Donors Choose HELP!

Hey friends! Shewwweeey! I am poop-did! I've got so much to post...including LAST week's dental unit pics, this week's Dr. Seuss pics, and most importantly freebies! Whoop whoop. But...before I do all that, I want to ask you all a question. How many of you have used Donors Choose? Have you had success? My project has been posted for almost 2 months now and I've had 1 donor! :(  I've advertised it on my blog, posted it on facebook, and have told friends/teachers/etc. about it. What am I doing wrong?  I'm desperate to get this project funded so I may have a "big momma" as I call it, in my classroom.  Does anyone have any suggestions? Any feedback would be much appreciated. You can view my project by clicking the link on the right hand side of my blog.  Thanks!

Brag Tag Freebie

Hey ya'll! Gearing up for a fun and busy week ahead! I should have posted these earlier, but maybe you can sneak them in sometime during your Dr. Seuss week. Every year, I print off these tags and staple them to a brown lunch bag. Students must go home and search the house for something, stick it in their bag, and write a rhyming word to match. I have a few present each day during circle and if we cannot guess what their object is by the rhyming clue, I allow students to give other clues to describe. It's a wonderful rhyme review and students LOVE it! Remember...all you'll need is the tag, brown lunch bags, and a stapler! Your students will add the creativity! Have fun! :)

Just click the document to head over to google docs!

Clip art: Scrappin' Doodles

Font: Felt Marker Thin

ATTN: all TN bloggers!

I'm so excited for this! If you are anywhere near us and want to meet up for some food, fun, and laughter...please contact Laura. You can visit her blog, {Kinder Kraziness} for more info. We hope to hear from you soon. The more, the merrier!!!

Dental Health and a freebie!

Hey folks! I'm gearing up for a little dental health FUN! Cannot wait for our visit from the hygienist and our "egg"speriment. I SO enjoy teaching this unit although the dentist is my least favorite place to visit. Amen? Anyone else have dentalphobia? ha I may have just made that word up. I snagged Cara Carroll's unit off TpT and am excited to put it to use. I found this presh idea on Pinterest and had seen it on a few other sites as well....but mark my word, we WILL be making these! LOVE!

On another note....I might floss every day if I had floss like this! Cupcake flavored....yes please!!

Here's a little dental health freebie from me to you, just click the picture to grab from google docs. Enjoy and leave me some love, please. Happy brushing and flossing!

Happy President's Day!

We've had so much fun gearing up for President's Day and learning about American symbols. DeAnna's unit has been a huge hit. I am beyond thrilled that I have today off and wanted to share with you a few pics from last week. I always try to do my units ahead of time so students know why we celebrate the holiday and why schools are closed in observance. So...yes, in the midst of Vday craziness, I was teaching my class about Presidents. ha

Math and Literacy workstations are a compilation of DeAnna's goodies, my stuff, and some Presidential freebies from Shannon's blog, Kindergarten Hoppenings. Students did a spin & tally, probability coin flip, poems, sorted by ending sounds, and other stuff - oh my. We.were.busy.

Here's another shot of more fun!  The far left photo is a printable from Kim Adsit's unit. Amazing! 

I was sooooo happy with the way these directed drawings turned out. Learning about the Statue of Liberty was the highlight of our week. I think their little drawings turned out amazing. I even had some 5th graders stop and ask, "Miss Eberhart...did your 5 years olds REALLY draw these?"

We measured the length of the Statue of Liberty's foot and marked it on the wall. Can you believe her foot alone is 25 feet long AND her big toe is taller than a man? That is one big shoe! Students predicted if they stood (shoulder to shoulder) would they be longer, shorter, or equal to the length of her foot? Hard to believe that with 23 kinders....we were shorter than her foot! Crazy! We tallied, graphed, and wrote about our results.

After learning that the Statue of Liberty was made out of copper and was...originally brown, students question why she turned green. We did a little experiment on copper pennies and turned them green to discover the answer! Fun stuff!!

Of course we learned allllll about Lincoln and Washington. Students used a fact sheet to record information they learned about our famous presidents. We even made George...not to be confused with Martha! ;-) ha ha 

We recorded our new learning on a Venn diagram and a large anchor chart. And, at the end of the week, we celebrated with a little food of course! My student teacher brought in a crock pot to melt white chocolate and red and blue sprinkles. Unfortunately, things do not always go according to plan and Ms. Estep and I had to result in plan B - which was white icing. ha ha Don't ask. Let's just say you do not want us in the kitchen....we manage to ruin everything. How you burn and curdle white chocolate is beyond me. Moral of the story - HAVE A BACKUP people! Nonetheless, kinders enjoyed a little "sparkler!" 

If you didn't pick up my FREE President's Day emergent reader....grab it below. Just click on the pic. Hope you've had a wonderful day off. 

Just.HAD.to.share.

Valentine's Day whirlwind

Whoo hoo! Happy Dance! I am back in business. Sorry I've been so MIA, but I've had computer problems and a near break down. I thought my hard drive had crashed...and I had lost everything...but good news - Geek Squad to the rescue!! I just want to give a shout out to the "geeks" employed by Best Buy in East Tennessee....YOU SAVED MY LIFE...and my MacBook! :)  I now have an external hard drive that has everything "backed up" on it and and brand new hard drive itching to be filled up with more goodies. ha Anyways...to get caught up.  Here is a glimpse at Valentine's in my classroom.  What is it with Valentine's Day?  The kiddos are super amped up and act wild interesting. ha ha 

We did all sorts of fun stuff in work stations...from graphing and counting by 10s to patterns and tally marks. It was a wonderful review for my kinders and they loved it! All of these ideas and more, can be found in my Valentine unit on TpT.  Just click {here}.

