Rock Fish!

I saw the book, Only One You, and loved it! I tried painting rock fish with my Girl Scout Brownies...there are only 7 in the troop. It was fun, but didn't have the end result I wanted. I still thought it would be a terrific end-of-the-year project for the Peeps, and then I could put it in their time capsules! Shannon wanted her Rockstars to do it too. So we had to figure out step by step instructions. (Click on the picture for the Amazon link.)

The rocks I used with the Girl Scouts were black craft rocks from Michaels. They were beautiful, but we wanted something more economical. So we bought a bag of landscape rocks. They are assorted sizes, but that worked great! The Peeps helped me sort by size, and then they each chose the rock they wanted! (Have kids put their names and the year on the bottom side of the rock they choose.)

Drawing lines on the rocks with pencil is the first step. Then choose colors and get to the painting part! I didn't have my collection of lids at school, so I was desperate for something that I could put just a dab of paint on. All I could quickly put my hands on was a pack of poker chips. But they worked really well! (Next time, I'll use milk lids!) The Peeps were very focused with their painting. Here they are at the "low" table, the "tall" table, and a regular table. (We love our new seating options!)

After the children painted the first colors, we let them dry. Then we added details after recess. Later in the afternoon, we added the black sharpie outlines. By then, some of the children had lost interest in working on their fish, so I let them choose if they wanted to do the outlines or if they wanted me to. Several of the kids did it themselves! The next morning, we painted the top with a clear coat of nail polish, and wrote our names and the year on the back. (That step really should have been first.)

Here are a few rocks from the Rockstars! Shannon had her kids practice making lips on paper before they drew them on the rocks. I think they look better than mine do! I also love those eyelashes!

We made some printables to go with the project. The kids pretended to "swim" around the room with their rock fish while they found friends to sign the boxes during the "Find a Friend" activity. It was so cute! I made it easy enough for the kindergartners to read themselves (for the most part!). Lots of times, this type of page is too tricky for my Peeps...but they could do this one!

Here are pictures from the TpT set. Each one links to our store. Check it out!

Jazzing Up Our TpT Store

It's so challenging to learn new things! I've been working and working on adding something interesting to our quote box on TpT. I've made progress...but still have lots of learning to do!!

Gobble! Gobble!

We made a Yahtzee-like game called "Gobble! Gobble!" This is a great way to practice sight words! You need an old coffee creamer container...or any type of container that you can turn into a turkey and put dice in. The coffee mate containers are neat because they have a shape that lends itself to becoming a turkey! 

The body and feathers are just foam shapes, hot glued on to the container. (The label comes right off, and you'll have a nice clean container to work with.) 

On blank dice, write any six words you like. We chose sight words that are tricky for our kids right now: here, this, said, am, my, like. Then we have a "Full House" and "Gobble" spot on the score sheet.  To play, children take turns rolling the dice. On a single turn, you can roll the dice a total of three times. Choose what words to try to collect, and keep any dice that work towards that. Then roll again until all three rolls are taken. For example, I roll the dice, and I see that I have two "this" words. I put them aside, and roll three dice again. If I get more "this" words, I can add them to my total. I can roll one more time to see if I can get them all on "this." Then I write down my score.  Put a star for a Full House (two of one word and three of another). "Gobble" is what you say when you get all five dice on the same word!  You can put a star on your score sheet for that, too! The game is over when all categories are full. 

We're going to make a snowman next, so that we can continue this game into the holiday season!

We're On Target!

We're working on making meaningful learning targets that we can use with the kindergartners each day. So far, it's awesome! We made huge "targets" to put where the children can reach them. As part of the Morning Meeting, the boys and girls put the target skills for the day on the big target. There are three per day--one for reading, one for writing, and one for math. They are written to be easily understood by the children, but have the actual common core standard written underneath. When we post them in the morning, it sets up the learning for the day, and makes it so easy to refer back to the targets during the specific lessons!

Welcome!

Welcome to our blog! We're Kelley and Shannon, and we decided to start this blog to share some of the ideas and experiences that we have together while teaching Kindergarten. We have a lot of fun working together! We hope that you'll enjoy seeing some of the things that we've been up to.

We're in the process of building a Teachers Pay Teachers store, too! We opened the store at the end of October; tomorrow is actually our one-month anniversary! We have lots of plans for more freebies, along with more emergent readers, math games, and sight word games...we are learning lots along the way! In many ways, we're Learning All Day Long!