We Just Can't Wait! Plus: Sir Paul McCartney!!!

Did I say, "Sir Paul McCartney?"  Yep!  You can see the pix further down, but first...

Just one more week until our One-Day Workshop:

Spend the day with Heidi, Sarah, and me on Saturday, October 5!

Click on the image for more information.

Start the day with Heidi, from Heidi's Songs.  She will dazzle you with the songs and activities she uses to teach English Language Arts.

Click on the image for a map & registration.

Enjoy a boxed lunch and then spend the afternoon with Sarah and me, from KFUNdamentals,  as we take you through our fast-paced "Make & Take" Common Core Math workshop.

You will leave with new songs to sing and math activities to share with your pre-school, TK, kindergarten, or first grade students on Monday morning!

And as a bonus, for all of you McCartney fans, check out this.  I got to attend the" Jimmy Kimmel Show Live!"  on Monday night.  Paul was the special guest!!!

Sound check @ Jimmy Kimmel Live!

The concert on Hollywood Blvd.
 after the interview in the studio.

See you all tomorrow!

Palma :)

Orange You Glad It Was Orange Day? Grab our FREE "Orange" song and See the SNOW!

We had so much fun making fresh squeezed orange juice from organic oranges, learning the song about how to spell orange, and wearing orange!

First, let me tell you that I'm up at Mammoth Mountain where it snowed last night!  How can it snow when Starbuck's Gingerbread and Peppermint lattes have not even come out yet?

Last week, we celebrated the color orange.

We all wore orange on Friday:

That's my wonderful sub who had a
volunteer text this photo to me.

We made fresh squeezed orange juice:

Each child received 1/2 of an organic orange and they each got to juice it and sample fresh squeezed orange juice with all of their five senses!

We looked at the oranges with our sense of sight.
They looked and felt different on the inside than
they did on the outside.

We listened to the juice being squeezed out of the orange.

Smelling the juiced orange.

We tasted the sweet juice!

We sang the "Orange Song": 

and completed a mini book about the song so they can sing it at home with their families:

To the tune of "The Farmer in the Dell"

O-R-A-N-G-E,  O-R-A-N-G-E,

Oh, I know how to spell orange,

O-R-A-N-G-E!

A Jack-o-lantern's orange,

And it can look spooky,

Oh, I know how to spell orange,

O-R-A-N-G-E!

You can also make a thinking map 

about things that are orange:

You might like our Color Day calendar cards.

Or our Color Day notes to parents in both English and Spanish.

Or our Color Class Books.

The set comes with a special book for individual students to create too.

And our Beginning of the Year Bundle is a great value!

Just want to show you where I was this morning.

I took a fly casting class on Horseshoe pond up in the Mammoth Mountain area in California.

Simply stunning scenery!

See you all tomorrow!

Palma :)

Stop The Car!!! LUNCH, FREEBIES, & FUN plus a WEEKEND SALE!

 To Celebrate Our Upcoming 1-Day Fall Conference...

I'm throwing a weekend sale, but first...

LUNCH, FREEBIES, & FUN:

Spend the day getting inspired, with great ideas for 

Common Core  ELA and Math for Pre-K, TK, K & 1st grade!

Saturday, October 5

Costa Mesa, California

Click the image for more info.

Enjoy a morning of inspiring music and movement with Heidi Butkus from Heidi's Songs, 

and an afternoon filled with new math ideas at a fast-paced 

"Make & Take" workshop with Sarah and me.

The day includes LUNCH, FREEBIES, and FUN!  

You will leave inspired with your arms filled with new activities for your students and 

tons of amazing ideas to use on Monday morning!

Now, for the sale:

This Weekend:  Our Best Sellers are on SALE!

Our Beginning of the Year Bundle:

Our Bundle is
$10 for a $19 value!!!

The bundle includes all of these things:

(Click on the images to see the products.)

First Day Certificates

Comfort note for parents

Our Letter-Name Book

You write the names of
the children who have an
"A" or an "a" in their
names on the "Aa" page...

Our Daily Diary Journals  

The text changes as the months go by.

