One Lovely Blog Award!

Thanks to Becki, at Little Miss Hood's Adventures in Kindergarten, I have just been given my first One Lovely Blog award!!! 

This is such an honor, and now I'd like to share it with 15 other lovely bloggers! 

Mrs. Larremore at Chalk Talk
Kathleen at Growing Kinders
Kim & Megan at Kinder Gals
Fran at Kindergarten Crayons
Mrs. Minor at Mrs. Miner's Kindergarten Monkey Business
Mrs. Carroll at The First Grade Parade
Deanna at Mrs.Jumps Class
Belle at Mrs. Wills Kindergarten
Alessia at Mrs. Albanese's Kindergarten Class
Ms. Kerri at Ms.Kerri and her Krazy Kindergarten
Lindsey at The Teacher Wife
Mrs. Nichols at The Polka Dot Patch
Michelle at Inspired by Kindergarten
Mandi at MOORE Fun in Kindergarten
Mrs. Bell at A Place Called Kindergarten

Here are the rules for receiving this award: 

1) Follow the person who gave you the award
 2) Link back to the person who gave you the award

3) Pass the award on to 15 new bloggers

Enjoy! :)

From the Mouths of Kindergarteners...

I'm a strong believer that every Kindergarten teacher should keep a list of all the "off the wall" things their kids say. Am I right, or am I right? 

Today, we were talking about things that make us happy. 

Me: [insert child's name], what makes you happy?
Student: When my dad gives me noodles.

...Random, but whatever makes you happy!  

(This is also my student who told me that he went to LeBron (sp?) James' house and played basketball with him. I asked him how he got there and he said, "On a plane...and I jumped out of it." Hmm, not too sure about that one!)

I also love how well my students seem to know ME.

Me: What do you think makes Ms. Heyboer happy?
various answers:

- running/racing people
- reading
- teaching
- when you don't have to repeat yourself to us(AMEN!)
- when we don't blurt out
- talking with other teachers
- when we don't bring bugs into the classroom (thank you!)
- coffee (they see me with it daily!)
- laughing

All very, very true. :)

That's all for today- just a little funny for your Wednesday.

What are some funnies that you have had with your students?


P.S. Does anyone else get as excited as I do when they receive school supplies?!? :D

Organization!

I am not the most skilled person at organizing...however, I love, love, LOVE to gawk at the organizational skills of other teachers in hopes that I will someday be like that! This is my 3rd year, and I am proud to say each year I have gotten more and more organized :). Just this year I finally organized my two filing cabinets! It's helped to keep so much clutter off of my desk. (Even though it seems to continue to pile up!) Today, I got one of these contraptions to keep my papers organized. My EA was amazing and put it together for me!

Do you have any organizational tips that you use in the classroom?



Zoo animals

This week we went to the ZOO!!! I personally had a blast, because I was free to roam with my co-workers due to the fact that I have AMAZING parents who volunteered to chaperone! :) Otherwise, it may not have been so relaxing. Before we went to the zoo, we talked and read books about zoo animals. This is one book that we read:

 Then we made zoo animals out of construction paper. My kids had a blast doing this! These are the ones I made, which they chose from:

                        This is a picture of our class' art work. They turned out SO cute!  

Here's a close up of two:

And of course, we had to turn ourselves into animals using these cute masks I found in the $1 section at Target! ;)

HAPPY FRIDAY!!!



Sticker stories, fish, and Target.

I have a drawer in my desk that is FULL of nothing but stickers!!! Something that I started doing this year with my kinders is Sticker Stories. I give the students a sheet of stickers, and let them pick up to four stickers to use in their writing.This really helps reinforce character, setting, and main idea. Here is a bulletin board from a few months ago:

Here is an example of one story. She wrote, "The ladybugs are sliding. The butterflies are building a sandcastle. The ladybug are riding a bicycle. The bee is swinging." I love how far my students have come with their writing! :)









We are constantly writing and illustrating in Kindergarten to prepare ourselves for first grade, so here is another writing assignment we did the other day (Some fish are...):

Some fish are mean. Some fish are nice. Some fish are dotted. Some fish are little.

Finally, I found these cute flower sorting divider things at the dollar section at target ,and couldn't pass them up! I just don't know what I want to do them. I have four, so enough for each table...AND I have 5 or 6 students at each table, so there are enough "petal" sections for each student! Ideas??



Newbie!

Well, I finally caved. I've decided to join the wonderful world of blogging! :) I don't consider myself a  "blogger," yet. However, I hope to turn myself into one soon enough ;). A co-worker of mine has inspired me to follow some really creative blogs this year (as well as her own, which you can check out here.) I visit it DAILY. It's that good. So, while my blog is going to need a LOT of work - it's not so pretty right now, and I may not post for days or weeks at a time...I hope that this is something I can stick with. It's already motivated me for next year, and this year isn't even over! Anyway, I don't want this post to go to waste, so here's a few things I've been working on for next week... 

I've been trying to get my math centers together for our last week in subtraction. This is one center I've put together:

This is "Subtracting with Little Critters!" Last week, in Reading, we discussed different kinds of insects, so this ties in with that. The aquarium/terrarium (not sure what the technical name for it is...) came from our Living Things Science kit, and the little bugs/critters were found at The Dollar Tree - that place and the $1 section at Target are like HEAVEN for teachers!!!  You can grab the Little Critter's sheet here ! :) <--- My first time linking a file, so I hope it works!





This is another math center I have planned. Nothing fancy, but I do have another sheet to go along with it, which you can find here. All the students have to do is use the dinosaurs to figure out the answer, and then find the card with the correct difference.

Here's another. Pretty simple. All they have to do is match the bee to the correct flower.

My kids love using this number line! It works much better than having them use their finger to "jump."

Not sure about other teachers, but we only have...28 days of school left?! :)

P.S. While this blog is solely going to be about teaching, I am giving lots of thought to creating another blog for my continued running/races and other random tidbits. Thoughts? Advice? Happy Blogging!