Saturday, July 26, 2014

A Life Update

Hi Friends! 
Wow, it's been a long time since April! 

I spent the end of the year packing up my room and organizing to have a long term maternity sub for about three months. Organizing exactly what I want them to cover week by week was necessary since my class runs on a different track than the other kindergartens at my school being an accelerated class. It was a LOT of work. But now I don't have to worry about it while I'm gone. 

I finished out the school year on a Friday and by the next Tuesday our little guy was here! I made it to the end with four days to spare.... it was a close one! 

Our little guy arrived on June 10th. 


Unfortunately he was admitted to the NICU for a few days after that for Jaundice. It was a rough few days. 

Thankfully we were discharged just a few days (and a few thousand dollars) later. 


Since then our days have been a whirlwind of feeding, changing diapers, rocking a gassy baby, and sleeping in small increments in between. It's worth every second. 






It doesn't leave me with much time to work though. I've only gotten a few things accomplished. I did create a new color by letter pack with a back to school theme. Click on the picture to check it out. 

I've already started another one with a fall theme but I only get about one page a day done ;)

I also updated all my decor packs and they now all include month cards and table numbers. To celebrate they are all on sale through Sunday night! Click HERE to see all my classroom decor. 

I have just a few more decor packs I'm working on that will hopefully be done before August!  

Sorry this has been short, but little guy is napping and I never know how long that will last! 

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Animal Research Projects!

This week our class began group research projects to accompany our animal unit in science! Each group is composed of three to four students who are working together to research one wild animal. I have groups studying monkeys, lions, elephants, and giraffes. So far they have started K,W,L charts to access prior learning:

And have researched their animals different body parts, habitats, and diet.



For our research we have mainly used Pebble Plus Books, (seen in the pictures) which are excellent non-fiction books written for primary students. If the information they are looking for is not available in the book, we look it up on the computer or Ipad.

We will continue researching together for one more week, then the students will be mounting their research onto poster board and presenting their group projects to the class. I can't wait to show you the finished projects!

This fabulous resource is from Creekside Teacher Tales. She is a second grade teacher, but the pack is easily adapted for younger students as well!