20% off Easter Sale!!

I'm throwing a 20% off EVERYTHING in my TpT store for Easter, hop on over and grab your favs!!
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Love from my old Kinders!

One of my former students brought this down to me today. I love when I get things like this, it makes me fall in love with teaching all over again! :o)

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Sorting 3D Shapes by Attributes

Today we experimented with different kinds of 3D shapes. I propped up a whiteboard on a block to make a ramp and we tested the shapes to see which ones would roll, slide or both. Then we had to sort them using the hula hoops. The kids had a blast doing this and it was fun to see them make predictions and then test it out. They thought it was so funny that I put my can of soup that I was going to have for lunch in the box of shapes to use! :)
Thanks to The Mailbox for the great idea!

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Building 3D Shapes

For our "Fun Friday Art Project" last week we built cubes out of tooth picks and mini marshmallows! Whenever I use food for an activity in class I always tell the kids that "I dropped them all over the floor!" So we can't eat any of them, they think I'm soo clumsy because I've dropped so many things this year ;)

Our following “Fun Friday Art Project” was to make cones! We had fun decorating them and pretending the were party hats & ice cream cones! :oP

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Exploring with Magnets!

We continued learning about magnets this week, today we got to explore and experiment with all different kinds of magnets. The "floating magnet" was a big hit! It was so cute to see all of their faces when the magnets were floating on top of one another! Another favorite was putting the magnet wand under the table and moving the magnets that were on top of the table, they thought they were magicians!

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3D Shapes Posters

Just hung up these cute 3D shapes posters I found from Tessa Maguire at Tales from Outside the Classroom
There is one poster for each 3D shape that we are learning about and a cute saying to go along with it!


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Community Map

       We started our "Community Helpers" unit this month and we start it off by reading the story "Me on the Map" by Joan Sweeney. This is a really good book and great for kinders. It starts off in the girls room, then her house, then her street, then her town, then her state, then her country, and finally her planet. It is really cute. Then we start our whole class mural that we make and it will eventually be our version of a map of our town. We started today with the roads. Next week we will make the houses, then the stores and other essential buildings. Finally, we will add the finishing touches with things like trees, cars, people, lakes, etc. The kids love working on this project together and it lasts a few weeks so its a great center!

This week we added our houses to the map. I had to make a few suggestions to my Kinders on where to put their houses, some of them where no where near a road...as you can see we LOVE the curvy roads :o)

Next, we added stores! We brainstormed a bunch of different stores in town beforehand...we had a hard time with knowing what stores were actually IN our town and which were NOT. We came up with;  Trader Joe's, UPS, The Boys & Girls Club, Stop & Shop, BP gas station, Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, etc.

We had to include the essentials like Panera, Walgreens & CVS!

Tens and Ones Sorting Mats

      Today we started building numbers with Unifix cubes and then sorting them into tens and ones. We used the cute cupcake cards that the kids love from Rebecca Sutton at Teachingfirst-abc.blogspot.com . I made the sorting mats and they are available on my TpT store for just $2! Go check it out!

Tricky Paper Clip Challenge

We continued learning about magnets this week and we experimented with a cup of water that had a paper clip at the bottom. The kids had to figure out how to get the paper clip out of the cup without putting their hands in the cup and (first time I've had a student stick the magnet wand into the cup of water) too easy! They finally figured it out that they had to run the magnet wand along the side of the cup to attract the paper clip and then drag the magnet up and the paper clip will come right out and stick to the magnetic wand! It was like magic! I loved seeing their faces when they were finally able to get the paper clip out!

Cupcakes Place Value with Tens and Ones

I got this cute center from Rebecca Sutton at Teachingfirst-abc.blogspot.com The kids really loved this center. They chose a card and wrote down the number on the card and then they had to record how many tens and ones are in that number.

Dr. Seuss Day!

 

 



















     

       We had a blast on Dr. Seuss Day! We started of the celebration by having green pancakes in honor of the book "Green Eggs & Ham" The kids LOVED them! A generous mom gave us those cute Dr. Seuss hats to wear too. I found a cute "Thing One and Thing Two" craft off of Pinterest, we painted one hand, the palm, white to be the "Things" face and the fingers blue to be his hair. On the other hand we painted it all red, only 4 of the fingers (2 for his arms and 2 for his legs). After they dried we drew on the face and painted a white circle on the stomach and the kids could choose to write either "Thing One" or "Thing Two". During our "5th Grade Buddy" time at the end of the day we did another fun craft about a Dr. Seuss book, "Ten Apples Up On Top". The kids had to draw a picture of themselves then they could choose how many apples they wanted to put up on top of their heads and we used apples stamped in red paint to put up on top of our self portraits.

Magnet Bottles

I made these magnet discovery bottles for our magnets unit that we just started. They are just old tennis ball containers. I have 5 different bottles all filled with random things and one object that is magnetic. There is one bottle with bingo markers that have a metal rim, another with screws, paper clips, clothespins and the last bottle has keys in it. I use beads and cereal to fill up the bottle and disguise the magnetic object. The kids then used a magnetic wand to run up the side of the bottles and pull up the object that was magnetic. We then recorded what we found on the sheet. The kids loved using these discovery bottles!

Tens and Ones Sorting Mats

I just made these cute Tens and Ones sorting mats! We have been learning about Tens and Ones for a couple of weeks now and these mats will be a great tool for my Kinders to use when sorting their tens and ones cubes. I was thinking that we could use them with number cards and the kids could pick a card and build that number or you could use them without number cards and have the kids think of their own numbers to build. These are also Common Core aligned!! Head over to my TpT store and grab yourself a copy!

March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb...

We made these cute masks today that the kids could pick either a lion or a lamb.

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20 Polka Dot Backgrounds!!

I've been working on some cute polka dot backgrounds and just posted them on my TpT store! Go check them out and don't forget to follow my store and Twitter @ColleensKinders