I'm Makeover Obsessed Sale

I think I've become a little Makeover Madness obsessed. I made over another couple of products entirely. Not just the cover page has been redone, but all the content inside has as well. I've decided that at this rate, my entire store may go on sale if I continue to update my products! I hope you like the changes and if you already own any product that has been updated, simply re-download for FREE to get the changes.

The original feel of the product posted over a year ago never quite felt right to me. I had each activity saved as a separate file and saved into a .zip file, which I hated. So with the update, I added better graphics and fonts and now all the activities are saved into one easily accessible file. Each section is divided by colorful instruction pages as well. Here are the instruction pages which give you an idea of the activities included. 

Here's is a blog post by Hanging Around in Primary, who reviewed this product and took lots of pictures: Hanging Around in Primary. (don't judge the old look! It's new and improved now!).

Click the image above to snag this item on sale!

This is one of my best sellers and a wonderful craftivity for your students. This is great for a lot of different grade levels. I used it with my kinders (post HERE... again, don't judge the old look!) and still plan on using it with my second graders next year but more adapted to fit our curriculum. It is on sale as well.

Here are the changes to expect:

Better graphics

Easier to read fonts

More variations of the mobile pieces to fit your needs

More ink-friendly printing options

Thanks for stopping by again! If you'd like to see a specific product in my store get a makeover, let me know in the comments below!

Weather Mobiles

A little while back I included in one of my Five for Friday posts about a Weather Mobile my little munchkins made. I have had several people ask for the templates and so I decided to jazz it all up and bit and post it on my TpT store. Link incoming!!!

Here's the original blog post with real life pictures and info on the experience: Five for Friday Feb. 15.

Here's a link to the download! Daisy Designs.

And here's some pictures! Clicking the pictures will also take you to the download. Enjoy!

Here's one of the printable templates. There's one for every piece, including a printable version on the snowflake. In my image, we used a coffee filter which is also listed in the download as a variation.

Final product! So much fun and our class looks so sweet all decorated with them hanging from the ceiling. <3

Five For [Saturday]... March 1

I had big plans for this post yesterday... alas, I fell asleep super early just like every other exhausted Friday night (living that teacher life!). So, happy Saturday!

Did a great writing center this week using a freebie I found on TpT for Black History Month. I was super happy with it and found it here.

Students chose a famous African American icon we discussed this month: Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., or Ruby Bridges. I provided them with books we read in class as well as other books they could use to help them. I encouraged them to peruse the books and look at the pictures (most of these were above their reading level) to help remind them of the person's accomplishments. They wrote their first "research paper" by filling in a picture of them, their accomplishment, a drawing of their accomplishment, and something else that they learned. It was a challenging writing center, but they all did really well with it.

I had an idea this week that I used for our unit on weather. One of the kindergarten standards is to know how to stay safe in a storm. We watched a video on Extreme Storms which they were talking about all day (I love it when I hear them chat with their friends about the "cool" stuff we do in class!) and the following day, we made "Survival Kits." I got this idea from a friend's lesson plan from one of my university classes a couple of years ago. I hadn't thought about it in a LONG time, but it hit me that I could totally adapt their plan to work for a kindergarten class!

First we discussed some items that they would need to survive an extreme storm and wrote them on the board. We talked about what a survival kit is and they definitely understood. In Florida, we get some heavy rains periodically so these kids are no strangers to power outages and lots of extreme weather!

They were given pages from magazines and had to cut out items that would be useful in their survival kits. Their survival kit was a brown paper bag that they decorated. Their assignment is definitely for a grade, so they were instructed to have at least 5 different items (I wanted 5 different items, not like 5 different pictures of a candle, for example). Most kids had WAY more than 5 items, but I'm grading them on having at least 5 different items in their bag, correctness in the item placed in the bag, and their bag decoration details. They were great!

