Anyone else feeling a bit frazzled?

    Sorry it has been a few days since my last post!  I have had a busy past few days....daughter's dance recital, son's band concert, setting up the Christmas tree, a full day of Christmas shopping, faculty meetings, professional development day at school,  parent/teacher conferences, report card assessments and a teacher of the year reception.  I am feeling like this cute little kitty who is looking a bit overwhelmed and not sure how to get out of this unfortunate situation.  Maybe it's the holidays....maybe it is all the activities and all the responsibilities....I am not quite sure but I hope I look as half as cute as this kitty when I am frazzled!

But I do have some good news!  Marlana over at Lil' Country Kindergarten has offered to help me with creating my button.  Hopefully I will have that up and working here real soon.  It was so nice for her to offer to help little ole' me.  It is so nice knowing that there are wonderful people out there in the blogging community!  I feel like I am meeting new friends.

Also, I was so excited when I logged on and found out that I was up to 10 followers.  Wow!  I know that isn't much to many of you out there who have hundreds of followers, but that is AWESOME to me! After all, you have to start out small...

Anyway...I sure am having fun with this Elf on the Shelf dude, ours is referred to as Elfie.  He seems to be helping a bit with my little ones.  I just love when he leaves little notes on the tables of the "good ones" to let them know what Santa really likes!  The notes seem to be reinforcing those positive behaviors that we want to see happening in the classroom and, thankfully, for me I am seeing them happen more and more often each day.

Now I am just wishing that Elfie could stay a little while longer.  Why does he have to leave!  So...my brain is thinking of another character that could stay longer....you know...like a stuffed animal that maybe Santa could bring to my class as a gift...also as a helper who could "report back to Santa " every so often and leave positive notes around to continue to reinforce the correct behavior.  

Let me know what you think?  Or...maybe you have a better idea!

Thanks for reading my blog and making me feel special!

Ann

The Elf is on the Shelf


You know the little guy I am referring to:

This one!

Yes, he arrived this morning straight from the north pole!  At least that is what my kinders think!  

Each year I try to come up with a unique way for this little guy to arrive.  One year it was a package that I really sent to myself through the postal service with the return address as The North Pole.  Another year, the principal delivered it to my room covered in snow (which is amazing since I live in Florida).  I've even had "Santa Clause" call my room and send us on a scavenger hunt through the school to find the elf.  

This year, I guess I toned it down a little due to the wild overzealous interesting behaviors that I have in my classroom.  I know that you understand because I am sure you have students just like this in your class.  I am referring to those certain individuals who have a difficult time calming back down after an exciting event (Oh!  And I just have to mention that yesterday was our school's annual Walk-a-thon.  I discovered that listening to "Who Let The Dogs Out" for 30 minutes will drive any sane person to their brink!)  

So, back to the elf story...I simply had our head secretary call into my classroom stating that a Christmas gift had been delivered to the front office for me.   So I selected the two students who I knew wouldn't peek most responsible students to retrieve the gift bag. 

When the gift arrived...I really played it up.  It went something like this... "Wow!  A Christmas gift for me and it is not even Christmas yet!  I really must have been a good girl this year to receive a present from Santa so early!"  

Of course, when we opened it up...who was inside but The Elf On The Shelf!

You know the rest of the story...read the book...discuss the book...name the elf...put the elf up on a shelf...yada...yada...yada.

It went well...now my only hope is that the Elf works it's magic on my few students who have wild overzealous interesting behaviors.

So I have heard that there are many others out there that use the Elf in their classroom and I have seen some wonderful ideas in the blogging community.  So I was wondering....How did you introduce your Elf On The Shelf?  Share your story with me...Maybe next year I will have a class without those wild overzealous interesting behaviors.  Maybe I will ask for that for Christmas!

Happy Blogging!

Ann

Oh...PS  I was successful in making a button for my blog but got extremely confused when it came to getting a text box to show below.  If anyone knows a simple way to do this...PLEASE SHARE!  

HELP! 


Okay...so I was able to create my button but I am having a difficult time with the text box below.  I have looked at several tutorials and have tried every one of them, but nothing seems to be working.  If anyone has a simple way to get the text box below...please let me know.

I am bound and determined to create a working button for my blog!

Thanks!
Ann

I am working on creating my button.  I am having some difficulties but I will never give up!

Keep you posted!

:) Ann

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...


