Heating Things Up! {Fire Safety Week FREEBIES}

For the next 2 weeks we are learning all about Fire Safety...I like to play and pretend, so this is a fun theme for me!

To get the kids excited about the week I hung "flames" around the room. I was inspired by this blog post and tutorial! {HERE} The kids FrEAkeD out this morning!

Amazing how a little hype and influencing of imagination can make learning SO MUCH FUN! :)
Here are some pictures of us hard at work in reading and math!

We are really working on our reading and writing muscles and developing our stamina. My students really are working so hard, and I wanted to reward them for all of their efforts. {Sometimes I have to remember that they are just like me...I like to be told when I am doing a good job, and I especially like to be rewarded for my efforts!}  So I made these little banners. As my students are reading and writing independently, I am looking for those who are displaying qualities of a good reader or writer. When I explained the reward to the students they became even more eager to get to work! Well look at that...tricked 'em!!!! ;)  

I also let the Red Hot Reader read wearing a fire helmet and a reading chief badge. {At this point my kids were going BANANAS---sang just like Gwen Stefani!} During writing, I "sounded the alarm" {rang a bell} to announce who I had seen working hard as a writer. Those students got to wear a writing chief badge, and wait for it...use "Fire Writer Pencils"! {Stop it!} :) The pencils were just yellow, red and orange mechanical pencils!

All day long whenever I saw my students "blazing" with amazing work, I gave them a "fire hose" to cool off! {Twizzlers} I also gave away lots of Red Hots for students that were "on fire" with their behavior! 

I know it seems cheezy, ridiculous or even over kill...but can I tell you that my Monday was ON FIRE!!! If being cheezy and silly gets my students to work hard and have FUN doing it, I am all for it! If you want to join the fun, grab your free copy by clicking the picture below!

Fire Safety Resources...

YouTube songs for Fire Safety...

Hope your week is off to a great start! 

Apple Day {FREEBIES}

This week was apple week. If you follow me on instagram {follow me here}, you saw that I posted this picture...we were all apple this week!

Yesterday was Apple Day...here are some pics of the fun!

We started the day with a simple Apple Day coloring sheet.

This was the day's schedule.

We made Apple Crisp in the crockpot. The kids love to help cook and get so excited to taste their creation...plus it makes the classroom smell AMAZING all day long!

We read this book. Amelia Bedelia is always entertaining!

Next, we read a little more about Johnny Appleseed!

We made Johnny Appleseed hats.

And a Johnny Appleseed craftivity! So cute!

After lunch we read this book, and explored apples using our five senses. {Sorry the picture is kinda blurry!!} 

 We tasted the apples last, then we created this Apple Graph...

This was the first time in 10 years that not a single person liked yellow apples...usually green is the least liked apple! 

One of my students' favorite games all week was Apple Picking time! This game is super simple to create, just draw a tree and add some "apples" {words on apple colored post-its}. The students find and color the word that was picked on their recording sheet. We had to play this game yesterday!

During math we used apple colored m&m's as apples on the trees to create math stories. We were working on the concepts of greater than and less than. The kids loved it...mostly because CANDY was involved, but hey WHATEVER works! :)

Finally at the end of the day, we had our apple taste test! 

The entire day was filled with fun learning! These activities came from these units...make sure to check out the FREEBIES!!! Happy rest of your weekend!

I Love Me! I Am Drug Free! {Red Ribbon Week in Kindergarten}

Red Ribbon Week is coming up in just a few weeks. Finding things that are Kindergarten appropriate is tricky, so I wanted to share some of the resources that I use in my classroom.

I found this YouTube video, it was a good reminder of why red!

A great picture book to read to the students is Sarah's Sick Day by Erainna Winnett. This easy read helps the students learn why taking medicine by yourself is an unsafe choice.

The author of this book has a website with lots of FREE resources as well! Check them out HERE! 

I use coloring sheets, printables and sorting activities from this pack. 

Find these activities HERE!

Of course since Red Ribbon Week is really close to Halloween, I HAVE to have my kiddos decorate and say no to drugs in a very CREEPY way! ;) I usually have my kids make one of these craftivities.

Check out these craftivities HERE!

What do you do to teach your little ones about Red Ribbon Week?

On the WRITE Track!

We are just getting to that part of the year when my kiddos are becoming more independent as writers. It is very exciting to see their growth in such a short period of time. Now that they are writing more, I have begun to conference individually with them and help them develop writing goals. The first writing goal that we are working on as a class is our writing stamina. For some students their stamina is 20 minutes already, other students are developing their writing muscles to work on writing for just 7 minutes. :)

This is our goal anchor chart that we use to help remind us of our daily writing stamina goal.

Get this FREEBIE in the PREVIEW FILE here!!

Something that I use to help my writers develop their writing skills during writing conferences is goal setting. When I first started conferencing with students I thought it would be a very overwhelming task...keeping track of paperwork, managing behavior and making sure all students were on task. However, I have found that since I set goals with my students I am able manage my students behavior and they stay on task BECAUSE they are so busy working on meeting their goals! Duh, Julie!!!!! I have created a few tools to help keep things simple. Take a peek... 

Get your copy of my writing conference checklist here for FREE!

This method is super simple and requires very minimal additional work for the teacher. Which of course we ALL love! Check out this writing goals pack, a preview is below.

How do you goal set with your students?

How About Them Apples?!?!

So here in South Florida it does NOT feel like the weather is changing from summer to autumn. Seriously! Every day I feel like my friends and I try and convince one another that we felt a change in the weather, and that there is a crispness in the air...we clearly are DELUSIONAL! It is definitely no where near boot weather here, or even t-shirt weather for that matter! We are still rockin' the shorts, tanks and a/c to the max! Although we don't really experience fall here, I love to celebrate and decorate for the season! Everything I bake has some form of apple or pumpkin in it, including my morning coffee.

In class this week, we will be doing lots of activities with apples. I made these fun apple pom poms to use as table names. I will be hanging the apples from the ceilings and then use the apple names red delicious, gala, golden delicious and granny smith apples as table names!

We will be having an apple taste test this week. This is when students will be sampling apple jacks, apple crisp, caramel apples and apple cider. We actually bake the apple crisp in class. The kids LOVE in class cooking! The recipe is found in this unit.

A website that I use to help me get parents involved in aiding in sending in supplies needed for classroom activities is Sign Up Genius. If you haven't tried it out before, you should! It is free, and requires little effort! Plus the best part is that parents will not send in multiple of the same item! In the past I have ended up with 5 of something I only needed 1 of, and none of something I needed 2 of! Using this website has saved me so much time and effort in my planning! I hope it helps you too!

After our apple sampling we will be using our five senses to tell all about apples. The students will help to complete this apple repeated text.

As part of our apple study we will be learning about Johnny Appleseed. We will check out some of my favorite Johnny Appleseed books...

we will be watching this Johnny Appleseed YouTube video...

then we will be making this Johnny Appleseed craftivity!

Our literacy and math centers are all about Fall too!

Just the other day we completed this  interactive math emergent reader. The kids had a blast! We used beans as the leaves on the trees. This week we will be doing a similar activity but with apples instead.

If you are learning about apples this week, be sure to check out this apple pack! Happy Apple Week!!