SEASONS FREEBIES

I love teaching the Seasons. It is so much fun! We don’t do a whole lot of science and social studies, but this is a unit that is a must. I teach my whole unit around the Dr. Jean song Seasons from her Kiss the Brain CD. It is perfect for helping kiddos remember the 4 seasons. I do a brief intro by singing the song. I have a FREE PowerPoint on my Teachers Notebook account that I made to go with the Seasons song. Due to copyright reasons, it does not include the actual music. You can find that here. I also show the first couple of slides from the other FREE PowerPoint in my store. It includes the videos from BrainPopJr. that are WONDERFUL. You will have to have a subscription to BrainPopJr to access the videos. After the intro, we spend a couple of days on each season. I begin with Winter. (I start with Winter because the song does.) I show the slides from the PowerPoint on Winter and show the video. We discuss the weather, trees, what you wear, activities you do, and holidays we celebrate during the season. I use these books by Nuria Roca to teach the Seasons.

You can find them on Amazon.

We then begin our Seasons’ book. This book includes a large page of each season. Here is the cover for the book:

I have no idea where I got the coloring page, so I created a new one this year and added it to my Seasons’ mini unit. You can find in my Teachers Notebook store. The students just color it and glue it to a large piece of paper along with the chorus of the song.

Here is our Winter page:

Students just draw 3 circles (large, medium, small) and then paint them white. They had a scarf, hat, and face. They then add snow by using these rings:

They are perfect for creating that “snow” effect. You can see the Winter quote from the song on this page. I do this because when the book is complete, all the words to the song are in the book and kiddos can sing it to their parents.

Next is Spring. Here is our Spring page:

We create this by water coloring a coffee filter and adding a stem, and grass.

Here is our summer page:

This is a simple one. Just paint a sun and add googly eyes.

Last is our fall page:

For this page, students color a paper plate green, and add red, yellow, orange and brown tissue paper squares for leaves.

At the end of the unit, we staple them in order and send them home!

To wrap up our unit, the students complete an art project showing what the trees look like in each season.

I created a better template of the four trees and it is included in my mini unit! We have a lot of fun with this unit. The students LOVE their big book. If you want any of these items, just head to my Teacher’s Notebook store and grab them!

The Lord

I've been working on my seasons mini-unit that I will share tomorrow! It's late, but I have a quicky I have to share. I work in a very rural area. We have 320 students in our school, AWESOME parental support, and just a great environment. We have some pretty sweet kiddos. One particular family is adorable. They go to my church. Brother is in 1st grade and I have sister in class. PRECIOUS. Anywho...the first grade teacher read Wemberly Worried the first week of school. Students were asked to write about if they were like Wemberly and if they would be scared and why. Here is brother's answer:

Really? Do you not just melt? If you could only see this sweet family...Adorable. Oh. And today, brother brought his teacher a Nickel and Dime CD and they played it in class. That is what kind of school I work in. I know. I'm blessed! I'll be back tomorrow!

Where Does Time Go?

Seriously, where does the time go? Is it really the last week in September?? I’m not complaining because in 2 weeks I am FLORIDA BOUND! We (as in primary grades) have a major focus in math and reading. Only students who are on grade level have science and social studies, while the students below grade level are in interventions for reading or math. We do very little of it in Kindergarten, but one of my favorites is our Seasons unit. Love. It. We are currently finishing up and I will be back soon with lots of freebies! Promise. I am also still working on my Rainbow Word unit. I have baffled how all of ya’ll have time to do these FABULOUS 20-80 page units. You AMAZE me! I must seriously have a problem with time management. I don’t want to do anything but play with my daughter and spend time with my husband when I get home from work. I don’t start doing anything “me” related or “house” related until after 8:30 when she goes to bed. That is my time to get ready for the next day, clean, laundry, sew, blog, and pin. I just can’t get it all done by bedtime. These units I wanna get done just don’t. I’d love any tips you have!

I’m trying out the new Windows Live Writer. First Grade Parade suggested it so I’m giving it a whirl. We will see! I’ll be back soon with freebies! Have a great week!

I've Got Winners!

Thank you so much to those of you who entered! Here are my winnners:

Congratulations ladies. I'll be emailing you your writing charts soon! Check your mailboxes and let me know if you have any trouble! Thanks again!

Winners Selected Soon

You have a few more hours to enter my giveaway! I am giving away 3 of my monthly writing charts in celebration of having 100 followers!

Please enter on the post below! Thanks!

