Oceans of Fun, Leprechaun Luck, and COMMENT TO WIN!

So I have been pretty MIA lately, but jeez louise you guys, there has been testing galore in our room. Last week was so super busy with testing and this week will be as well. Ew. FML people, FML. I hate having to test all day! It is beyond stressful for me and the kids.I didn't take NEARLY as many pictures as usual last week because it was booooooring in our room. And I didn't blog due to the borefest. Here is the most eventful thing that happened last week (which is pretty sad): We have a new {living} {breathing} class pet.

 

Let me explain how this happened. The fair came to town and my kids were all raving about how they were going to go after school. Well, many of them did and came in the next morning going on and on about their festivities. I usually love going to the fair, but being on crutches was not all that conducive to the fair environment. I could just picture it: crutching along, crutch stuck in mud, falling forward, no hope for survival, landing in crap, and standing up with hay stuck to my a**. No my lovelies, no fair for me this year. Anywho, back to the story. One friend came in a bit late and had something hidden in his hands. He says, "I have a surprise for you! I won it at the fair!" Here I am thinking it is a small stuffed animal or something. How naive I was. He pulls out this fish tank with a little goldfish swimming around and says it is for me. Me *thinky* that some parents did not feel like maintaining a fish. At least they sent in food with him. I did not realize how often I would have to clean his tank or how bad he would smell. Poor little guy stinks to high heavens. Can I give him a bath?! Ha. Probably not possible. But leave it to me, I plan on figuring out a way. I guess I would stink too if I swam around in my food and my own urine.

So we named him Nemo and the kids get a kick out of him. When the kids were at specials, I was just chilling with Nemo. I watched him swim round and round and started feeling terrible for him. He must be so bored in there. So I started googling "fish toys" and I saw everything from dog toys to adult toys {jeepers!} and did not see any toys for a fish. I have to imagine that they make toys for fish to play with, right?! One forum said that fish only have a 3 second attention span so they can't focus long enough to be bored, but I still felt terrible. I tried to put some tank rocks and a little tunnel thing for him to swim through but he was scared to death of them so I took them out. In summary, I did not find any toys and I also realized that he wasn't fed over the weekend because he was in my classroom. At least he was still alive and kicking flippin' when I got there this morning. Sigh. How on earth did I end up with one more thing to keep track of?! And a living thing too for Pete's sake! Here's hoping that he makes it through the year!

 

Here's a recap of what I have worn recently (since I can't seem to keep up with it daily as I had hoped):

 

Sorry that the last pic is barefoot, my shoes were in the other room and I didn't feel like crutching all the way to get them and back for a picture. I'll describe them for you: they were black. HA! Now let's move on to the fabulousness that was today. We are learning about ocean animals this week! Woot woot! Love me some aquatic life. We are using my BRAND spankin' new Ocean Animals unit and the kids are totally loving it. Isn't it the best when your kids get into the things that you make? This is my newest fave creation! Check it out below:

 

 

We started by creating a KWL chart! I modified things a bit to make it SmartBoard friendly. It's much easier for me to do things this way because I can set it all up just by sitting in my chair at the computer :) I do love making anchor charts that we can keep posted though, so I cannot wait to be back up on two feet. My favorite "K"now moment was when one of the kids said, "I know that eels can electrocute you by sending fireballs through your veins like they did to my uncle Jimmy". So sweet. Love those heartwarming family stories!

 

 

 The kids also filled out a student version of the KWL chart. Next we read an awesome octopus story, one of my favorites. It is extremely informational, yet very understandable for the kinders.

 

Then I introduced my littles to our new octopus friend! This thing is awesome. I bought it for only $10 on Amazon and it is very detailed. It even has the suction cups under each of the 8 arms. 

 

 

Click the picture below to check it out on Amazon.

 

Of course we had to name this guy! We created a graph on the SmartBoard to choose which name we liked the best.

 

 

  I made the graph editable so that the kids could choose the options along the bottom.

 

This is when it got a little "fishy". As much as I loved all of the names the students picked, I had to sift through them a bit. I literally had to stop myself from snorting out loud when one of my tinys said they wanted to name him "Octopussy". Sigh. There was absolutely no way I could live with calling the toy Octopussy for the next 2 weeks. It would be so fun to have my principal in the room and one of my kids scream, "HAVE YOU MET OUR PET OCTOPUSSY?!" And you can only imagine what we would call him for short. Sooooo I convinced him to go with "Octy" instead. We also had "Pus Pus" and "Pusasaurus". Needless to say, those two were vetoed immediately. There was just no saving either of them. Next we had "Squirty". Still a bit iffy, but I let that one slide. In the end, here were the options we voted on: Squirty, Colorful, Octy, GG, and Jiggle. I was totally rooting for Jiggle! In conclusion, I'd like you to meet our new pet Octy. I, for one, am happy with the how things turned out.

