Some shamrockin’ fun!

It’s March!  Hurray!!!!  One of my favorite holidays is just around the corner.  I thought I’d share some of the fun things we’ve done in the past to celebrate.

We always read Jamie O’Rourke and the Big Potato.  I always try to read out loud with my best Irish accent (which I’m sure is ridiculous…😂).  Last year my class made these adorable potato people.    My class also completed these leprechaun directed drawings from First Grade Blue Skies.  They turned out SO adorable!!!

 We also worked on writing questions.  First we brainstormed some question words whole class and made a poster.  Then during our stations we worked on writing down the questions to ask a leprechaun.  I had this large leprechaun cut-out that I purchased from Dollar Tree.  I taped it to the door and had students ask the leprechaun a question.  Oh my goodness–this was SUCH a cute activity and I absolutely loved the questions that my students wrote in their leprechaun letters.  

I uploaded this fun activity as a FREE item to my TpT store!  Just click here to download.

We also had a little visitor at our house!  My kiddos were SO EXCITED!!!  He left little green footprints and shamrocks everywhere!  Here is a photo:

The visiting leprechaun also left green milk in the fridge!  Ha!

I’m looking forward to this silly little leprechaun visiting again (and I’m looking forward to Shamrock Shakes)!  We also have a little tradition of making green dinner that night.  I usually just tint some pasta and alfredo sauce and serve with broccoli–yum!  What do you have planned for St. Patrick’s day?  I’d love to hear all about it in the comments below!

 

 

 

A Peek into my class…

I never did get around to posting a classroom tour at the beginning of the year (oopsie). Here are a few pictures:

View from the door. It was open house the night that I took this picture.

 

Culture dolls and culture reports. They turned out SO cute!

 

I love, love, LOVE the way my writing board turned out this past year. I cut black poster board in 1/2 to make it look like a clip board. I super glued tacks to clothespins and then covered them with washi tape.

I ended up making quite a few decor items for my class.  Here are some pictures of some of the things:

 

 

I’m very happy to say that I have now finished and added these decor items to my TpT store.  Click any of the pictures below to be taken to my store to check it out :).

Here are some sample photos of just a few of the many items included in this decor pack.

 

As a special introductory price this item will be 50% off for the first 48 hours!  Thanks for looking and I hope that you liked taking a little peek into my classroom!

 

 

 

Newly revised…

I recently updated and revised my A-Z letter recognition pack and let me tell ya–it’s FULL of great resources!  Check it out for yourself!

 

I revised the letter recognition pages.  This pack includes 26 different practice sheets with an ASL image for each letter.  I have always found that pairing the letters with sign language  really helps your struggling students.  Check out the picture below to see what the worksheets look like.

I also added a few things to this pack.  I included 26 different letter sound puzzles with both color and black and white versions.  Choose which version would better fit your needs!

Another new added item is ABC-flip books.  There is also one for each letter.  This activity takes very little prep, but is wonderful for teaching beginning sounds and vocabulary.

 

This is only a few of the included items.  Below is a list of the included contents and if you would like to download a FREE sample of the letter A flip-book, letter worksheet and sound puzzle, then click the link below to be taken to my store.

 

Thanks for checking this out!  I’m pretty excited about my own upcoming kindergartner working on these activities :)!

 

Let’s Celebrate! Mrs. Kilburn’s Kiddos is turning 3…

I am super duper excited this afternoon, because today I clicked on my site stats and found out that within the last three years my site has had over 3,000,000  hits!  Oh my goodness!  I never would have dreamed that my little ol’ teaching blog would have so many people looking at it!  I first started this blog in July of 2008 and look how much it has grown!

So, let’s celebrate!  That means FREEBIES for you!  Click the pictures below to download:

And this freebie is from my A to Z Letter Recognition activity pack that I just uploaded to Teachers Pay Teachers.  I think that I’m planning on gluing this chart to my student folders or it would also be handy to have for writing activities :).

Thanks for all of your support everyone!  I hope that you enjoy these printables :).

~Barb

Great Reading Resource…

I was surfing the web this afternoon and found this great blog The Moffatt Girls.  The author of this blog is a former elementary school teacher and she is developing and sharing all sorts of wonderful reading resources for teaching beginning readers.  Click the Ready2Read icon below to be taken directly to her Unit 1 reading post where you can download wonderful FREE resources:

Happy surfing!

