Hats and Help Please

I know everyone is done with their Dr. Seuss stuff for this year but we made these really cute hats on Friday that I just had to share.  I got the idea from Khrys at Keepin it Kool in Kinderland.  Click HERE to see her hats.  They are ADORABLE! When I saw them I  knew I had to make them since last year I made Cat in the Hat hats and lets just say they were a PROJECT!! I wanted them to be tall but then they wouldn't stand up, so we taped paint stir sticks to the back and then they were heavy and still fell over!!! It was a weeks worth of trying to make them work with no luck.

Now I love her hats with the painted hand Things but after my 100's day hat painting debacle (I won't bore you with the details again but I ended up with paint ALL over my shirt) I had to find a way to make them without the painting!  So here is what I came up with.

I loved Khrys' idea of having them call each other by their thing names so I made the circles to put on their hats and my kiddo's LOVED them! They thought it was great to call each other their Thing numbers, I even wore the Thing 1 hat for the day! If you would like to grab a copy of the Thing Hat circles, I have them linked up as a FREEBIE HERE!  I made them through 30, hopefully no one has more than 30 kiddo!

On another note, I reached 100 followers this weekend!!!!!  I never thought I would get to 100 followers when I started this blog in August! I am so grateful to everyone reads my ramblings and love all of the bloggy friends I have made! To celebrate I would love to have a giveaway....if anyone is interested in donating something I would be so thankful! Just leave me your email and I will contact you or you can email me at clearlykindergarten@gmail.com.

Oh and before I go my friend Jessica over at Fun in PreK-1 is having her 100 Follower giveaway and it is HUGE!  You really want to go check it out and enter to win!! Trust me! Click the picture to take you to her blog to enter.

Hope everyone has a great week!

Some Fun in Socks and More Word Families

We are having so much fun reading Dr. Seuss stories this week!  Today we read Fox in Socks and everyone wore their crazy or silly socks (except me cause I forgot and I was really late this morning, because I had to help tow my hubby's van out of the drive way, but that is another story, so I couldn't even go back and get my socks when I realized I forgot) But it was OK the kids forgave me! 

When we were done reading the story I took my favorite picture of the year! (We take lots of pictures during the year because we make each student a memory book with all of their pics, yes you read that right EVERY kinder gets a book filled with pics!) They turn out really cute but are A LOT of work especially if you wait to the end of the year to put them together, like I do!  I will have to remember to take pics of them this year and share!  Anyway here is our crazy sock picture!

 

We are still working our word families during our RtI time and I have the group of kiddos that get them already. So I was looking for some games we could play on the SMART board.  I went to SMART Exchange and found this great game!  It is just like the one the fabulous Khrys at Keepin' It Kool in Kinderland posted about here for sight words. They LOVED it! We had to throw a small stuffed dog at the circles to pop them since I didn't have a Koosh ball today, but it worked, most of the time.

Here is the screen that they throw the dog ball at.

When they hit one of the circles a new screen like this comes up.

Then I had the kiddo come up and move the word family part down and write the beginning sound to make the word.

If we hit the same circle again they had to think of another word that would fit in that word family and write it underneath.

They were begging to play this game again tomorrow!  I love when I find activities like that! Hope you can use it too!  Click here for the link to the game on SMART Exchange.  You have to have an account to download it but it is free to sign up!

Currently

Ughh I am late to the Currently party again, but better late than never I hope!  If you haven't already head on over to Farley's blog and link up, it is a fun one! My goal for next month is to make it on time! 

So here goes....

Listening - my own kiddo are watch some of Despicable Me before bed (I love that movie), so that is playing in the background.  OK so now that I am actually finishing this the kiddos are long in bed and I am listening to The Bible series on History...but I am too lazy to go back and change it.

Loving - I am getting ready for conferences next week so I have been redoing some running records on my lowest readers....and I am sooooo happy with how well they are doing! Some of them still have some work to do on comprehension but we will get there!

Thinking - I am going to be busy busy at work this week doing the Dr. stuff and testing for conferences. And of course it is also a super busy week with stuff after school.  A meeting on Monday about the human growth and development curriculum for my son's 4th grade class, a doctor's appointment for me Wednesday, and Thursday a big family night at my school and a big family night at my kiddos school (of course they are on the same night at the same time!)

Wanting - I really want to get to work on some ideas I have for spring for my classroom and TpT I just can't seem to squeeze it in right now!

Needing -  I am in charge of my teams 2 week fairy tale unit that we are doing right after spring break....so I need to get my backside in gear and find and make some good stuff for us.  If you know of anything good I would love to hear about it!

Like - I like the sand and can't wait for our trip to Florida at the end of the month!

Love - The sun...it was actually out today and even though it wasn't that warm it still felt like a taste of spring.

Hate - The snow...I am really tired of the snow and cold and driving in it. I really hope it doesn't snow this week like they say it is going to!

Hope everyone has a great week!  I am hoping to have time to post some pics of our Dr. You Know Who stuff this week. I am also starting to get excited about getting to 100 followers...so I am starting to think about organizing a giveaway.  Stay tuned for details!!

I'm a Cheese Head and Word Family Fun

As I was blog stalking Elizabeth at Kickin' It In Kindergarten, I found out about this great Linky where you can find other bloggers from your state!!  I love finding other Wisconsin bloggers....so some day (when it stops snowing!!) we can have a bloggy meet up!  Head on over to Diane's blog Fifth in the Middle and find your state and link up!!  She even has these cute buttons you can grab and put on your blog!

Now on to some Word Family Fun!

