100th Day Celebration!!

OH. MY!!!

We (finally!) celebrated our 100th day of school last week Wednesday.  It was originally supposed to be several days earlier, but we've had some serious snow days this year and it just kept getting pushed back further and further.  We were all so ready to finally celebrate!!

We had a busy, fun-filled day planned, and there were lots of things that we had to carry into the rest of the week because we couldn't fit them in, but it was such a fun day of celebrating together!

I thought I had snapped a photo of my classroom entrance on the 100th day, but I must have forgotten.  There were streamers hanging down for the students to walk through, and a sign that said "We are 100 days smarter!"

We took some time in the morning to make these 100th day glyphs.  They were fun and look super cute hanging in our classroom now!

  

While the class was in music, I did a little prep work for our next fun activity!  We had a scavenger hunt through the school to find a special 100th day treat.  We counted by tens to 100 and found the numbers in the hallway.  They led us back to our classroom where there were 100 hidden hershey kisses.  We had to find them all to get the treat!

My teaching partner introduced me to this 100th day activity a couple of years ago, and it is a favorite of my students every year.  We place our hundreds chart on the floor and search for kisses in the classroom.  The students must use walking feet and may only get one candy at a time.  Once they place it on the hundreds chart, they may go to find another one.  This year, I added a number to the bottom of each kiss and the students had to match the number as they placed it on the hundreds chart.

This activity is SO MUCH FUN.  The kids loooooove it!!

  

94 was the toughest one to find!  But, we found it and the class earned their treat bags!

Click here if you'd like to snag these tags for yourself....file them away for next year!

Lots of fun writing prompts for classroom books...

I would love to have 100 cakes, but I would never want 100 skunks!

 I would love to have 100 dogs, but I would never want 100 dragons!

"100 Years Old" book...these always make me laugh so hard!  LOVE this fun activity!

 This little guy added a wheelchair to his 100 year old drawing.  Ha!

"If I had $100..."

 "100th Day Line-Up"

We ended up doing this activity on Friday because I knew that it would take some time.  We moved all of our tables and chairs out of the way to line up our 100 items on the floor. 

Some of the lines wound themselves back around and still ran out of space!

Once all of the lines were complete, we analyzed our data!

What a super FUN week of celebrating!!  I am so thankful for my sweet Kindies and burst with pride for them when I think of how much they have grown and learned in the last 100 days of school!  I am so blessed to be their teacher!

All of these activities and more can be found in my 100th Day pack on TPT.

President's Day and March is Reading Month prep

Oh my goodness.  This is shaping up to be the craziest week of my school year so far.  Fun-filled and exciting, but still super busy and just plain old crazy!  Yesterday we celebrated President's Day which was SUPER FUN, but I ended the day with a whole stack of activities that we didn't even get to!  Normally I would have just extended the fun into today, BUT today was supposed to be our 100th Day celebration...except for the fact that we didn't have school due to freezing rain and terrible, unsafe driving conditions.

Crazy Michigan winter weather!!!

Sooooo....our 100th day will be tomorrow, and then Thursday I have a guest teacher because I will be completing individual assessments all day.  So it looks like Friday will be a mix of 100th Day and President's Day leftover fun!  So much for reading, writing, and math curriculum!!  I guess there's always next week!

Here's what we DID get to yesterday...

I was pinspired by these adorable masks (this is the link).  We just made the black hat a little straighter and taller and they were perfect for Abraham Lincoln. 

We cut the plates, colored them with a crayon that matched Abe's skin, and sponge-painted beards.  We added the popsicle stick and black hat once the paint had dried.

 No pics of the finished products (at least none that I can show on the blog), so you'll have to use your imagination....but they were adorable!

Then, we spent much of the afternoon on these cuties that Holly was sweet enough to send me (thanks again, Holly!).  I built mine along with them, so they were able to follow step by step.

It was A LOT of cutting, but my kiddos did really well.  It took us over an hour from start to finish, but it was calm, quiet, and my students were SO PROUD of their finished products!  I think they turned out seriously cute!!

More President's Day projects to come as the week goes on, but not tomorrow.  Tomorrow will be overflowing with 100th Day FUN!  Can't wait!

AND...even as I enjoy all of the fun of this week, my mind is already looking ahead to what's next.  For our school, it's March is Reading Month, and my brain is spinning with ideas!  I have been working hard on literacy and math station activities that I can use throughout the month of March, and I was able to use my snow day today to finally finish it up and upload it to TPT.  Click here to check it out.

