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Sunday, March 31, 2013

Earth Day & Mother's Day: One project! :)

We use recycled colorful magazine pages to create beautiful beads for our Mother's Day necklaces.
Here is a pic-tutorial:  (Is that even a word?)    
 Earth Day & Mother's Day... Together At Last!


This project is almost FREE.
Start by cutting lots of colorful triangles that are about 1 1/4"-1 1/2" wide by 3"-5" long.
Gather some round toothpicks, white glue, and stretchy beading elastic (find it at Michael's).


Begin by rolling the shortest end of the triangle tightly on the toothpick.  
(No glue yet.)


Younger students might have better results by using a wooden skewer 
instead of a toothpick, but everyone of my kindergarteners have been
 able to do this project for the past 3 years using round toothpicks..  


Sometimes it takes a few tries to get the hang of keeping the wrapping tight, 
but they do eventually get it.  :)
Keep wrapping, keep it tight!


Here is where you add a line of white glue.  Keep wrapping and don't worry if the glue oozes out.  
Wrap to the end & add a little glue to the surface of the bead to seal it.  

Slide the bead off of the toothpick and allow it to dry on some wax paper or in a waxed paper cup.




Use elastic beading thread to string your paper beads.  
Add other little beads to make a cool pattern.
Just tie off the end with a few good knots.  


Students like to use a color theme, like all blues, or all earth tones.  
Our moms loved these soooo much and actually wear them!
Let me know if you have any questions.  :)

We make these necklaces around Earth Day and save them for Mother's Day when we also present our moms with a beautiful, handmade hat, made by their child.  I'll post about that this week.  :)

Slappin' Sight Words!

This idea is so simple & FREE! Just die cut a variety of colorful hands, write sight words on each hand, laminate, and attach to your door. As your class lines up to leave for anything, call out the sight word they should slap.

 Remind them to slap only once and call out different sight words so they don't just copy the kid in front of them.

Those of you familiar with the Houghton Mifflin sight words can see that I have mine grouped by trimester.  :)

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Time For A Break. How About Fly Fishing?

First, let me say that no fish were harmed in the making of this post.
Actually, we fly fish barbless and release all of our fish.

For those of you in So. California, there is a FREE Fly Fishing Expo next weekend.

These photos were taken in California at a beautiful little stream in the Sierra.

Could this be the river the Gingerbread Man tried to cross?







My Spaghetti & Meatball Pointer

Yes, this Italian has struck again with another pasta idea.
 This pointer, Spaghetti & Meatball, reminds children to leave enough space between each word for a meatball, but only enough space between the letters of a word for a piece of spaghetti!


How cute it that?  And you can make it so easily with a bamboo skewer and a wooden bead from any craft store like Michael's.  Just paint the meatball brown or red (like mine) to look like it's covered with sauce.

My kids love to say, "Spaghetti, spaghetti, spaghetti, meatball...." as we look at the spaces on the sentence written on the board each day.

We use this with our 4 Star Writing Journal.

Friday, March 29, 2013

Working In My Classroom During Spring Break

I couldn't stay away.  I had made & purchased so many things for my students that I had to take them to school today.  And when I got there, I discovered my colleague, the kindergarten teacher next door, there too!  She is so dedicated!
I love the new things I got for my class.  New lamps (I love to use incandescent lighting around my classroom), puppets, pointers, and science experiments for my sweet students.  :)

Arriving at school with bags of stuff for my classroom.  



                                          This is our newest lamp.  Isn't it cute?
        (Oh, yes, the color wheel behind the lamp was made from paint chip cards.)


Some of our newest classroom puppets.
These are available on our TPT store.  



We Are Having A Spring Sale!

Scroll through our store to see what's on sale!

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Kfundamentals

Have You Seen Our FREE Song???

It's a new Days of the Week song sung to the tune of "Fridays I'm In Love" by The Cure.
Your kids and their parents will LoVe it!  Check it out here:

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/NOT-your-same-old-Days-Of-The-Week-Song

Fine Motor Fun

I saw this on a great site, but the "pin" link was broken.  Here is the site.  Just click on the photo.
I just saw these racks at the dollar store too!

Our New Logo on TPT

Here it is:

Thursday, March 28, 2013

I Can Teach ANYTHING With Pasta

Being Italian, I use pasta a lot in my classroom.  This classic butterfly life cycle project is fun and easy.
For the eggs, use pastina (tiny pasta found in most grocery stores or Italian specialty stores).
For the caterpillar, use spiral pasta painted green.  (Acrylic paints work best.)
For the chrysalis, use small shell pasta painted brown.
For the butterfly, use bow tie pasta painted orange.  I used White Out for the tiny white dots.
Glue the pieces to a green construction paper leaf and label like the photo.  Be sure to use white glue, not a glue stick.
Here, you can see one of the pages from our Memory Book.  It includes our raised bed organic edible garden.  :)

Just Added 17 More Puppets & The Big, Bad Wolf!




































Wednesday, March 27, 2013

We Decided To Offer Our Puppets on TPT

These are being offered at a GREAT price.  
  Just click on a photo to see where you can get this puppet!


Our Fire Fighter is one of our Community Helper Puppets.


The 100 Year old lady actually comes with gray hair.
  She goes GREAT with our 100 Year Old Man, Mr. Geezer. 
I bring them both out for Day 100.  :)
She also goes well with Little Red Riding Hood.


Baseball Player has a golden glove.  


Ahh!  The King of "Ing" is also great to use with our 




Ahh!  The Royal Queen is also great to use with our 



Our 100 Year Old Man, Mr. Geezer, is GREAT for Day 100!




Little Red Riding Hood goes great with our 100 Year Old Woman.
We will be posting our Big Bad Wolf soon.  







These retail elsewhere for $9.95 + shipping, but we carry them for less.