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

Friday's Funny!


If our student's parents could hear the conversations that take place in our classroom, wouldn't they be shocked!  Here is one from today:

Student:  "Look at my nails, Mrs. ????.  My mommy painted all of them and she put crackle on it."

Teacher:  "Those are very pretty and your mommy is very talented.  Do you think she would come in and do mine?"

Student:  "I bet she would because she is the Crack Queen."

You gotta love what they say.

Happy Friday!

Ann

What in the world are QR Codes?

I bet you have seen these around everywhere lately.

This is a QR code.  I really didn't pay much attention to them until this afternoon. 

 I mentioned in my last blog that I work at a school that is using a great amount of Apple equipment.  In addition to all this wonderful equipment, we have a group of teachers who meet once a week (on our own time) to discuss new and innovative ways to use this technology in the classroom.  Well today, I learned how to make my own QR code.

Now I know what you are thinking!  How can this be useful in kindergarten?  Especially when the kids can't read yet and it wouldn't be feasible for the teacher to be walking around all day reading everyone's scanners.  Well, the neat thing is that when you create your own QR code...you can type in ANYTHING.  

So, my brain got thinking...what CAN my kinders read?  Sight Words!  Color Words!  Number Words! Numbers!  Letters of the alphabet!  Names!  So there began my "AH HA" moment on how I can use this amazing new technology!   

Yes, there I was, incredibly excited about inputting our 31 District Based Sight Words into the QR Code Generator so that I could create codes just like the one above.  I am going to place these codes in various locations around my room for my students to scan with their iTouches (Think of it as a "Techy's" version of read around the classroom).

If you are interested in how to create your own QR codes to use in your classroom, just click here.  It is amazing how technology keeps creating new ways for us to teach our students.  Don't forget to download a QR scanner app on your phone, iPad, or iTouch to complete this activity.

Let me know if you try this.  I would love to hear from you!

Respectfully,  

Ann