Five for Friday

It was a long week in Kindergarten! Did the week drag on for anyone else? My coworker and I were commiserating over the length of each day...needless to say, we were so thankful for FRIDAY yesterday. Ha! This week, we did an assortment of Fall-ish things and began a new rotation for literacy stations.. 

I tried something a little different with our usual "pumpkin art" this year and I'm so glad I did. Don't these pumpkins SCREAM personality? This will definitely be a repeat project in years to come.

For my kiddos who need help with number recognition and one-to-one correspondence, these tens frame cards and novelty erasers were the perfect activity! They picked a number, found its matching tens frame, and then counted out that many erasers. Simple and FUN way to learn!

 

We tried some Q-tip painting this week...and talk about personality! No two trees looked the same...these were somewhat similar, but overall, we had a wide range of Fall trees. The kids have loved painting this year. I need to keep giving them these opportunities! *Note to self.*

If anyone has read my blog before (still in its infancy stage), I do a lot of DeeDee Wills in my classroom. The above picture shows one of her Sequence games. It is a FAN FREEBIE on her Facebook page. Does anyone use this game for a center? My kiddos LOVED it. The little white board signs are from Dollar Tree and were a fun little way to keep track of student points. Her Sequence pack is on sale over on TPT. Head here to get it! You won't be disappointed!

We switched up how we do literacy stations and I doubled the stations that are available to students. Wow. What a huge difference. You'd think this was my first rodeo, but even after 6 years of teaching Kindergarten, I'm still learning! I have a smaller group of kiddos this year (20 instead of 24) so it wouldn't seem as necessary as it might have with my bigger group last year. However, the fact that I have 2 (or less) kiddos per station is a DREAM! Any guesses as to where I got my new station organization? You guessed it! DeeDee's station cards are a freebie on TPT. You can find the cards here. 

I hope you had a fabulous week! Enjoy the weekend, friends! I'm sure you deserve it.

Five for Friday- Farm Style

I'm back with my usual Five for Friday on a Saturday antics. Last night, we went to our friend's  pajama birthday party. The birthday guest was turning 3! My friend made the evening so precious...complete with breakfast food, fruit loops necklaces, and cereal box favors.

This is my second post this week...and I'm pretty excited to be blogging with much more regularity than ever before. If I keep this up, I'd LOVE to spend some extra time (and a little bit of $) to redo my blog design. I just couldn't justify a nice new blog before with posts months apart. Ha! Anyone have any suggestions for blog designers that are fairly reasonable?

I've started to sit down and create some TPT products...ones that I'll actually try to sell. (Cue my husband's Hallelujah chorus!) But first...another freebie! I've been making some simple class books that we've done so far this year. They're pretty typical for all teachers...nothing new and fanciful. I have 4 so far and you can find them in my TPT store: Mrs Murrays Kinders. Creating TPT products has made me THAT much more appreciative to all of the TPT sellers I buy from! I already knew this (because I spend all my paycheck on TPT) but you guys rock!

 

This is one of my farm activities that I'm working on. I put the entire unit on the back burner to figure out whether or not my ideas were "good" ideas. This was a simple emergent reader working on our popcorn words I, am, the, and little. We adopted Reading Street last year so this emergent reader goes along with Unit 1's introduction of sight words.

Simple Simon. These cute chickens were fun and easy to make during a week filled with assemblies. And what great fine motor practice to have Kinders cut out their own handprints! These two clucks were probably better than some others...but overall, the hands looked good.

Glow in the dark fingers...is there anything more fun than that?! Well, if you asked one of my kiddos he would say "Yes" because he'd rather use our Monster finger puppets. Sadly...I don't have a class set of those yet. These readers are from our RS series and the kiddos love to use something special to find our popcorn words and try to whisper read it to themselves. We also read in a whole group and in a small group. Anything to make reading fun!

Mrs. Wishy-Washy was a GREAT way to end our farm week. These ideas came from Mrs. Williamson's class blog: Welcome to Room 36! You can check out her blog post here. The kids loved finger painting the blue spots on Mrs. Wish-Washy's handkerchief and then stamping their WHOLE hand onto our mud poem. It was a FUN Friday! 

I hope you all had an amazing week! Check out these sunrise pictures I captured on my morning commutes this week. I'm going to be sad when I don't get to see the sunrise each day.

Have a wonderful weekend, friends!

Moooooving and Grooving

Sorry for the corny title, but I had to come up with something that made it seem like this Farm unit we're muddling through is ROCKIN' our world. But to be honest...it's slow-going. We're dealing with some schedule conflicts and a full moon. Can I get an amen?! We've got two more assemblies on the docket for tomorrow. Eeesh.

     Anymoo, I just HAD to share our little directed drawings we did today because these WERE rockin'! It was our first directed drawing this school year and I was more than a little nervous about trying one already. I don't think I've ever done a cow before either so there's that too. BUT directed drawings never disappoint. I don't know why I doubted the process. The end products always SCREAM uniqueness and personality. Don't you wanna squeeze all these sweet little cows!?

I fancied them up a bit with a little "mat" action.

I think these sweet drawings were just the motivation I needed to keep exposing these Kinders to directed drawings! Even on day 25 of Kindergarten...they did a fantastic job. Kinders never cease to amaze me. I can't wait to see their little Mo Willems pigeons and Dr. Seuss Cats. What are your favorite directed drawings? I'd love to hear how YOU use directed drawings in your classroom. 

