I am joining some fabulous bloggers to celebrate Khrys from Keepin' It Kool In Kinderland. She is throwing a HUGE 100 follower giveaway! One lucky winner will win over 25 products and 3 winners will win a product of their choice from Khrys' TeachersPayTeachers store. I hope you will check it out!

 
 
 
 


 
 
 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I hope you will enter this giveaway! This will end NEXT Wednesday February 6th when the clock strikes midnight. Can't wait to find out who the super lucky winner will be!

A Sweet Little Freebie {Consonant Blends}

Hi Sweet Friends,
Valentine's Day is coming right up (along with a slew of other mini-holidays) and it's time to get prepared! Like my motivation!?!  Well, it's purely cybermotivation..in reality I'm curled up with my blankey and my puppy just about ready for bed at the ripe ol' time of 8:33 PM! :)

I do have a fun consonant blends freebie for ya with a Valentine's theme. It's a part of my brand new Sweet Little Valentines Literacy Centers pack.  It's still 20% off through tonight!

Want to win this pack?  Enter my giveaway here. It ends this Friday. I am picking 2 winners and there aren't too many entries so you have a great chance of winning!!

 My sweet little kinders are going to be working on consonant blends beginning on Thursday.  I am SO excited for the fun ideas my student teacher and I dreamed up today after school to teach about blends.  A different blend themed stuffed animal friend is going to visit them each day with a blend-filled message to read and activities to do!  I got the initial idea from Heather at Heather's Heart last year when she post about the cutest blend ideas ever.  I am going to TRY to remember to take a picture of each stuffed animal friend and their letter to the class, as well as the blend activities we do. Now that I have a student teacher, it will be easy to take bunches of pictures...right!?! So far I know that Flo the Flamingo, Grady Groundhog, and Steve the Snake are coming for visits to my classroom:).

Here are the goods...Enjoy! Leave me a comment if you grab my freebie, please:).

Click here for the GoogleDoc.

Guest Post!

Dear Readers, I'm hosting a guest post today by Carla from Preschool Powol Packets. Enjoy! -Kelly First of all, I want to thank Kelly for having me over today!  This blog is a wonderful resource, and I am very excited to be here!

This is the first day of my two-week blog tour celebrating the release of my new Ebook, Bears & Butterflies: 41+ Hibernation Activities!  As part of the celebration, I am visiting some amazing blogs, sharing free printables, and giving away a $10.00 Amazon Gift Card!!  Keep reading for more blog tour details!

Today I want to share a fun and easy science lab that meets science and math standards and gives students a chance to explore.  I call it Pipette Party.

You will need: 

• a disposable pipette for each student (I recommend plastic disposable 1-ml pipettes)
• a muffin tin with six pockets (or similar container) for each student (or a set for the center)
• goggles for each student (or a set for the center)
• three large plastic beakers or large cups for each group (or center)
• water
• washable paint

Procedures:

1- Prepare the science station by filling the large plastic beakers/cups half full of water and dissolving a little washable paint into each beaker.  Make one red, one yellow, and one blue beaker.

2- Review science safety and show students how to use the pipettes to transfer water.  Ask them what colors they think they can make and encourage them to experiment by using the pipette to mix colors in their tins.  Instruct them to record three of their experiments using a sheet like the one pictured where they place one drop of each color they mix and one drop of the final color onto the worksheet.  Show the students how to rinse out their muffin tins and reset the station. 

3-  Talk about it.  Which new color did they like the best?  Was using the pipettes difficult?

4- If your students are already pros at mixing colored water with pipettes, try adding a beaker of oil and see what your students observe!

Blog Tour Details:

1- To celebrate the release of my new Ebook, Bears & Butterflies: 41+ Hibernation Activities, I will be visiting eight blogs during the next two weeks.  Each blog tour "stop" will include a freebie or flash giveaway AND a chance to enter a drawing for the Amazon Gift Card!

2- All readers of Kindergarten Kel can download these Hibernation Word Searches here for FREE!!

3- To enter the drawing for the $10.00 Amazon Gift Card, just leave a relevant comment to this post!  (If your email isn't in your public profile, include that in your comment too.)  Everyone who leaves a comment at a post on the blog tour will be entered in the drawing.  Since there will be eight stops, you will have eight chances to enter.  Visit Preschool Powol Packets for a schedule and more details.  A winner will be drawn on Saturday, February 9th. 

Thank you again, Kelly, for hosting me today!! 

Sweet Little Valentines Centers Flash Giveaway

Hi Everyone,
I must have finally caught the bug that has been flying around my school and have been on the couch all weekend.  The good news is that I could finally be productive with making teaching products again!  Here is what I came up with...

These Sweet Little Valentines Literacy Centers are just the thing to keep your sweet little kinders or firsties busy and productive during the days surrounding Valentine's Day. For the next 2 days, they are 20% off!

Click here to see the product on TpT.

Click here for TN.

Here's the giveaway part: If you pin or blog about my new Sweet Little Valentines Centers, leave me a comment with the link to your pin or blog post (yes, you can comment twice if you do both).  I will pick TWO winners at the end of the week (Friday, 2/1/2013 at 11:59 PM CST).  They will get my centers for free:).

Thanks so much! I hope everyone has a great week with their kiddos!

Asking for Prayers!