I'm back from my wonderful vacation with my hubby to Sanibel Island, Fl.  The weather was beautiful and the shelling was fabulous.  We had a great time!  I highly recommend this vacation destination to all of you!  One of the highlights...we went on a speed boat name Sanibel Thriller...look it up on the internet.  What an awesome tour!  We had dolphins playing in the wake of our boat.  Not just one...a dozen or more at a time.  What an THRILLING experience!

Any who, while on vacation I didn't turn on computer once...can you believe it?  Not once!  So now, as I am catching up on all of my favorite blogs, I am noticing a seasonal trend!  The excitement of Christmas is in the air.

All this talk of Christmas even got me excited...especially tonight while at Wally World, in the seasonal section mind you, my seven year old daughter spots a pink Christmas Tree.  Seriously, it was pink!  The twinkle in her eye told me that we just had to buy it for her bedroom.  I guess you can call me a softy because I gave in and now she is the owner of a small (but I have to admit cute) pink Christmas Tree.  There has to be a story in there somewhere.  My brain is thinking something like Pink Christmas tree...Pink Christmas tree...What do you see?  I see a blue Christmas tree looking at me...etc...etc...etc.

So there was my daughter, in the car on the way home, proudly carrying her pink Christmas tree on her lap for the entire ride home.  She already has it on display in her heavily pink and black decorated bedroom.  So...apparently Christmas is in the air and, although it isn't even December yet, it is time to change the appearance of my blog to keep up with the seasons.

Let me know what you think of the new look.  Oh...and I will be posting a few of my favorite Christmas ideas that I have found within the next day or so.

Lastly, if anyone out there knows an easy way to create a button for a blog,  PLEASE LEAVE ME A COMMENT.  I am a self taught blogger and there are some things that a just a bit too complicated for me to figure out.  I would love to have a button to share with all of you.

Happy Blogging!

Ann

Hello fellow bloggers!  Is anyone as happy as me that we are on Thanksgiving Break?

Today was our annual Thanksgiving Dessert Feast.  Yes, I did say dessert!  My team came up with this concept a few years back and it seems to be a hit with the little kiddies.  We ask each child in K to donate some type of dessert and the entire grade level meets in the cafeteria or outdoor pavilion to feast together.  It truly in amazing the amount of desserts we get.  And what is more amazing and that most of it gets eaten.  We never hear the words "I don't like that!" or "Do I have to take that?"  All kids love desserts!

I know!  I know!  You are wondering....how do you possibly survive the day with all your kiddos on a sugar high?  We don't feast until around 1 pm and they go home at 2 pm.  The sugar rush seems to hit them right about the time of dismissal and I am sure the parents love us for it.

Anywho, it is a fun day filled with Pilgrims, Indians and the best part of Thanksgiving...sharing desserts!  You should try it some time.

If you have the time, let me know what your team does to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday.  I love to hear new ideas.

Oh...and for Christmas...we do Donuts with Santa.  I think I see a theme here...my team loves to eat...especially desserts.

I send out my apologies now...I will be gone from the blogging community for the next few days.  My husband and I are taking a much needed couples vacation to Sanibel Island.  I'm looking forward to the R & R.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Where are all those Storytelling pieces?

I bet if you have been around awhile, you will remember Monkey Mitts.  I love them and use them often; however, either I or my students were always misplacing the pieces that go with each story.  This kept getting frustrating and I would often find myself not using them because I didn't have time to locate the pieces.  I knew I had to find a way to keep all the pieces together and make these storytelling mitts more useful for kinders.

The solution:  Hot glue gun and cheap fabric gardening gloves from the Dollar Tree.  

This summer, I brought home all of those  Monkey Mitt sets that were dumped into a bin and sorted through all of their pieces.  I hot glued all of the pieces onto a fabric gardening mitt and now store them in a ziplock baggy with the book.  I can very quickly find what I need to model retelling a story with my kinders and the added bonus is...the pieces can't get lost.  After modeling how to use the retelling mitt, I add it to a bin at my puppet area with it's corresponding book.  I am finding that this method is much more user friendly for my little ones and more storytelling is taking place because they don't have to go hunting for the missing pumpkin or monkey.

Here are a few pictures of my user friendly Monkey Mitts:

     Also, here are a few pictures of some Thanksgiving Day Crafts that we made together.  I just thought I would share them because they turned out so cute this year.  I just love our scarecrows; however, I think they are too cute to spook anything away.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Ann