Today seems like a great day to join... Plus, our brains can handle a list of 1 to 5 right about now... NOPE...Not for us...Not even close! We ran in our annual Jogathon this week! This is by far our most favorite school event and the easiest school fundraiser we know! Make a track, build some hype, and let them run for fun... and mon-ey. If we raise our needed funds, the kids have voted to Slime the Principal! Our community helpers show up to cheer our first graders on too. Plus, they ... VIEW POST
Five for Friday…What a Week!
Kindness Activity for Kids Compli-Mats
Teaching our primary students about compliments is highly important in our classroom. Of course it's always easier to point out what we don't like...But, we have found we have to purposefully teach our first graders how to see the good in one another by pointing out what they do like. So, we came up with an idea to teach our kids how to pay compliments to their classmates. Introducing...Compli-Mats! Get it? Compliments written on a 12x18 piece of construction paper, about the size of a place ... VIEW POST
Dazzle Desks & Marvelous Mats
Do you have kids who like to move and groove when they're supposed to be sitting and working? We get it, and quite frankly don't really have a problem with it. Kids are active and they need to move sometimes...Even while learning. In our classroom, we use it as an incentive. Dazzle Desks and Marvelous Mats These plastic lap desks taunt us every time we head to Michaels. We finally grabbed 5 of them on clearance after the holidays and are putting them to good use. We also grabbed a few bamboo ... VIEW POST
Teaching Tolerance to Young Children…
There are very few textbooks that we actually kept from college, but this book, "Starting Small: Teaching Tolerance in Preschool and the Early Grades" was one that we've hung onto tightly from our teaching credential class days. It's stayed on our nightstands for bedtime reading. It's journeyed to soccer practices while we watch our kids and from home to school and back again. It moved us before we became teachers and has stuck with us over the years. It's not a ... VIEW POST
Keep Your Hands to YO-self!! Song Poster *Freebies*
Now that we've got our chit chattery under a bit more control, we're moving onto Behavior Breaking 2...The Hands on Others Syndrome. We were told they were "handsy" by their Kindergarten teachers...not as in helping hands. As in, hands all over each other all the time a slight difficulty keeping their hands to themselves from time to time. It didn't happen at first. We were proud. It was the Honeymoon. A fake out... A facade? Come mid day last Friday, the lyrics to Cyndi Lauper's ... VIEW POST
Secret Sticks and Shhh…I’m Talking With My Pencil {Freebie}
They will learn to work quietly. They will learn to work quietly. They will learn to work quietly. We have the cutest, most adorable, sweetest, MOST talkative class ever. For the past 12 days, there has been only one way to get them to be quiet. Don't take a teacher breath! Ever! It was making us light headed... So, we've been putting our tired brains together, and today we started something that we hope will stick! We use the old popsicle stick trick for tons of activities throughout the ... VIEW POST
