Valentine Exchange

I'm sure a lot of you have seen this hilarious picture on Facebook over the last couple of weeks. I couldn't resist posting it today!

 
I'm a little late posting about Valentine's Day, but better late than never right!?

My class was fortunate enough to participate in a Kindergarten Valentine Exchange! We had a group of 26 classes total, including us, from all over America and one from Canada. Each class made enough Valentines to share with each class. We also made a letter about our school/state and then mailed them to each other!

It was a lot of fun receiving so much mail and my students really enjoyed learning about different states and seeing their unique Valentines!

Here are some pictures of the Valentines that we created as a class:

We used the erasers of pencils to stamp onto different colored stamp pads, then make patterns, designs or just random dots all over our hearts. Afterwards we wrote "Happy Valentine's Day" on each one, cut them out and we were good to go!

They all had so much fun decorating and writing on their Valentines and were excited to put them in envelopes to be mailed to all our new friends.

I forgot to take pictures of our final cards before mailing them, but they all turned out really cute!


After reading the letters from our new friends, we added them to our bulletin board in the hall. It was a lot of fun to see where everyone lived and how we all live in different climates, have different weather and favorite things to do. One thing that we had in common with a lot of classes was our love of P.E. and recess!

 Our exchange was so much fun! The coordinator of the exchange put a lot of time and effort into organizing all of the groups for it and I'd just like to give her a HUGE thank you!! :)

I hope you all had a wonderful Valentine's Day with your classes!

Show Us What You Bought Linky

I stumbled across this linky a couple days ago as I was trying to decide what to buy from the TPT sale! It is so hard to choose what to buy....there are so many great products out there from so many talented people!

I was searching different stores and looking up different products....about 3 hours later, this is what I ended up with:

Have you heard of RedPepper yet!? I never had! I actually found their store through this linky, and I'm in love. They have so many different colorful papers....DEFINITELY check them out!

I ALMOST bought the whole "It's a Small World" pack.....but then I decided to just go with the Australia one. I'm really excited to have this spice up my Australia unit!

I'm really excited about this pack from Lidia Barbosa. If you've followed my blog for awhile, you know that my students LOVE playdough (as most kids do!)
My playdough center really needs some spicing up, so this will be perfect.

What do you do with playdough in your classroom? (Seriously.....I want you to leave a comment and tell me!)

Lastly, I got this Stamping center pack from Mrs. Miners Monkey Business! I've had my eye on this for awhile, but didn't have alphabet stamps. WELL, I recently found an uppercase and lowercase pack of transparent stamps at Lakeshore for $11.99 each!

If you think you'd like to try out this pack, she has a stamping freebie you can grab here!

What did you buy at the sale!?

Head on over and link up!

Winter Planning Giveaway Stop A-4

Welcome! I'm so glad you're here. Can you believe it's already December!? Well, pour yourself a cup of Hot Cocoa (if you already have candy canes, like me, you can throw one of those in too!) and get comfy ....we have a great giveaway planned for you! A giveaway that EVERYONE WINS!!

You heard me right. EVERYONE!

This is how it works. There are 3 different prize packs to choose from....but no one is stopping you, so why not grab them all!?!

You will visit each blog in the pack that you choose, follow them, leave some comment love for each one....you know, to let us know you appreciate us ;)

Each blog will have a "secret word" that you must find. Collect all of them and submit them to Erin at I'm Lovin Lit, and she will email you your prize pack. Simple as that!

You can start right here if you want the K-2 Prize Pack! Or click the top image to go to I'm Lovin Lit and join the fun!


 Let's get this party started!! 

This is everything included in Prize Pack A:

I'm very excited to give you all my "Roll Roll as Fast as You Can" game!

This Roll, Say & Keep game can be used as a center or small group. It will help your students practice identifying numbers 1-120.

I know if I add a dice to anything, my kinders are all over it! They LOVE games, and what better way to practice number recognition than a fun and engaging game like this!

Just print it, cut it, laminate it and you're good to go!

I can't wait to use this in my classroom this week, and I hope that your students will all enjoy it too!


Now, before I give you my secret word, I would LOVE it if you'd take the time to follow me! Just click the little blue "Join This Site" button at the top right of my blog. Then you'll get updates on other freebies and fun posts that I have!

You can follow me on Facebook to grab a Fans only Freebie, and Bloglovin by clicking the pictures below:

I also have quite a few Christmas freebies in my store! Head on over to check them out, and make sure to follow my store while you're at it!

In fact, I just posted this freebie in my store yesterday.
Just click the picture to grab it!

While you're there, take a look around and see if you can check anything off of your Christmas List! And don't forget about the huge TPT Cyber sale going on too. You can get 28% off everything in my store when you use the promo code.

Thank you for stopping by and supporting me by following! It really means a lot :)

Now it's time for your secret word:

Just click the image above to go back to I'm Lovin Lit and collect all of your secret words.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!!

I have a Helpful Hint for you! {And a Freebie!}

Have you heard of the fun linky parties that has been going on this week over at Blog Hoppin'? Each day has had a different theme! I'm actually linking up with Tuesday's Helpful Hints linky (on Saturday!)

Are you constantly passing out papers to everyone throughout the school day?

Well last year I decided to implement "Paper Helpers." Each student at each table in my room would take turns being the "Paper Helper" each week. Anytime I needed to pass papers out these students would come to me and I'd give them the papers for their table. Also, when anything needed to be collected these students would gather everything from their table, put them all the same direction, and place them in our "Turn in Basket."

It worked like a charm!

Then this summer I was doing some blog stalking professional development ;) and came across a different variation of this from Teaching with a Passion.

She basically did the same thing, except instead of "Paper Helpers"she called them "Table Captains" (How did I not think of that!?) lol. Also, instead of rotating students each day, like I did last year, she suggested rotating weekly, which I liked a lot more!

So I decided to switch it up a little bit this year! I implemented her "Table Captain" ideas and I can honestly say that my students LOVE it this year! They get WAY excited when it's their week to be the captain. I even had a lot of parents mention it to me during parent teacher conferences a few weeks ago!

Here are some pictures of what it looks like in my classroom this year:

 I found the little cones at Dollar Tree....I wanted different colors for each table, but I was searching RIGHT before school started and had to go to 3 different Dollar Tree's JUST to find these ones! I was just grateful to find any.  (I was at Dollar Tree recently though and there are a BUNCH of them again.)

I got the adorable picture frames for each table at Ikea for $0.99! (LOVE a good deal.)

I made the table numbers for the picture frames, along with the stars for each cone. I printed the stars on cardstock, 2 of each, and glued a popsicle stick in between them. Then I just stuck the stick into each cone.

Each student has a name tag at their spot on the table, and when it's their turn to be captain, they get to put the cone above their name.

In addition to this, I have a "Table Captain" display on my whiteboard at the front of the room. I put the student's names at each table on each circle. The star turns around to point to who is the captain for the week. After everyone has a turn being the captain I switch their spots around, but you could just rotate it around again too!

This could probably work if your students sit in rows too!

Is this something you'd like to do?
No need to make your own labels and stars....just click HERE to download mine!


Let me know if you use it. Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend!