Spring Hedgehog Freebie and More

Happy Spring! This is a quickie post with a few little things you might like! Thanks to Stephanie for Show and Tell Tuesday!

What do you do to celebrate spring with your kiddos? I usually do a planting project, but I am a bit overdosed with special projects at the moment... between St. Patrick's Day, Dr Seuss week, and worm day in the last couple weeks– whew! So I was looking for something pretty easy in the planting department.

I have done the kids faces on cups, so it looks like they are growing hair. You can see a photo from a couple years ago and you can see they did turn out pretty cute. I posted about it and you can see the details if you click on the photo. However I passed on it this year because the prep to get those face photos to fit and be waterproof was more than I wanted to do.

I've also done the egg carton caterpillar where the grass makes the caterpillar fuzzy. You can see it if you click on the photo below. The problem with doing the caterpillar this year though is that we go on spring break in less than two weeks and the grass won't be high enough to take home, but there won't be anyone around to water them at school. Those little egg cups hold just a small bit of soil that dries out quickly.

Sooo... what to do??  Hairy Hedgehogs!

I put Jonathan's drawing skills to good use and had him draw a hedgehog to fit on a sauce cup. I gave each student a paper hedgehog and colored pencils to color him in. They cut them out along the heavy black line. Then I carefully placed a strip of wide packing tape across the hedgehog so that he was sealed around the edges and placed that on a take-out sauce cup. I get the take-out sauce cups at Gordon Food Service. They are pretty cheap, and handy to have around the classroom where I've used them for all sorts of things.

Now these little guys are hanging out on the window counter to catch some rays. The little cups don't hold a lot of soil, but enough that if we give them a good watering before we leave for break, and place a little clear plastic wrap loosely over the top, I think they'll make it.

You wanna Hairy Hedgehogs with your kiddos?? Well, just click on the hedgehogs and you can download a sheet of six. Happy Spring!

And I have a second share, too, though some of you may remember this one from last year.

This is my April Showers activity that includes a new twist on an old saying, a moveable craft, and a close read on that little critter known as a June Bug.

It comes with all the stuff you need to make a shared reading for your pocket chart, a poem for the poetry folder, a bookmark, and the craft. We're going to do the activities in April, which is just around the corner. Click on the pic below to see it on my TPT page. 

Well, hope that was a breath of fresh spring air and you enjoy having a little fun with your kids. Remember to PIN! Now click on back to Forever in Fifth Grade Show and Tell Tuesday to find more teacher ideas. Thanks, Stephanie!

Thanks for stopping by!

Garden News, Review & Giveaway!

I wrote this earlier in the week–

It summed up that day... and many days that followed. I LOVE kindergarten but I swear I spend as much time putting away as planning and getting out!

Thanks to Kacey for the Five for Friday linky– a super good way to find teacher bloggers!

2.  Okay, so that image up above was my number 1. I'm a bit pooped as I work on this tonight.

Ta-Da! For those of you who follow, you'll know I had plans to make some Earth Day hats, and WE DID!

This one's flower drooped to allow for incognito viewing.

They are made entirely out of recycled-reused materials: brown paper grocery store bag, white plastic shopping bag, and scraps I collected over two weeks. In this up close and personal shot you can see we used bingo markers for added color. The rose is just the plastic bag, curled up and stapled, with added permanent marker color... yes, Target makes the best bags for this and OF COURSE I could come up with enough without even asking parents. 

DH Jonathan (Dear Husband, not Dumb Head as he insists) helped me turn the grocery bags inside out so you couldn't see the branding, and after twenty he couldn't resist trying one on himself. 

My class looks like a bunch of Unknown Comics as we take a blog shot... I don't even know if the kids know what a "blog shot" is... but they know I don't want to see their faces if I ask for it. And I bet many of you are too young to even know who the Unknown Comic was!

I'm telling you those hats were a BIG HIT. Not only with the kidpeople but people throughout the building. We did a parade through the fifth graders' room, and went Earth Day Caroling through the building boasting ... showing off ... sharing our hats. Our carol was the recycling song I posted about last week.

And what is she drinking? I thought you'd never ask. Actually she's not drinking...

