Five for Fraturday! And our Trashy Crafter WINNER!!

Good Morning, Bits and Bobbers!! Kerri here...

I'm linking up with Kacey from Doodle Bugs Teaching for her weekly Five for Friday linky party, but since last night I was pretty much good for nothing but laying on the couch in an exhausted heap, it'll have to be a Five for Fraturday post!

It has been HOT here this week.
 Like "I'm officially in HELL' hot.
Like "My classroom is 90 degrees (NOT exaggerating) because I have no air conditioning because I teach near the beach and it NEVER gets hot at the beach" hot.
My wonderful parents realized how dire our situation has become so guess what they did for us????
TADA!!!

Oh HAPPY DAY!!! Can you believe this??? We set it up in the front of the room that's the hottest and it was gloriously cool ALL DAY yesterday! Is it not the most beautiful sight ever?? I have decided that...
A) it is a male air conditioner
B) it is officially my new boyfriend (my husband totally understands, trust me)
C) He is British and shall henceforth be known as Benedict Cumberbatch the Second.
SWOON!!

We started our unit on Apples this week and did all sorts of apple activities and learned about Johnny Appleseed. Here are some pics of our week...

I asked the kids to bring in apples so we could sort and graph them (FREEBIE) and use them to make applesauce next week...

 Look at how many apples they brought in!! I'm telling you, my families this year are AMAZING! I think we can make applesauce for the entire school with all these apples!!

We did our first direct draw of Johnny Appleseed and added him to our apple trees...cute!

And made an apple life cycle flow map...

My Johnny Appleseed Centers are next week. There's just too much apple goodness to fit into just one week!

We started our Back to School super sentences book from my Super Sentence Unit and they kids went CRAZY!! They LOVED it!!! They said (and I quote), "I like writing super sentences, Mrs. B!"
Well, there you go.

I am ADDICTED to the British crime Drama called Happy Valley. It's on Netflix. People, if you like British television and you have Netflix and you like a good cop/crime/drama, then
 HOLY CANNOLI!
For heavens sake, stop what you're doing.
Find it on Netflix. If you don't have Netflix, get it. It's worth every penny.
Sit for the next 6 hours and watch the entire season.
It's that good people. It's that good.

My 4th Stitch Fix came this week!!!

Oh, sooooo good! I'm going to blog all about it tomorrow, however, here is what I have to tell you about this one.
Never, ever, ever, take a picture of yourself wearing your new clothes first thing in the morning if you are 40 years old and tired as hell. Not pretty. I don't recommend it.
You'll see tomorrow.

Finally, here is the winner of my Trashy Crafter bracelet giveaway!!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Congrats!! I'll be emailing you to get your details!!!

I'm off girls! Tune back in tomorrow to read all about my latest Stitch Fix and to win a $20 Stitch Fix gift card!! 
Praise Jesus, it's cooler outside today.
XOXO Kerri B

Five for Fraturday!

Good Morning, Bits and Bobbers! Kerri here…

Once again I am linking up with Kacey for her Five for Friday link party. Of course, I couldn't get my rear in gear to get this done last night, so I am late to the party AGAIN. Oh well, at least I made it!!

This week we made Snowflake Art and wrote a snowflake poem together. It was super fun! We also got .00001 inches of rainy drizzle (the closest we will ever gets to actual snow and it's not even remotely close at all!) on Thursday, which made my kids turn into Looney Tunes since they haven't seen a drop of rain since December 20th, NO LIE.  

They came back from lunch screaming and running around like wild banshees, not to mention they tracked about a pound of dirt and grass into the classroom from their feet. Seriously? We desperately need some rain so my kidlets can actually get used to it!!

The sweet people at Teacher Created Resources were kind enough to send me some classroom decor in their new line that is Chevron themed! OHEMGEEE!! Chevron! I am sooooo in love with Chevron!!

I had so much fun using these classroom decorations in my classroom. Check it out…

These Chevron Welcome letters are perfectly perfect on my Tacky the Penguin bulletin board!

I re-labelled all of the bins in my classroom library so they are finally all matchy matchy, thanks to the cute chevron labels that came with the Welcome bulletin board set!!

These name tags fit perfectly onto my drawers that house all of my units and centers for each month! I love the black and turquoise together!! 

I am still deciding where to put up this border….Hmmmm..

If you are interested in winning at $150 gift card to Teacher Created Resources, click the link to enter their Chevron Classroom Pinterest Giveaway! $150 can buy ALOT of CHEVRON for your classroom!!

