{Spring Break is Over...}

Well, technically it ended over a month ago but who's counting...

 

So I have severely neglected this little blog of mine so in an attempt to redeem myself I'm going to share with you some of the activities we did to celebrate Spring!  I found the majority of these using Pinterest... seriously the most addicting site EVER...

 

1. Clouds in a Jar: My kids L.O.V.E.D. this experiment.  In their words they felt like "real scientists."  [I think they really liked using the pipettes] 

 

2. Spring Patterns: The Fantastic Frogs have gotten SOOO good at patterns. 

[Shannon Martin of Kindergarten Hoppenings has created a bunch of these for her thematic units]

 

3. I think these butterflies came out so stinkin' adorable.  In the past I've had the kids do the traditional paint one side using a paintbrush, but this time we use different sized sponges and I think they came out beautiful.

[Can I also add how proud I am of my little collage?  I did it with one of the apps on my phone.]

 

4.  The Day it Rained Hearts:  I love the book The Day it Rained Hearts and I was super excited when I found this activity to go with it.  I love when I find crafts or activities that use multiple skills and make connections to our books.  It's like a double whammy...Boo Yah!

 

Anywho, the kids selected hearts of two colors, counted how many they had of each and then added them together. 

 

5. Rain, Rain Go Away: So I can not remember where I saw this and I have tried googling but nada.  All I know is that I saw this adorable activity somewhere and this is how ours came out.  We had done a pocket chart with the rhyme and used the kids name before hand so when it came time for this we were prepared...well sorta...I jsut love how they decorated themselves in the rain.

 

Happy Monday!

{Hello Summer...}

Hey All... Well needless to say I totally and completely ignored my poor little blog as the year came to a close.  Many apologizes and I applaud those of you who kept it up even amidst the craziest of the end of school.  You Rock!!  So much happened after March--a week in Peru with my sister, cousin and grandparents, parent conferences, accreditation, graduation and then immediately following the last day of school I spent an amazing two weeks in Spain.  Lots happening :)  Now that things have settled down a bit I have every intention to returning to the blogging world...We'll see...

So I leave you with a hodge podge of things we did--Some of these came from other blogs and Pinterest, but I can't remember which, I apologize...If it looks familiar let me know so I can give credite where credit is due..

1.  Making and Labeling flowers

2.  Yarn stamped kites

3.  Flies

4.  We witnessed the metamorphosis of caterpillars to butterflies

5.  Life Cycle

 6.  Digging for fossils

7. Dinosaurs

Thanks for reading and having a happy summer!

{Dr. Seuss is on the Loose...}

I don't know about you but I am not a HUGE fan of Dr. Seuss... I mean I like him enough and I grew up on many of his books but doing a whole thematic unit on him in preschool is a little rough-or at least that's how it was the past couple of years... However, this year I might be singing a different tune... I did things a little different this time and I will admit I had FUN! gasp! I know...

1. Thing 1 and Thing 2...Totally Pinterest inspired.. 

2. Top Hats.. Also found on Pinterest...that place is so addicting...

3. Cat in the Hat

4. Word Search after we read I Can Read with My Eyes Shut

5. Oobleck.. I think I needed to add more water.. but the kids still had a blast!

6. After reading One Fish, Two Fish  the kids drew an underwater scene on fish bowl shaped paper and watercolored.. they loved using these paints and worked for a long time...

7. Practicing rhymes

This week we are celebrating St. Patrick's Day!! Stay tuned...

{The Zoo...Part Deux..}

Alrighty..Here we go...the Zoo Part Deux.. This week we covered peacocks, zebras, and alligators... Please make sure the visit the Zoo Part I...Enjoy!

1.  Patterns... this came from KindergartenHoppenings... Shannon has some great stuff...

2. Peacocks!

3. Zebra Stripes

4. Investigating our fingerprints and graphing which ones we have...

 5. Tree Frogs

6. "At the zoo I see a..."

We charted our sentences earlier in the week and I types them out for this activity... original found at Little Giraffes

7. Anchor Charts..we had one for each animal.. the kids shared a piece of knowledge and added it to our chart..

We also did the alligators found at krazyforkindergarten but I happened to be out that day so I didn't take pictures...

However, here is something I hope you can use!  Later gators!

Click here for a copy

{The Zoo...Part I...}

Hello all you wonderful bloggers! I hope the weekend is treating you well-- So I am playing catch-up and as usual will be posting three blogs back to back to back...Here is what the Fantastic Frogs did when we learned about Zoo Animals [Part I].. The ideas for the art projects came from many sources including Julie Lee's Blog and krazyforkindergarten... This blog has lots of fun stuff but the creator has since moved to 3rd grade...

 Hope you enjoy!

1. Lions...inspired by the book My Heart is like a Zoo

2. Kangaroos and their joeys too

3. Seeing how far we could jump

4. Monkeys in a Tree

5. Changing the ending sound



6. Happy, Happy Hippos

Next up...the Zoo Part 2...

{Valentine's Day & the 100th Day of School...}

If you're like me you may have celebrated Single's Awareness Day or perhaps you celebrated Valentine's Day, either way yesterday was pretty awesome... My sister and I each invited a friend to dinner and a movie [we saw The Vow, which I thought was adorable] and had the best time! 

So I know this is a little afte the fact and and truly intended to post some of these before Valentine's Day but it just didn't happen... Hopefully you can use these in the future or for whenever... Stick around--there might be some freebies at the end!

1.  Heart Cookie Cutter Painting 

2. Puppy Love...We made puppies using only heart shapes..I think this may have come from a Mailbox Magazine..

3. Working on sight words..I am so proud of my kids!  I have seen similiar activities to this one, I just created it to meet my students needs.. they find the heart {I just used a die cut} with the matching sight word, color the heart and write the word...

4. Heart Play Doh Mat

5. Practicing writing our numbers and counting

6. Making Valentines! We had the privilege of being part of the Valentine Exchange organized by Ellis over at Growing in Pre-K... So fun...

7. Estimating.. Their estimation is in green and actual number is in red... We discussed reasonable estimations...

8. Yarn Heart.. This came from a Family Fun Magazine.. We dipped yarn into water/glue mixture and laid them into the heart...the key is to lay them in a thin layer so they come out like this [see below]

9. Sorting and Graphing Candy Hearts.. I apologize for the poor quality this is my camera phone.... This came from Little Giraffes

10. So I was on Pinterest and saw these adorable crayon hearts so I made them for my kids for Valentine's Day... 

{100th Day of School}

Banner outside our door

100th Day of School Crown... find it over at Mrs. Lee's Kindergarten

Counting to 100 using our mat to make a Fruit Loop necklace...

Seeing how many times we can write our name in 100 seconds... I also got this from Mrs. Lee's blog.. really she rocks..check her out!

And last but not least, the freebies I promised... Click the image to get your copy...So I know I'm not the first one to have developed these but they are what I made to help my kids... Okay...That's my little disclaimer...