First Day Fun

I know my blog posts are out of order! So are my thoughts right about now :)  Just go with it!  

In Kindergarten, we stagger enrollment so we only have half our class the first 2 days. (Do you do this wherever you are?) This is a great way for us to help the students learn the rules and routines, learn their way around the school etc.  

We always plan our day around some sort of story and I know a lot of teachers like to use The Kissing Hand, but I just didn't want to do that story this year, so when I saw this Cool Cat First Day of School Pack from Live Love Laugh Kindergarten, I knew which story I was going to use!

I knew the kids would love this book and it would make the first day a little more fun! Tammy includes hats and certificates, so we did both! 

We will definitely keep this tradition! I loved these! :) 

Read Across America

I love a Dr. Seuss book! My favorite? I'm not sure I can pick, but I love trying to read Fox in Socks!  It's a tough one to read, but one of my favorites to try every year.  I posted around Christmas about how I scored the Dr. Seuss books and animals at Kohl's for $5 each.  Did you get them too?



I already had some friends from previous years, so we had lots of Dr. Seuss buddies here with us last week.  I don't know what's up with mother nature, but we had ANOTHER snow day last week, so that ruffled our plans and we didn't have a whole lot of time for the 'ol Doc, but Ms. Moore did make hats with our sweet Kinders.

We just trace a pattern onto poster board, color it, and staple it to a sentence strip and voila...instant Cat in the Hats.  Adorable, right? You can see some of my other buddies hanging around the room.  We had them all over the place :) 

I usually like to do a lot for Dr. Seuss and Read across America, but this year we just did lots of fun reading.  

What do you do for Read Across America?

Native Americans!

Today was Native American day in room 201!  We are having a pie feast next week and we will be the Pilgrims for that, but I like for the kids to have the opportunity to dress up as both.  Thanks to my amazing assistant for leading this less :) Our little Native Americans are adorbs!

The hats are strips of poster board decorated with patterns by the kids.  I used to try and do the Native American Symbols and it was chaos.  This is much easier.  Instead of feathers, we use die cut hands.  Why you ask? I have no idea.  Someone suggested it years ago and so we go with it.  They are cute, no?  Their necklaces are yarn and fruit loops/apple jacks.  Whatever we had extra of in the closet :) They can make a pattern or put them on however they want to.  

Tomorrow I am going to be posting about a HUGE deal! Check back for a giveaway :) (Who doesn't love something free??)  You don't want to miss this!!

Bats & Spiders Week and a Freebie!!

This week was all about Bats & Spiders! The kids were super excited about every activity we did!  They learned a lot of facts this week and I was so happy that they could tell me that a fact was "something true."  We did many activities in my Bats & Spiders Unit! There are a lot of fact books and fun activities included.

We did not do an alphabet hat this week, because we made a Spider hat!! These were a lot of fun! 

Here's how you make them:

Give the students 8 strips of black paper.  I had a wonderful practicum student cut, count and paper clip these earlier this week.  It makes it a lot quicker to pass out.  You also need a strip of black poster board.  Mine were about 2-3 inches..I didn't measure I just cut.  I also gave them a square of white paper to cut out the eyes.

Crinkle the legs in an accordion fashion.  I had a moment of genius on Friday...I kept them all together and crinkled them at one time.  Have you ever tried to teach 5 year olds to crinkle paper?   Talk about a time saver!!!

Add legs, 4 on each side.  I spaced mine out a bit more than this cutie did.  Cut out 2 circles from the white paper for the eyes.

Glue on the eyes.

Staple together and look adorable :) I love these kids!

Have you guys heard about the Facebook Frenzy? This is an awesome "hop" put together to offer free products from TpT sellers.  You start on a Facebook Page and when you "like" the page, you snag the freebie and move on to the next one.  I am participating in the K-1 Frenzy and have a super cute activity to share!

You can snag this freebie until Monday night by going to my Facebook page, liking my page, clicking on the FB Frenzy tab at the top and downloading.  There are 45 stops on the K-1 hop - have fun and enjoy the Halloween goodies!!