Hope you had a great HUMP day!

Five for Friday- ON FRIDAY!

I'm actually linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching on a FRIDAY! *And I've blogged 2 days in a row.* Someone pinch me! Haha! It was a busy week in Kindergarten, however, I'm kind of wondering what we accomplished?! The first couple of months always means assemblies, school pictures, and other special "extras" which make the days and weeks that much busier!

Excuse my messy desk...but I LOVE ripping off old calendar pages and letting the NEW month show off its stuff. Can I get an amen?! Speaking of stuff...do you see all of that STUFF?! Yikes! October is a busy month! Here's hoping I can keep my desk a LITTLE neater.

Since we started after Labor Day this year...we're finally getting into the swing of things and mastering routines. One of our longest routines to learn and build upon is our morning calendar. We use the Smartboard and eventually work in our calendar folders with markers. The kiddos were SO excited to see a morning message on October 1st! They love being letter detectives each morning.

Math Workshop and 2-D shapes were SO MUCH fun this week! We worked on describing shapes throughout the week as we talked about number of sides, number of points/corners, straight sides vs. curved sides, etc. The kiddos loved building shapes with coffee stirrers. We also used geo-boards and rubber bands to build some of our straight-edged shapes! We love the hands-on exploration!

We celebrated our first classroom birthday today! This cutie was SO POLITE when I gave him his birthday loot. We also had the chance to try out my first TPT freebie! The class made this birthday boy a special book. He got to decorate the cover of the book and each of his classmates drew him a picture. He was so excited to take his birthday book home at the end of the day. 

We had a BUSY week in the Murray household. Can you tell?! I think we're all ready for some REST this weekend.

Have a great and restful weekend, friends!

October Currently!

I have to say...I have really enjoyed getting back into this whole blogging thing. The "Currently" series is SO fun to look forward to each month. *Ok so I'm only on my second month...but it's fun, ok!?*

Check out the other great bloggers and what they're currently up to over at...

Oh Boy Fourth Grade!

Here's my October Currently...and I'll be honest...it's a boring one. I apologize. It's just been a funky week of trying to get back in the swing of things. I was in New Mexico last weekend and missed a couple days of school. Check out my last post for some pictures of our trip!

Listening: To the rain. It is raining cats and dogs here and there have been some earth-shattering booms from the thunder. I have a little 3 year old cutie standing in his doorway telling me he's scared of the storm. I caved and let him snuggle with me in bed for a bit. Daddy is working late so I figured why not!?

Loving: That tomorrow is Friday! I wasn't even at school on Monday since we were flying back from New Mexico, but it has been one of those weeks! I've just felt a little behind in life! I began a new position on Tuesday night for one of our school programs. I started a new bible study on Wednesday about adoption, and then cooked dinner tonight for one of our church families who welcomed a new baby. I think I might have resembled a chicken with its head cut off this week...yikes!

Thinking: About this weekend. Having just said I'm glad that tomorrow is Friday...I've been trying to think of something we can do together as a family this weekend. The start of the school year is always busy for our family and I'd like to spend some intentional time with our kids. I'm leaning towards carving pumpkins...the kiddos always enjoy that...and with the forecast, it might be best. We have a pumpkin patch and corn maize near us that's a lot of fun and a fruit farm where the kiddos can pick their own apples...but rain might delay those adventures!

Wanting: Some Biggby coffee! This. is. a. weakness. As in a "I was running SUPER late to school today and still stopped to get a coffee" weakness. It was a FREE one though so I had to go...and luckily the line was short. I'm a grande Teddy Bear kind of girl. Hot. No extra shot. And right now...I'm in bed, underneath covers, wanting something warm and toasty!

Needing: Some motivation. I sense a theme in this Currently...I've got a lot on my To-Do list and I'd really like to knock some things off of it. Not only are there school-related items, but there are some other life-related items. We're in the middle of selling our house, remodeling our master bathroom, and fixing up our rental house to sell, just to name a few. I'll be looking for some superhero powers to conquer all the To-Do items!

Trick! I'd love to do a treat, but I'm just a beginner in the whole process of TPT selling. The only items I have are free so there'd be no treat in that! I'll share a trick I use that my kiddos really enjoy in the morning. It's quite simple and the kids loved starting it this week. *We started after Labor Day so we're moving slower than normal. I don't add this step until we get a routine down.*

Anywho, in the picture below are 5 circles on the Smartboard. There is a red circle, a blue circle, an orange circle, a green circle, and purple circle (in the shadow). Those circles represent my 5 tables where students sit. Each table has colored chairs (i.e. purple table has purple chairs) and this is how I call students to the carpet, to line up, etc. Every morning we begin calendar time by completing the following sentences. Students drag the correct day or month on the line.

Yesterday was ________.

Today is _________.

Tomorrow will be ___________.

The month is __________. 

Each morning, I simply turn one of those circles into a Smiley Face and that determines which table of friends gets to finish the sentences. These students also read the sentences aloud while using a special pointer. (I have a bucket of pointers that students can choose from each day.) Great practice for one-to-one correspondence and speaking skills!

Such a SIMPLE trick...but the kiddos squeal with excitement (and disappointment) when their circle is (or isn't) turned into a Smiley Face.

Thanks for reading my October Currently! I hope your month of October is a GREAT one!