Welcome to School Postcards Now In Color!

Just click here or go to my Teachers Pay Teachers store to download the Welcome to School Postcards in color now! If you still prefer the black and white ones you can also get those here. PS- They are both FREE! :-) Have a wonderful week!

BACK TO SCHOOL Welcome Postcard K-6th Grades: FREE!!!

I know we're still at least a month out from the new school year but I've had a few requests for my Dr. Seuss "Oh, The Places You'll Go!" Welcome to School Postcard to be upgraded to include more grade levels and I finally got to it! YAY! Now, it includes not only Kindergarten but grades 1-6 as well. And what's even better is it's FREE! Just go to my Tpt Store or click here to download it now. Also, I've attached just the jpg images for each grade level below. Just click on the image and save it to your computer. Enjoy!

St. Patrick's Day Fun!

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone! St. Patrick's Day is one of my favorite holidays and unfortunately this year I don't get to celebrate it. At my school we are having an "All Cultures Week," and every minute of every day is already planned out for us leaving no day for St. Paddy's Day Fun :-( But as I was looking back on the special Leprechaun day of years past I found some of my favorite ideas and pictures and wanted to share them! At least I can remember the fun I've had with my students on this day!

Two years ago I put together this reading and math St. Patrick's Day packet. It includes nonsense words, writing activities, and many different types of math activities to make St. Patrick's Day that much more fun! And to top it off it's FREE!!! You can find it by clicking here. I hope you enjoy it as much as much kids have in the past!

Another activity I love to do with my kids around this time of year is Leprechaun art. First, I have them draw their Leprechauns using pencil (and then I recommend you have them go over it with a permanent marker) and then they use watercolor paint to finish them off. They look so cute once they're cut out and hung around the room. Check out the photos below!

Another activity I enjoy doing is called, "If I were a Leprechaun." First, I spend about a week reading different St. Patrick's Day and Leprechaun Books. Some of my favorite books to read to them are:

That's What Leprechauns Do

Ten Lucky Leprechauns

Jack and the Leprechaun

After reading each of the books we talk about what the Leprechaun in the story did and create a chart of Leprechaun characteristics. It's one of my favorite activities. After we come up with all of the characteristics of Leprechauns then we talk about specific things they do such as hiding their gold at the end of a rainbow, playing tricks on those that are searching for their gold. 

Once we've talked about what Leprechauns do then the children get to turn themselves into Leprechauns and write about what they would do. It's a great writing activity!

To download the printable version of this activity just click here. Again, this activity is FREE and I truly hope that you enjoy it! Have a wonderful, hopefully full of surprises, St. Patrick's Day! 

More Dr. Seuss!

I was going through an old post and found a few more Dr. Seuss "blasts-from-the-past"! I thought I would post them here in case anyone is interested for this next week and please share any other Dr. Seuss ideas you have so I can be sure to make the week with my students even better {and remember I'm not doing this until April so I have plenty of time}! 

This one obviously goes with Dr. Seuss' book "10 Apples Up On Top!" I just wish I could have fit the apples into one line but it just didn't work out. Still I think they turned out pretty cute!

This activity can be adapted in many different ways. In my classroom we used this all year but it could also work for just a week. Instead of having the children read 35 books {like I had them do during the year} you could have them read 2-5 books {depending on grade level...} and then have them color in the egg and bring it back for Dr. Seuss week. We read the book "Horton Hatches and Egg" first obviously, then discussed the reading challenge, and I sent home an egg and a note to each of the parents requesting their help. This photo is from the beginning of the year so we didn't have many yet but by the end I had about 30 eggs under Horton and it was amazing to see. 

I hope everyone enjoys the rest of their weekend! Have a wonderful Dr. Seuss week! 

Happy Dr. Seuss Week!

Happy {Soon-to-be} Dr. Seuss Week! This is one of my favorite weeks during the school year! This year, however, I am going to celebrate Dr. Seuss' Birthday in April due to some other commitments at my school so I will upload all of the fun things we do that week later on. I did want to remind you about my awesome All About Me Book though just in case you were looking for something to add to this week:

You can find it on Tpt by clicking here. It's still one of my favorite products!

And please, since I still have a month before I get to celebrate this crazy, rhyming day let me know of any great ideas and activities you're using in your own classrooms. 

Here's one quick photo from a previous school year where I used Cat In The Hat for one of the activities and after reading the book my students made their own hats and attached them to their faces. We hung them in the classroom all week and the kids thought they were pretty cool :-)

Have a wonderful Dr. Seuss Week!

