End of Year Gifts for Students and Teachers {Freebies}

First of all, I want to thank all those in the armed forces today.  This past summer I was able to visit some of the memorials in Washington, D.C. and I have been thinking about those a lot today on Memorial Day!  I am amazed by all those in the armed forces and I appreciate what they do for us on a daily basis.

It has been a rainy Memorial Day weekend here....boo!  I decided to get up early this morning and finish up my student gifts.  Take a look at what I did:

The supplies

"You BLEW me away this year!" Bubbles

                  "Have a COOL summer!" Kool-Aid           "You will ROCK in 1st grade" Pop Rocks

The finished product!

 In each student bag, there is the following:

~one small bottle of bubbles that says "You BLEW me away this year"
~one package of pop rocks that says "You will ROCK in 1st grade"
~one package of kool-aid that says "Have a COOL summer"
~one crazy straw

I can't wait to give these out to my kinder babies.

If you are interested in the labels for these gifts, please click on the image below to grab this freebie from my TpT store!

Then while I was at it, I decided to finish up my kids' gifts to their teachers.  I just love how they turned out.  I planted flowers in a pot and added the sign that says "Thank you for helping me Grow"  on the back side of the flower I put the grade and year.  I really hope their teachers enjoy these!

What are you planning to do for the end of the year for your students or kids' teachers?  

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Five for Friday

I am linking up again for one of my favorite linky parties....Five for Friday.

{1}  This was our last full week of school.  We only have one day left which is Tuesday.  I am excited to get to spend some quality time with my own kiddos during the summer, but I am sure going to miss my little kinder babies.  They have grown so much and I am so proud of each and every one of them.

{2}  My class went to the zoo for our field trip.  I shared some pictures in {this} post, but here is a video I took of the lion.  We headed to the back of the zoo first and my group and one other group had the big cats all to our selves.  It was very cool.  {You can hear one of our aides telling the students that they were too loud so that is why the lion was making that noise....ha!}

{3}  We had pirate day on Wednesday.  Here arrrrrgh a couple pics.  ;)

{4}  This pile is going to be my end of year gifts to my students.  I am working on them today and I hope to post about it before the weekend is over.

{5}  This past weekend my mom, grandma, grandpa, stepdad, and niece came to visit to see my son's soccer game and to visit for my birthday.  I love them all, but I was most excited to see this cutie pie.

I just don't get to see her enough.  Now that it is almost summer vacation I plan on getting down to visit her as much as I can as well as my baby nephew.  I think being an aunt is like the best thing ever!!! :)

Hope you all have a great three-day weekend!  I plan on relaxing and getting some quality time with my kiddos!!

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Summer Bucket List

I am joining in on the fun for the Summer Bucket List.  My kiddos and I create a "Summer Fun List" for each summer.  We hang it on the fridge and cross items off as we do them.  Some are simple like play at the park and some are more exciting like a vacation.  Once, I saw this linky I knew it was right up my alley!!!  :)

{1} Anniversary trip with my hubby....We will be married for 10 years this summer and the last BIG trip we took by ourselves was our honeymoon 10 years ago.  We plan on going to Chicago for a long weekend to relax and have some fun.

{2}  READ.....I love to read and my kids and I usually end up at the library at least once a week.  They always participate in our local library's summer reading program.  I love sitting out on my deck with the sunshine and a good book!

{3} I really want to color coordinate my classroom a little better.  Here is the color scheme I thinking of doing.  Haven't decided 100% for sure yet though.

{4}  I plan on creating some new things for classroom inspired by Pinterest.  {Click on the images to head to my pins.}

{5}  I WILL be organizing my two closets in my classroom!!

{6}  Shopping....both for myself and for my classroom.  :)

Today we had our zoo field trip.  The kids had a blast!  Here are a few pictures of our day.

Last, but not least I need to pick a winner a for my birthday giveaway.  Congrats goes to.....



a Rafflecopter giveaway

Now this exhausted teacher is headed off to bed because we have field day tomorrow so I know I will need my rest!

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Birthday Giveaway

My birthday is tomorrow and I am celebrating by hosting a giveaway and throwing a sale.  I love birthdays.....especially mine! ;)  I think birthdays are so special no matter what age you are.  My hubby always tries to make my birthday special for me.  He is the sweetest.