Here's my Pinspiration for the week! We did a Character Trait lesson on Ruby Bridges and Rosa Parks. I had this anchor chart up without Post-Its and just "Ruby Bridges" on it. We discussed what an adjective is and what a character trait it. It took them a few tries to come up with some character traits rather than accomplishments for Ruby Bridges, but they did an EXCELLENT job! I mean, one kinder said, "generous," another saying "compassionate." I was a PROUD teacher that day!

As they came up with descriptions, I wrote them on a Post-It and stuck it around my [terrible] picture of a little black girl. I swear, she's black... the picture made her look a lot lighter!

Then I changed the big Post-Its to Rosa Parks and just said, "What if I did this?" and stood there letting it sink in. Then a few kiddos gasped and I heard whispers like, "They're the same! They can be the same!" I love my job...

We did this great group project this week about what to wear in each season. They are photo booth posters! And they get to put their face through the hole when they present. I am so excited! They present next week. I actually have a separate post with MANY more pictures of this project HERE, or you can click one of the pictures above. I have a picture of each season on that post and details on the project. It was SO MUCH fun.

My husband starts a new job next week! We are going to go clothes shopping because he has to wear a shirt and tie! Good bye uniform days! Hubby can pick his own clothes for work now! He's surprisingly excited about wearing a tie. Pictures will be posted soon!!!

Happy weekend!

Seasons "Photo Booth" Posters

My kinders and I had so much fun this week with this project. Initially I was going to have it only in my Five for Friday post, but I HAD to have a dedicated post for it because these projects turned out so awesome!

One of the standards for kindergarten when they are learning about weather, is what to wear in each season. So this week, we assigned groups of 3 kids to a season. There are 6 groups so two of them have Summer and two have Winter, with only one each for Spring and Fall. I cut a hole for the kids' faces in a piece of poster board and the assignment is to add the body wearing appropriate dress for their assigned season. This is definitely for a grade and part of their grade is for teamwork, appropriate dress in the drawing, details, appropriate use of time, and their presentation to the class. Presentations will be next week, but take a look at these pictures! They loved this project and so did I!

Working on their posters.

We let them use markers which instantly made this project more fun.

How great are these?!?! 

I encourage you to try a project like this. I can't wait for their presentations next week because they are going to look so adorable with their faces through the "Photo Booth" posters and they are so excited to each get a turn to get their picture taken.

Five for Friday (on a Saturday!) {Feb 15}

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching again this week but I regret to say that I missed the fact that yesterday was Friday! Between the busy day at school with the kiddos' Valentine's Day party, Valentine's Day dinner with the hubby, and the fact that I am definitely sick... I lost complete track of time and the day of the week. But better late than never right?

This week has been nutso! I'm sure everyone is in that boat. But here's my crazy week:

For our Weather unit, we have been learning about the different seasons and the different types of weather you see in each season. For our craft this week we made a Weather Mobile. It was much more labor intensive than I had realized, but I LOVE them and the kids really liked making them.

I cut out an umbrella (two pieces that were glued together) and they colored it. The four pieces are: a raindrop, a snowflake, a cloud, and a sun. The raindrop is covered in pieces of foil. The kids liked gluing something that was an unusual texture to them. However, it takes a lot longer for glue to dry on foil, so be aware of that if you tackle this mobile as well. We made the snowflakes out of coffee filters because it is quicker and easier to cut out. Plus, it made it such a nice round shape instead of a boxy shape like regular paper. Another benefit is its less weight for the little card stock umbrella to hold. :)

The next piece is the cloud and it is simply covered in cotton balls. And then the sparkly sun is covered in gold glitter. This was messy, but no one ever said Kindergarten was a clean place...

I love how they turned out and I would say it was worth the time and effort put in. I did have a parent volunteer to help, so I feel like I had an advantage, but getting the 19 kids in the class done was a little rough. We plan on attaching weather poems to the mobile next since we are learning about poems in ELA. Pictures coming soon!

