officially obSEUSSed

As many of you are, my kinders and I have been enjoying ourselves some Dr. Seuss! I have to say, I am blown away by the way he is able to present topics that are quite complex in a fun, childlike way. If I were teaching fifth grade, I would be using The Lorax to teach about supply and demand! Buuuut that's not quite a K concept. So, we instead enjoyed a reading of The Lorax to lead into a discussion about wants and needs. Wow, my babies amaze me. We found ourselves in a friendly debate about whether or not a friend is a want or a need. "Friends are a want because you can live without them," one says, to which another replies, "But you need them so you won't be lonely." On we went, with a class discussion that's still making me smile. Anyway, here's the sheet we used to record our wants vs. needs.

This little guy decided that friends fall in the needs category, along with his heart, food and water. On the wants, he has a galaxy tab (??), pizza, to be the king of the world, and a new hamster. How precious is this? Let's look at another one, because they're so darn cute!

This little one's wants include: a baby frenchie, no tornadoes, a fox, and a sister. Her needs are trees, animals, heart and God. I'm melting. I have been trying to figure out where I got this page... please let me know if you know so I can link back! Thanks.

We also made Thing 1 and Thing 2 word families:

I freehanded tracers (can you tell!?) for them to use in making their things. They wrote
"-ing" word family words all over their thing with white colored pencil (except my little friend there who wrote in black). They then wrote a sentence about their thing using a couple of their word family words.

On a waaayy late note, here is our President's Day fabulousness:

[If I were president, I would make more video games. I would make Jesus come back.]

Inside Lincoln's hat! [I would stuff my hat with my pony because I love her]

free valentine math journals

I'm breaking the one post per day rule in the name of freebies. I have finally had some time to spend stalking and am so amazed at all the wonderful freebies out there right now! For that reason, I felt the need to give back a little more. Click here to get my free valentine math journal pages!

Chrissy, at Read Write Sing, was so sweet to make a list of some awesome freebies. Bless her heart, she also made sure to encourage everyone to show appreciation to those fabulous friends who are offering freebies to everyone out here in cyber world! Go check out her list!

Valentine freebie for your help!

I recently learned that I am moving from Kinder to 1st next year! I am so excited, but I have a lot of things to take care of for the transition. I was hoping for some help from my bloggy friends.

1. I can't exactly keep a blog name that implies I teach kinder when I move to first. I have been thinking about new names, and wiiiissh I could use Here We Grow - which is the name of my TN shop. HOWEVER, someone took this blog name back in 2005 and hasn't done anything with it. I thought I could just contact them and politely ask for them to relinquish the name, but there is no way to contact them via the blogspot page.

Any ideas on how to find this person? If not, any cute name ideas that match the the flower-theme I have going?

2. Please leave a comment with links to your favorite blogs for 1st grade! I'm ready to get inspired!

3. Anyone have experience with switching blog names? Is it better to create a new blog altogether and upload this one to it... or to switch the URL of this one? I don't want to lose my beloved followers in the process!

Thank you allll sooo much for your help. Here is a freebie in advance as a thank you for your advice!

If you haven't already, go out and buy yourself some cute little heart boxes from dollar section or store. These are from the 99 Cents store.

Fill the boxes with letter tiles that spell sight words or CVC words that your want your kiddos to practice. Have them open a box one at a time, unscramble the letters to spell the word and record the answer on the response sheet. If you get these exact boxes, you can use the sheet I'm using. If not, I included a blank sheet for you to program how you'd like. You could easily just write numbers on the boxes with a sharpie and write the numbers on the sheet to match.

Click here for the blank template!

Click here for the template I'm using

Sorry, someone told me once, but I cannot locate the email explaining how I link an image! I'll figure that out again one of these days. I hope you enjoy!

I'm Getting Married!

I've been MIA from blog world because I have been up to my elbows in wedding plans the past couple of weeks! You see, having been with my dear fiance, Greg, for 5 years, I am ready to seal the deal. Sooo, after he proposed on January 2nd, I have been full speed. The wedding will be May 5, at the fabulous Moon River Ranch.

Enough about me, here are a couple of winter-friendly ideas for you.

Everything Christmas is on sale right now - including Christmas cards that are simply winter-themed. I made CVC puzzles using some cards. I just wrote the words with a sharpie, laminated, and cut with fun scissors.

We actually did these before Christmas, but I think they make nice winter tree scenes. The children colored various sized trees in any way they desired using oil pastels and cut them out. They painted a sky using liquid water color on a sheet of water color paper. Then they arranged and glued on the trees. Last, they used a pencil eraser and white paint to add snow. Cute, huh?!

So Excited!

I am so excited to announce that I have been given my first award from Tanya at Ms. Solano's Kindergarten! Thank you Tanya, I am truly honored and encouraged by your recognition.