I'm Expecting & 100 Days!

Ok, teachers I'm back! I'm so sorry for the fact that I've been MIA for the past two months but I actually have a good excuse this time: I'm pregnant! We're so excited! We are planning to have the baby in Shanghai and I already have my doctor and hospital all picked out {here you have to let them know where you plan to give birth about 7 months in advance}! Check out our little alien {this is from my 8-week ultrasound}:

Anyhoo, since this is my first pregnancy it has taken me a while to get used to all of the wonderful {and not so wonderful} things that come along with it. As a friend of mine said, "After the first trimesters it's like coming out of a deep, dark hole." Well, I have finally emerged from the "deep, dark hole" and am ready to start blogging and sharing again!

I have a whole file of pictures from events and activities that I want to share with you but some of it will have to wait. For today I thought I'd start with our 100th Day of School! It was just too much fun to not share :-)

This great idea I got from Pinterest of course {click here for the link}! The kids loved it!!! I got the banner from Tpt  so click here to download it. I did find another cute one though {just click here} if you're interested...

For our 100th Day I had different activity areas set up. I'll just quickly list them for you and then take you through them one-by-one. 1) ____ is 100 Days Smarter Crown Coloring Table, 2) Making a picture from 100, 3) Making a tower using 100 balloons, 4) Building with 100 blocks, 5) Making a chain using 100 pieces of paper, 6) Making a Pizza with 100 toppings, 7) Decorating the teachers' 100th Day shirts, 8) 100th Day Movie and Snack area, 9) Ice Cream Cone Number Order (By 10s) from 10 to 100., and 10) Reading 100th Day Books: Library Corner.
1) This FREE printable (see above) I also got from Tpt and the kids thought it was just amazing. {Click here for the link}

2) The idea for this activity area came from Pinterest as well. {Click here for the link}

3) Making a tower using 100 balloons: This was one of the best activities of the day! The kids thought it was amazing, stacking all of the balloons together and watching them grow. We just used clear tape to keep the balloons together. And I have to say I'm a bit proud since this was my own original idea:)

4) Making something out of 100 blocks: This idea also came from Pinterest but from various places. It was great fun! 

5) Making a Chain with 100 pieces of paper: I got this idea from this awesome Kindergarten Blog {Chalk Talk}. She had some really wonderful ideas for the 100th day of school! 

6) Making a pizza with 100 toppings: The kids still play with this one. I've kept it in our activity areas for the past week and they think it's so fun to make their own pizza and I love hearing them count to 100 over and over again!

7) There are 4 teachers in our K1 group {we have 2 K1 Classes, each with a Chinese and English Teacher} so I bought each of the teachers their own shirt and wrote 100 Days of School on each one and then we had the kids decorate them for us. Check out the photo below to see the finished product!

8) Movie and Snack area: I don't have a photo of this but for the snacks we used two different kind of cookies that looked like 1's and 0's so the kids could make 100 out of them!
9) Counting by 10s to 100 Ice Cream Cone: I just made this out of different colored paper, laminated it and found a large rug area in our room that had enough space to lay it out!

10) The last area was the Library Corner: Here the children could read all of our 100th Day books and just relax from all of the activities. 

Our 100th Day theme was Pirates as you can tell from our 100 Days Board in the background. So for our 100th Day party I told the kids they could dress up as pirates and that we would have a treasure hunt. They loved it! At the end of the day I concluded all of our activities with a treasure hunt around the room (I had drawn a map of our room and we turned on some pirate music and followed our way across the map until we found the treasure! The children could not have been more excited! It definitely was the best part of the day!!)

Thankfully one of the other teachers at my school had this awesome treasure box that she let me borrow and I filled it with the chocolate gold pieces from the store. You should have heard the children scream with joy as we opened the treasure box! It is something I will definitely remember for a long time! 

Here's a whole class photo: obviously not all of the kids dressed up but they were still so excited to celebrate together!
Below are photos from our day as the children were working at each of the activity centers.

The res of the photos from here on down are examples of 100th Day Projects that the K1 students did at my school. Some of them are really amazing!

I am already sad that the 100th Day of school has come and gone though--those first 100 days went too fast this year. However, my mind is already thinking up new ideas and possibilities for next year so if you have any other great ideas to share please send them my way! I'd love to hear them! 

I hope you all had a great 100th Day of School!