Dinosaurs!!

Hi friends,

I have been working on some new products for my TpT store and have decided on making whole units.  I make sure that my students do one whole group lesson in each subject area daily and of course there are centers, journaling, groups etc...

I just finished a unit on Dinosaurs...what child doesn't find Dinosaurs interesting??  Even I love them!  The new Dinosaur Unit which includes 5 literacy and 5 math activities.  The subjects covered are:

Literacy
Describing, Creative writing, Can, Have Are chart, Sight Word Coloring and Word fun for stamping or writing.

Math
Graphing, Adding with dice, Fill in the missing numbers 1-30, Letter count and which one is greater.

Here is a link.

Art Night

This past school year I switched schools.  It was by choice, and although the last school I was at was like "home" to me I was not happy there.  It was not my co workers by any means.  They were amazing and I miss them all the time.  My principle however was not the type of person I wanted to work for and lets just leave it at that.

I switched to another school in my district and although the co workers are not as close, (many are very friendly and amazing but, it is not the same as my previous school) I absolutely love the principle.  She is exactly what I was looking for.

As with all schools there are many different activities to raise money, or increase community/family involvement.  One thing my new school does is Art Night.  Each class makes a piece of art as a whole that are auctioned off and each child makes their own personal piece that is sold for $5 each.  Parents can make their purchase early so that they are guaranteed their child's work.  It is a great way to open our school to families and show our artistic skills.  We also have local artists come and demonstrate, or make things.  We also have some fun activities for the kids and of course food.

Each art project has to be what the teacher in charge called REAL art....not something like crayons and paper drawing.  I found my inspiration on Pinterest...go figure.  Here is what I found.

I came from a website called "Do Small Things With Love"  and you can check them out here.  I loved the idea of the washers as flowers and I knew that my kids could do this.  I decided to prime my washers and then allow them to paint them with acrylics instead of using paper and mod podging them. I also decided to paint the stems instead of using ribbon.  My changes really had nothing to do with the product but with time I had to use...classroom time.  Here is a picture of my finished products.  It is our class piece and some of the individual pieces.  

Our class project.  All of them helped in some way to create this piece. 

Here are our individual pieces.  I just love them!!  

All in all it was a huge success!  I can not wait till next year I already have some ideas.  You can also check out my Pinterest board of Arts and Crafts here.

So many things have happened since November and it is hard to know where to begin.  I love to make this blog about my classroom, teaching and my career.  But, although it is my passion I have more then one....Who says you can only have one passion?  My children and husband are my #1 passion... they are what keeps me going, who make me me.  I talk about them with my students just like my students talk with me about their families.
One thing my children do that is a large part of our lives is Scouts.  My daughter who is in 5th grade, she has been in Girl Scouts since Kindergarten and I have been the leader since 1st grade.  My son has been in Scouts since 1st grade and loves it.  One part of our Boy Scout pack is a Father/Son Bake off.  The two years he has participated he has won some kind of trophy.  He won his first year for most weird cake (a spider cake...Black Widow) and his second year he won for 3rd place in his den.  Here are his cake from this year. I unfortunately can not find the picture of the Spider cake.

His theme was camping, and I just love it.  He made the cake, I just watched over him and turned the oven on.  I added the chocolate icing and river of blue icing but, he did the rest.  I just love it!

Really? November????

Wow Friends!

Did I really not post since NOVEMBER?  It can not be.  All it takes is one sickness, then children sick, then holidays, then work, then more work, more kids, more EVERYTHING, to stop me from blogging.  Very sad.  I have got to get back in the groove and catch up on all the amazing fun my class had since the late fall.  So be on the look out and also PLEASE forgive me for taking so long to catch up.
Love, : O  erin

Cyber Monday! Big Sale!

Hi all! I have all of my items in my store at 20% off today AND tomorrow! Come check it out and get yourself some fun new things.  I will be post new products soon and will have another after Christmas sale.  Hope you can find something you can use.  ~ Erin
Erin's Cyber Sale

The Mayflower and Tom the Turkey

So, I am back for now.  I was so sick, then hurt my shoulder and neck then sick again.  The list can go on too but, I am not going to bore you.  I have neglected my fun blog.  BUT, I did have some time to do some research on Pinterest and found this cute Mayflower Hand Print art work and wanted to share my classes work.  What do you think??

