly before the paint dried, they needed to fold it over.

It never transfers perfectly, but it at least gives the 

kids an outline so that they can fill the blank parts 

in with paint to complete their symmetrical heart.

While we waited patiently (or not) for our party time to arrive, 

we decorated bags to put our Valentine's in.

We also played some candy heart games 

from The First Grade Parade.  My kids loved them!

Back 2 School Sale!

Thanks to The 3AM Teacher for the cute button!

It's here!  The big Back 2 School Sale on Teachers Pay Teachers!  I've been adding items to my wishlist, waiting for it to be here! :)

Here are a few things that I plan on purchasing:

Miss Kindergarten Love

Cooking Up a Great Year Centers

These cute centers from Miss Kindergarten.

I just think they look adorable and perfect for my kinders at the beginning of the year.

Kroger Kindergartener's Fall Homework Pack

I am looking for a few different homework sheets this year, so this would be perfect!

And Cara Carroll's Math Mission Pack

It looks like a great addition to our 

math curriculum and so fun! 

What's in your cart?

Everything in my TpT store is on sale!  

Use BTS13 for a total of 28% off my products.

Here are a few of my favorites from my store:

(click on the picture to take you to my store)

These are probably my favorite centers of the year!  The kids love these!

Chevron Ten Frame Posters

I just hung these up in my own classroom 

and love the look of them!  They are great 

as posters or to use during instruction.

Speaking of chevron...

I organized my classroom with these labels this year.  I sell both Editable labels and Supply Labels that are ready to go for you!

I also have some great Calendar Cards (bees, apples, birds) and other great centers to use in your classroom!

Have fun shopping!

Instagram!

Ah, can you believe it's the middle of August already!?  I know some of you have 

already started school!  We have meetings next week and kids come a week 

from Monday, so I'm busy decorating the room and writing the 

little ones' names 500 times! :)

I moved rooms this summer and can't wait to show you where I am now!

But, you'll have to wait until next week when it is all done.

In the meantime, I recently joined in on the Instagram craze.

I love it!  It's so easy to snap a picture and post it and 

it's so fun to look at everyone's ideas!

Follow me on Instagram here!

Here are a few sneak peak pictures of 

my classroom that I posted on Instagram...

It's coming together!

Also, head over to Lacey's new blog, The Fabulous Life of an Elementary Teacher 

and enter all of her amazing giveaways!  You can win something from my TPT store!

ABC...123...Dr. Seuss

When I began teaching kindergarten last year, my wonderful mentors handed me a 

box of alphabet and number books and explained what they had done for years.

Each week, our school sends home one alphabet book and one number 

book with each student.  They can read these books at home with

their parents and practice what they are learning at school.  It's great!

I found these cute Dr. Seuss bags at Target and the cute little tags too!

Perfect for reading bags!

 I numbered the tags with stickers.

Printed out some instructions of what they can do with the books 

and when to return them to school.  Then, I glued it on the back of the tags.

Laminated them and wha-la!, my bucket of books is ready for the new year!

These bags would be great for library books, special journals that get sent home 

for the week or even storage for center/learning activities.

Blog Lovin

So even though I haven't written on my own blog since last February (minus 30 minutes ago), I have actually been keeping up with everyone else's blogs.  And also switched over from Google Reader to Bloglovin.

I've been following blogs on Bloglovin for about a week now and love it!  It's easy to set-up, great format to read and I also love that they have an app so I can easily read blogs on the go.

Anyhow, I apparently need to claim my blog on Bloglovin, so here we go!

<a href="http://www.bloglovin.com/blog/4980279/?claim=zm7dwmmb2yb">Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>

Favorite Pins Friday!

Well, if you haven't blogged in forever- you have to start somewhere...

Cara from The First Grade Parade is hosting a Favorite Pins Friday link-up!

Here a some of my favorite pins that I found for this week...

School Related:

How great is this ear bud organizer from Hopelessly Devoted!?

Ear buds are on our school supply list this year, so I had been thinking about 

some way to store them- this will work great!

I found these ABC posters and hopped right over to TPT to download them.

Aren't they adorable?

I actually had pinned this a while ago and forgot about it.

I was looking for number worksheets to start of the year,

and came across it again.  It is by Inspired by Kindergarten.  

I love the simplicity of the layout!

Other Pins:

Yum!  Yum!  I made this mix from Glorious Treats for the 4th yesterday 

and it was so good!

Good and EASY- that's the best part! :)

Isn't this the cutest little art nook that Project Girl posted?

Good thing we just finished our basement up

or I would be asking my husband how he could

build this.  Well, I still might...

I found this picture on Little Daisy May and had to pin it!

We got a wooden monogram for Christmas and I 

still haven't found the right place/thing to do with it.

I love this...add it to the summer project list!