During our RtI time this week we are working on word families and I am lucky enough to have the group that  understands word families already! So we have been able to do some fun activities. 

Yesterday I gave them 6 word family endings and pieces of construction paper.  I asked them to each brainstorm 2 words that fit in each word family.  When they were done they each had 12 cards. Then I put them in groups of 4 and we put all of their cards in a large bag and mixed them up. Then time ran out for the day!

So today when they came in they got back into their groups and spread all of the cards from their bag in the middle of the table and played word family memory. If the words were in the same word family they were a match!  They loved it and it was even a little bit challenging for them because I gave them the -ick and -ock word families, so they really had to pay attention.

Here are some pics!

 Ready to play!

Woohoo a match!!!

Another match!!

Hope everyone has a great Friday!!!!!

Jury Duty and a Math FREEBIE

I wish I could post about all of the cute projects and learning we did last week but...........I really have no idea what my kiddos did last week!!! GASP!!! Why you might ask????  

Well I had JURY DUTY!! 

And despite my best efforts to fidget,  look and the clock and explain that my kiddos certainly wouldn't be able to live without their teacher I was picked to serve on a jury for an actual trial!!!!!  Obviously they have no idea how hard it is for a teacher to sit still and only pay attention to one thing at a time!! I was constantly reminding myself to pay attention to what was going on and not think about the other 100 things I could be doing!

The case actually turned out to be pretty interesting and I was able to come home at night.  However we had strict instructions not to blog or use other social media - GASP!!!!! I survived (barley)!

Of course since I wasn't planning on being picked so I only prepped for 2 out of the 3 days ahead of time. I was planning to squeeze in all of the fun projects that I didn't want to leave for the sub on Friday....alas no such luck...instead I was scrambling to make plans for Friday.  Luckily I have an AWESOME team who pitched in and made things so much easier.  My kiddos survived too.....mostly.....as Friday was also our drill day so they had a fire drill, tornado drill and lock down drill with the sub!!! (I felt awful for her!)  We did  have a serious talk today about the expected behavior during said drills regardless of if I am there for them or not! 

So to make up for not having anything cute to share from last week I have linked up a Teen Number Math freebie below.  I am using it as a recording sheet in one of my math centers this week, but you can also use it on its own.  In my math center the kids are picking a teen number card and then building the number with 10's rods and 1's cubes. Next they find the number on the sheet below and cut and paste the 10's rods and 1's cubes and make it on the ten frames. Click HERE to grab your free copy!  I would love to hear your feedback if you download it!

Hope everyone has a good week!  Hopefully I will have pictures to share this week!!!

Valentine's Day Sight Word Freebie

Happy Monday! I wanted to share a little love with you all before Valentine's Day.  I just finished another sight word book called You Can Have My Heart and uploaded it to TpT. Until Valentine's Day you can click on the picture below and grab it for FREE, after that it will become a paid item.  I am using it in literacy centers this week and my kiddos love it.  I hope your kiddos do too! If you grab it I would love to know what you think!!  Happy Valentine's week!

I Survived the 100th Day......sort of

Friday was our 100th day of school!!!  I love doing fun thing in the classroom but last week just seemed REALLY stressful, I HATE weeks like that.  Especially when I don't know why, my kiddos was really good so it wasn't that! I did have a parent issue that was drug out for the whole week (like I got an email on Sunday night and it wasn't resolved until the end of the day Friday!) and then turned out to be something really easily solved, so I guess that must have been part of it.  But anyway we did manage to have some FUN on Friday!

We started by making these cute 100's day hats.  My kiddos spent about 45 minutes or maybe more writing the numbers 1-100 in groups of 10 on strips for their hats. The kiddos did a GREAT job, you could have heard a pin drop in my room while they worked. Then they arranged them in order on a sentence strip and glued them down.  Next we added the cute front plate from the 100th day of school hat by Kinder Craze    and Q-tip painted the 100 dots.  The kiddos loved the painting!

 Then DISASTER struck!  It was my own fault!  I was being impatient! It was getting close to lunch time and  I had other fun activities planned!  So instead of waiting for the paint to dry before I fit their hats on them, I started stapling them while the paint was wet!  Can you guess what happened next?????  Yup I got paint all over my cute t-shirt that we had made just for the 100th day of school!  Oh and did I mention the paint was on my chest and that we had a staff outing that night at a local restaurant and I didn't bring any other shirt to change into and I had a meeting with the above mentioned parent after school!!!! So yes I met with the parent and went out for beverages with paint on my chest!!!  But the hats were cute!

So after lunch I hid 100 Hersey's kisses with the numbers 1-100 written on the bottom for the kiddos to find and put on our 100's chart.  I wrote this note and put it on the door to our room. They had to read the note before they came in and listen to the rules no running, you can only get one kiss at a time, you have to put it on the chart on the right number before you can find another.  I only had 1 (ok 3) kiddos walk around with a handful that I then had to take and hide again. And we only had 1 kiss we couldn't find (luckily I had extras and could write the number on the bottom and hide it quickly).  Yes that means there is still a kiss hidden somewhere in the room!

 Here is our completed chart!  You can't tell but it was an AABBCC pattern.  We then figured out how many kisses we could each have. It ended up being 5 per person!  They were excited!

In the afternoon we made the cute Zero the Hero craftivity from Foxwell Forest and read Miss Bindergarten Celebrates the 100th Day of Kindergarten. Then we made our 100's day snack mix with the 100 items each of the kids brought in.  They loved it!

 Overall it was a great day and I survived......but my shirt didn't!