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!