Five for Friday (Linky Party.. Oh Yeah)

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday, Yeah!

Our Donors Choose project for our writing center got funded and the materials just arrived!!!  This has been an amazing year with Donors Choose, we are so lucky to have been able to get 2 projects funded for this school year!  We are truly blessed and appreciate it all the love, support, and donations!

My husband's chair that he 'HAD' to have arrived this Wednesday.  I'm not feeling it but he he keeps raving that this is the chair to have.  I'll just smile and say nothing else for this one, as long as he's happy.....lol

This little manzanita centerpiece was one of my DIY projects 3 summers ago when I was trying to figure out what type of centerpieces I wanted for our wedding.  I never did end up using it, but I LOVE my manzanita tree.  I change it up and decorate it every month, just for fun.  Can you see the small heart clips?;)

I made these shapes posters in the summer, but never did have time to complete the whole packet...I was finally able to sit down and finish it up this week.  My kiddos are going to be so excited to learn and review more shapes!

Finally my stairway wall is complete, I found the last piece for my decor at Hobby Lobby.  Hobby Lobby is my most favorite place to look for decorations for the house and also crafts for my classroom!  Now if only I could get the rest of the house looking amazing.  There is so much that I want...lol.  

Well I hope everyone had an amazing week!!  Happy Friday everyone!

Shapes Posters

Shapes, shapes, shapes!  We have been singing our shapes every day in school during our afternoon circle time or you may call it calendar time.:)   This year, I have been blessed with kids who really, really, and I mean really like to sing!  They just want to sing about anything and everything, lol.  

I had to shrink the shape posters to half the size since we were running out of space on our bulletin board.  It's funny because my kiddos were bummed out that we didn't have anymore shapes to sing...so here I am on track break.  

Trying to think of songs for the rest of the shapes....now the tune that we have been singing them to is: The Farmer in the Dell.  So, I wanted to make them easy, friendly, and fun for the kids to remember the shapes.  There are a few that you have heard out there for a circle, triangle, square, and rectangle.  

But what about a pentagon, octagon, trapezoid, star, heart, pyramid, and rectangular prism!!??  OMG, I was up yesterday and today, just trying to think of what I wanted it to say for those shapes.  Even my friend Heather thought I was crazy for staring at a computer screen and trying to come up with a song for those...thankfully she helped me with the heart and trapezoid.  

Kudos to my dear friend, who I tortured in the middle of the night with all the singing, lol.  She came to the house today and said...'Because of you, I can't get that tune out of my head.'  Oooops, sorry!!!  Didn't mean for that to happen.
Have a good night!;)

Visiting My Friend's School and Behavior Note Freebie

I was lucky to visit my friend Wendy today at her school.  She teaches half day kinder and it was really nice to meet all of her students.  Let me tell you, this girl is quite lucky...she only has 18 students in the morning and 15 students in the afternoon.  Can, you say WHAT??  It would be super nice to have a small class in kindergarten.  I straight up told her...'Wendy, I am so Jealous with a capital J!!'

I'm shocked at how fast the day went...it could have been since she kept me busy the whole day with helping her setup and organize her classroom, lol.  She was feeling pretty sick today and I am always happy to lend a hand.   

I really didn't expect to clean out her desk, inside and out!  I thought I was just there to watch and hang out for a bit.  It all started with another teacher coming in to ask for a rubber band and I couldn't find one in her desk.  So I offered to organize it and she did not hesitate on the offer, lol.  Here's a picture of my good friend Wendy and I.

After I was finished, she asked me to organize her writing center.  I love that she had these words on key rings and I added them to her writing center for the students to use when writing words, sentences, or even labeling the pictures.

I was able to watch her students follow simple directions and use different shapes to make a penguin.  I love how they all look different.  

Towards the end of the day, I had to take a few pictures of her classroom.  

Wendy can be so creative!  I miss working with her and seeing all her creative ideas when it comes to crafts!

I even had a chance to watch her do some Kagan strategies with her students at the carpet when they were sharing their daily news.  She picks a student each day and they help with counting the words, breaking down the sounds, and writing the words on a big sheet of paper.  Afterwards they return back to their tables to write their daily news in their journals.  

I'm so glad that I am able to go visit my dear friend and help her out during my track break.  I kinda want to go back and hang there during my vacation time, lol...I just had so much fun!