I think they turned out really cute!

Then we also wanted to share our Tom the Turkey project.  Each child got a Tom the Turkey to disguise and bring back to display in the hall.  I think they turned out great.  I love the Hello Kitty Turkey and the Native American.  But really they are all adorable! 

Happy Halloween!

I am still not feeling 100% and I have been really busy with assessments and family but, I wanted to post a Happy Halloween.  Here is a view of my children tonight.  They got enough candy to feed two classroom of Kinders. lol.

Mrs. Vadar and Her Imperial Guard

Mrs. Vadar

Imperial Guard who protects the dark side

Be Back Soon

I just wanted to update my blog since I haven't in a while.  I have been under the weather and finally went to urgent care tonight.  Sinus infection and upper respitory infection. So I will be back to blogging real soon....or as soon as I am feeling "normal" again.  - Erin

Mo Willems and Fall Trees

Fall is such a great time of year as a teacher.  The fresh beginning, the settling in and getting to know each other and all the fun themes.  Recently I redid my back to school bulletin board and wanted it to last for more then a few weeks.  I decided to take this great project I found on Pinterest last year and did with my class.  It was another huge success this year.  I can keep these up till at least December.  Now that sounds great to me!

I LOVE these!!  Don't you think they turned out great??  

We also did a fun author study on Mo Willems.  The author Elephant and Piggy,  Don't let the pigeon drive the bus!, and Knuffle Bunny.  Just to name a few! Any who, we recreated the art from Knuffle Bunny, Mo Willems uses black and white photography and drawings.  We made these fun pieces.  

I gave each of them a very small piece of white paper and they drew a few people.  They then glued them onto this black and white outdoor scene.  They loved this project. Fun and simple.

Hope you enjoy these great displays of awesome art work by my amazing Kinders.  Till next time ; )

Dice Addition Freebie!!

Here is a fall Dice Addition Freebie you can get it on my TpT store or right here! It isn't very fancy but thought I would share with my sweet followers ; )   Hope you all enjoy.  I really love this time of year.

Fall Freebie!

Pumpkin Mini Unit!

PUMPKIN TIME!  Here is my Mini Pumpkin Unit that is now for sale at my TpT store.  You can find it here.  This unit includes a roll and cover game, a list of my favorite pumpkin books I use in my pumpkin units, number recognition, creative writing "If I lived inside a pumpkin...", Pumpkins can, have are,  and sequencing.

You can also check out my other Mini Units for Fall which include, bats and spiders as well.  I also have two fall readers one on pumpkins and one on fall with sight words.  I'd love to hear what you think.

Another Amazing Blog Hop for Fall!!

Check out this fun blog hop by Learning and Teaching with Preschoolers.

Blog Hop!!!

Freebie from a Great Seller on TpT!! Check it out!

Here is a fun, and useful Freebie from a wonderful seller on TpT, Carolyn McClearly.  She has some really cute, and amazing products!  I love this freebie with Nicky Noun and Vicky Verb.  What a useful, tool.  You should really check her store out soon!  Thanks Carolyn for sharing with me and my followers!!

https://docs.google.com/open?id=1Sa4N7p0N01nXCV2COoeJ8tIolrDSQeFqjStpiBm8hUrhY--T4mVIldsWuMSQ

Fire Safety Mini Unit

Some of you may already know my husband is a fireman.  He is Dan, Dan the Fireman to us at home.  lol.  And we respect and admire all fire fighters and others in similar professions. With that said, and the fact that Fire Safety Week is coming up fast,  I decide to make a mini Fire Unit Pack to sell on my TpT store.  You can find my Mini Unit here.  It is 8 pages and includes, literacy, math and even a fun coloring page.  Hope you like and Come check out my other fabulous October Units.  Bats and Spiders.

