Back with great news and a freebie!

It has been forever since I posted - I know you are dying to know what's been going on with my sweet Kindergarteners.  I was sick last week and just haven't been able to get up the energy to post.  Let me start by sharing my great news - I am OFFICIALLY a National Board Certified Teacher!!!  I have been working on this process for 3 years...oh..my...gosh!  The scores were posted yesterday and I woke up in the middle of the night after dreaming about passing and checked my scores and the first word I saw with groggy eyes was "Congratulations!" and I immediately burst into tears of joy.  I couldn't do it in 1 year like I wanted to, but I persevered and finally got it 3 years later.  Now, I have a clear mind to get my masters.  Must start studying for the MAT!

In other great news, I was nominated by my awesome colleagues as Teacher of the Year.  We voted last week and I should find out tomorrow if I won!  What an honor that my colleagues think that I am teacher of the year worthy!

Moving on, we have been talking about Thanksgiving the past 2 weeks.  The students have learned all about it using my Thanksgiving Unit.  We have a 2 day week this week and we will be talking about Thanksgiving traditions, reading There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie and doing some fun activities with it.  On Tuesday, we will be having Thanksgiving Rotations in the morning.  (If you don't know the story behind rotations basically the kids rotate around 5 Kindergarten classrooms doing different theme related activities.) I have ALWAYS made an edible turkey....but 7 years later, I have had enough of requesting all the ingredients and icing everywhere, so we are going to make this Pinterest Inspired turkey - cute right?

Yes I said I was tired of messy icing, but I am going to let 5 classes paint a turkey.  I must be crazy!  We will also be having a Pie Feast with Mrs. Mitchell's class.  We will be dressing up as Native Americans and her class will be the Pilgrims.  I will post pictures later in the week :) 

The week before last, we reviewed the three shapes we learned and added 2 more.  As a final activity  the students worked in cooperative groups to create a tree map of the characteristics of the shapes.  I snapped some pictures of my sweet friends working together.

Just in case you are interested in doing it in your class, I uploaded it to my store as a freebie - enjoy!

One last thing, if you are still with me that is.  The week after Thanksgiving, we are going to be learning about Wants and Needs.  It's the perfect time with Christmas right around the corner.  Stop by my TpT and pick up my unit.  Hope everyone has a great short week!!