~Barb

More Spring and Bunny Ideas…

We had lots of fun learning about Eggs and Bunnies before we left for Spring Break last week.  Here are some pictures:

We had lots of fun sorting and eating these!

We used the sorting worksheet pages from Shannon Martin

If you haven’t checked out Shannon Martin’s blog, Kindergarten Hoppenings you are seriously missing out on a great blog!  See her Spring post to get the Spring Marshmallow Sorting Pages:  Spring Hoppenings Post from Shannon Martin.

We also played Jelly Bean Bingo!

Here is a copy of Jelly Bean Bingo if you are interested:  jelly bean bingo.

I printed out 5 copies of this sheet and I just colored the jelly beans so each card would be different and then laminated the cards.  I cut out the squares to create calling cards.

Okay, so we did complete some other fun activities that didn’t include food :).  We also completed lots of fun bunny activities!

I used some clip art from Scrappin Doodles to make these cute bunnies. I wrote numbers on them and students used the egg erasers to create groups.

I bought the egg erasers at Target, and they were pretty cheap, but if you find them after Easter they will be even cheaper!  Here are some other bunnies that we used during our math stations:

I used egg stickers on the bunnies.  I think that I got these stickers at JoAnn’s last year, and they aren’t anything fancy–just Easter themed stickers.  If you would like to download a blank bunny template click here: Bunny counting.   Here is the worksheet if you are interested:  Bunny counting worksheet.

We also made this adorable bunny for our April math page:

The idea for this bunny came from Kimberly Jordano's site Kinder By Kim

We also made these fun placemats for our Spring Party that we had on Friday:

Here is a copy of the egg that we water colored:  watercolor egg for memory book.   Here is the writing prompt:  My bunny can writing prompt.

Well I hope that all of you have a very happy Easter and enjoy reading this post :)!

~Barb

Happy St. Patty’s Day!

May the Luck o’ the Irish be with all of you today!  Seriously,  I love this holiday and I’m looking forward to a jam packed day full of fun activities with my little ones (I’m also really looking forward to our staff Potato Bar Potluck this afternoon too;)).  Here are a few fun things that we completed today:

We made leprechaun paper plate masks! So fun!

We sorted and counted Skittles! Yum!

If you would like to have the Skittle sorting worksheets, they are available from Toddler House.  You can get them if you scroll down their St. Patrick’s Day unit page here.

We completed a TON of wonderful worksheets from Shannon Martin, which she posted on her blog Kindergarten Hoppenings.  You can see her post here and download all of her wonderful resources for free :).

Tomorrow we are planning on completing the Leprechaun’s Gold project that April Larremore posted on her blog Chalk Talk.  You can download a copy of the directions here.

We are also going to work on this Leprechaun writing prompt and make color some simple leprechaun patterns that I have.  Here is the writing prompt:  Leprechauns Like To writing prompt

And here are some great ideas of things that other people are doing:

This is a photo in a colleagues classroom of a project that they completed with pattern blocks. Too cute and I love how it incorporates math, art and language!

One of the special education teachers that I work with had her kids make these paper plate leprechauns, which I must say are adorable!

You can find directions for making this paper plate leprechaun here.

I hope that all of you had a great St. Patrick’s Day!  Last year’s St. Patrick’s day post also has lots of great ideas if you would like to check it out!

Mrs. Kilburn’s St. Patrick’s Day Fun

~Barbara

President’s Day Ideas and Fun!

Monday is a holiday in honor of President’s Day, and I’m excited for my students to spend a  little time completing a patriotic mini-unit!

Check out this cute idea that a colleague completed with her kindergarten students last year:

Here is another picture of a bulletin board my students completed a few years ago:

We made presidential placemats (idea from The Mailbox magazine) and completed TLC's Statue of Liberty project

Check out the adorable hand-print flags my students made last year:

Here is a link to a free download of the Statue of Liberty lesson from TLC Art:  Statue of Liberty Art Lesson.  Here is another great sample lesson from TLC art for a Barack Obama project:  Barack Obama TLC lesson.

Check out this cute George Washington project that April Larremore’s class completed below.  She also has some great ideas for President’s day, click the picture below to be taken to her post:

 

The First Grade Sweet Life also has some wonderful ideas, check out this adorable Venn Diagram that her students made:

 

Click on this picture to be taken to this blog for more President's Day ideas

Here is a penny estimation worksheet that I made for my students:  Penny Estimation.  I also made this penny rubbing worksheet to reinforce counting and penny recognition:  penny rubbings.

