Little Gardeners

It's planting time again. This is one of MY favorite activities - planting lima beans. I always plant a bean too, but last year nothing sprouted. We planted the beans yesterday and when they got to school this morning, they were expecting to see some sprouts. Nope, they're not magic beans, sorry.

After we finished planting, we wrote in our plant journals.

Open House is in four weeks, I'm hoping everyone's plant sprouts and there are no casualties. Seems like someone always drops their cup or breaks the stem.

Our next activity will be our vegetable tasting party. We'll be graphing our favorite veggies.

Let's Get Together

 Today's the day! Do you live in S.Cal? In the Orange County area? Come join us at Cheesecake Factory at 1:00 pm at the Irvine Spectrum. And don't forget your camera.

February Activities

There's always so much going on in February!!! I love seeing all the activities everyone is doing with their students. There never seems to be enough time to get everything done! But here's what we've been doing so far this month.

We started off with Groundhog Day. We graphed whether our Pomona Phil would see his shadow. Then we made these headbands with our predictions. The headbands came from Mailbox Magazine.

Then we took Pomona Phil outdoors to see if our predictions were correct.

And yep, he saw his shadow! Six more weeks of winter for us! The kids got the biggest kick out Phil seeing his shadow and then realizing they could see their own shadows as well.

Next up, the 100th day of school. I wanted to make a t-shirt that I found on someone's blog. It looked like the easiest thing in the world. But it wasn't, at least not for me. It turned out to be a hot mess!!! Ruined a very good cheap t-shirt.

We made crowns

counted out 100 fruit loops to make necklaces

counted by 10's to sequence school busses on their way to school

We also made a hundred link paper chain, and brought in 100th day collections. I would have liked for them to make their 100 year old portraits but NO TIME!!!

Valentine's Day was simple. We graphed the colors of the Sweetheart candies. I used the graphing pages from Teacher bits & bobs blog.

After this, we passed out our valentines and finished up with cupcakes that a parent sent in. Those 2 activities took up pretty much the whole morning.

And that's been our month so far. Still working on president activities but end of trimester testing is taking up much of our time. This year is flying!

A New Year and an Award

Happy New Year everyone. It's been awhile since I've been here. I find out I've been awarded the Versatile Blogger Award by three wonderful bloggers. Thank you so much.

So here are the rules for accepting this award:
1. You must thank the bloggers who gave you the award.
2. Share 7 thing about yourself.
3. Find 15 bloggers who are new to you and nominate them for the award.

So here goes, thank you to Alex at The Teacher Diaries, Laura Starnes at Kinder Kraziness, and Tanya Solano at Ms. Solano's Kindergarten. Please go on over to their blogs and check them out.

Seven things about me, hmmm....
1. I've been teaching kindergarten for 12 years. It's a grade I said I never wanted to teach. Then I got moved to a new school and kindergarten. I LOVED it and don't want to teach anything else. (and I don't have to deal with standardized testing)
2. I am addicted to Starbucks' peppermint mochas and did you know that they really serve them all year long and not just at Christmas? Well they do, so I drink them all year long. Except for summer, when I switch over to the blended ice kind.
3. I love to craft but don't have as much time to spend on it as I would like. School gets in the way.
4. I love watching The Big Bang Theory. Sheldon makes me laugh but I would hate to have him as a friend.
5. Brownie and ice cream is my all time favorite dessert. Yum, I feel like have some right now.
6. Vegas is my favorite getaway place. I love that ITeachK is held there during the summer.
7. I always have to read the book after I see the movie at the theater.

15 blogs....well, here's the thing: All the blogs that I was going to give the award to have already received it, some a few times over, OR, they have not been active for several months. So I'm going to cheat a little on this rule. But I'll keep looking.

Bloggy SoCal Get Together

OMG! Thank you so much to Hadar for putting this lunch together! I wish everyone could have come, but then we would have needed a bigger meeting place. heehee.  We met at the beach and the weather was very nice. People were actually laying out, getting suntans. OK, I didn't think it was THAT warm.

Anyway, I was sooo excited to meet everyone. I had sooo much fun. I'd met Fran at the ITeach K conference and couldn't wait to see her again. She made all of us these cute little gifts. Isn't she great!

I loved chatting with everyone, laughing, OMG, we laughed so much, listening to everyone's great stories. The one little disappointment (yes) was that it was too short. I didn't get a chance to talk with everyone.  Parking meters that were about to expire and other appointments interrupted our time. But I tried to get pictures with everyone that came. Madison left before I got my camera out. :(

Oops, sorry Kristin, didn't mean to get you coming out of the ladies room. The rest of the ladies:
Hadar, Annie, Kerri, Lindsay and her adorable baby Jack.

Mikaela, she doesn't have a blog yet but of course read about the get together and came so that she could meet everyone. She's a K teacher in Long Beach. (sorry that I am probably not spelling your name correctly) Gwyn, Fran, and Nancy. Nancy came all the way from Barstow with her kids. woohoo for her!!
These are the blogs of all the wonderful ladies that you see here. If you don't follow them yet, go check them out.
Kristin - A Teeny Tiny Teacher, Hadar - Miss Kindergarten Annie - The Moffatt Girls, Fran - Kindergarten Crayons, Kerri & Lindsay - Teacher bits & bobs, Madison - Life With Mrs. L, Gwyn - Preschool Printables, Nancy - The Apple Basket Teacher
I can't wait till we do this again.

Another Pinterest Inspired Post

One of my favorite parent gifts to make for Christmas was the hand print snowman ornaments. They are so cute but a lot of work. I haven't made those in years, ever since our class size went up to 32. Anyway, I've been cruising around Pinterest and saw the cutest thumbprint ornaments!

You can go here to Meet the Dubiens, to see the snowman, elf, penguin, and Santa.
If I had seen these in time, I might have tried to make them with my students. They are definitely do-able with 32 students. Instead I made them with my niece.  I found some small red ornaments from the previous Christmas, got some paint and this is what we came up with.  The Santa didn't come out that great but Rudolph was my favorite. I will definitely be making these next year!

An Award

Oh how exciting! Yesterday when I opened my email, I saw that 2 very sweet bloggers, Cindy and Holly,  nominated me for an award.  That made my day.

This award is for newbies, and it's goal is to spotlight up-and-coming blogs with less than 200 followers. If awarded, you must:

♥ copy and paste the award on your blog

♥ thank the giver and link back to them
Thank You for this award!

For The Love of Kindergarten
Joy of Kindergarten

♥ reveal YOUR top five picks and leave a comment letting them know

Through The Looking Glass
Having Fun From K-1
Kinderdi
kindergarten days
Mrs. Stamp's Kindergarten
 
♥ hope your followers will share the love with them :)
Please go and visit their blogs and join their sites!