I'll post more about it once I get it all prepped and ready to go.

Snow, snow go away.... let us celebrate our 100th day!!!

Happy Valentine's Day 2013

We had such a fun and busy Valentine's Day at school !  I didn't take as many pictures as I wanted to because our day was jam-packed with all things hearts, glitter, and LOVE!

These are the valentines that I put together for my students this year.

One of the fun activities we did was this great "Find a Friend" activity.  I cannot remember whose blog I snagged it from, but my students loved it!!  We went through all of the items together first, and I drew a clue next to each so that if they had trouble reading one they could peek back at mine for help.  This was really fun for them!!

We also made a class book using this sweet freebie from Teri found here.

I like to put my class books together and then send them home with each student, one at a time, so that they each have a chance to share their work with their parents.  Sometimes I add a page for comments at the back so that the parents can write what they love about the book too.  I can't wait to get these pages bound together and start sending the book home on Monday!

We read my two favorite Valentine's Day books, "Love, Splat" and "Slugs in Love".

We also had ice cream sundaes and SO MUCH FUN passing out and opening valentines from each other!  I just LOVE this day filled with LOVE!!!

Love Notes Link Up

I'm linking up with Amy at Literacy and Laughter to share some of my loves!

I thought it would be a fun way to head into this week of LOVE and Valentine's Day!

Name: Jill

Grade I teach: Kindergarten

State: Michigan

Favorite color: green

Favorite subject to teach: writing

Favorite TV shows: Project Runway and Smash

Go-to snack: almonds

Always shopping at: Target and Old Navy

Some of my greatest LOVES???

My family, of course!

John and I were high school sweethearts and have been married for almost 11 years.

Trey is almost 6 and Rowan is almost 4!

I LOVE writing/blogging!  I kept a journal for most of my life, pretty much until I began blogging.  I have had a family blog for several years, and finally began my teaching blog in December!  The teaching blog that I LOVE the most is Rowdy in Room 300!  I don't even remember how I stumbled across Nicole's blog, but I was hooked from the first post I read and I knew that Nicole and I had a lot in common.  Besides being a super fun teacher with lots of awesome ideas, she is an incredibly gracious and selfless person!  She gave me SO MUCH help and encouragement as I started my blog!  Someday I will meet this girl and give her a hug in person!  But for now.....virtual bloggy hugs to you, Nicole!

I love breakfast!  I cannot start my day without a decent breakfast!  My current favorites are 

with berries

OR

 with raisins.

I LOVE quiet mornings, meeting new people, laying in the sun, countdowns to special days, singing in the car, traveling, family traditions, playing games, being with my friends, and so much more!  OH, and I love teaching Kindergarten!

Happy Valentine's week, friends!  Do something you LOVE today!

Five for Friday link-up! {February 8th}

I'm linking up with Kacey over at Doodle Bugs Teaching for another Five for Friday link-up!

We actually enjoyed a full, five-day week at school this week!  It was wonderful!!!

We were BUSY....lots and lots of learning, and some play time too!

1. We began a non-fiction unit on arctic animals.  My teaching partner and I kept seeing blog after blog with the MOST adorable penguin activities, so we decided to go for it too!  This is something that I NEVER would have time to fit in before (we switched from half-day to full-day K this year), and I am loving it!  We began this week with polar bears, then we'll move to walruses, and we'll finish with penguins.  We're using Deanna Jump's Arctic Animals pack for polar bears and walruses.

I am NOT an artist at all, but this polar bear turned out pretty cute anyway! The kids love it!

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2. We got a letter from our pen pals this week!  So exciting!  We'll write them back early next week.

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3. We are getting close to our 100th day.  February 19th!

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4. We celebrated two birthdays this week in our class.  One of the girls brought the MOST delicious frosted sugar cookies, and the other brought these sweet skittle butterflies.  I had to get a picture with it because she decorated all of the clothespin bodies.  She knows that giraffes are my favorite animal, so she decorated mine like a giraffe.  Precious!  I LOVE kindie kids!  They are so thoughtful and sweet!

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5. We have finally had some snowfall that has stuck around, so we ended our week with a Young Fives/Kindergarten sledding party!  We have a great sledding hill on our playground, but each grade takes turns using it, so our students only got to use it once last week.  We invited parents to join us and spent the last 45 minutes of the day sledding!  The weather was PERFECT, and the kids had a blast!!  It was the BEST way to end our week together!