We also read Love, Splat! and did a little character analysis.  Students even compared and contrasted a few Splat! books and recorded their answers on a Venn diagram.  I stinking love me some Splat! He is the cutest cat everrrrr. Amen?

We plugged a little mess painting in during the week and made this sweet card for parents. A huge thank you for my student teacher for pulling my students back and grabbing their handprints when she could.  I'm pretty sure she went home multiple days with paint on her clothes.  Good thing it's washable! This cutesy little printable was snagged from Erica Bohrer. 

Our February family project was for parents to help their kinder create a box to hold their valentine cards. I was so happy with the way they turned out and students had SO MUCH fun at our party.

Check out this sweet thang! This is the little brother of one of my kinders. He attended our Vday party and I literally could've eaten him up. Maybe I'll have him in a few years? Every time I got near him with my camera...he said "CHEESE!" No matter if he had food in his mouth or what. ha ha PRESH! Lucky for me, we go to the same church...so I can get my fix on Sundays too! 

So I moustache you a question....will you be my valentine? hee hee Grab this sweet printable from the amazing Abby! My kiddies had a blast making these. Hope ya'll had a wonderful day filled with love!

Presidential freebie

Hey friends! I'm gearing up for Valentine's Day and trying to stay ahead of the game by being a few weeks planned out. While I should always do this....THIS never happens. It helps to have a student teacher! :) Anyways....while looking at some upcoming units, I started getting excited about President's Day. I just love my Presidential unit and am even more excited about it this year because I purchased DeAnna's America unit! Whoo hoo! I snagged a few pics of a George Washington project my students made and a bulletin board we put together out of their shadows last year. I actually drew my kinders' shadows for Groundhog Day and held on to their outlines for this bulletin board. Can I get an AMEN for killing 2 birds with 1 stone?! Yess!!! 

I put together this little informative booklet/emergent reader for my kiddos and wanted to share.  Most of the clipart was found on Scholastic. Students can "butter" the words they know, label the February calendar on pg. 2 and sticker President's Day with a gold star, and even draw themselves as the president on the last page. I hope you enjoy. I don't know about ya'll...but that 3 day weekend cannot get here soon enough!  Can't a woman get a cold front up in here?!?

Just click on the image to grab from google docs and leave me some love, please! Hope everyone had a happy day back. 

Holy hibernation, batman! (and a freebie)

We had so much fun last week....wrapping up January. Students learned all about bears and hibernation.  I bought Rachelle's bear unit and OMG - it was awesome. If you don't have it...you must hurry over to TpT and grab it.  Here is our week in pictures...

What I loved so much about this unit was that, Rachelle incorporated a ton of fiction and non fiction texts. Students took a break from reading about Grizzlies and Polar Bears....to learn about Corduroy the bear and how his character changed within the story. Students illustrated how Corduroy changed from sad to happy and made a sweet little Corduroy bear afterwards (see it in the middle photo?!) PRESH!

We did a little work in our poetry and math journals. You can grab the "Are you Sleeping?" poem {here}. That's a little gift from me!

Students learned all about hibernation and created a little hibernation scene out of Ellison di cuts and half a paper plate. They had so much fun creating snow with cotton balls and adding details. 

We also sampled bear food! Students tasted honey, strawberry jelly, and fish (tuna) on crackers. We graphed our favorite food and then wrote about it! I could NOT get over how many of my students loved the tuna. WHAT?! Pretty sure that would not have gotten near my mouth when I was 5 (I was...and still am a picky eater - ha ha). But, I was so proud of my kiddies for trying the "fish" and even happier with the ones who picked it as their favorite bear food.  Whoo hoo, way to go!

Here is a sampling of our finished writing. 

We even managed to mix bears into work stations. Here are just a few pics from the 10 work stations kinders rotated throughout. We graphed, measured, counted, patterned, learned about antonyms, added some new high frequency words, bear stomped syllables, and a partridge in a pear tree. These activities are compiled from stuff I had, Rachelle's unit, and Mrs. Huff's blog. Check out her hibernation post {here}. She was kind enough to email me some of her files to use during the week. And for free, no less. She rocks! Thank you Mrs. Huff!!

We wrapped up on Friday by having a "Teddy Bear Day!" Students brought in their teddy bears and we measured them and did some other fun activities. 

At the end of the day (shew), students enjoyed a cupcake...made by my student teacher. She found this great idea online and decided to plant a teddy graham inside a cupcake, so it would appear as if the bear was hibernating! Students LOVED this and couldn't wait to find their bear. Can you see him in the pic?  You must try it. They were soo cute! Well, sista over here is poop-did (as one of my kinders says) and I'm off to hibernate. Have a happy Monday. Is it that time already?

I have finally finished!

I have finally finished my Valentine's unit. Whoo hoo! This 51 page unit is packed with goodies and includes 5 math work stations that review:

Graphing

Tally Marks

Skip Counting

Making patterns and labeling

Roll and Color (dice/number recognition)

Items for literacy work stations  and literacy circles include:

Poetry

HFW practice

Pocket chart center

CVC practice

Splat the Cat listening response sheet

Splat the Cat glyph (and patterns hand drawn by ME!)

Splat the Cat tally table

Splat the Cat character analysis

AND MUCH MORE!  

This sweet unit is priced at $5.00 and can be yours today.  Hurry over and grab it from my TpT store! :)  Thanks friends. Happy weekend.