This week being Valentine's Day, the kids were assigned to make a box of sorts to collect their valentines in for the party. Of course, being Kindergarteners, parents did a lot of the work at home. Most kids came in with a shoebox wrapped in decorative wrapping paper and stickers all over. They were so cute. I loved the see the students' personalities shine through these boxes. I did not take a picture of all of them and I'm regretting that now because I'll never see the boxes again, but I will share with you the ones that the kids were talking about all week long. Clearly, parents did most of the work, but you can tell the kids had a say!

The ninja box.

The adorable minion box. This one was made out of a cereal box.

And the crazy Frozen box. This was made out of cereal boxes and tissue boxes and comes complete with the dolls and accessories.

We had another castle box was that was adorable, but I didn't get a picture of it! And the Kindergarten class next door had a unicorn that I just wanted to steal and take home. SO CUTE!

We had a meeting this week through the university and I had to make my first day's worth of sub plans. No big deal! Hooray!

The meeting was great because we got to talk about graduation stuff and make plans for parties and get togethers. I will likely not walk at graduation because, quite frankly, it is really expensive. I am also at a remote campus which means my campus is in a different town. If I wanted to walk at graduation, I would also have to drive almost 2 hours south on the Florida Turnpike, which means I have to pay lots of tolls. Also a bummer is that the College of Education will be graduating with the College of Nursing, both of which have the largest number of graduates in the whole university. Sounds like bad planning to me, so I'm just going to save my money and stay home. I also don't want to leave anyone out by only having the five tickets, so we'll just party at home!

In the meeting however, we also discussed some different classroom management strategies that we are using in our classes and I got some really great ideas! I'm excited to start using them to see if they work for my class and me.

The day I had the meeting was also my husband's 28th birthday! Hooray! We went to Red Lobster with my brother, some friends, and my sister-in-law. It was delicious and we had a LOT of fun. Happy birthday, sweetie!

On Valentine's Day (yesterday), we did a lot of fun things before the Valentine's Day party. I read the book Love Monster by Rachel Bright which is such a sweet book that the kids really loved. If you haven't read it, I suggest going by your closest book store and checking it out. We read it twice for two reasons: 1) I'm teaching the kids that it is necessary to read things through twice before answering questions or writing about a text and 2) The kids loved the book so much they wanted to hear it again.

Like any good book, this one has a great website. This is the first book in what looks like an upcoming series, so the website doesn't have a huge amount of things to offer but it is definitely one to check out. In their downloadable section I found an activity packet which I downloaded.

For our project, I used the Monster Finger Puppet page and the kids made their own finger puppets. I then partnered them together randomly by pulling two sticks out with their names on them and had them create a Love Monster puppet show. This was a really exciting activity for them and they really enjoyed sharing with the whole class.

Sorry this one us blurry. Those monsters just wouldn't stop "dancing!"

And finally, Valentine's Day was just a wonderful experience. We had a great party! Parents brought in lunch for the kids. One parent brought in chicken nuggets from Chic-fil-a! Great choice! We played Valentine's Day Bingo and made little hats. But the most popular activity during the party was the Rice Crispie Treat Decorating. My supervising teacher made home made Rice Crispie Treats shaped like hearts and the kids decorated them!

We have a child with severe allergies in the class, so we had to be careful with ingredients. The rice crispie treats were safe for her, but not a lot of candy or sweets options are available to her. Valentine's Day was tough. But we made it through it! I really wanted to make some of the cute ideas I found on Pinterest for Valentine's Day but I just couldn't leave her out, so I made a little coloring book for them. I used graphics from My Cute Graphics and Creative Clips and taped a package of Smarties on them! She can have Smarties! They really liked the books and I had a blast making them, so it was a success!

My only regret is that I waited till the last minute and didn't get to upload it as a freebie for you guys! Maybe next year I will be able to. Keep an eye out, readers!

Happy Valentine's Day from Amanda and Daisy! Have a WONDERFUL 3 day weekend, teachers!