{Five For Friday} Jan. 31!

I am linking up again this week with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five For Friday! Check it out!

This week was my first week teaching math in my internship, as you may already know from my last post about my math centers! What I didn't include in that post was the whole group learning games we played afterwards before going home.  We played a game called "I am, You Must Be" and the kids loved it! You start with one and say "Hi. I'm 1, you must be 2!" and shake hands with the person next to you. They then turn to the next person, say, "Hi. I'm 2, you must be 3," shake their hand and so on. They were so excited to shake their friend's hand. It was adorable. They were a little giggly though, so it did make it hard to keep them focused. But it was a great review on numbers and since we have 19 kids in the class, the game went to 20 (since I played, too).

We also put my new "I Have, Who Has" game to use. I printed them on light blue card stock and laminated them. We are learning numbers 11-20 during this unit in math. I used the cards with the ten frames on them for this go around. Once they get better we can take that away. They were GREAT. They listened, they all participated, and they were actually calm and quiet. I was amazed.

They turned out nice and I am glad I laminated them and made them so durable, because we are definitely going to play this again next week.

If you would like to download them as well, check them out here or click the picture. The pack includes the cards with and without ten frames, with pictures instead of ten frames, and when they are ready, just the written form of the word.

We did a lot of 100 Day stuff this week since yesterday was the 100th day of Kindergarten! We did so many awesome things. Throughout the day yesterday, I took small groups over to make fruit loop necklaces. There have been some pins on Pinterest about it and I pinned it a while back hoping to use it. And I did! They loved it. And thank goodness for Google! I searched how many Fruit Loops were in a box and the regular size box on average has 1725 Fruit Loops in it. Well, I have 19 kiddos, so I got the big box. However, lesson learned: ALWAYS account for broken fruit loops... It was hard for the last kid to find good pieces. Poor thing. But it was created!

We used regular yarn (we picked red!) and taped it to the table. My supervising teacher also had big plastic "needles" so they could thread the yarn through the Fruit Loops. I would not recommend it any other way. The one I saw on Pinterest just had crazy colors and no pattern, but I had our kids do A-B patterns in their's. They did them in groups of 10 and then got a tag that read "10 Days," "20 Days," "30 Days," and so on. That made it easier for them to keep track of how many Fruit Loops they already had on there and how many more they needed. It also made the necklace look really cute. ;)

Hehe. I love it!

Also for 100th Day they had a Kindergarten parade where the students had to make a "float" or a costume of some sort that had 100 of something on it. We got so many neat things! Posters! Hats! Sandwich signs! Wagons filled with candy! We even had one boy bring a big toy car and he attached his dog leash to it so he could pull it! Even better... he covered it with worksheets that he got a 100% on. Love it!!

100 Army Men, 100-Eyed Monster, 100 Star Wars stickers on a cowboy hat ( <3 ), 100 pencils glued in the shape of a pencil, 100 hearts (there's more on the back of it), and 99 cotton balls (one fell off... and then we couldn't find it...)

The projects were all great. And all of Kindergarten did it, so the parade was pretty long! Our class was the last class, though... And it was COLD.

I have been pretty bad about exercising this week. My goal (if you recall from my New Year's post about fitness) was to go to the gym 5 days a week. That quickly got pushed down to 4, which really, I am okay with. 5 was a little excessive with the schedule I have... But here it is... Friday... And I have only gone.... twice. :( I plan on going tomorrow and taking my time since its Saturday, but I am disappointed in myself. I will say though, that I have been GREAT with eating right! Well, except for 100th Day. There were a lot of snacks... and... well... it's hard to stay fit in a Kindergarten classroom!

I am working on a new product. My goal was to have it up this week, but I'm tellin' ya, 100th Day WEEK wore me out! Don't judge me too harshly. I'll be posting something for your resources ASAP!

My First Math Centers

This week has been such a great experience for me! It was my first week of implementing my plans for one subject. Next week I add on another subject to my planning and then another, until I am teaching the whole class. But one step at a time! Math!

I did some pretty cool centers this week and was pleased with how everything flowed. I tried a new method with these kinders and it worked very well.

Every center has a number (1 though 5). Every student received a "flip book." They turn the pages in their "flip book" to find their next center. There are no more than 4 to a center at any time. Each time a student moves he/she is with a different group of kids! The first week, I rigged it to know what student was in which group. I didn't want my first week teaching and trying a new method to be consumed with behavior issues... They loved their books! I was thrilled.


Here are the flip books in action! I made the covers out of craft foam and sharpies and created the pages out of cut in half index cards. I hooked them together with a book ring. If it works well, I'll make a more attractive one and post it here. :) 



When they got to their centers, there was a plastic cup labeled with the center number. The cup has a bamboo skewer stuck through the top. This is where the students can "hang" their booklets, so they don't lose their page (or the whole book for that matter). They really liked sliding the booklets onto the stick and I liked that I knew where each book was. They were a little time consuming to make, so I'd rather not do it again if I can help it! But really, it was worth the time invested in making them. They turned out great and useful. I may go back soon and make computer printed versions. I didn't want to waste the ink the first time I tried it in case it didn't work. But, so far so good! I will keep you posed on its success or failure throughout the weeks.

