Fathers' Day 2015

Three days before school ended I reigned in the crazy and made Father's day gifts with my students. Here is the result

Fathers' Day Project for Kindergarten

We made iphone cards made to look like the screen shot of an incoming call. I used this toy phone as a prop. Kids held it up to their ear and smiled into the camera.

Father's Day Phone Call Craft

The phone outline was printed on cardstock and colored in with marker by the kids. I added the photo to the center and laminated them together. We put a magnet on the back so it would be ready for displaying on Dad's file cabinet at work, mini fridge, main fridge, or office furniture, etc. 

The second part of the gift was the card made to look like a GOOGLE SEARCH results page. 

I printed each card in color on cardstock and folded it in half for the kids. The Google letters are outlined in color but the kids filled them in with marker to look more realistic. 

On the blue line of the inside kids write their father's full legal name. I had to help my little ones with that one since most kids did not actually know their father's real name. 

Fathers' Day Card 1

Father's Day Card 2

Last, the kids drew a picture of their father in the box and described why he is such a great father. 

Like last year (2014 project), I had the kids use a technology/gadget theme to the father's day crafts. I sell the templates in my TPT store.

Father's Day Craft

Spanish Sunday - Bilingual Rhyming Puzzles

Last school year, my grade level began chaining for guided reading. This meant I would get access to helping kids improve their literacy in Spanish every day in addition to my own students.

I quickly realized that there is a SERIOUS lack of Spanish resources out there and decided to do something about it. This Summer, I began making resources in Spanish to use with the bilingual classes at my school.

Rimas

Rimas, Rimando

Once I finished this awesome (I think so) RHYMING unit in Spanish I got VERY JEALOUS and decided to make the English version right after.

Rhyming, Rhymes

I got to use it with my class and passed along the Spanish version to my teacher teammate to keep. Here is the outcome.

Rimas

Rimas

I am going to ask kids to trace the words in crayon by coloring the rime in one color and the onset in another.

Rhyming

Rhyming

A lot of these words are found in my class' favorite rhyming song book, A Hunting We Will Go. They love to sing, "A hunting we will go, a hunting we will go, we'll catch a bear and put him in underwear and then we'll let him go. Oh!" They get pretty hysterical with their nonsense rhymes as well.

The packs include the same format to a RHYMING memory match game.

Rompecabezas para rimar

 Once printed they are ready to cut and laminate. Memory is one of the class' favorite centers.

Rhyming Puzzles

 The second feature each pack includes are pocket chart cards. Pocket chart cards are new to me as a teaching tool since my district has had Promethean boards for so many years. This is the kind of activity that got relegated to technology and the poor little pocket chart was wheeled to the back of the room. However, I can dust it off now and use these cool pocket chart cards to practice rhyming with my class.

Rimas

Rhyming pocket chart cards

As you can see the onset is in black and the rime is in red. I love the use of color to help out kids who are visual learners SEE THE RHYMING part when they can't hear it to save their lives. 

Here is the link to each product:

SPANISH RHYMING

ENGLISH RHYMING

Teacher Memes

I was feeling playful tonight after the completion of my blog redesign and opening up a brand new facebook account for my Teachers Pay Teachers products so I created a few funny Teacher Memes to help you share in my merriment. Feel free to pin the images to your social media accounts.

Here is my facebook link: www.facebook.com/kindergartencorps

This was the teacher meme that started it all for me tonight. The "Success Kid" meme felt appropriate because I brought home all my students' assessment data for math, writing, and the language arts benchmark to sort by student ... and I actually did it! I'm one step closer to report card preparation.

Teacher Meme : Success Kid

The next appropriate Teacher Meme for me tonight is the "Thinking About Life" Bear meme. This will be me tonight as I seem to have a lot of energy and it's nearly 9 pm.

Teacher Memes: Thinking Abut Life

Speaking of bears. I read my class a bear book this week in preparation for Spring. The bear had been asleep and hibernating and he awoke to flowers and birds everywhere. Even though he was a kind bear I went ahead and read his voice in a growly voice ... as it should be! I teach Kindergarten after all.

Teacher Meme: Mordor

Needless to say my audience was enthralled. Growly voice tends to do that to five year olds. The next meme came from the 15 minutes it took me to scrub glitter and dried glue off my students' desks before leaving on Friday. It's all worth it, right?

Teacher Meme: Toy Story

Why am I worrying about having cute crafts? The superintendent will be visiting my school soon and we all know what a well decorated classroom means, right?

Teacher Meme: Willy Wonka Sarcasm

But back to Fun Fridays. Homework is due on Fridays in my class. Inevitably, there is always one or two students who show up with no homework. I understand that five year olds are very dependent on their parents but still. Responsibility begins at young age!

Teacher Meme: The Matrix

It is my number one pet peeve. Just because a child is small doesn't mean they can't learn some responsibility for their actions. But considering how crazy households can be in the morning I guess I can be more lenient from time to time. This leads to my next pet peeve. Parents in Pajamas! It's 8 am not 5 am. Please put on real pants. You have time. Treat yourself to a cute outfit in the morning. You deserve it.

Teacher meme: Star Trek

Speaking of treats, in my district we are lucky enough to have instructional aides who help pull out and tutor our kids who are behind. Every year around Spring time, I get my class of ELLs to a point where they are ALL meeting benchmark before Spring Quarter.

Little do they know, I rely on the aide to help in this process and ... then they take her time from me. Don't they know its because of her help that I was able to accomplish this feat? There goes the ability to maintain it. Womp Womp Womp. 