Giveaway and Store Opening

As promised, I have a giveaway. I reached 100 followers about a week ago. I am so excited. Thank you to those of you who read! I LOVE blogging and have gained so many great ideas from ya'll!
As you can see to the left, I have FINALLY opened my Teacher's Notebook store. I am in the process of making sure all of my creations are "copyright free" and then I will begin posting them.
I have placed my first item in the store. These are monthly writing word charts.

 I use these in my "homemade writing desks". (Pictures to come soon.) Each month, I post these for each student to use at the writing center. If you don't have writing desks, you could laminate and have available for students to use as needed. This package contains months August/September - May. I did not do a June/July because we are not in school at this time, however if I get a lot of requests for this, I will be more than happy to create and add to the package.

So...now for the good stuff - the giveaway. I am giving away 5 of these monthly writing charts. You can earn 1 entry for each:

• Become a follower of my blog and leave a comment letting me know you are
• Add my button to your sidebar and leave a comment letting me know you did
• Blog about my giveaway and leave a comment with the link of your post
• Follow me on Teacher's Notebook and leave a comment lettign me know you did

I will choose a winner on Sunday night, September 18th! Thanks!

I Can't Believe It!

I cannot believe I have 110 followers? What??? How did that happened? I am SUPER excited!! Thank you, thank you, thank you! I am currently working on a giveaway for you! I have been working on this (along with my still not completed rainbow words unit) this past week. I hope to have it finished by Sunday and also open up an account in Teacher's Notebook. Hang in there with me!
It has been crazy busy for me lately. I am in charge of our school T-shirts. We do a different color for each grade as well as the option of stripes or polka dots. It has been crazy the last few years with teachers trying to take care of their class orders and then get it correctly to me, so the TYPE A in my came out and I took it all on. Yep. You heard that correctly. I am taking ALL 350 orders and trying to sort through sizes, colors, money, etc.
In the midst of this, I thought it would be fun to do staff sweatshirts too. We had a contest on the logo for these sweatshirts. There was a tie between 2 so our new staff shirt will say the name of our school in zebra print font and the logo "Everything is better in the country"
How cute is that? We are located in a real rural area with lots of farm around us. I thought it was precious! So....that's where I've been. I'll get it together this weekend. THANKS!

Top Ten Award

How excited am I? Crayons and Curls named me as one of her Top 10 Blogs and gave me this sweet award! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Thank you Crayons and Curls. It is very hard for me to nominate an award to only 10, but here is who I love!



She is so creative and has the most fabulous downloads. My favorite is her Common Core Standards for Kindergarten. I swear it has saved me HOURS of time each week!




Mrs. Preppy is the only other "blogger" in my school district that I know of. She has great ideas and is preppy like me! She is new to blogging like me, check her out!






Live, Laugh, Love Kindergarten always has great ideas too!She has lots of freebies. She is also a pinterest junkie like me!

Little Miss Kindergarten was one of the first blogs I found this summer when I started looking into blogging for teaching. I had NO idea all of these blogs existed. She has tons of cute ideas and is always the first to let you know about great deals, freebies, and awesome finds!






A Place Called Kindergarten I just found Friday, but cute! I love how she has already done a reader's theatre with her kiddos! How awesome is that?

Such a cute blog! Lots of freebies. Check her out!

I am so overwhelmed with how organized she is and how she can multi-task. She creates FABULOUS posters with her class. She has the cutest classroom and also has 2 other blogs. One dedicated to her family (adorable) and the other to share recipes. This girl cooks some GREAT food all the time. I have no idea how she does it! Remember: I don't cook.

Room 36 is very crafty. Her classroom is adorable with all of her polka dot created items!



She got a new makeover recently by Dreamlike too! Lots of great ideas and freebies!


She's just plain cute! Very creative and funny too!

I have had so much fun blogging. I love it! I am a much better teacher this year due to all of the great ideas. My house is also much messier because I blog instead of clean! :)

Have Fun Teaching

Please tell me everyone knows about Have Fun Teaching? My teaching partner found it about 2 weeks ago on You Tube. It is FABULOUS and the kids LOVE it! It is very repetative and so interactive. I have an ACTIVboard and we play the letter we are learning everyday that week, then on Friday as a treat, we listen to all of the letters we have learned. They have all of their videos on You Tube, but they also have a website. Here are a few of their videos:



Today I found a sight word video for THE:

This seems to be the only one they have but they are working on more. You can view all of their videos on YouTube or from their website. You can purchase the alphabet DVD for only $20. That is SO on my purchase list for next year! I'll post about some of my other favorites from YouTube soon!