Congratulations are in order

Congratulations to Can Do Kinders for reaching 1000 followers. Oh my - one day when my little blog grows up, I wanna be just like her. Check out her giveaway in honor of this momentous achievement!

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Spring Break

AHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhh! I love my kids but I also LOVE being away from them! Does that make sense to anyone else? That's what Thanksgiving, Christmas and Spring Break is for --- so we don't kill 'em! And then just about the time you are fed up with them yet again, it's all over...summer comes! Then we start all over again. Absence makes the heart grown fonder!

So Spring Break in the Ozarks. It's the second day this week that I woke up #1 - not knowing where I was, #2 - without an alarm, and #3 - thinking it was Sunday yet again. It is very weird being in town when everyone else is going about their business. The schools here are NOT on Spring Break so the parking lots are full and the buses are out and about. I made my way through two Flea Markets in Branson West. The weird things that Kinder teachers pick up --- a Madeline doll and a large strangely brightly colored Lizard stuffed animal for my reading corner. A whole box of 45s for my brothers' juke box and some candle sticks.

Wal-Mart finds: cute plastic Easter eggs that are pre-decorated. I think I will make up a recording sheet to go along with them for either sight words or CVC words. I will post it up in the next day or so. I am still figuring out this system of blogging and posting and making docs show up here in my post. I still anticipate rolling out the full blog and my TPT and TN stores this summer.

Freebie for St. Patrick's Day

We will be celebrating St. Patrick's Day this week before we have our Spring Break. Since we only have three days with kids this week, I created some special center activities. My kinders are working on building two digit numbers using ten frames. Students will match the Question Card with the appropriate ten frame cards and then with the correct number card. Here is my first freebie for you!

Shamrock Ten Frames

Fabulous at 50!

I'm not gonna lie - I'm taking this Birthday kinda hard. I remember when my parents turned 50 and I thought that was soooooo old. Well - it's not so old anymore! Come to find out - quite a bit went on 50 years ago that was/is pretty significant (of course, besides the fact that I was born in 1962!) So - did you know...

•  Folk music was evolving into protest music thanks to young artists like Bob Dylan and the birth of Surfing music by the Beach Boys grew in popularity meanwhile in England The Beatles record the single "Love Me Do".
• The new hit on TV for that year was "The Beverly Hillbillies" and the first of the James Bond movies "Dr No" was an instant success.
• The First Wal-Mart discount store is opened by by Sam Walton in Bentonville Arkansas.
• Oral Polio Vaccine developed by Albert Sabin given to millions of children to combat Polio.
• Andy Warhol made his famous painting of a can of soup.
• The Dick Van Dyke show was on TV.
• Johnny Carson began as presenter for The Tonight Show.
•  John H. Glenn, Jr., becomes first American to orbit the earth during Friendship 7 orbit.

So I guess 50 isn't so bad (yeah, yeah, keep saying that and it will be so)!

  

Magic!

I am reminded daily of the wonder of five year olds, their imagination and incredible innocence. They think  believe that I am truly magic! Like when I turn on the projector for the Smart Board and they wiggle their fingers to help the image appear - that's magic! Or when we did the rubbings of the penny and the quarter and the images appeared on the paper - that's magic! Or the whole flamingo fiasco (don't ask - I will post it at a later time - suffice it to say that they BELIEVE that a real and true flamingo has hatched from a plastic egg that sat in water for three days and is on the lose somewhere around or near our school!) That's magic! The sheer joy of playing with oobleck and their fascination with the magic of the goo changing from liquid to solid!

Although they wear me out, make my feet hurt, try my patience and utilize my tool box on a daily basis, I am so thankful that I am a magician teacher.