Love The Earth!

Hello Kinder friends,

Are you out there wondering what to do for Earth Day? If You need a little help I have some inspiration for you and some fun and free stuff. Hop on over to the Science Lab to get your Earth Day hat tutorial and some freebies to decorate your hats so that you are super ready to celebrate the day with all of your tree hugging, Earth loving friends!

Follow me and let's go to the lab!

 

Updates!

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Howdy Friends,

Whew! It has been a busy week. Lots of things going on inside the classroom. As we beginning to wrap up our Texas unit in class. I wanted to let you know that if you have previously downloaded the Texas Our Texas unit please check your messages from TpT to download the new additions. It seems that the ideas from friends, family and the kids just keep coming and we are really having a blast with this. In the new download you are looking for Jumping Bean Number Combinations and the new addition of Texas Landforms. I am afraid before it is over that there will be one more thing to update. So instead of 80 pages we are hitting 100 this time around!

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We have found a few more books that fit well with our Texas unit.

And if you made it this far... I am having a sale this weekend in my TpT and Teachers Notebook Store as I gear up and get ready to travel across Texas for a conference. I am hoping to see fields of bluebonnets along the way and if I am lucky maybe some Indian Paintbrushes.

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Since I will be away for my birthday, I am bringing this with me just in hopes that my friends will share it with me and somehow I just don't think that will be a problem.

Happy Trails Friends!

Almost forgot... Science Units will be updated and uploaded soon!

Pizza Delivery!

In honor of my teaching friend Miss B hosting her first pizza themed Math Night, we are all getting a goodie bag of a few pizza printables that are sure to make your next pizza party just a little more fun! Click on the image above to take you to your free download! Maybe Miss B will share some party pics with us!

ENJOY!

Come To The Carpet!

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Here is something cute, simple and to the point.

 

Oh My! Guest Bloggers Stopping By!

I am super excited to announce that next week I will be having guest bloggers posting on my blog while I am away for a conference. I am so super excited to have these bloggers come and join me on a very special week for me...my birthday week and fast approaching my blog anniversary. Not only do I LOVE these blogs but I have gained so much from all of them. I am so excited about this line up and I am sure you will be too. I know I will be super excited to go to lunch and check out all of their posts! I think this just might keep me from having blogger withdrawal. So far the line up includes...

So far this is the lineup but I have more up my sleeve! And these are listed in no particular order because when I say I love them all...I mean it! 

The Posh Box!

The Posh Box is currently having a fantastic giveaway. I hope you hop over and enter this one. If you win you could walk away with a fabulous blog of your own. The best part is this... Pam at The Posh Box is one of the most wonderful people to work with. She has incredible talent to walk you through a project and has the unique ability to see your vision and make it come to life. I have worked on several projects with her and I am always amazed at the final product. I love her style and the way she stops at nothing to finish a project with every single little personal detail. There are several chances to win and enter in this giveaway. Click HERE for giveaway details. Trust me this is so fabulous...I am entering as many times as I possibly can!

Take 2!

Here is an updated freebie for you but with adjusted margins for better printing!

Free For You!

This simple tool has helped my students plan for non fiction writing and we were so happy about it we wanted to share it with you!

Thank You Friends!

I wanted to stop by and say thank you to new and old friends for having fun with my class as we learn about Texas. As I said before I have searched the world over for a unit on Texas and could not find one. I was excited to find the graphics to make this project possible. I wanted to let you know that the TpT file has once again been updated and you should soon be notified to redownload the updated file. I apologize for updating and updating and updating BUT it gives you extra resources to use and that is not so bad! Currently in class we are working on landforms and that will be included as well. I appreciate your encouraging words and feedback. Thank you for everything.

How To Writing!

In class we are working on non fiction writing, specifically "how to" writing. It did not take long to figure out that I was going to need a little help in this area because my class had little experience (or so they thought) with doing things independently and not many children could easily come up with a topic for their writing. I decided to create an experience that they could recall when they were planning for their writing. I decided to teach them How To Make Texas Toast.

In my neck of the woods we have something called Texas Toast and this is my inspiration for our non fiction writing. I remember as a kid making cinnamon toast was something that I could do without help and to make toast you need just a few ingredients. Once I started talking about toast, almost everybody could relate to either making it or eating it so they were hooked. I explained that I was going to teach them how to make Texas Toast. As I walked through the writing demonstration, I kept my illustrations, wording and steps to a minimum so that we all could focus on the steps of writing a how to. After I finished the children were able to follow my How To Anchor Chart and make Texas Toast. It was pretty simple to create this learning experience just a toaster, bread, butter and cinnamon. When we were closing our writer's workshop, it was interesting to hear how many different things the class could come up with after just experiencing this simple lesson. I noticed that they were super motivated to write and share their writing plans for the next day. I could hear them talking about how to this and that and I could hear some pretty elaborate writing plans. The anchor chart helped me with a much needed visual and a reminder to keep it simple and for my children not to get lost in the wording.