Hi Bloggy Friends,
I know you all have big hearts and right now I could use some prayers and help from you.  My husband has three cousins, Ben, Emma, and Natalie, who all were diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis (CF) at birth.  For those that don't know, CF affects the lungs and digestive system.  People with CF live with symptoms such as: persistent coughing, lung infections, wheezing/shortness of breath, and poor growth and weight.  The median life expectancy age for someone living with CF is late thirties.

My husband's cousins are excellent students in college and high school.  Ben has studied abroad, and Emma and Natalie are involved in high school life and are busy applying to colleges.  They make the most of life, have a strong faith in God, and are just fun, happy people to be around!  We are a close family and really love spending time with all three of them.

Here's where I need your help:
Right now, Emma is battling a bad case of pneumonia, which can be extremely dangerous for someone with Cystic Fibrosis.  Because of the flu outbreak, she is receiving treatment (IVs and antibiotics) every six hours at home.  Hopefully, the drugs will do their magic, and she will recover in a few weeks.  Please pray for Emma and a speedy and complete recovery!

My husband, Jon, is doing a CF "Climb for a Cure" fundraiser in honor of Ben, Emma, and Natalie.  He will climb 50 flights of stairs at the IDS Tower located in downtown Minneapolis on Feb. 2nd.  He is asking for pledges to benefit the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation to help find a cure for CF.  Please go to this link: http://www.cff.org/LWC/dsp_donationPage.cfm?idEvent=23350&idUser=606608 if you are willing to help with a small pledge.  Every little bit counts!  If you would be willing to forward the link on to friends, family, and/or co-workers, that would be amazing.

Here is a short video about the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FpbTIzYiVP8


Thanks so much for your prayers and support!

Tell Me Something Good

Well, my friends.  It was another long one!  A meeting before school, field trip and IEP meeting after school...during assessment week...gotta love it!

I thought this would be an appropriate time to divert my attention to something happy and positive, so I'm linking up with Rowdy in First Grade's Tell Me Something Good linky.

Something Good At Home: It's my husband's birthday on Thursday and I have a big surprise for him!  I am so excited!  I will have to fill in you later this week:).

Something Good At School:  The end is drawing near...the end of TESTING that is!  My quarter two report cards will soon be done.  I plan to spend my report card work day organizing my classroom and prepping for by student teacher.  I just went to Walmart and spent my leftover classroom budget on BINS, BINS and more BINS!!!!!! Yay! I am weirdly excited to get going on a major clean out.

Snowman/Winter Theme Ideas

Hi Friends,

Today was one of those days where I breathed a deep sigh of relief and let out a little "Whoop Whoop!" when I finally got in the door at around 7:15 PM.  12 hour work Mondays are just a little too much for my liking (okay it wasn't actually over, of course I brought stuff home to do, too).  Did anyone else have a MARATHON of a Monday??

I have finally remembered to take some photos of the fun winter art projects we have been doing.  I am going to try to remember to take pictures of the rest of our winter themed "stuff" that is around our classroom tomorrow.

I have to say that I got all of these ideas from various places...co-workers, Pinterest,  blogs, etc. and tweaked them to work for my class.  I think that's what teaching is all about...sharing ideas but also taking into consideration the needs of our own classes.

Up first...We read Snowmen at Night.  We used "snow paint" to marshmallow paint snowmen being mischievous at night!  The kiddos loved it!  I did this project slightly differently than last year.

Here is how I made my own version of " snow paint" . I added some white paint to glue and cheapo shaving cream to make the paint a little more solid white.

We used big marshmallows to paint the snowmen and mini mallows to paint the snow flakes. I clipped on clothespins to reduce the mess!

Here is our mess of a scrap paper bin.  The kids used scrap paper to decorate their snowmen.

"My snowman drinks cold choklit at night"

A snowman that likes to eat apples and bananas!

A hot dog eating snowman...maybe my students were hungry while making this project!?!

Here is another project we made after learning all about snow! I do this one every year, so I think I may have blogged about this last year. We did several snowflake science experiments to see what happens snow melts and how fast it melts in different temperatures.  We discussed that snowflakes have six sides, are made of ice crystals and dust, and are all different from one another.

We made this project by cutting paper snowflakes and taping them to blue paper to use as a stencil. Then we sponge painted over and around the paper snowflake.

Our unique snowflakes!

We talked about words that describe snowflakes. Every student thought of two words to describe their snowflake.

"My snowflake is cute and star-shaped".

"My snowflake is cute and big".

For a special math project on Friday, we worked in partners to cover a snowman shape with cotton balls.  Before doing this, students estimated how many cotton balls it would take to cover the shape.  After the project was finished, the students counted the cotton balls and recorded them on the blue paper shown.

We read The Mitten and The Hat by Jan Brett and compared/contrasted the books.  We did lots of activities to accompany The Mitten but of course, I only photographed this one!  We made a class book called Our Big Mittens.  Each page reads _____'s mitten is so big that a ____ could fit in it.  The children came up with some very creative things that could fit in their mittens!  The children cut out a mitten shape to tape over their illustration.  The mitten acts like a flap.  This book will definitely become a favorite in our classroom library!

 Hope you enjoyed the pictures.  Don't forget that I am brand NEW to Teacher's Notebook and everything in my store is 50% off today! Click here on the graphic below to check out my products.