I get by with a little help from my friends...

I was looking back through my photos from the last couple weeks and this one just stuck out to me... I think it is so sweet how they take care of each other... Makes my heart smile!!

I don't know what was wrong with me these last few weeks but I just couldn't remember to take pictures of all the fun we have been having... Here is what I did manage to capture!! :)



We made Deanna Jump's Scarecrow and completed the book that goes on his belly! We have been working on labeling so we added labels to our scarecrow's body. :) oops- just noticed my toes... I soo need a pedi!! :)











Here is the Roll Say Keep (Stamp) game we did during small group - they really got into the stamping part. :)



We did the Haunted House Patterning activity - they loved using the foam halloween shapes I found at The Dollar Tree. :)












We made Frankie and ended up using his as our door decoration!!


We have been discussing positional words in Math and my kiddos loved the Halloween position word with a Twist activity by Sue eth Arnold and Robynn Drerup! I can't figure out how to link up to them on my phone so if you want the link - send me an email and I can send you in the right direction. :) for a follow up we made an entry in our Math Journal and I was really impressed with how cute their little drawings were!!





Deanna's Sticky Web Experiment was also big fun for my babies this week. This was one of those "forgotten camera" moments. Oops!! :)



I hope you all have a restful weekend! My daddy is here for a visit and my baby girl is excited beyond belief. She loves her grandpa!! :)


This was a few weeks ago at the airport on our way to visit friends in Florida!! :)

Scarecrow Fun

I am so excited about this week!!!  

I had something totally different planned, but I came across an inspiration...

and POOF, plans started changing!!

I don't know how I missed this when Deanna Jump first posted this but O M G!!! How adorable is this scarecrow??????  This made me start thinking about all my other cute fall/halloween stuff that I have spent half my paycheck on this month - please tell me you can relate!!!!!  :)  

I had already prepared this:

from Mrs. Kim Adsit and her Fall Literacy Game Pack and I had planned on using it last week but just never got to it. So, Sunday evening around 7ish I made the connection between the 2 - SCARECROWS!!  I know - I'm a little slow! LOL!!!  This connection led me to a big hunt through all the rest of my fall stuff I had acquired over the past few weeks.  I found a few things, but I made a few things too!!  You know what that means for you????  FREEBIES!!  Yippeeeeee!!!!  Here they are!

Click HERE to download!

I made these to go along with Kim's Alphabet Scarecrow Roll Say Keep game I showed above. I have been trying to find a way to introduce stamps to my babies and thought this would be a perfect way.  Depending on the level I have in my group, they can stamp the matching letter the member of our group rolled, or they can stamp the opposite (capital or lowercase) letter that was rolled by a group member.  I can also put this in a center next week and they "should" be able to do this independently!!

Click HERE to download!

I made this color coded patterning activity for a math tub!  You should know the drill by now - Run the scarecrow on 6 different colors.  Cut and glue the pattern starters to the back of each scarecrow.  Laminate and you are good to go!!  I had a spider one, and a bat one like this but of course I didn't have a Scarecrow one - sooooo I made one!! :) 

We are doing some of the fantastic activities Deanna has in her 

Scarecrow Math and Literacy Fun packet and I will share some pics as we go!!  We are also doing some great activities from my other amazing fellow bloggers!  I can't wait to share!!!   I hope you all have a great week.  I had a short week last week and this week due to Fall Break for the kiddos - and staff development for us. 

Ron Clark on TBA!! RUN! DON'T WALK!!!

OMG!  Can you believe it???  Go over and check it out NOW!

Kindergarten Beginning Rubrics - FREE

YAY!!!!!!!  It is clean...well almost!!  

I just can't get away from having at least one pile, but I figured one small pile is better than one great big one right???  I really enjoyed reading all of your comments about my desk and love that I am not the only one whose desk looks like that sometimes!!  

The last few weeks have been busy for us.  One of the things I have introduced within the last few weeks is the RUBRIC!!  That can be a scary word for a kindergartener and an even scarier word for their teacher!!  Explaining what a rubric is and why we use it can sometimes be confusing at first for the children but once they see it and start using it they start to see how helpful they can be!  After I introduce them to a rubric initially, and they get used to seeing and using one, we begin making them together before they begin the activity!  Here are  a couple pre-made rubrics we have used in the last few weeks.

We used this rubric when we did Deanna Jump's Apple Poem Activity.

I used this activity mainly as a following directions activity... (I know you can imagine what some of them looked like at the end... :) ) So that was the focus of this rubric.  You can download it HERE.

This is the rubric I used for our Pete the Cat Project.  I think they turned out really cute!  I didn't do a lot with Pete but definitely plan on using it more next year.  My kiddo's LOVED him and begged to read it everyday!!

This rubric we did one step at a time and it was really neat to watch them consider whether or not they accomplished each task. :) You can find it HERE. 

Ok- on a different note, this week(a short week for us --- We are on Fall Break now!!  YIPPEE!!!) we finished up making our Apple Pie Graph, thanks to Kim Adsit and it was absolutely adorable!!  It has scalloped edges just like the edges of a pie!!  So cute Kim!!  I for some reason did not snap a picture. :(  My kiddos were not ready to complete the data analysis sheet she included in her Unit so I made one that my kiddos and I did together.

You can find the Apple Pie Graph HERE!

They completed their analysis while I completed mine on our Smart Board.  Wait - you can see just a smidge of our "Pie" in that first picture!! :)  You can also see a smidge of our new carpet bags in use in the second picture!  A big thank you to Kim again, for the fantastic idea!  I don't know who loves them more...me or the kids!  We get so much more done when they have their supplies right there and ready to use!!  They are also doing a great job of not touching or playing with them during our instruction time when we are not using them!! ;)  Losing their carpet bag is not something they want!!

Phew...this post seems to keep going and going and going...I actually started it this morning and it is 9:00pm and I am still not finished with it!!  Plus, Grey's is about to start... :) Must...Finish....Fast!! :)  I will make this last part quick - it is just a few snapshots of our fun sink or float activity!  I used our AIMS Web activity book our county supplies us with for the response sheet. (It was actually cute!!)

First we made our predictions...

Then we performed our experiment...

and marked what each object actually did in the water.  We were able to compare our findings to our  predictions

Finally, we recorded our findings in our Science Journal.

Time for Grey's!! :)

Is there a desk under there??

I just got back from bus duty and took a glance at my desk:


Please tell me I'm not the only one who has a desk that looks like this right now!!!!!!! :) things have been so crazy with new things coming down from our county and state I feel like I am doing good to tread water to keep from drowning!! We have done some neat things down here in the Polka Dot Patch and I have used some really awesome ideas from some really awesome blogging buddies!! I promise I will post pics soon!! Until then- keep your head up and remember why we bacsne teachers in the first place... children... :) I'm off to clean my desk... LOL