I guess the only problem now is that the class wants to know if they can write a How To Make Texas Chili...will we make it? Hmmmm, sneaky just sneaky!

Roll With It!

Sometimes you just have to roll with it! When I was talking more Texas with my class today the kids had some great ideas and it kind of made me think. They have asked me for some more Texas inspired activities after reading L is for Lone star.

I decided that sometimes you just have to roll with it! Good news is this... If you have purchased the Texas Our Texas Unit already, then you will get an email telling you to download the updated file when changes are made. When we work through something new in class,  I will add it to the download and you will get the new stuff that has been updated. I think that is one of the best parts of Teachers pay Teachers and it is a feature that I use all of the time. I added to three popular files last night and I will continue to do that as needed.

Above is a picture of marble painting our Texas shapes and it is from last year. I had to post it because it reminded me of just rolling with it! It is kind of hard to argue with a class when they are asking for more. I will let you know when an update has been posted. I am super excited to share with you what my have helped me to create!

FREEBIE ALERT!

Hello Kinder friends,

If you stopped by the Science lab to grab your free copy you need to stop by again and get the update. I had trouble with my school computer and the margins. I was worried that you would have the same problem. So, one more time, grab it and get out there and investigate!

 

FINALLY!

I can't believe it but the Rock Investigation unit is finally finished. I have posted it to my TpT store if you would like a copy. This download is full of nothing but hands-on fun for any budding Scientist. In this unit we explore the properties of rocks and learn about natural resources. Guided Investigation Mats are the cornerstone of this unit and each investigation comes with recording pages. Investigation Mats help the classroom teacher present the information and teach young children how to investigate independently. The Recording Pages allow the child to investigate and then record their understandings. This resource would be a wonderful way to integrate Math and Science and the investigations would work well in Math Stations or Math Centers while integrating Science. The culminating activity to this unit is sure to make your young Scientists begging for more! 

Right now in the Science Lab is a fantastic freebie from this unit that I am sure you will be able to put to good use! Have fun investigating!

Greetings From Texas!

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Howdy Friends,

So much to share and so little time... Let's get to it. We have had a Texas sized heaping helping of fun learning about Texas, the symbols of Texas, learning some basic map skills and how ordinary people helped to shape our State.

We started out by learning about our flag. One of our favorite projects was painting flags to display for Open House. We learned that our State is called The Lone star State and that each color of the flag has meaning.

Red stands for bravery.

White stands for purity.

Blue stands for loyalty.

We were also able to compare and contrast the Texas flag and the American flag. We learned that both flags are made of the same three colors. Both flags have stars and stripes. We learned that the American flag has more starts and stripes than the Texas flag. We noticed that both flags were rectangles and they were the same size in our classroom. Once we started talking about flags we noticed flags around our school, in our neighborhoods and in the community.

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Before we went on Spring Break we learned about Stephen F. Austin. He is the father of Texas. We learned how ordinary people, just like us, made contributions that shaped our State.

We learned where Texas was on our United States map and we learned how to identify the city we live in and the State capitol of Texas. We learned that the capitol was named after Stephen F. Austin. Naturally we were interested in where our friends and relatives were located on the map. We really wanted to know exactly where our pen pals were!

In my previous post I shared just how much I loved this book. And considering we were talking about Texas, we just had to create our own lesson for this because it was just to good to pass up. Like I said earlier, I went through several different versions of My Map Of Texas. I was super lucky that we had some rain days and I had a group of children that would try out just about anything for me. As I watched and listened to them as they worked, I was able to create version 2 then 3 then 4 and so on.

Here is version number 3. I have to admit some versions didn't even get a picture. As I was preparing for this post I realized that I did not have a good picture of our last version but I promise I will post it for you when we return from break because we were all just itching to try the new version!

So, after all of these versions what did we actually learn? We learned to create and interpret visuals, including pictures and maps. We learned that maps are pictorial representations of information and there are different kinds of maps.

We were getting ready for Texas Public School week and Open House so we had a few projects to complete. The hats are from our Take Home Project activity. The children take home cardstock copies of the hat and decorate it with their families. We had some creative hats this time around.

As with all of our projects the children try to match their own skin color with the paint, paper or crayons in the project. At this point in the year children can actually name their paint or crayon color!

 The multicultural paint sold by Lakeshore is my favorite because is has a great variety of paint colors and the paint names are common and familiar to the kids. It is always fun to see who is toast or cinnamon or toffee.

I was super excited to talk about the things we see in Texas especially our State Flower The Texas Bluebonnet. These is nothing that reminds me more of traveling across Texas than bluebonnets.

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We had to make our annual Texas Bluebonnets!

Here's my right hand man Diego. He is never far from my side. He's following my guided art instructions just smiling away. I wonder what he is actually thinking as I am saying blend, blend, blend, twist, turn, blend...

Before we left for our break we just had to have some Armadilly Chili because chili is the official food of Texas.

It was the best chili ever. And we learned that chili is much better shared with friends!

If you would like to follow along and learn about Texas with us just click on the image above to go to my store.

Happy trails to you until we meet again...