Leap Year Sale!

Hi Everyone! My TpT store is on sale in honor of the extra day in our calendar….it is a Leap Year! I hope that will help you get some of those things that have been sitting in your shopping cart.

  

Click the link above to get to my store and get everything on sale for today only. Enjoy!

Giveaway!!!

Have you heard? There are TWO days left to enter to win a $50 TpT gift card from Planning in Paradise. That is a lot of resources for your classroom. Click here to enter for a chance to win. YAY!

 GOOD LUCK!!!

Valentine: Cheap and Cute

The Dollar Tree makes me happy.  Anyone else? There is something about walking through the local Dollar Tree, especially when there is a holiday fast approaching! It is a store FULL of teacher treasures! Wouldn't you agree? This weekend I went and found heart shaped crazy straws.

I pretty much squealed when I saw there were 6 in a pack for a dollar. I may only teacher First Grade math, but I knew pretty quick that meant CHEAP! I love CHEAP and I love CUTE. This was definitely BOTH for our upcoming classroom Valentine Exchange. Candy is great (Reese's pieces are my favorite, lol!) but they get so much of it and well, this was something a little bit different.  I grabbed 4 packs and before I could even get myself home, my brain was already thinking of a little saying and how I could attach it to the straw. I came up with a few sayings, but I kept coming back to this one: "I am CRAZY over how SMART YOU are!"

Once I printed them out, I just punched two holes and slipped the straw right on through. Viola. Done! If you need something to give your kiddos for Valentine's and you like this idea - you can get a copy here. Enjoy and Happy Valentine's Day!

The 100th Day of School!

I am linking up with other Kindergarten teachers to share some of the ideas that we LOVE most.

The 100th day of school happens in the month of February for me…the 8th to be exact, and I wanted to share a few ideas. A day (or two) before our 100th day celebration, I snap a photo of each student in my classroom…just a little head snapshot. I either print them off on my computer or upload them to Walgreens. The morning of our 100th day, I placed that photo on their table when they come in…but to their surprise there is one MORE photo on their table too. It is a photo of them at age 100! How? I upload their photo to an app called: Aging Booth. It is super simple and with a few taps and swipes, I have added wrinkles, gray hair, age spots and more! 

Here I am after my aging booth makeover:

Hilarious for sure! 

The students take both photos and glue them onto a special (paper) frame, then share them with one another. At the end of the day, they take the two photos home!  You can grab a free copy of the frame here. 

This is what the Aging Booth app looks like in the app store: 

  Here is my outfit courtesy of Kmart:

(a housecoat, slippers, pearls, red lipstick and ankle highs) There is a pair of glasses and a scarf that I wear as well.  I ask my kiddos to dress up and join in the fun! Many of my colleagues dress up and let me tell you - the laughter that day is abundant! Take a look at this photo of several teachers from my school - where do I even begin??  HA!

Needless to say, the school day is filled with all sorts of creative ways to celebrate the number 100. I would say it goes down in the books as one of the most memorable days of year! And that is exactly why we do it again, each and every year!  I also send my students home with a 100th day certificate, because after all - we are all 100 days smarter!

Click here to download

How do you celebrate with your kiddos?  Please leave me a comment, I would love to know!

 Happy 100th Day!

An InLinkz Link-up

Pioneer Butter

Pioneer Butter. Cool name. Sounds fun, right? It is what we called the butter we made in our classroom while we were learning about life, "Then and Now." We named it pioneer butter because we did not buy it from the store, we made it ourselves!  We shook it until we felt like our arms were going to fall off and then we shook it some more. That is just what life was like back then, it was HARD work. But in the end we had butter and that was exciting!

How did we do it?  You might know, but if not here goes:

I divided the class into teams of fours. Each team got a small plastic container with a lid.

We filled it half full with this heavy whipping cream.

Before we closed the lid we dropped in a marble. (This is kind of like a "timer." We shake the container until we can not hear the marble move.) That's how we know the butter is done!

Then the container got passed around within each team and we shook it, and shook it, then passed it and passed it…and kept it going and going and going. It takes a lot of shaking…and the kids will probably say their arms are getting tired. But that's good, ask them to shake it just a little more. Then someone will say, I can't hear the marble anymore. (Perfect, it must be done!) I carefully lifted the lid so the kids could ooooooh and ahhhhhh. Then someone noticed that it was not a liquid anymore - it was a solid instead. 

I quickly gave each team some crackers, a plastic knife and their container of pioneer butter, letting them go to town spreading and eating. Then I heard, "This is the BEST butter I have ever eaten!" …a few seconds later I heard, "this is the BEST day ever." 

Yeah... Firsties are fun like that.

Yum!

Need a little "how to" make pioneer butter response sheet? Click here.

Welcome and a Giveaway!

Welcome to my new Class of Kinders Blog! One of my New Year's Resolutions was to start a blog and thanks to the amazing Jolene with Paisley's n Polka Dot Blog Designs…I have! I can not say enough wonderful things about her! She was a pleasure to work with and really helped me through the process! If you are in the market for a blog or a new design, she has the best deal around.

I hope to use this blog to share my teaching creativity! Here you will find classroom ideas, my Kindergarten and First Grade TpT resources, plus freebies and giveaways! If you are a Kinder or Firstie teacher, it might be fun to follow my blog so you can be updated.

Let's start off with a GIVEAWAY! To enter  for a chance to win a $25 Teachers Pay Teachers gift card {good for any seller} go to the right side of this page and FOLLOW ME by adding your information under "JOIN THIS SITE." Then click follow Class of Kinders on the rafflecopter below and leave me a comment letting me know you have done so! One winner will be selected randomly and receive a $25 TpT gift card (by email.) The giveaway ends on Thursday 1/21.

GOOD LUCK and WELCOME to my BLOG!!

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