3. ... which leads to number 3, our dirt snack. Everyone knows about dirt pudding with gummy worms, right? Well, a made up a variation with these ingredients from the dollar store. I was inspired by all the gardening we've been doing in the new school garden, and thought Earth Day would be a great day to try it out. 

You can get EVERYTHING from the dollar store for under ten bucks.

I crushed the sandwich cookies so that they looked like dirt and filled the cute flower cups with this "soil" almost to the top. Then I put out the sunflower seeds, edamame, nuts, and pumpkin seeds (which didn't make it into the picture.) The kids poked their finger down in the crumbs to make holes in the dirt, then dropped in the seeds.

Apparently some of them didn't realize that the dirt was cookies. When I said, "Go ahead, take a mouthful," and then did so myself, oh my, you should have seen their faces!  One Little said, "Do we HAVE to eat it?? My mom won't let me eat dirt!"  hmmm... how does he know this.... I assured them the "dirt" was cookies, and to convince them this was a fun treat, I handed out the gummy worms. I meant to give out the popcorn, too, as it is another example of seeds we eat, but we were all so taken with what was in our cups that I forgot. We'll have to have it another day. I bet they'll hate that.

I have to tell you, we had just been outside planting, with the kids poking their fingers in dirt to make holes for sunflower seeds, and this little made up treat did look an awful lot like those pots outside.

As it turns out, sweet cookie crumbs with salty nuts and seeds are a great combo. Yum. The kids went off to special with dirt all over their faces, and when I got back I found I had walked around with crumbs all over my shirt... yikes. A GREAT Earth Day or Garden Day treat! I recommend you give it a try!

4.  You can never go into the dollar store for two things without coming out with twenty... or at least I can't. Here are the other useful things I picked up, several of which I had never seen there before.

Stacking letter trays, kid tweezers that have a nice amount of tension- neither two tight nor too loose, plastic test tubes in holders– wouldn't they be cute with planted seeds so you could see the roots, and silicone dishes– squishy as I show here. Might be good for sand cakes... and yes, I really mean SAND cakes.... as in PRETEND, IN-THE-SANDBOX sand cakes.... only one dirt recipe per post. snort.

5.  AND finally, a GIVEAWAY, the second in a series of three four!  Yep, I have yet another one lined up for June. This week's giveaway is another book... but not just "another" book, a very unique book about gardens no less. Secrets of the Vegetable Garden by Carron Brown and Giordano Poloni.

This nonfiction book about gardening is wonderfully illustrated...

with a surprise, because behind each picture, is MORE to the picture...

that you see when you hold the illustration up to the light. See?

Kids will love holding a flashlight to the pictures. In class I used the lamp on my document camera. They LOVED it! Every page was another surprise. I had to read it several times so we could get all the details. And I got a special pleasure out of seeing my kiddos enjoy such low tech book happiness with no screens involved. Funny how the novelty of seeing through the paper held such interest. Don't get me wrong, screens have good purpose, but so do books... and flashlights.

Here is the page as you look at it:

And here is the page with a flashlight behind it:

Secrets of the Vegetable Garden has all the facts needed to learn about plants. It can easily be read at spring planting time or autumn harvest.

It has some rather unique gardening information, too.

Lots of children, adults, too, don't know what a cloche is.  Pronounced  klōSH  it protects plants from creatures like snails and slugs, but it can also hurry up plant growth. I have used one in the classroom as the greenhouse effect works beautifully, and I find them beautiful to look at as well. You're not going to find a cloche in every children's book.

Thanks goes to Candice Currie, an independent consultant with Usborne Books and More for supplying Secrets of the Garden for the giveaway. Usborne Books and More is a wonderful book company that specializes in non-commercial, engaging, and educational books for children of all ages. As an independent consultant Candice shares these books through home parties, online parties, fundraisers, book drives, and book fairs. For more information you can contact Candice at  CandiceMCurrie@gmail.com or on Facebook here.  You can also see the great selection of books by clicking here. There are some terrific books I have to say.