These are the rules:

1. Thank the person that nominated you with a link back to them. 

2. Tell 7 things about yourself. 

3. Pass this award on to 15 newly discovered blogs and let them know that they’ve received an award!  

Here we go with my 7 things:

1. I never pass up an opportunity to share photos of my furry children, Precious (Chihuahua, 5) and Molli (Mini Schnauzer, 10 months). Would I be crazy to send out a Christmas card of them with their names and ages just like everyone else does with their human children? 

2. I got received a "how to crochet" book and set for Christmas and have practiced three basic stitches - chain, single and double, and still find it all to be difficult. I have so far made a long skinny piece of yellow yarn that somewhat resembles a banana. 

3. I didn't know I wanted to be a kindergarten teacher until I was a kindergarten teacher. I always thought I would teach fourth grade. The kindergarteners that buddy read with my "big kids" during internship frightened me a bit. Now I'm a bit frightened by the big kids. I LOVE my babies! (I'm sure I would be in love with any age other than middle school.

4. I am blessed with a best friend that also happens to be my sister, Tiffany. Here she is with her cute hubby. 

5. I have a question of the day in my classroom. It is the first things the kids to in the morning. I can do so much with it! Graphing activities, sight word practice, quick surveys of whether or not they enjoyed something we did, assess what they are learning, practice decoding and reading strategies etc. This example was from when the Rangers were in the World Series.... sad face. 

6. Speaking of the Rangers, I am a fan of the Dallas Cowboys, Texas Longhorns, and since I have been dating my sweetheart Greg, my sports fandom has expanded to the Dallas Mavericks and the Texas Rangers. However, I must admit it is easier for me to "get into" games in post-season. And apparently, according to Greg, that doesn't make me a serious fan. 

7. If I wasn't a teacher I would be a psychologist or counselor of some sort. 

Now, for some fabulous newly discovered blogs! For this list, I went out and discovered some new blogs that inspire! I hope you find someone new to follow on this list. 

Keeping up with the Kindergarteners

Mrs. Russell's Class 

Wild About Teaching

Mrs. Davison's Kindergarten

Kindergarten Days

Seeds of Knowledge for Future Generations

Peterson Kindergarten

K is for Kindergarten

Mrs. Grant's Kinder Gators

Color Me Kinder

Mrs. Ricca's Kindergarten

Mrs. Lee's Kindergarten 

Mrs. Bearden's Kindergarten Class

Primary Perspective 

Getting Messy with Ms. Jessi

Snowman Freebies!

Today is the first day of the break I have given thought to what I'm going to do when I get back in the classroom! Our first week back is, of course, winter-themed. I will begin addition with my kiddos in January, so I created a "Draw a Snowman" activity. The kiddos love doing these. It's available for free in my TN shop, click here!

I also wanted to share a wonderful emergent reader freebie I found at CanDoKinders. She is so sweet to share this - the kiddos dress their own snowman as they read along. 

Nutcrackers and Target Love and Trees

I am in love with these nutcrackers! I did a drawing lesson following the directions from the amazing blog, artprojectsforkids.org. She has a whole Nutcracker Series. The kids then traced pencil lines with sharpie (one with reluctance... "but Miss Brooooowwwn, I'm not allowed to use sharpies!" Her parents have trained her well)! After sharpie tracing, they erased any pencil lines that were left over. We used my shiny tempera paint for big parts and cray pas for face, beard, hair, eyes. This project followed a reading and discussion of The Nutcracker, listening to the music and attending a puppet show version at the Dallas Children's Theater.

Have I mentioned that I LOVE the Target dollar section? There is so much inspiration to be had on those shelves. So, my latest finds are these cute, plastic Christmas-themed jars and these packs of tiny plastic ornaments! Each item is only $1 so that even a poor private-school teacher can have fun stuff in the classroom! Here is how I am using both in the classroom:

I got one of each jar - trees, gifts and gingerbreads. I filled each with different amounts of candy canes. This is going to be a station this week in which the sweeties estimate how many candy canes in each jar, then count them. I created this response page to go with the center (that you can download for free here).

As for the ornaments, I will use them along with my Christmas Math (on sale in TN) sorting mat and graphing page. The kiddos will first sort the ornaments by color. Then, they decide how to share each color equally among two trees. They will record their findings on the response sheet.

One of my fellow Kinder teachers came up with this cute project. The kiddos trace three different sized hearts and cut out from anything you choose. My colleague used fabric, I used wrapping paper and scrapbook paper. For those of you in a Christian setting, there is a sweet poem that goes with it.

One more precious idea I want to share tonight and then I'm calling it quits for the evening! I got this idea from Pinterest - a mom wraps 24 Christmas books (that she already has) every year and puts them under her child's tree. The child gets to unwrap one to read at bedtime each night as a sort of Advent calendar. I adapted this for my classroom. 15 days of school until Christmas break, 15 kids in the class, 15 books under the tree, 15 names on the tree. Every day I choose a different child to take his or her name off the tree and unwrap a book to be read during snack. It is a great incentive for good behavior and they are always so excited to see what we be unwrapped!