Fantastic giveaway!!

I am so excited about this giveaway! Ana from Ingles 360 has very generously provided me with a simply WONDERFUL Valentine bundle that you don't want to miss out on! Ana is a teacher who also produces many bilingual resources. She is FANTASTIC at what she does and I am so thrilled about hosting this giveaway. Not only is Ana providing the pack above, she is also also going to include:

A Roses are red flannel Board set,

"There is a shape" ( a pocket chart poem),

A valentine vowel sorting activity,


and a matching activity using couples from the Bible.

This giveaway is open to anyone and the winning person will be sent an email file from Ana. I will choose a random winner using an online random number generator on FEBRUARY 7th at 8pm....that will give you a week to print it, ready to use for the big day :-)

Please note that you need to leave a separate comment for each entry!

Here's how you can enter:

** You MUST either do option 2 or 3 to enter (you can do them all if you want but I think it's only fair to Ana to supprt her).**

1/ Follow my blog.

2/ Subscribe to the Ingles 360 newsletter - this will up date you on all of Ana's latest projects and deals. You can subscribe here. Make sure you come back to my page and tell me you did.

3/ Follow Ingles 360 on Facebook.

4/. Check out Ana's other products at Currclick and tell me which product you'd love to have.


Good luck everybody!!

Arizona - coming up next week

Hi folks....yep, it's that time of week again! Unfortunately, we have had a rough week!! My husbands Grandfather lost his 5 year battle with cancer on Friday and Channing has been acting out all week. We didn't get anything done at all (except for lots of stories, hugs and prayers)..........thanks for understanding, we'll be back on track next week with Arizona!!

Happy Australia Day

Happy Australia Day everyone!! For those that are wondering, January 26th is that day that we celebrate the First Fleet arriving in Sydney Cove in 1788..............I am definitely proud to be called an Aussie and miss my beautiful country..........
I'm hoping to make some Aussie treat's to share with our student home boys tonight :-) Of course I started off the day with my Vegemite toast (but I do that every day anyhow :-)

I was hoping to have some Australia printables for you but we've had a bit of a rough week.....my husbands grandfather is not doing well at all. So I'll have to post them at a later date! I'm also working on some "dental" printables (since February is dental month)..........which should be out soon.

Until then, I hope you fellow Aussies enjoyed your day - I'll be using as much slang as I can today!
Hooroo everyone :-)

Trekking across The States - Alaska

With our passports in our hand, we boarded our little (pretend) plane again and headed to Alaska! My husband and I had the privilege of going to Alaska a few years ago (it was a VERY quick visit) and I was fascinated by this beautiful, cold, state. Here's what Channing and I discovered this week (hold your hats because there is a LOT).

We found out that the State flower is a Forget-me-not and that there are MANY polar animals that live there. AS you can see, Channing was not in the mood for "coloring").

We looked at the shape of Alaska and drew an igloo (the big circle).
This was one of my favorite projects that I had done with Kindergarten many times. We read "Mama do you love me?" by and then made this picture and stuck the words in order at the bottom (Channing loves doing this).

We talked about dog sleds in Alaska and then played "race to the igloo"

We used some counting mats to practice more/less than numbers. We put a number card on each mat and counted the correct number of polar bears and then add the "more" or "less" word to the correct mat.

We did another counting mat activity, this time with an Eskimo and King Salmon.

We read "Living in the Arctic" by Allan Fowler and learned that while Inuit people do build igloos, they mostly build homes made of stone or covered with animal skin (these days, many Inuit people live in the town in houses too).

We played an Igloo game where you roll the dice and cover each square on the igloo with a mini marshmallow - whoever covers theirs first wins! I let Channing have 5 little marshmallows when he was done :-)

We read "The Arctic Habitat" by Bobbie Kalman and then talked about the kids of animals that live in the arctic. We also did a sorting activity and made a special book about arctic animals (You'll find the special animal book we made as part of the download but I won't post about it until next week).

