Roll a Turkey FREEBIE!

Hello November! So glad you finally arrived! And that means turkey time is just around the corner!  

If you need a quick, fun, yet still standards focused activity...then you may just want to hop over to our store and snag this little freebie!  

There are a couple of versions...1 where you roll a single die to draw the turkey. This one is really simple and works on number recognition to 6.  The other version uses 2 dice and the kiddos add them to draw their turkey.

Hope you can use this for morning work, math centers, or maybe even a Thanksgiving party game!  Enjoy!!!

Thankful!

We are so thankful that we made it through our last week!! It was crazy! The stomach bug that circulated our school was KILLER! Just ask Cristy!

Cristy caught it the morning of her Harvest Feast!! Yep, the one where she had 40 parents coming to her classroom! NO worries!! Her faithful/fabulous assistant ran the show like a champ! The kiddos still cut veggies, mixed the stew, made piki bread and homemade butter!! It was awesome! We tried to help, but Mappin had everything under control!

The only thing I was able to help with was to put pictures that Mappin took into a photo story so parents could see all of the preparation that went into the special feast!!

However, I am pretty sure that is what led to my demise!! I used Cristy's computer! AAAHHHHHHHH!!! Yes, I used it the very day she woke up tossing all her cookies!!! OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Yuck!!

I have always heard that the worst germs are on phones and computers!! Well, I was fine Tuesday, but all day Wednesday, my tummy felt a little SQUEEZY! You know like Junie B. felt in Stinky Smelly Bus.  No time for sickness!! My Harvest Feast was Thursday!! I was terrified!! I gave myself a couple hours to be sick before I willed myself to PRESS ON!

So, I made it through my Feast! Yay!! And, even made it to the Thursday, 8:30pm showing of Hunger Games!! Loved it, but hated how it left me hanging, even though I knew it would!!!!

So what is the take away from this post???? Well, I think it should be, don't use any one's computer if they are out sick or wipe down your computer often to avoid scary germs!

Also about Junie B.!! We were so sad to hear about Barbara Parks!! We do love us some Junie B. Jones!

More about being THANKFUL...
We are so thankful for...
A great school
Fabulous assistants who are great friends and awesome with the kiddos (they read our minds)
Awesome kiddos and their families
Supportive administration
Plenty of resources
A blog where we share our Tales from K
Blog followers who support and understand what happens everyday in the classroom
And each other!!!
We make each other be the best that we can possibly be and it's AWESOME!!

Thanks friends!! Have a great week!

Turkey Trivets...SO Stinkin' Cute!

So it's been crazy around here.  Been planning my parents 50th wedding anniversary party, oldest kiddo just finished football season (Superbowl Champs!  Woot-Woot!), and the general madness of school, sick kiddos, holidays...

We are trying to get back on the BLOGGING BANDWAGON!!!

So this week is our Harvest Soup Celebration.  We love to have the kiddos make something to give to their parents as a treasure to remember the event.  You still have 4 days (or more) to make these super cuties yourself.  They are easy peasy!

Materials Needed:

6 x 6 tiles (We use 45 cent off-white tiles from Lowe's)

Acrylic Paints (yellow, green, orange, red, and brown)

Sharpies Markers

Clear Acrylic Spray

Steps:

Paint the kiddos hand (brown palm and different colors on fingers).  Let it dry.

  Then have them use Sharpie Markers to add the eye, beak, waddle, and legs.

Then use a black Sharpie to sign their name and date it.

After it's all dry, give the tiles a light coat of the Acrylic Spray to seal it all in.

That's it!  So easy, and so stinkin' cute!

Parents can stand this on a picture easel, use them as a real trivet, or tuck away for safe keeping.

Happy Turkey Day!

Let's READ! Getting books into your kiddos' hands!

It's so important to get GOOD FIT books into your kiddos' hands!  We have a TON of great guided reading book sets at school that work really well for our CAFE strategy groups.  BUT...what about getting these books into our kiddos' homes??  NOT SO MUCH!

Our librarian loves us, but not THAT much!  We can't let the littles take these perfectly suited books home since they are library sets.  Our kiddos DO, of course, get to check out library books, but these are not always "Good Fit" books where they can apply all of their new strategies to help them read.

SO...we came up with some EMERGENT READERS that are PERFECT for getting books into our kiddos' hands that they can TAKE home and actually READ!!!  It can be so frustrating for our guys to know all these new strategies and then when they open their library book...it's just FRUSTRATION-VILLE because the strategies aren't working...not a GOOD FIT!

These readers use almost all of the PRIMER and PRE-PRIMDER Dolch words, making them perfect books for most of our readers at this point in the year.  We included an easier version and a more challenging version for 5 of the readers, since we do have some kiddos who are already in the 100 word club.  (Read more about our word clubs here!)

These readers are great for working in guided reading strategy groups

on standards such as tracking left to right/top to bottom,

reading sight words, blending unknown words, using picture clues,

reading for meaning, and much more!

Use the You Be the Author version to work on writing standards such as spacing, capitalization, punctuation, blending, sentences, and more!

So we hope these might be helpful to you too!  We love watching our kiddos discover the JOY of reading and finding out just how powerful words can be!

Please visit our TpT store and download the preview of this pack.  We included the emergent reader, LEAVES (all 4 versions), for FREE as a thanks for your awesome support of our blog and store. 

Download the Preview at our TpT store to grab all 4 versions free!

And as always, we will give away this pack to one winner chosen randomly from ALL the comments left below!

 Now...off to the front porch to drink coffee with the hubs, pooch, kitty, and kiddos and enjoy this GORGEOUS fall day!

Let's Talk Turkey!!