It was Kindness week at my school this week! In addition to completing all of the activities in this Kindness pack that I created…

Our entire school got to do some pretty awesome acts of Kindness throughout the week. Check them out…
We all made Kindness quilts and hung them up on the fence so the kids could read them all...

Our students wrote letters for kids in the hospital during recess and lunch…

Our students also raised $250 dollars by selling lemonade for the Mckenna Claire Foundation, which supports Pediatric Brain Cancer research…

The kids made over 350 rainbow loom bracelets to give to children in need during their recess. They even brought their own loom kits to school to do it!

All of our students also worked hard to complete their Great Kindness Challenge checklists, by performing random acts of Kindness around the school…

My class wrote kindness stories about our favorite TOSA in the whole world, Mr. T, and presented them to him as a book. They were so proud!!

Overall,  it was a wonderful week and I think the kids really tried to embrace Kindness! 

We are working very hard in class on writing a proper paragraph. The kids call it their hamburger story. I introduce them to this chart…

This thing is so old and ratty! But it is a great visual...

Then, I use markers to turn my modeled writing into a "hamburger story" (Don't judge my printing/writing. This was done spur of the moment and it is NOT pretty!!)…

Then, they used this model to write their January writing samples, and they were all successful in remembering to write an opening sentence, 3 juicy details, and a closing sentence! YAY!! 

We will now work on expanding our details and making them even more juicy.

So, Lindsay and I are REALLY and TRULY presenting at the Southern California Kindergarten Conference in less than a month! WHAT THE WHAT????

We decided that since this is OFFICIALLY happening, we needed our very own FANCY SCHMANCY business cards…

Aren't they gorgeous???

We are also having a GINORMOUS Blogger's Bash on Friday February 28th, which anyone can attend, even if you aren't signed up for the conference…

We're all making baskets to give away, and everyone who signs up to come with get a goodie bag filled with fun stuff, including a CD with a bunch of our products on it!! We hope a bunch of you will sign up to come! Click on the picture above to get all the details and sign up!!

Have a happy Saturday, Friends!!
XOXO Kerri B

Five for Friday-May 31st!

Happy Friday night, Peeps!
PTL it is Friday! I am so darn tired! And it was a 4 day week-what the heck!

My kids were all kinds of crazy today. It probably didn't help that they started their day off with their Spring Performance (adorable, BTW), which meant we weren't able to do our Math Centers (the HORROR! I'm still twitching over it!), and it threw the whole day off! Luckily, they redeemed themselves by being absolutely GORGEOUS for their Open House photos (taken by your truly), and LOTS of Open House project making.

Which brings me to my five for Friday, courtesy of Kacey from Doodlebugs Teaching's linky party!

Okay, here we go. First up-Super Model Firsties! Could they be any more photogenic?? I mean, really!

Aren't they just ADORBS?? And I could have posted 20 more just like these~ Gotta love my 50 fixed lens from Canon. It is MAGIC!

Number 2: Welcome to RAINFOREST HELL. The week before Open House when I haven't put everything up yet. Yeah, there is stuff EVERYWHERE, and it is starting to eat my children, I think!

Oh man. I am getting the cold sweats just looking at all this. But, come Thursday, all of these rainforest projects will be up on the wall and looking fabulous! Fingers crossed...

Number 3: Red-Eyed Tree Frogs! These are one of my favorite projects to make each year. They are just too cute!

Number 4: Rainforest Mini-Me's. Each year, I ask my kids to create a Mini-Me rainforest kid that represents them in the rainforest. They do this at home with their parents, and they always come out AH-MAZING! This was the best.one.ever. Let's just call him the "Hipster" Mini-Me!

Oh yeah! Dark shades, the hipster haircut, and the handlebar mustache. LOVE IT!

Finally: Rainforest Research Reports. We have been hard at work all week on our rainforest animal research reports and today, my kids got to draw their rainforest animal as the final piece of their research report. I was FLOORED at how beautiful their artwork came out! And, this was with absolutely NO help by me (Peeps, I'm tired. I'm about arted out, for reals!)

Here the creator of the hipster rainforest dude. Isn't he so cool?? :)

I leave you with this-my girls sure know the way to my heart. Just give me jewelry and I am one happy teacher!! Who needs diamonds anyway? I got wooden beads! LOVE...

XOXO Kerri B