We played a game called "Melt the ice", which I saw over at Little Giraffes and changed it up just a little bit for Channing. Needless to say that this was probably his FAVORITE activity of the week and he (of course) won! I have no hope against that kid :-)

Here's a pic of him "holding the ice" for 5 seconds, trying to melt it.

He played with his Animal Planet "polar animals" set that he got for Christmas.

We read "The Northern Lights" by Susan Canizares and then painted out own picture of this beautiful natural display of color.

We learned some really interesting facts about Polar bears......I'm not sure if you know this or not but a Polar Bears fur is actually translucent - it just looks white because it reflects the color of the snow and ice!

After learning some Polar bear facts, we did a little science experiment..........it didn't really work out too well for us because I didn't have and Crisco (I really thought I had some in the cupboard but upon searching, discovered that I did not!).....anyway, what you do is stick your hand in ice and water to see how cold it is.......brrrrr.



Now pack a glove with Crisco (I used petroleum Jelly which didn't work too well) and stick you hand in there. Dip it in the ice and it won't feel very cold. This shows how the layer of blubber under their fur/skin keeps arctic animals warm..........I got this idea from an old Mailbox magazine that I have. We'll have to try it again after I get some Crisco.

We then drew a picture of 3 things that Polar bears like to do.

Other things we did but I didn't get photos of:

Ate some Salmon

Used our Alaska 3 part cards and See. Trace and Make cards
Built an igloo our of sugar cubes and frosting

Did some coin rubbings of the Alaskan Quarter

Read "Polar Bear, Polar Bear what do you hear?" by Bill Martin and "The Three Snowy Bears" by Jan Brett.

Looked at the PowerPoint from 1+1+1=1 about Alaska

**you'll find it in the members only section.....if you haven't joined, you should consider it because Carisa has TONS of "extra" things - like the PowerPoint's for all the States of America PLUS PowerPoint's for all the letters of the Alphabet too.........right now the cost is 10 dollars to join but in February she'll be putting up the price a little, so get in now!**

Also, don't forget to check out Montessori Tidbits for some additional Alaskan fun :-)

The clip art I used to make these printables is copyright and used with permission. It is designed by:

Dianne. J Hook from DJ Inkers

The cute graphics I used to make the "Trekking" button are from Scrappin Doodles. Thank you Denyse for allowing me to use them!

PS - OH MY WORD!!!!!! I just found this whole unit from Valerie......why had I nor seen this before!! Anyway, this is SUPER and will go along GREAT with Alaska!! Make sure you check it out.

I am going to link this to:

ABC and 123

Homonyms

I know some of your are teaching older kids so I thought I'd share a set of homonyms that I made for a friend.........I color coded them so there are 3 sets (there are about 35 pages of them, so there are a LOT). You could have the kids match them, look the meaning up, write sentences using the correct word etc - maybe one day I'll get around to making worksheets to go with them. For now though, this is what I have :-)

You can download them here.

Don't forget that I'll be posting our ALASKA unit for "Trekking across the States" on SUNDAY...........it's a fun one so don't miss it!!!

Valentine's Day unit

The day is fast approaching, so I thought I'd whip up a Valentine's Day unit for you do do with your little ones!

Here's what you can find in the unit:

Hearts and Arrows upper/lower case letter match

See, Trace and Make cards

3 part cards

Scissor skills

Counting mat

Lacing card

Size sort

Pre- Writing

ABC order

Visual discrimination

Read and color

Missing numbers

Dominoes

Magnet/counter page

Fill my heart game

Heart size sorting mat

Heart count and cover game

Letter V sorting

Greater/Less than numbers

Patterns

Number writing practice

Alphabet writing practice

Conversation heart sorting/graphing

Teddy Bear measuring

Count and Place cards

Mailbox drop activity

Number Clip cards

This pack will soon be available for download in my TPT store.

The clip art that has been used is copyright and has been used with permission. It has been designed by

Dianne. J Hook (DJ Inkers)

Denyse (Scrappin Doodles)

I am going to link this to:






Tot Tuesdays

Trekking across The States - Alabama

Welcome to the first stop in our Trek across The States. To begin our journey, we used our boarding pass, hopped on our makeshift plane and landed in ALABAMA. Channing was so excited and we found out so many cool things!