{Background by Laura Randazzo, Frame by Print Candee, Fonts by Hello Fonts & Kevin & Amanda}

All you need to do is enter the rafflecopter below.  Giveaway ends on Wednesday, May 22nd at midnight.  I also have my entire TpT store on sale for 20% through my birthday, Monday, May 20th.  Click {here} to check out my sale.


a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Five for Friday {Saturday Edition}

I had every intentions of posting my Five for Friday last night, but I didn't so here we are.  :)

I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching again.

1.  My hubby built me this planter for the veggies I want to grow this summer.  I was finally able to plant some of them the other day.

2.  This week my students learned how to measure using rulers.  Once they understood how to do this, we used a Kagan Cooperative Learning Structure called Rally Coach to practice measuring items around the room.  It was great practice and it got them up and moving around which always helps too!

3.  As part of our ABC Countdown we had "S" day which for my classroom was sunglasses and shaving cream day.  The kiddos wore their sunglasses all day and we used shaving cream at the end of the day to write sight words.  {They were having so much fun that they didn't realize they were learning.  Shhhh........please don't tell them!}

4.  As part of our ocean animal unit, we created these jellyfish.  I was going to hang them from my ceiling clips, but the kiddos really wanted to take them home so I let them.  They were having so much fun playing with their jellyfish that I just couldn't say no.

5.  One of the teachers at our school is a certified scuba diver and her father actually teaches the certification classes for scuba diving.  When I was telling her about our ocean unit, she told me how her father used to come in and give presentations to her class when she was in school.  She asked him if he would interested in coming to present to the littles at our school and he said YES!  I have to tell you.  This was amazing!  The students were just so engaged and interested in everything he had to say.  {Warning....lots of pictures, but it so was COOL!}

 Trying on the googles.

 Three-horned trunk fish

 Trying on the flippers.

 Sea Urchins

Coral

A puffer fish

He made sure to tell the students that all the animals were already dead when they found them in the ocean.  They never take any live animals out of the ocean.  I truly hope they will come back next year.  :)

My friend Becky from The Compassionate Teacher is having her 100 follower giveaway.  She is one of the sweetest people.  Click on the image to go enter her giveaway.  She has 3 separate giveaways.....amazing!!

I hope you had a great week too.  Link up with Doodle Bugs and tell everyone what your Five for Friday was!

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Find me at.....

I am blogging over at Mrs. Thigpen's Kindergarten today. You can find me there today. I am posting about tracking student behavior data and what to do with it. Click {here} to head to her blog.  While you are there, you should follow Nicki's blog.  She is fabulous and we have become friends through our blogging world.

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Oceans of Fun!

Before I start my post, I want to say that I hope all the mothers out there had a wonderful Mother's Day.  I stayed off the computer all day and just enjoyed time with my family.  We planted some flowers, fruit, and veggies plants, and I was able to even sneak in a nap.  It was wonderful!!

We are finishing up our two week Ocean Animal Unit this week.  Boy have we learned a lot about different ocean animals.

We start every day with a chit-chat message.  Here is an example:

 My students have become fantastic authors and illustrators.  Just check out some of their writing and a few directed drawings we completed.

We have been using the math centers from my Ocean Math Centers.  You can grab those {here}.

One of my favorite activities we did last week was a reading response activity with the story "The Pout-Pout Fish" by Deborah Diesen.

I asked my students to complete the sentence, "To make the pout pout fish smile, I would...."  They had to also illustrate their idea.  I LOVED what they came up with.

 "give candy"                                                       "do a joke"

"make silly faces"                                         "give him a hug"

What did I tell you adorable or what??  Now I have a quick funny story to share with you.  A couple of weeks ago my class was working on persuasive writing.  I wanted to model this to my class so I chose something I was going to have to talk the hubby into letting me get or do.  I chose a pedicure.  Here is my example:

I told my class how my hubby teases me about my toes.  I also told them that it was o.k. because I tease my hubby about his toes as well.  Anyways, it must have really stuck with one particular student because look what I got as a teacher appreciation gift.

This same student also brought me these beautiful daisies.  :)

I showed him the picture of the daisies so he could see where I put them in my house.  {The water immediately turned that weird color......I think it is from the dye they use for the flowers or something.}  We decided we needed a picture together.  :)

Hope you had a fantastic teacher appreciation week and Mother's Day weekend.  

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