Classroom Management What works for me

I have wanted to share something with you all for a little while now. I know we all have to have a plan for how to manage our classrooms, how to make sure we setting the bar for good behavior and what do we do when behavior is not positive.  I have changed and tinkered with my plan many times.  How am I suppose to manage behavior, but also make it FUN and EASY for me and my students.  I want to celebrate my students successes, not always come down on their mistakes or misbehaviors.  About a year and a half ago I stumbled upon  www.ClassDojo.com  It is a free site that I use to give or take points from my students for the behaviors they show at school.  The first thing that drew me in was the cute, fun avatars that you can give to each child, or if you choose you can upload their own picture.  Let's face it the fact that it is FREE is also a very important thing for teachers.  Can anyone say BUDGET ; )  

Basically you load your students names into the list and each child is given a little monster type of avatar.  Unless you choose to use their own pic you have taken.  Every teacher can customize their page by deciding to start at zero and work your way up to a goal or by starting at a number and taking away.  I start at zero and when you reach twenty points you go back to zero.  Once you get to twenty you get to choose from the treasure chest. You can reward individual children or groups of children.  You also get to choose what you are rewarding for and what you are taking points away for.  My rewards for good behavior are for the following- Creativity, Great Insight, Compliment, Hard Work, Helping Others, and Making good choices.  My points are taken for the following behavior- Disrespect, Tattling, Hurting Others, No self discipline and interrupting.  Many of the 'negative' behaviors I do not use such as interrupting or tattling.  Those only used when it 

becomes an issue.   

At the end of each day you can open up a circle graph that will show you the positive and negative for the day for the whole class.  You can also open for each individual child however I never do this with the whole class.  In the graph you will see a percentage of what the positive/negative behavior was.  Sometimes we check this and sometimes we skip this at the end of the day.  It all depends on the behavior and the time we have left.  My students love to see how we did as a class.  They try and reach for 100% positive many days.  You can also email a child's report to their parents so their parents can see what the issue is and when it is happening.  Overall I just love this site, my students love this site and my new teammates at my new school were so excited when I show it to them.  If you are looking for something new to help spice up your classroom management I highly recommend you check out ClassDojo.com!  

I mentioned yesterday that I had a Mini Unit on Spiders as well as Bats,  I thought I would post incase anyone would like to check it out.  Hope you all enjoy!  October is one of my most favoirte months.

Mini Spider Unit

Batty Fun!

Here is my latest product on TpT, I also have a great Mini Unit on Spiders. Come check them out! Let me know what you think.

Batty Mini Unit Fun

Fall Activities/ BLOG HOP!! Check it out!

So, this week we finished up our apple unit.  We did some fun art with our apples as well.  We made apple stamped apples, (that's a mouth full lol) and paper plate apples.  We will be working on fall activities for the next 2 weeks and I am super excited.  Here is a little example of our apples art.

In the next two weeks when we do some more on Fall we are going to make these cute trees I found last school year on Pinterest.  I made them with my class last year and they turned out so cute and festive.  I wish I had taken a picture then but here is an example from Pinterest.

<div align="center"><a href="http://teachingmy3.blogspot.com/2012/09/fall-blog-hop.html" title="Teaching My 3"><img src="http://i1146.photobucket.com/albums/o527/hlpharris/fall-blog-hop_zpsc925475e.png" alt="Teaching My 3" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

Appleseed Freebie!

Here is a little something I used with my apple unit this past week.  The kids loved it.  I used this as a quick morning activity, they drew/wrote 3 facts about Mr. Appleseed on the back when they were done  coloring.  I hope some of you can use this cute freebie.  You can get it on my TpT store.

Johnny Appleseed

Some Issues & New Look

Hi all,

I am having some issues with my blogger.  I am trying to work on it and fix the problem.  I had some great things to share and am very disappointed about not being able to post documents on here.  I will work on it and try and get it all working soon.  Thanks for being so understanding.

On another note, I hope you like the new look.  It was also a pain to put up but I got it done!  Also wanted to tell you that,  I am posting some new items for sale at my TpT store, so if you are interested check them out.  Thanks!  Erin