I use these Journals to re-cap the events of each day.  The VIP of the day gets to illustrate the page.  

At the end of each month, I glue a class list behind the cover and use it to check off the names of each child who got to take the book home.  It's a great way to let parents know what is happening in your classroom.  

Also on SALE:

Our writing journal with a 4-star rubric on every page. 

 It includes templates with blank lines as well as sentence starters:

Our 4-Star Writing
 Rubric Journal

A sample page.

Our Kissing Hand Addition Book:  

Our Kissing Hand Book

American Symbol Writing: 

Flag template

Students write on the dotted lines, color the blank lines red, and illustrate in the star area and add a blue background.  From afar, these will look like American flags.  Up close, you can see the writing and the illustrations.  For younger students, like pre-k, T.K., and K, I take dictation and and they copy from my sample.  For 1st grade, they do the writing with assistance.  

Learning To Write Our Numbers:

Templates include
review pages too.

And some FREEBIES:

Perfect NumberCards

Donation Tree

 We hope you can all make it to our 1-Day Fall Conference in Southern California on Saturday, Oct. 5!

Click the image for more information.

See you all soon!

Palma :)

Our Mellow Yellow Day: Recipe for Individual Cups of Lemonade & a FREEBIE

We celebrated "Yellow Day" in TK!

We all wore yellow, we made individual cups of lemonade, and we made a book about yellow things!

Preparation:

First, I requested organic lemons from our parents by placing a Post-it on our "Giving Tree".  You can grab our Giving Tree FREE here.
I also requested cups, organic sugar, and filtered water.  My great parents had everything we needed at school by 8:00 A.M.  :)

Wow, this has been
downloaded
over 460 times!

Here it is mounted on construction
paper and laminated.
You can use any type of Post-its.
 The apple ones are so cute! 

Then, I brought in my juicer and a small knife to cut the lemons.  Now, this juicer is older than me, and I'm pretty old!  Yep, it's about 60 years old and it still works great!  You can use any juicer, even a fork inserted into a half of a lemon works well.  Just juice over a strainer to remove the seeds.

It's hard work!

They loved working hard to make their own
lemonade!

You can usually find a juicer like this one for about $10 at a swap meet or flea market.  My son bought one, power sanded it with steel wool, repainted the base red, and gave it as a gift.  It looked so amazingly retro!

Problem solving when the juicer started to move.

I like the way his yellow crown covered his eyes.
I didn't have to smudge out too much of his face!

He loved squeezing his own organic lemon!

How we Made Lemonade:

OK, after each child in my small group of 4 juiced 1/2 of a lemon, we poured 1/2 cup of water into a plastic cup.  

Spills are OK.  That's why we worked on
yellow construction paper.  :)

It was interesting to see who knew how to
1st: hold the white cup so it didn't tip, and
B: pour quickly enough so as not to spill.
(Do you like that 1st, then B thing?)

Then we added 2 teaspoons of freshly squeezed, organic lemon juice and 1 teaspoon of organic sugar.

Measuring wet and dry ingredients.  

When they stirred, they got to hear the sugar scraping the bottom of the cup as organic sugar tends to come in larger granules than highly processed sugar.  

Five Senses Link:

So, we saw the yellow lemons, smelled them as we squeezed them, listened to the sugar scraping the bottom of the cup, tasted the lemonade, and felt the bump lemons and the wet, cool lemonade.

Linking Our Color Days To Our Calendar:

For the first 11 Fridays, we celebrate our Color Days.  I use these Color Day Notes

and Color Days Calendar Cards to remind students to wear a particular color on a particular day.

The notes are
in both English
& Spanish.

You get 2 on
a page so they
are easier tocopy.

Color Day
Calendar Cards

You can find these items by clicking on the images.
Then, we make a Color Day Class Book for the color we are celebrating that week!  This download also includes an individual

Our Color Days
Class Books.  

This download also includes an individual student book.  This also integrated writing into our day.  :)

Enjoy keeping the FUN in the FUNdamentals!
See you all tomorrow!
Palma :)