We colored a map of Alabama, found out that the State bird is a Yellowhammer (named after the soldiers in the Civil War who had yellow trim on their uniform) and the State flower is a pretty Camellia.

We found out lots of interesting facts about Yellowhammers......did you know that they eat more ants than any other kind of bird in the USA? So of course I had to make a counting game to go along with it :-)

We also painted a Yellowhammer and added yellow feathers.


While cotton is not the MAJOR crop in Alabama anymore (it is still a BIG crop), the State was once was known as "the King of Cotton". We glued some cotton balls on a map of Alabama and then drew 3 pictures of things we use cotton for - I was quite impressed that Channing could think of 3 things himself!

We also made a very pretty Camellia craft. Channing is going through a weird "I will not have a picture unless I hold the paper in my mouth" phase - funny kid!

We also looked at the Sate Flag and touched on some famous people that were born in Alabama (like Helen Keller and Georger Washington Carver).

I also made some 3 part cards to go along with our Alabama adventure (they include the flag, a map, the Monarch butterfly, yellowhammer, Camellia, state quarter, Helen Keller and George Washington Carver). .

We did all of these activities in conjunction with our Space unit as it was Space scientists in Huntsville who helped send astronauts to the moon! We did some great crafts to go along with our space theme but I'll post about them next week.

I had great plans of making some "sweet potato biscuits" but ran out of time....bummer 'cause they sounded so good!

Before you get ready to board the plane again and head out to Alaska, head over to Montessori Tidbits to see what they did to learn about Alabama.

From Next week on, our "Trekking across the Sates" will be posted on Sundays....so look out for them. If you're joining us and do some other interesting activities, please email me and I'd be happy to add a link to your post :-)

The cute graphics I used to make the "Trekking" button are from Scrappin Doodles. Thank you Denise for allowing me to use them!

Winter Hats

Here is something I did with my Kindergarten class a few years ago that I thought some of you might be interested in..........the kids brought in a winter hat and wore it.....I put the kids in pairs and turned their desks around to face each other. They then had to draw their partners Winter hat (and the top part of their head). They did an EXCELLENT job! After hanging proudly on our wall for a while, I made it into a class book for them to read. We used oil pastels to draw with (in case you were wondering).

Don't forget that tomorrow is the start of our "Trekking across The States" adventure. I am so excited that I can hardly wait......Channing and I have been working hard all week :-) My blogging friend Leann over at Montessori Tidbits will be joining in the fun and I'll link each week to what she's been up to. I also have another blogging pal that may be linking up with us too - this is so much fun :-)

New Look

Well, here is my "new look"!! How do you like it? I think it's FANTASTIC! It is totally me.........I'm really into everything whimsical - thank you so much Staci for doing such a fabulous job! I have Staci working on an "I was featured" button for my blog too.
If you've written me an email about subscribing by email, you can now do that in about 24 hours (once Feed burner has finished setting up). All you have to do is click on the balloon in the sidebar.

I'm hoping this will make my site MUCH easier to navigate! I just have to work on getting all my printables on the "printable" page.

If you're looking for a blog makeover or even a new button, make sure you check out Blogging Bella Designs.

Don't forget to grab one of my cute buttons :-)

What's in a name?

Letters! You can't really see it too well (because the snowballs are made of shiny paper and the only thing that wouldn't smudge was a silver sharpie) but we made the snowballs spell "Channing". This was a great activity because I am always looking for things to have Channing practice his name.
I had his name written out and he put the letters in order on the table and then we stuck them down vertically.
We're going to stick this little guy up on Channing's bedroom door :-)

Snowman Soup

We made some "Snowman soup" a few days ago, packaged it up and sent some to some buddies.........before we did though we had to try it ourselves (of course).

Here's what's in it:
A packet of Hot Chocolate
10 mini Marshmallows
3 Hershey's Kisses
A candy cane
and some edible snowflakes

Cute huh!?! Here's a few pics of Channing.

Stirring it together...........

Despite the funny face, he LOVED it! We hope our friends love it as much as we do :-)