Just a little plastic cup and a bamboo skewer! And if we don't get to finish centers for some reason, these are easy to collect with the books in place on the sticks. When we pick back up tomorrow, the kids know where they left off and where to go next! LOVED IT.

Here are my centers for this week!

1. Penguin Skip Counting

Not sure why this is sideways... :(

Students use a little laminated penguin on a popsicle stick to skip count together on the big 100's chart. They are really loving their counting to 100 because 100th Day is coming up! Some students made the penguins "swim" through the numbers. It was awesome.


2. Number Puzzles

I made these little self-checkable puzzles and they were challenging enough for the students to fill the 20 minutes of time in that center but easy enough for them not get frustrated. They fit the four pieces together that go with that number: the numeric, an addition statement, the written form, and ten frames. The way they check themselves is flip the pieces over to see if they have matching stickers. If not, they know which type of piece they got wrong and can look for the right one!


3. Number Riddles

I am ten and two more. Who am I?

These were challenging for some, but I made sure that the groupings had strong readers paired with lower readers so they could complete the riddles together. I also made a "cheat sheet" which had the numerical number next to the written form so if they got stuck and didn't know how to read a number, they could check it out on the cheat sheet. These were great. The kids got surprisingly excited to get the riddles correct.


4. Flip and Color

Again, they are working on 100s and skip counting due to the 100th Day coming up (tomorrow!). They were given a regular ol' 100 Chart and cards face down with numbers on them. They had to flip two cards to make a two digit number and color it in on the chart. This one was a lot of fun, as well!

I hope my center ideas help you in your classroom! If you use any of them, let me know how they worked (or didn't work) for you! I love to hear about other classrooms.

Manic Monday Freebie! {Jan 27}

This week I am linking up with Classroom Freebies to continue supporting teachers out there! I always love the link ups Classroom Freebies has. It also gives me a great opportunity to check out other blogs (and get free stuff, too, of course...)

So here's the little freebie! Just in time for Valentine's Day!

Click either picture. :)

Happy Valentine's Day from Amanda and Daisy!

Thanks Classroom Freebies!

First Week Teaching

I am so very excited for this week! This week is the first week I get to teach my own plans. The past two weeks I have been essentially a para, co-teaching with my supervising teacher with her plans. It has been great to get acclimated to the classroom again after several months of being away from them and their routines.

I have some great stuff planned for this week, some I'm extremely confident about and others I'm not sure are going to work. That's the life of a teacher, though, am I right? I will keep everyone posted on how things develop throughout the week and keep your eyes peeled for a FREEBIE for Manic Monday with Classroom Freebies!

Trying to keep this in mind as I plan for the week. <3

The Ball

The cutest thing happened yesterday at the playground!

As we supervised our kiddos, my supervising teacher and I were chatting by the picnic tables when I noticed two of my most rowdy students were dancing together by the slide. Not your regular dancing, mind you. They were ball room dancing. The boy was twirling the girl around and they were moving around the playground gracefully. It was a shocker to say the least and SO ADORABLE. They danced for quite and while and then like any other day in Kindergarten, the girl tackled the boy to the ground. Later, my supervising teacher asked the little girl where she learned to dance. She blushed and said that her daddy dances with her like that and she was teaching the boy how to. <3

After a little while, the little boy decided he didn't want to dance anymore and went away. So the little girl found another boy to dance with. This boy had absolutely no interest in learning to dance. He was busy pretending one of the big playground toys was a car. I watched as the little girl pulled him and tried to drag him away from it to dance and finally she said, "You can drive the coach after the ball." It took every once of my being not to laugh. That poor boy put up with her but he just didn't like dancing. :)

{Five for Friday} Jan. 24

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching this week for the {Five for Friday} linky! I'll post 5 random things that happened this week in the world of an intern in Kindergarten!

I finished my planning sheets and started using them. I like them a lot! Right now I am only in charge of planning for Math, but very soon I will be taking over the class, so I'll be filling these pages up! I may not actually have enough room for my big bubbly handwriting... Maybe it will give me an opportunity to practice smaller writing...

I love my pages. <3 

This week I had a lot of fun continuing with the kiddos' winter activities... even here in Florida. This week has been a COLD one. I know the 30 degree weather I'm having is not cold to some, but good grief! It is horrible for my Florida blood. This has been a long winter........

Anyway, we did a little activity with mittens in math this week and it was cute. The students learned the meaning of "predict" and made a prediction of how many of a chosen manipulative would fit in a mitten. They used dry erase worksheets (Yay laminating!) and then we counted how many actually would fit. They loved all counting at the same time as me to see how many would fit. I did this is small groups of about 4-5 kiddos. :) We then recorded the number of the actual amount that would fit and broke it down to how many tens and ones were in that number.

Then we tried a larger mitten. We all had a lot of fun with this center activity.

