Saturday, January 24, 2015

Game Day Giveaway and a FREEBIE!

I'm SO excited to be part of a 'Game Day Giveaway' with these amazing teachers.  Thank you to Gabrielle from Teaching Special Thinkers for putting this together!
I know this giveaway centers around the Super Bowl, but spring training is right around the corner, and in honor of my Royals I am giving away my 'Play Ball' Baseball Literacy Pack
Be sure to enter the giveaway for your chance to win these activities and so MANY more! Just use the Rafflecopter below! 

Now for my freebie…..in keeping with the baseball theme I have an 'I Have/Who Has' Baseball Number freebie,  Click in the picture below to download your copy!
Thank for reading and good luck!!!

Snowball Number Stamp It Freebie!

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for the Five for Five linky party to showcase some activities we did at school this week!

We practiced cutting out circles to prepare for one of our art projects.
The next day we traced three different sized circles with different shades of blue crayons.
Then, we cut them out.
The sweet learners then had to listen and follow teacher directions with visual cues…
Some skills we worked on with this project besides the tracing and cutting included: gluing the circles from largest to smallest, using visual perception skills to know where to put the arms, scarf, and face {for those learners still working on that skill, I will put a yellow highlighted dot to help guide them to the area}, and lastly we used more scissor skills to fringe the scarf.

Another snowman craft we did also involved the fine motor skill of tearing paper.  
This can be a very difficult task to many little ones.  They end up pulling the ends to the side instead go using a 'pinch, pinch, pull' approach.  For those that still struggled, we cut a slit at the top of the paper to get them started. 
We then added a hat, eyes, mouth, and a carrot nose.
IOf course once we got them started, some did not want to stop!  
We talked about leaving the white piece of paper large enough to put the snowman's face on but as you can tell……………not everyone could resist the temptation to keep tearing.
I love how each one turned out so differently.  :)
 
Here is our bulletin board full of our completed work samples.

We also worked on number recognition with this 'Snowball Stamp It' game.
You can pick it up HERE for free!  
We also read 'There Was a Cold Lady Who Swallowed Some Snow' this week.  We used part of my retelling pack to make our own retelling puppets.  The little learners had SO much fun with this activity!
 You can find my retelling pack HERE or click on the picture below to take you to the link.

We also did some activities at circle time from Creating and Teaching Winter Cookie Tray Free Sampler Pack.
There are some great activities included and it's FREE!  Gotta love that.  :)

Well, that was part of my week!  Check out others or post your own on Doodle Bugs Teaching 'Five for Friday'.
Thanks for reading!  Have a great day.  :)

Saturday, January 17, 2015

A Snowy Five for Five!

We are continuing our winter unit of study with snow and snowman activities.
 We created a snowy scene by painting the bottom of construction paper with white paint and then added snowflakes by dipping the tips of our fingers in the paint and adding them to the paper.
We added triangles that we had glued tissue paper onto. 
We added torn brown construction paper for trunks and voila!
I think they turned out beautifully.  :)
 
 We read 'The Snowy Day' and then created the scene from the end of the book by mixing shaving cream and glue for the snow at the bottom, then added Peter and his friend, stamped snow by dipping the end of a thread spool in white paint.  The final touch was adding a statement in the the form of a snowball that read "The friends went out in the deep, deep snow and they ……….".  Many of my sweet little friends wanted to make snow angels and get in a snowball fight!
Some math activities with a snowy theme included counting snowballs (clear gems) gathered in a mitten…..
 then deciding which friend had greater than or fewer than their friend.
 We also stacked Unifix cubes by the color and number on the mitten.
We compared towers to show the representation of numbers.
W
Everyone loved this activity!
Mandy  from A Special Kind of Class created this interactive book on 'How to Build a Snowman'….
After reading the story, we built a snoman on our magnetic Teamboard according to the directions of the story.
Then, we glued the sentences at the bottom of each page to make our own reader to take home.  This really helped the little learners understand print concept. 
It was a wonderful activity.
We made another snowman craft by listening and following teacher given directions.
 
We tried to recreate a pattern to make the snowman socks.  The morning sweeties did an AB pattern, while the older afternoon learners worked on an ABC pattern.  I sprayed the finished product with adhesive spray and then sprinkled it with glitter.

Join up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday.
Thanks for reading!  Have a great day.  :)

Friday, January 2, 2015

The Snowy Day Freebies!

I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching and Five for Friday.
I'm super excited to actually have blogged three days in a row.  That hasn't happened in oh so very long.  May my new found motivation continue.  :)
I finally finished my 'The Snowy Day' Retelling Pack.  


You can find it HERE or by clicking on the pictures.  It feels good to get something accomplished.  It's been a long time coming.  

 Since I will be doing 'The Snowy Day' when we return from break, I made this freebie as a table time coloring activity.  There are two versions.  One with color words that correspond to color needed and the other with the color words in black.  That way you can adjust for the level of the learner. 

My littles in the morning are just starting to understand the concept of colors and also need to work on coloring within a defined space, but many of my afternoon sweeties are working on reading color words.  You can pick up your own copy HERE or by clicking on the photo.
Last year I made this freebie that also goes with a 'Snowy Day' theme.  Grab it HERE from TpT 

I've had a lot of request for the templates I used for 'My Book of Nursery Rhymes' when I did a nursery rhyme unit of study.  You can find it HERE from my TpT


store or HERE from my TN store.  Please let me know if you need or want anything else added.
It was SO good to spend some time with my own kids over the holidays.  My daughter visited from Arizona and was able to catch some much needed snuggle time with our dog.
My son cracks me up with his 'swag'!  He asks for the funniest stuff for Christmas, like these silver tennis shoes.  Pretty sure he's the only one who would want to pull this look off.  :)
Love my babies!
Link up your week with Doodle Bugs Teaching!
Have a great day.  Thanks for reading.  :)