And as a special request by a follower, here is one of the behavior notes that I use in my classroom.  

Click here to download the file.

Look At the Goodies I Found

I'm on track break and the first thing I did on my day off was go shopping...of course instead of looking for things for home, I went out to look for goodies for my classroom.  

I seem to always go to the same stores, good thing they are all in the same area...sometimes I fee like I'm driving in a circle because of all the stops I make to each store, lol.  

Here are my goodies that I bought:

In Joann's, they were having a 40 percent off on Valentine items and I bought these cute valentine foam cards.  I just couldn't resist...I mean, it had both of my favorite animals: owls and monkeys.  I also stopped by the World Market and they had all of their Christmas items on clearance for 90 percent off.  Score!!  I was able to get this pop-up book for only $2.00!

My next stop was to the 99 cent store and I went straight to their Valentine section...they had so many cute things!!  But I had to fight the urge to buy it all and left with a cute foam owl, heart felt doilies, heart cutouts, and colorful mustaches!  If you know me by now, I  couldn't stop smiling when I found the mustaches...I had to buy 2 of them, lol.

The last place that I went to was my favorite store of all time, the Dollar Tree.  I tend to stay there the longest just to make sure that I don't miss out on any goodies that are there.  When I saw the owl pen, I knew I had to have it!

And to end my post, I am linking up with Mommy & Me Creations.  What a great way to find more new blogs!

5 for Friday and a Freebie

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching and posting a few pictures of my week.  It was actually a pretty short week for us since we were only in school for 2 days and then tracked out.  

Here are 5 random pictures of my week!

Can we say A-DOR-A-BLE!  One of my students' who is a 'FANATIC' of the minions brought us these adorable cookies for our afternoon snack!  My students had a hard time deciding if they wanted to eat them or save them to show their families when they went home.

 Wednesday was our last day before tracking out!  I really didn't want to go on break, I felt that it was just too soon...but that's how it goes when you're on Track 2..the breaks come to early.  Here is a pic of my classroom...we had to move everything to one side of the room.  I made my hubby come and help me of course!  

We went shopping at the World Market in search for a console table for the house and when I saw this...I had to take a picture.  I love me some mustaches...I'm thinking that I may buy the gift bag for my hubby on Valentine's Day and the small clips would look great as a decor for my manzanita tree center piece that I have in the living room.  Cute, cute!:)

I've been using my silhouette cameo 'A LOT' and having so much fun making things with it!  Here is a picture of the thank you cards I made for my students.  I can't wait to use it to make Valentine cards and crafts!  I already have a lot of images on my wish list to download, yipppy!

And last but not least, I have bought me a juicer!  I've been feeling blah and with the extra weight that I packed on during the holidays, is no fun.  It is time to get on the healthy side and during my track break I plan to juice as much as I can.  Crossing my fingers that I stick with it!

Here is a freebie just for you, just for stopping by!  Click on the image to download the file.

Snowman and Penguin Fun (Freebie)

We had s-n-o-w much fun learning about winter and how to build a snowman.  Here are a few pictures of what we did in January.  We made a snowman using shivery snow paint.  I got the recipe from 'Growing A Jewled Rose.'

The students wrote about their snowman in the writing center using a circle map that we made to describe our snowmen.

We made a snowman to see how many letters are in our name.  

To help us visualize how to build a snowman, we used Crayola Model Magic to build one of our own.

For this month's family project the students decorated a snowman with their families.  My kiddos love to use the microphone to share their family projects.

This week we learned about penguins and listened to many different non-fiction books to learn more about them.  We made a bubble map to describe a penguin.  If you look closely, I accidentally wrote Mrs. Penguin Solis...lol.  One of my students distracted me while I was writing my name and wrote penguin...they thought it was sooo funny.

I used the thinking maps from Kindergarten Smiles 'Penguin Unit.'  So cute!

We made a penguin and then wrote some fun facts that we learned about penguins!

This is a sneak peak of our bulletin board that we made using our penguins and snowmen.  I think the kids are going to love seeing their artwork on Monday!

And last but not least, we did a countdown for the New Year!

Here is a freebie for you just for being a follower.  

Click on the image to download the 'I Spy These Sight Words.'  Super easy to use in a center and the kids love to use a magnifying glass to find the hidden words. Hope you enjoy using this as much as my kiddos do!