I also just purchased Deanna Jump’s America Unit.  Check out these adorable bald eagles, the instructions are part of the unit.  Click the picture below to be taken to Teachers Pay Teachers to purchase her unit:

Deanna has also posted some other great pictures from her unit here if you would like more information.

Here are some other must see links for wonderful ideas:

President’s Day Theme Ideas from Little Giraffes

President’s Day Ideas from Kindergarten Hoppenings (there are some great printables here that I most definitely will be using in my class next week :)).

I hope that you enjoy these!  Leave a link if you blogged about what you did to celebrate President’s day with your kiddos :).

~Barbara

Can you feel the Love?

I’m sure feeling the love from all of you!  Whoot-whoot!  I can’t believe that my little ol’ teaching blog has had over 2 million hits and over 100 subscriptions!  Awe….I love you guys too!  Thank you so much for all of your support, and I am so happy that all of you have found resources here that you can use with your little kiddos too!

And….I’m SUPER excited to say that my blog has been chosen as one of Teaching Heart’s Site of the Month winners!  🙂 🙂 🙂

So all of these lovey dovey feelings just make me think of Valentine’s day, which is just around the corner!  Check out this super cute math idea from Kinder by Kim, just click the picture to be taken to her February page, which is full of wonderful ideas!

I love this subtraction idea form Kim Jordano! She always has the best ideas!

Donna Glynn shares this adorable writing activity with a download. Click this picture to be taken to her site.

Here is another adorable math idea from Overall Success.

Last year a colleague of mine shared this adorable poem with me for making giant wearable Valentine’s with students.  We made them in my preschool class last year and the kids had so much fun decorating them with stamps, stickers and die-cuts.  Here is a picture:

We also completed some candy heart sorting, click the picture to be taken to ABC Schoolhouse’s website:

Click here to receive their free sample of February Ideas, this is where you can download the sorting page from ABC Schoolhouse:  February Ideas from ABC Schoolhouse.

I also sent home this take home project with my students to complete with their families:

I send home a copy of  a construction paper heart with the note from above.  Here is a picture of the finished projects from last year’s class:

This was the "Things We Love" take home project that my students completed with their families last year.

We are planning on making these “Love Bugs” again at our party on Monday:

My class also made this handprint heart for their February page last year:

I’ll try to post some other things later, but this is all that I have for now.  I hope that all of you have a great day!

 

~Barbara

Classroom Superbowl Party Ideas!

It’s almost time for the Superbowl, and that means that it’s almost party time!  Well in my classroom at least!  I’ve been busy collecting some ideas to bring football to my classroom, so we can learn and have fun in a SUPER big way!  I must say that I’m a little disappointed that the Chicago Bears didn’t make it this year :(.  My hubby and I are big fans, and I was hoping to teach my little kiddos the Bears Fight song…lol!  Well anyway, here is a compilation of some ideas :).

At last year’s classroom superbowl party, students graphed what team that they thought that would win:

Students graphing and making their 'predictions' about who will win the superbowl.

We also made a color themed football book with die-cuts, but you could also have students draw different colored footballs. You can download a copy of the book here:  Superbowl of Colors Book.

Check out this adorable art idea from Teaching Heart’s Superbowl Page:

This football player activity is too cute!

Pre-k Fun’s Blog posted a bunch of super cute Superbowl classroom party ideas.  I really like these stuffed footballs:

I’m also super duper excited to say that I found a Football Theme page from Making Learning Fun! Check out this adorable Cheerleader writing activity:

Speaking of cheerleaders, I think that now would be a great time to complete the name cheers that Mrs. Lee blogged about here in September.  What a cute idea!

A new blog that I found called 2Teaching Mommies was full of a ton of printables and wonderful football themed ideas.  Click the picture to be taken to their blog:

Here is a picture of a counting activity that is available to download from their blog.

So, I’ve been working a few new football activities for us to complete too!  Click below to download the worksheets:

football theme addition worksheet

Color I See Football Theme

And, of course you can’t have a Superbowl Party without food!

Did you know that they make football shaped Oreo cookies? Pretty cute!

This would be a cute and healthy snack.  The idea is from Food Chics;  click the picture below to be taken to their site:

 

Have fun teaching your little ones about the Superbowl, and feel free to share any ideas that you may have!

 

~Barbara