Can't wait to see what everyone else is pinning!

Come see and join the link up!

Also come follow me on Pinterest!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Today, I got all my Valentine's ready for our 

class party tomorrow!

I love Valentine's Day parties at school!

This year, I decided to go with bubbles.

I saw this idea from Simply Modern Mom on 

Pinterest and thought it was perfect.  

I changed the wording on the card just so it would 

fit better for a teacher Valentine. 

If you don't want to, you can just 

print her cute ones right off. :)

I sent mine off to Office Depot and they 

printed them on nice blue cardstock.

Picked them up, cut them, hole punched them

and strung them together.

Can't wait to give them to my kids!

Last year, I went with bouncy balls.

Super easy!

What kind of Valentine's are you giving you students?

Valentine's Day Goodies and a Freebie

Yay!  So excited that Valentine's Day is this week!

It is one of my favorite holidays to celebrate at school.

Since my kiddos are only at school Monday, Wednesday and Friday,

we are having our party on Wednesday afternoon.  Should be fun!

Also, because my class is a 3 day class, we aren't celebrating 100 day

yet, so I have the whole week to focus on hearts and love! :)

On Friday, we painted symmetrical hearts.  They turned out adorable!

Our room was quite a mess, but boy did the kids have fun. 

This week, we'll be playing I Have, Who Has with our Sight Words.  

Click HERE to purchase from my tpt store.

And practicing number words, ordering teen numbers, counting tally marks, 

placing numbers before and after and practicing simple addition with my Math Centers.

And even though I don't teach 4th grade anymore, 

it still has part of my heart, so I made a I Have, Who Has game 

for multiplying.  My 4th graders would have loved this!

And now for the FREEBIE!

Click HERE for this lovely worksheet!

Enjoy!

Winter Love

Ah, I'm loving all the winter fun my class has been having!

Earlier in January, we made these sweet mittens to practice symmetry.

They colored the designs in crayon and then water colored over them.

We cut them out and added some yarn to tie them together- too sweet.

My class loved imagining what snowmen do at night!

I used this craft that I saw on The First Grade Parade blog.

I know that a few other classrooms have done it too.

I LOVE kindergarten art projects! :)

 And we used my Winter Wonderland Centers.

My kids are loving them.

Excuse the poor iphone photos and the fact that there is

 no work on the worksheets, but I decided winter is coming to a close

so I should probably just take some pictures and get them up. :)

My door is the perfect place to put up sight words for a Snowflake Sight Word center.

Plus don't the penguins just look like they are cheering you on?

We've been working hard on number words!  

My kids love working on tally marks!

Especially when we chant our tally mark poem.

Found HERE through pinterest.

We are getting pretty good at counting by fives!

Colors and pictures make ten-frames THAT much more fun!

Who doesn't love kindergarten spelling?

We practice sounding out words everyday!

Interested in our Winter Centers?

Check them out here:

Polka Dots and Bees!

Oh my- it's been a while!  I've been gearing up 
and getting ready this summer 

for a switch from 4th grade to kindergarten!

We have already had a few weeks of school, 
but I'll start with a tour of my classroom this year.  

I had so much fun putting together my room!

 The view from my desk.  I wish we could have balloons in our room everyday.

Well...maybe not on second thought...but they were fun for our open house! :)

Our meeting area...

that polka dot rug was just sitting there 

waiting to be bought for my classroom- it's perfect for my theme!

There a few pinterest projects in my room...and this is one of them!
A $7.00 craigslist table, can of spray paint and chalkboard paint = a perfect art area table

Love the polka dot seat pennants!

It's easy for the kids to find their seat and doubles as being adorable!

(Obviously the blurred part is where their name is)

Polka Dot boxes tied to the balloons...more on these to come later.

(tags from schoolgirlstyle)

Table numbers

polka dot and bees of course!

Always a good reminder...right above our sink

Our Word Wall

Just missing the part that says it's our word wall :)

Our door from the inside

(bees inspired by First Grader...at Last!)

And a little higher...

I just HAD to have these when I spotted them!

(from Miss Nelson on TPT)

My new book rack that my father-in-law made for me...

Another view of our meeting area

Our reading table and view out our windows.

The flowers cheer up our room every morning!

The outside board...

 

I'm loving having a board where I can just switch their work in and out quickly!  

I cut out frames from scrapbook paper, painted clothespins and added some ribbon and chalkboard label for their names.  You can see it in the background of some of the pictures.  I should have taken a picture before I put all their names and pictures up.  Trying to blur that all out messed up some of the pictures...when it comes down at the end of the year,

 I'll try taking another one.

Our playing area full of games, legos, and magnets!

Did I mention magnets!?

The Trust in the Lord poster was just printed

at Office Depot.  $3.00 for a large poster?  Yes, please!