All you have to do to enter the giveaway is follow my blog via Bloglovin' or Email, both of which you can do with a click to the right sidebar over there. I'll find your name and email address to verify. You do want to follow so you don't miss anything, like this book and the next giveaway I'm doing of a HUE camera and animation kit! More info coming on that SOON! Now click away and get into things below and I might just be dropping Secrets of the Garden in the mail to YOU!


a Rafflecopter giveaway


Hope you enjoyed today's review of life in the classroom and a great book. Now it's time to click on over to Doodle Bugs Teaching Five for Friday to enjoy a little more teacher reading.

Thanks for stopping by! Don't forget to enter! See you next time!

Little Plant, Big Will

I think all classrooms should have a few green plants, and a Jade is one of the easiest plants to grow, mainly because it has a strong will to live. You can water regularly, or NOT, and still it presses on. If a leaf falls off in the dirt, it will send out root shoots and keep on growing. Not too many plants can be grown from one single leaf! I have a big one in my classroom and a few smaller ones at home, all offshoots of the big one. They truly are almost impossible to kill.

When school let out for summer and I actually started spending time at home, I found one of my little Jades over in the corner suffering from severe lack of water. It was still alive, but several of its leaves were shriveled. As I went to clean it up and pick off the oldies, I found THIS leaf.

New Jade babies growing on a damaged leaf!

It had a hole in it from some earlier accident and much to my surprise, the edge of the hole was growing NEW baby plants! That was a new one on me!

If you are looking for a plant for the classroom I highly recommend a Jade plant. By the end of the year you can have enough little plants growing that each student can take one home.

Do you have plants in your classroom? If you do, what kinds do you have?

Thanks, Christina, for your Wordless Wednesday link up, which gave me the idea to share this little green thumb suggestion. Click below on the WW button to find more great pics and ideas.

Thanks for stopping by!

Five for Fools with a Freebie, Too!

Whoot!  Today is the first day of my spring break. I love my job... and I love getting away from it to renew, even if getting away is to my own comfy house where dozens of projects await me. Here are five things from this week. Thanks as always to Kasey at Doodle Bugs for her Five for Friday linky.

1. How about starting off with this week's Freebie! 'Tis the season for bunnies and eggs and candy and carrots. I picked up several packages of the clear plastic "carrot" eggs that are in the dollar store this time of year. Whoever thought of expanding the egg theme to chick, bunny, bee, and carrot shapes is brilliant.

I took two sets of eight carrots, labeling one set with capital letters and one set with lowercase ones
A-H. You can label any way you like, including writing directly on the eggs with Sharpie, but I used painter's tape around the stems.

Into each of the carrots I then put between 0 and10 little green "peas"– this year I used green counting cubes, but you can use marbles, beans, dried peas, etc. When I explained this "peas and carrots" math center to the kiddos, one of my little sweethearts said, "Mrs. Wright, those aren't peas. Those are cubes." I asked, "What shape are peas?" She replied, "Spheres."  Math language everywhere. We moved on.

I put the carrots into a bin of shredded paper. I'm going to keep my eye open for brown shredded paper for next year to be more dirt like. Or dried black beans would do the trick, too.

The kids dug through, found a carrot, put the cubes out onto their own little tray (more dollar store goodness) and filled in the Subtracting from Ten sheet I made up– gotta love Jonathan's cute little peas and carrots border.

I also have a Making Ten and Making Teen version in the set. There are two of each of these sheets, either designated A-H or a-h, so you get six different activities from your two sets of carrots. I gave each student a paper copy, but you can always slip them into dry erase envelopes (found here) and save paper.

And did I mention they are FREE. Just click on the image below to download. But do it fast. This freebie is designated to be part of a complete packet with both math and reading activities, at which point they'll come off the blog and on to TPT, and you'll need to pay a small and reasonable fee. Right now, you can't beat free.

Pssst! If you missed last week's freebie, click on back HERE to see what it is!

2. Did any of you notice those little bead counting stems that the kids are using in the photos above to help take away from ten? They are from complete sets that I made years ago, long before the round bead "bracelets" came out in our math curriculum.  I organize them on a binder ring.

Sometimes I give the kids a whole set on a ring, and sometimes I take them apart so they have just the bead stem they need. Easy peasy to make with chenille stems and pony beads. I used neutral black stems and a different color for each number of beads. Color coding helps the kids when they are working with several stems at once, and helps me grab the right stems when I need just one number. These are very old and have had lots of use, and yet they still look and work just fine. And you can't beat cheap.