Teacher Meme: Bad Luck Brian

Speaking of success being a group effort the next meme is to say thank you via Kevin Durant. I work very hard to get my 24 Kindergarteners from a low socio economic, primarily ELL neighborhood to excel at all Kindergarten standards but parents work harder in different but equally important ways.

Teacher Meme: Kevin Durant

Key word: DIFFERENT. I make up odd songs that work well one day and then I can't remember them a week later because I made them up on the fly in the moment. Maybe one day I'll learn to write them down before I forget.

And I've saved the best for last. In no other profession is taking a sick day ten times harder than going to work sick or feeling low. Every time I complain someone always says, "Well at least you have Summers off." Cue the smallest violin. Only a teacher will understand.

Teacher Meme: Dos XX 

That's it for now. I hope you enjoyed my Teacher Memes. I'm off to watch The Walking Dead on my DVR. I love that show.

Reindeer Antlers Craft

Luckily, my school still has a Christmas Program on the last day before school lets out for Winter Break. For this year's performance, we dressed up as reindeer and sang Jingle Bells. Here is how I made the adorable antlers the kids wore. 

As you can see they're huge and are secured and tailored to each child's head with a brad and rubber band. 

For girls I put a piece of tape over the brad's legs so that it would create a seal and not pull on their hair. 

I've never used a template for these antlers so I don't have one for you to print. However, with any 18 X 13 construction paper you can easily make one antler set per child. I like to make durable templates out of Manila folders so I can use them to trace and not worry about tearing them. 

You can make a half sheet template and trace it onto a folder construction paper aligning it with the seam. 

Or

You can make a full size template to trace onto a flat unfolded sheet of construction paper. 

 Last add the brads and rubber band. 

To further personalize the size to each child's head you can put the brads further back or use a smaller rubber band. 

Here's the class sporting their look. In years passed I put a little bit of red lipstick on their noses for a pop of color. 

Thanksgiving Day Crafts in Kindergarten

Thanksgiving day week has come and gone. We celebrated all week long by reading non fiction books on Indians, Pilgrims and even turkeys. Now comes our culminating activities... pilgrim hats and indian crowns to wear home at dismissal.

Here is the pattern I used for pilgrim hats for boys. I used a standard manila folder as the material so that the template is thick enough to last for years. I got the pattern from a past teaching partner and have used it ever since. It is too large to trace and scan on a 8.5 by 11 paper so I don't have a link for it. However, through the pictures you can see it takes up the entire size of the manila folder and traces nicely onto a large 18 X 13 construction paper without having too much excess to trim off.

Pilgrim Hat Template to trace on black construction paper

Pilgrim hat trim and gold buckle

Pile of Pilgrim hats and all the fixin's! Ready for kids to glue.

In order to adjust each hat to each student's head size. I place the hat on their head and then pinch and overlap the excess in between my fingers. I staple that together and it fits like a glove!

Pilgrim Hats get fitted to each head.

Pilgrim hats get the excess overlapped and stapled to fit perfectly.

Here are a few cutie pies wearing the finished product while enjoying some juice.

Pilgrim Hats for boys! 

Now for the ladies. They got to wear bonnets made out of white construction paper and black yarn. It took a lot of folding, one staple, two 12' pieces of yarn, and a hole punch. 

Here are two pilgrims side by side. The little girl looks adorable in her bonnet.

Pilgrims in a bonnet and hat enjoying a snack

Here are the step by step folding instructions for creating that bonnet shown above.

Step One to making a pilgrim bonnet

Step One: Take a standard 18 by 13 paper and fold up an inch from the bottom. This will serve as the cuff of the bonnet.

Step Two to making a pilgrim bonnet.

Step Two: Flip the paper over.

Step Three to making a pilgrim bonnet.

Step Three: Take the left and right top corners and fold inward equally in the same way you would fold a paper plane.

Step Four to making a pilgrim bonnet.

Step Five to making a pilgrim bonnet.

Step Four and Five: Fold the left and right sides inward evenly over each other then fold the top peak down as well. 

Step Six to making a pilgrim bonnet.

Step Six and Seven: Open the flaps and pick up the top peak and the inside squared flaps and hold them in the same hand together as shown above. This is where you will place the staple making sure the top peak and the two squared flaps are in the same staple. See below.

Step Seven to making a pilgrim bonnet.

Now pop that sucker open by square it out. Place a hole punch on each side of the cuff and tie a yarn string into each hole.

Step Eight to making a pilgrim bonnet. 

Pilgrim girl bonnet out of construction paper

One of my coworkers bought doilies from the dollar store and cut them in half. Then she glued one half to the top of each bonnet. I choose not to embellish my bonnets this way because I think pilgrims would have had simple bonnets in "real life." 

I was able to prep the boys' hats in one sitting after school and the girls' bonnets on a separate day. While I fit the kids with their bonnets one at a time, I have them color a pilgrim coloring sheet. Click here for the free download. 

Free Pilgrim Coloring Sheet

We also made Indian crowns the day before. We had each color symbolize a part of the Indian life style we read about earlier in the week. The kids related it to camping as we were discussing the colors. Red was fire for keeping warm and cooking meat. Yellow was the sun for growing plants. Blue was for water. Brown was for soil.

Indian Crowns for Thanksgiving

Indian Crowns for Thanksgiving - Symbolic Colors

As the kids were finishing their Indian crowns I had the early finishers color a cute sheet from Artifex Clip Artist found on TeachersPayTeachers. It is shown below. Click here for a free pdf file.

Free Coloring Sheet for Thanksgiving

We had a busy week celebrating Thanksgiving. Hope that my pictures and freebies can help you celebrate with your own class as well. Enjoy :)