This is Page, the Thanksgiving Lover of Kindergarten Squared! Seriously Cristy, I know you are super excited about Christmas, but I needed to share this first!  I guess I was snoozin on my blog responsibilities and you beat me to the punch for sharing about my favorite holiday.

 I am all for Christmas and Hanukkah too, but my favorite holiday is Thanksgiving! I love all the great food and time with family and friends without the pressure of the gift! I love that Thanksgiving is not all about giving and receiving, but just about being thankful for all the great things in your life!

We spend Thanksgiving Day in Adele, Ga at Uncle Mikey's farm riding 4 wheelers, fishing, playing soccer, and various other sports, as well as stuffing our bellies! This year we will even celebrate my lil guy's 2nd birthday with a big cake for dessert!

Look at that Cutie Pie! I can hardly believe that baby is 2! We tried for what seemed like forever to get this precious guy!

Anyway, I know it is too late for our blogging buddies to have Harvest Soup in your classroom, but I wanted to share about the Harvest Soup our classes had before the break.

We spent one morning before the Harvest Soup, making festive costume pieces that of course incorporated Common Core Standards (patterning and counting).

Check out "cutie pie" Joshua and his grandparents (That's Cristy's baby and parents). I know it is hard to tell, but he has a detailed pattern on his headband and necklace. The vest was made from t-shirts dyed by myself (super easy), then cut by a parent and beaded/knotted by the kids. The bracelet is a retelling bracelet where each bead is a cue to retell part of the Thanksgiving story. The kids made the bracelet, necklace and headband during rotations. Each teacher was in charge of one activity. Super fun to get to know all the kindergarten babies :).

Below are the steps that made our Harvest Soup a Success.
1. Decided on a menu. We always have Harvest Soup (Comment and leave your email if you want our recipe), Piki Bread (recipe on the back of Publix Brand Corn Meal), desserts from various parents, homemade butter made by students, and apple juice (Cristy has Sweet Tea and juice boxes).
2. Made a list of all ingredients that were to be requested from students.
3. Made invite and ingredient request form to send home with students.
4. Sent invite home and requested items from students.
5. Had items in the classroom before the day of the feast so teacher could pick up any last minute supplies.
6. On the morning of the feast, our students helped open canned goods, placed all the stew ingredients in the pot and stirred, cut vegetables, made butter, flipped piki bread corn cakes, and wrote about being thankful.
7.  While students were at lunch, teachers set up the tables and place settings. This event was a sit down dinner and required a RSVP. We borrowed tables and chairs from the other kindergarten classes because each class had their soup on a different day.
8. Teacher put together a quick photo story of students cutting veggies, making butter, and flipping piki bread.
9. Parents/ grown ups joined our class at 1:00 pm to watch all of the student preparations and share a delicious feast.
10. While waiting to be served, students and parents wrote what they are thankful for on a leaf cut from paper. The students then hung their leaf on our Thankful tree (a mid sized branch in a vase with tissue paper around it ).

This event is truly loved by all of our kindergartners and parents! It is one of the top 5 events of the year!

Adding stew ingredients to the pot.

cutting veggies!

Shaking heavy whipping cream and a little salt to make butter.

Cristy and her cute son Joshua and husband Marcus :).

Flipping piki bread!

Happy Turkey Day! Would love you hear how you celebrate this special day!

 Which holiday is your favorite?

 Are you on Team Page-- a Thanksgiving Lover! or Team Cristy--- a Christmas Lover!

Winners! and Roll a Turkey FREEBIE!

Happy Sunday bloggy buddies!

Wow!  It was so dang beau-ti-ful here in Georgia today.  After church I had to take a "Sunday Drive"... crisp fall breeze blowing, sun shining, windows down, head out with tongue dangling in the breeze, and all.  I swear, I think on such a gorgeous day I totally get the pooch happiness of an open window!

My (Cristy) oldest kiddo's football team played in the 8 year old Superbowl yesterday.  Let me just tell you...it -was- not- so- pretty.  It brought me to my knees to see my little guy broken-hearted after a big loss!

But let me tell you, there is NOTHING... and I mean NOTHING that an indoor adventure center can't cure!  I took both the boys to a friend's birthday party where there was rock climbing, a bouncy trampoline and wire contraption thingy, air hockey, a SuPeR Slide that I swear they came down so fast that I thought some one was gonna get LAUNCHED!!!

Did I also mention there was an air cannon "Baaaaallllllll-adium"???  6 air cannons, foam balls, targets ( the painted kind on the walls and the live people kind!)...need I say more???

Let me tell you what...that little broken-hearted kiddo MOVED on from his grief in about 3.43345 seconds upon arrival!    I mean...steps 1-12 completed in 1.2 seconds!  Attention span of a gnat, I tell you! :)  THANK GOODNESS!

All that to say that we were SUPPOSED to announce our math pack winners on Friday, but here it is Sunday and all.  I hope we didn't keep you waiting too long!

Our big winners are:

Heather, Amy, and Lori!!!!

Thanks to all of you who left us a comment!  We'll be giving away one of our other products REAL soon.  We just finished up a "Digraph ch Word Work Pack" and a "Counting and Cardinality-Numbers 11-20 Activboard Flipchart" that we plan on giving away!  So please be on the lookout!

In the meantime, we want everyone to get a consolation prize!!!  Woo-hoo!  (We don't like making anyone sad!)  Click here to download our ROLL A TURKEY freebie!  Hope you enjoy the activity.  

Have an awesome week!

P.S.---Did I mention that I am SO gonna take my husband on a field trip to the adventure center!  We are gettin' in that Air Cannon Balladium dealy...and it is ON like DONKEY KONG!!!!  That man is going down I tell you! :)