3.  How do you say April Fools?  This is an old trick, but I think it's perfect for kindergarten. Here's how we do it.

At the end of March we talk about how April first is coming up and what April Fools' Day is.  Some kindergartners know about it, but certainly not all.  Then on the morning of April first, we talk about it again. Then at snack time, I tell them that the start of a new month is a good time to celebrate all the learning we've done in the month gone by, so I brought brownies to share– interject loud whoops of happiness here.

I pick up the brownie pan, conveniently covered with foil so no one can look in, and stroll around the room handing out brown construction paper Es from the pan. Their faces are priceless. I keep handing them out as they all gawk and gafaw, and I don't have to go to far before somebody gets it... I then hold one up and say it certainly is a "brown E" at which point everyone's lightbulb goes on and giggles erupt.  I do, of course, have real brownies in the pan as well– two-bite size from the bakery– so everyone gets a brownie along with their brown E. (I have dim memories of actually baking brownies for this day in an era long gone by...)

Later in the day, we stroll through the building looking for April fools to play our trick on again and again. Each year, I don't know whether the adults in my building enjoy getting the brownie or playing along more. What do you do for April Fools' Day?

4. I mentioned in the last post that I'd report on a little green thumb project we've been up to. You've heard of Chia pets? Well, we turned ourselves into grass heads!

Every year I do several green thumb projects. Good learning comes from watching things grow and some kids wouldn't watch plants grow at any other time in their life. I find the extra effort needed for plant care to be well worth what my kiddos get out of it. Most years we grow from seeds, bulbs, cuttings, and transplanting, too. I keep quite a variety of houseplants in the room, as well. At some point I'll blog about all of them.

This is the first time I've used kids' photos, though we have grown "hair" on drawn cup characters many times. Several Pins from Pinterest get the credit for this idea. I have to say I found the prep to be rather time consuming. First, I had to take up-close photos– most kids had no problem making their best goofy face. Then size their face in the photos carefully so they'd fit on the cup. After picking up from photo finishing I cut them out, laminated, and then cut them out again. It was important that the entire face be encased with laminate as they had to endure kindergarten watering for several weeks. I taped the faces to the cups with loops of clear packing tape, which held quite well.

As to timing of this project, I worried that we had left it too close to spring break when they'd have to go home, but thankfully the timing was perfect. We planted on a Monday and they took them home on Thursday, two and a half weeks later. I put the cups in a tray with a clear plastic lid, which did not seal as the cups were too tall.  The tray contained any mess from watering. I kept the tray on top of a seed starting heating pad (not the same as a heating pad used for humans!) I placed it by an eastern window for morning sun. We watered every few days. The grass grew to a great length in this amount of time– funny how our lawn never grows so well. The kids loved keeping track of daily progress. Some of the blades lifted up clumps of soil as they grew and we tried not to knock them off to see how long the clumps would cling.

The kids LOVED seeing themselves as grass heads. As you can see in the photo some styling was involved– wild, ponytail, buzz cut, pigtails, sideways haircut. This will probably be one of those once-in-a- teacher's-lifetime projects for me, as the prep seemed to drag on for days. It seems each year's students get some special project that future years won't get. Do you find things like that? Still, I encourage you give it a try, even if it doesn't become an annual project for you.

5. It is the first Friday of the month and you know what that means!

One day we were sitting on the rug for a lesson when I glanced at the clock.  With great enthusiasm I said, "Time for recess!"

As they happily jumped up, one little guy said to me with enthusiasm that matched my own, "Mrs. Wright, you're the MAN!" I've been called a lot of things before, but that was a first.

I live for funny kid stories! TPT's blog recently shared some and I was laughing out loud. Everybody loves what those little brains come out with. If you'd like to share some of yours, please leave in comments or post and link here any time this month.

Don't forget to go back to Doodle Bugs to find more blog joy.

I also linked with Allison at No Time for Flashcards. Click below to see what bloggers shared there.

Thanks for stopping by!  I have several more posts with freebies in the making, so see you real soon!

An InLinkz Link-up