Back to Work & Read Across America Day

Happy Sunday folks!  Lindsay here . . .

I know some of you probably just fell out of your chairs.  Lindsay? Blogging?  It can't possibly be!!

But it's true.  I'm baaaaaaaaaack!

After taking a long teaching (and, apparently, blogging) hiatus after Baby Charlie was born back in November, I returned to work just in time for the 100th Day of School AND Valentine's Day all in one week.  It was pure craziness and sugar.

Here are some shots of my first week back:

One of my favorite 100th Day centers - 100th Day Gumball machines!!

 
Idea courtesy of A Cupcake For The Teacher . . .

 
Then we used Kerri's fabulous 100 Days of Fun packet and did all sorts of activities . . . like writing our numbers to 100!!  Yes, I had some students who were SO SURE they would never survive physically writing all of those numbers . . . but of course they did and it was fabulous!  They were SO, SO proud of themselves!!

 
For Valentine's Day we made "I love you to pieces" pictures for the kiddos' parents.  Painting + gluing puzzle pieces = fun in Kindergartenland.  (Hot gluing 300 popsicle sticks does NOT = fun for poor Mr. Messyhair at home!  Thanks babe for all your help!!)

 
We even did special Valentine's themed sticker stories in our journals!  My kidlets thought their little valentine pooches were just so funny!

 
And one of my sweet (and oh-so-talented) moms made me this delicious Welcome Back cake to enjoy with my lil kidlets!  (Yes, she made all of those little pieces with fondant!)

 

 

This week our district has Ski Week (really a week off for President's Day) so I am trying to get organized for all of the fun stuff that is coming up in March . . .

 

One of my favorite celebrations of the year is Read Across America Day, which in my classroom really gets turned into a weeklong celebration of all things literary and Seussical!! 

 

You can check out my whole Read Across America unit in my TPT store (just click the image below):

 

 
Your kiddos will love celebrating ready and Dr. Seuss with activities such as:

*Read Across America ABC order
*Real vs. Nonsenssical Words (CVC word practice)
*Rhyme Time (identifying and recording rhyming pairs using literature)
*Cats in Top Hats Sentence Scramble
*Write the Room: Read Across American Edition
*Read Across America: Write, Cut & Glue
*Favorite Nonsenssical Book writing paper

 

 

 

In addition, I am sharing my Dr. Seuss favorite book graph FREEBIE for y'all to enjoy!!

 

Well, that's about it for now!  I'm off to go spend some time with my crazy boys . . . Being back at work always makes our Sunday afternoons together seem so much more precious!

 

Hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend too! 

Lindsay

100 Days of Fun!!

Good Evening, Peeps! Kerri here...
Well, I am writing this inside the hospital because we are STILL HERE!! Dangit all to you know where! My daughter had a bit of a fever last night so they made her stay another night and let me tell you, she is NOT HAPPY about it ONE BIT. My hubby stayed last night so I could go to school today (it WAS the 100th day, after all!) and I am staying tonight so he can go to work tomorrow. Blecchh...

I was able to take a PLETHORA of pics today of all our 100th Day fun, so I thought I'd share! All of these activities are from my 100 Days of Fun Learning Activities Pack...

First up...100 year old students! I just love the bow tie and muu muu on these first 2 elderly folk...






 Grouchy old man and someone forgot to shave...for like 50 years!!
                       
                       

I just adore the hat on the first grandma up there, and those pearls are to DIE FOR, darling!!

Here are some more fun things we did today...

100 Days Trail Mix making

100-themed cupcake eating

100 Days Smarter Book prettifying...

Getting to have Zero the Hero AND his sister Zerona come out for a visit!

100 Days Smarter sentence unscrambling

putting numbers 1-100 in order...

Buying a pony with 100 dollars

100 Days smarter crowns and necklaces too!

 Lots of 100 year old portraits!!

Writing 100 words...

Adding 2 dice and coloring our way to 100...

Writing about our lives when we're 100 years old...

Whew! I'm exhausted just remembering it all!! And the 100 Days Smarter fun will continue all week long, because as usual I have WAAAYYY to many activities to squeeze into just one day! 

Well, here's hoping we get to come home tomorrow! Hope you all survive the big V-Day on Thursday!!

XOXO Kerri B

100th Day Wrap-Up and a Presidents Day Freebie!

Happy Wednesday folks! Lindsay here . . .

Well, as Kerri mentioned, today we had our wet and rainy 100th Day of School!  That's right. Nothing says fun like torrential downpour and fruit loop necklaces, right?  :)

I just had to share picture of some of our cute projects (more pictures to come later, I promise!). 

First, we made our 100 year old selves for art and wrote all about what it will be like to be 100 years old!

  

I love what the bearded gentleman on the left wrote: "I will sleep as long as I want. I will buy a dog and call him Jingle."   Priorities people . . . priorities.  If you want to enjoy your golden years, you most DEFINATELY need a dog named Jingle!

My favorite of our 100 year old art were the little old ladies with their hair in white buns . . . AND this particularly cross looking 100 year old man.  Isn't he hilarious?!

Then of course we made necklaces, decorated crowns, wrote about what we would do with $100, created gumball machines with 100 gumballs, glued our 100 items brought from home, and made trail mix.  Phew!!!  We were busy little bees today -  and my kids got everything done and said it was the best day ever!  (Cue warm, fuzzy feeling in my heart!)

Here are my kidlets counting 10 groups of 10 fruit loops for their necklaces.  

Writing their "I Wish I Had 100" poems.

Well now that all that madness fun is over, there is still more to do with Presidents Day!  I created this little Venn Diagram freebie to do with my kidlets now that we have learned about both Lincoln and Washington.  They were already making so many great text-to-text connections between the books we had read about both men.  I can't wait to stretch their little brains a bit more and really make them think of more similarities and differences between the two.

Click on the image below to link up with the document.

But the BEST moment of all during our mini-lesson on George Washington came as I was asking some questions at the end of the read-aloud . . .

Me (to students): Now do any of you think you know why they nicknamed Washington "The Father of Our Country?"

Student: Because he looks like my grandpa.

Classic.

Anyhow, enjoy the freebie, and hope you all have a great Presidents' Day holiday.  Our district gets a whole week off . . .not to rub it in or anything! ;)

Happy teaching!

Lindsay