Happy Teacher Appreciation! So let's shop!

Because we all love shopping...that's why we chose teaching with HUGE salaries right? :)

Don't hate me!

But really...please don't! I know I am the WORST blogger ever lately. I honestly have no idea what happened?! I am thinking it is becuase I am still (yes it is April) trying to get organized at my new school. With planning and just getting used to a kinder brain I have been a crazy lady!

It has been an exciting spring so far too! This guy moved to Dallas in March! Pretty happy. :) 

This would be our attempt at a family pic. Penny did not want to cooperate.

Classroom updates:

We had open house (may be a reason why this post is so overdue) it was awesome! Here are some pics of the things we made for it! We did some Dr. Seuss activities since we just completed an author study on him.

We started poetry this week! Y'all never thought I would teach poetry in kinder. BUT it is so great! If you are reading this and thinking....hmmm no way, get this book:

No worries too, there is one for first, second, third and fourth! Here are some poems my kiddos have already written this week!

This is my modeled poem.

"Rain fall down wear a coat jumping in puddles"

Obviously I loved this one. 

 

 

 

So needless to say I have been doing things I just need to be taking pictures and writing posts! I promise, scouts honor!

Throw me something mister!

So I no longer live in Louisiana....

which means:

no beads, no king cake, no parades, and no three days off of school. 

SAD DAY. 

BUT, I do plan on bringing some of the Mardi Gras flava to my kinders. I made this unit last year and I am going to use pieces of it next week! I talked to them about king cake today since I went to Baton Rouge this past weekend. Most of them wrote about it in their draft book! They all said "Ms. Thomas I don't want that baby!" HA!

Go and check it out!

Tweet! Tweet!

We were told at the beginning of school to take on some sort of web 2.0 tools for the school year. Well I was like "I want my kids to tweet!" One of my graduate professors had shown me this awesome video of a class in New York that tweeted every morning to practice their writing skills. I was just waiting on a class to do it! I waited until now to get our writing skills up to awesome and coming back from break I could tell they were ready. :)

So, here is how we tweet in the treetop...

First, we check out twitter home and check what the other kinder classes may have tweeted. They love this part because they usually want to respond to them. Today we asked a class what they do in their writers celebration. They can't wait to hear about it! 

 When they come in after they unpack they go and grab a "tweet! tweet!" paper. I explained about what they could write about, and how they should. We discussed for some time how we should only use "we" and "our" . :) They write their tweet and put it in the basket.

 After they have them all turned in I pick one randomly out of the basket. They we "fix it up!" I take a blue pen and I ask them what we could do to make the tweet better. They like this part. I made it a fun, positive thing that we fix our writing.

 After we fix the tweet, I have the student who it belongs to, to read the tweet out loud while I type it on the computer. The rest of the class watches and I sometimes make mistakes on purpose to make sure they are paying attention. :)

 Last, that student hits tweet! They love seeing it pop up on the side bar! 

Since I don't want the other student's tweets to go unread, we read all of them together. I put each one under the doc camera and then they read them. That way no one feels like their tweet isn't up there. 

I am loving this so far. I can tell they are enjoying it and it is another sneaky way I have made them practice writing during the day! {mwah, mwah!} 

If you are tweeting from your room we would love to tweet with you! 

Our class is:

@MsTKinder

Also, I want to give a shoutout to a fabulous new blogger! She was in my classes in grad school and then she came and helped out at my old school and now she has a class of her own! Her blog is ten kinds of adorable. She also has a cute TPT shop with a new Valentine's unit that is so cute!
Check her out! {how cute is that blog name?}

I finally made something new for TPT!

And the crowd goes wild!! HA. Maybe not, but I am pretty excited that I FINALLY had the motivation to make something on TPT. To be honest, I have been using all of your stuff and it is all so great I wasn't needing to make anything new! {will that work?}

A couple weeks ago we introduced two word families and my kiddos really loved it. I decided to make this little activity to put in a word work station to reinforce the skills. They match up the letter with the picture to make the correct word. I am pretty excited about it, can you tell? :)

Now go and check it out!

O and I am watching this championship game right now, {yawn}, and if you read my blog you know I am not that into it because I cheer for another team...first two to comment with what two colors I bleed get this newest creation FREE!! Don't forget your email! :)

Silence for Sandy Hook Elementary

Holiday Update!

I want to start out this post by saying I am thinking and praying for all of the families in Connecticut. I truly cannot imagine how horrific that was for everyone involved. I hugged my babies extra tight yesterday when they left. May those families find some comfort in their pain. 

Now to some updates in my kinder classroom! We have been doing a few creative writing projects, and I love seeing what they come up with! 

First, We read this book...

 It is so cute! It talks about how Santa gets a new suit and no one likes it! I challenged my kinders to give Santa a new suit and then write about it! After teaching writing the way I have, their writing is amazing! I am kicking myself for never doing a draft book EVERYDAY before. Here is what they came up with:

An Army suit for Santa!

An owl suit for Santa

A King suit for Santa!

An Astronaut suit for Santa

 Later on this week we did a project where they had to take a candy cane and turn it into something else. We do DoodleLoops for morning work sometimes, where it has a random shape on it and they turn it into whatever they want. It is very cool to see what they come up with! Here are some of the candy cane creations:

So creative! Proud of my littles. :)

We also have been doing graphing during math. Loving it! We made this tree, and then each of them colored an ornament. Then we did a tally chart to count how many and made a bar graph of all the colors. 

In Science we have been talking about the day sky and night sky. We did this version of a compare and contrast. It was sent from a sweet friend at another school in our district. They drew where they lived, then we glued black and blue pieces of paper together and they drew what they know is in that sky.

So that is what has been up in my kinder classroom! We are done on Friday and the kiddos are ready! So is their teacher. :)