I LOVE it when kids don't think I'm watching and they do cute things like hold hands, hug, high five each other, etc. I adore it. Today was a strangely cuddly day for the kinders, I guess, because I saw it a LOT! I saw very unusual pairs of children holding hands and even dancing! On the playground today, a little girl and boy were seriously ball room dancing! They were twirling and spinning and had their arms in the right place. It was seriously one of the most precious things I've ever seen. I guess they are getting into the Valentine's Day spirit early!

I put up a new TpT product today! In Kindergarten we are starting numbers 11-20 and then shortly after that, 20 and beyond. I am a fan of the game "I Have, Who Has" and created one for Kindergarten number recognition and number fluency. I love it! There are five sets of cards all for varying levels of number recognition. They can be used as individual sets or they can be mixed together for differentiation.

Picture Cues

With Ten Frames

Numbers with no pictures.

Written form of numbers.

Written form with picture cues.

Check it out here at my TpT store: Daisy Designs

A yearly tradition for the school I'm interning at for the 100th day of Kindergarten, is to make shirts with every student's handprint in paint and to wear them in a parade around school. Here's some Math for you:

1x shirt for every student

20 students in every class

1 handprint per student PER shirt

5 classes of kinders

Yeah. That's right. That's 2000 painted handprints....

Well, we finished that this week and THANK GOODNESS for parent volunteers.... <3

So Many HATS!

I finally took some pictures! Last week in my Dr. Seuss class, we made Cat in the Hat hats. I was losing my mind and couldn't find the packs of red and white paper that my boss got for me and used what I could find. Honestly, I think they came out better this way... (Fortunately, my boss thinks so, too...)

I gave each child a long paper and some strips of their color choices. They arranged them and glued them.

The look horribly messy in this photo, but we stapled them into a cylinder and I had to tape a few odd ends in here and there on the ones that didn't get the proper glue technique... I mean.. they're 4 years old. It's bound to happen.

I cut out a circle and cut a little circle inside with tabs to tape to the inside of the cylinder to attach. 

One complete hat!

Several COLORFUL Cat in the Hat hats!

So today proved how flexible a teacher has to be. Even though it was my own mishap by not being aware of where the paper was (I'm going to be completely honest... it was RIGHT in front of my eyes and I didn't see it. It's happened to us all, right?.... Right?!). I found what I could get my hands on and they turned out so great and the kids totally loved them. I encourage you to take some time and read The Cat and the Hat and make your own hats!

Wearing Green for Uncle Jimmy

Normally I post about education and new products. But today I am posting about a person who I have never actually met.

I'm talking about my husband's Uncle Jimmy who lives in Georgia. During the time I've been with my husband, it has just never worked out for me to meet everyone (I'm tellin' ya, his family is BIG). However, family is incredibly important to both myself and my husband and we all try to stay in touch through the amazing internet.

Recently, Uncle Jimmy was diagnosed with brain cancer. I don't want this post to be a sad one. He's fighting through it and has a lot of people supporting him. He has asked for everyday he has unusual tests or bloodwork done, that we wear green to support him. That's what this post is about. We want to send him pictures of his supporters wearing green. I'm wearing green! I've never met him! So, put on a green shirt, a green bracelet, some green socks... whatever! And send me a picture! We want him to stay strong and how amazing would it make him feel to know that there are people out there that care about him and his struggles... even if they don't know him.

My husband has a YouTube channel that is completely unrelated to what I use my blog for. However, he says it nicely in his video... so watch the video... and send us your photos! My email is daisydesignstpt@gmail.com and my husband's email address is in the video. Tweet the photos, too! #WearingGreenforUncleJimmy @daisydesignstpt @brutallstatic. Make someone's day, week, month, or year... just by wearing green.

Thank you! I'll share a post with all your awesome photos soon. <3

Snowman Writing

I decided to make this a separate post because it just needed it's own little space. I already posted about the awesomeness of my first week back in Kindergarten, but one activity we did I was so in love with and proud of the students' work, I had to share it in more detail.

For literacy centers this week, my supervising teacher and I switched running different centers. One day I did guided reading, the next I did the writing center. I think it is so great that these kids get two teachers helping them with centers.

The one I am sharing is the writing center. I was crazy about it! Basically, my supervising teacher has these little snowman magnet dolls (similar to paper dolls but made out of magnets). The students dressed up their snowman, drew their snowman, and wrote a story about their snowman. We made sure they had an introduction sentence, two details, and an ending.

Here are the pieces:

So fun.

Here's one I built so you can see the adorableness:

The cute shopping bag says, "Flakey's." Get it? So cute...

And here are the student's writing with translations. They are SO GOOD! These kinders have great writing. I was so impressed. The pictures are crooked so their names are cut out.

Translation: "My snowman's name is Mary. When she is cold I give her a hat and when she is cold I give her a scarf and when she is cold I give her mittens to her. Then she is not cold."

"My snowman's name is Snowea. One time Snowea went to the mall and then she went to the park. She had a good day."

This little one wants to write "a's" like the computer...
"Max is a snowman. Max likes his bird. He plays hockey. Tomorrow he will play with his bird."

I love these! They are definitely going in their Kindergarten books. So proud of these babies!