 

 

 After meeting our new octopus friend, it was time for each of the littles to create an octopus of their own! The templates for these cuties can be found in my Ocean Animals unit. After cutting out and assembling all the pieces, it was time to add the suction cups. We used little fruit loops for them! I let the kids snack a bit during this part :)

 

 

 

  The kids did such an awesome job on these. We are going to hang them up outside the room for our ocean themed "Student Showcase" this week.

 

After our ocean fun, it was time to get down and dirty with some testing. No super cool pictures of that nonsense. After some testing, we had a bit of leprechaun fun! I was beyond excited to start using "The Naughty Leprechaun" story with my littles. Today we read the story and they were seriously into it. They could NOT believe that Liam and Leyland left them a gold coin from their treasure. And when they heard that it was magic, they went overboard. Holy Crow.

 

 

I changed things around just a little bit to make it classroom friendly. In order to have a visit from one of the leprechaun friends, our class must have less than 3 people on yellow or red. If there are more, we will not get to choose a leprechaun to visit. The students get to choose between Liam the friendly twin who leaves us treats, and Leyland the naughty twin who leaves us a mess. We used a graph on the SmartBoard to decide which leprechaun would visit us tonight.

 

 

And the kids decided that tonight we would have a visit from Liam! He is going to leave us some yummy treats in the morning and a new special friend! I will tell you all about that tomorrow.

 

 

 Get ready for tomorrow, because I will be posting some AMAZING pictures of the leprechaun traps my kiddos have made. They are so good. Can't wait to share them! You will also get to see what Liam has left for us. Woo hoo!

 

And as I promised, I will be giving away my new Ocean Unit to 2 lucky followers! All you have to do is:

*Follow My Blog

*Follow My TPT Store HERE

*Leave a Comment About Anything! {be sure it includes your email} 

I will choose my 2 winners on Thursday!

 

Hope everyone had a MAGNIFICENT Monday my sweets! And here's to a TERRIFIC Tuesday!

Love and Hugs!

NAUGHTY LEPRECHAUN WINNER!

Hello my sweets :) I am soooo exhausted!!! I don't know what is going on, but I feel like I could sleep for like 3 days. I'm hoping that I am not getting sick! I am going to keep this short and sweet to tell you the lucky winner of my Naughty Leprechaun giveaway!

 

Congratulations to....

 

 

 

  

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I promise I will have a more interesting post later this week :)

Love and Hugs!

St. Patrick's Day, Giveaways, and More!

Happy Sunday my sweet followers! I hope everyone is having a fabulous and relaxing weekend! I am excited to be linking up with Sharing Kindergarten for her St. Patrick's Day Products Linky Party!

 

 

Here are some of my St. Patty's products and freebies!! Click the pictures below to check them out :)

 

 And on a "non St. Patty's Day" note, I also have a new product and a new freebie in my store!

And I am super thrilled to be a part of 2 amazing giveaways!! Check them out below!

Elizabeth from Kickin' It in Kindergarten is throwing her absolutely wonderful 101 Follower Mega Giveaway! Click below to check it out.

 

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And the fabulous Joanne is throwing her 100 follower giveaway as well!



 

 

 

And don't forget to enter my "The Naughty Leprechaun" giveaway!! It is ending soon so be sure to enter while you still can :)

 

 

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Love and hugs everyone!

 

Biting, Writing, Dr. Seuss, and Currently!

Ok, ok, I'm sorry! I promised myself I would try my best to post every night this week and made it up until Wednesday. Sigh. But seriously, Wednesday was cray-cray you guys. One of those "pulling my hair out, screaming at the top of my lungs, sweet lord somebody save me" type of days. First I'll recap the Wednesday wardrobe (I forgot to take a picture of Thursday, but you will see Fridays in a bit):

 

 

Now down to business. So the kids were like raging lunatics. Literally, they were bonkers. I was completely shocked by what I was witnessing. It was as if they had lost all control. From 8 to 12 I was doing everything in my power not to go ballistic. Then on the way back from specials, we had more fun. One of my little angels decided that it was completely acceptable to just bite the girl in front of her on the arm as hard as possible. Of course I ran (and I use that term very loosely) over to them and attempted to figure out what was going on. This sweetie acted like I was the irrational one. As if I was going to say,"Oh you're so right girl, that's totes fine. Just go ahead and sink your teeth into whoever you want. Go on! Vamp it up." When she realized that I was not happy AT ALL and not having the load of bull she was throwing at me, she decided to go another route. "Well it was an accident. You see, I was opening my mouth, and then I tripped, and my teeth just bit her arm." And I said, "Why were you walking with your mouth open?" And she said "Because I was sucking the fuzz out of the air." And I replied, "First of all, that is gross and unsanitary, and  I want you to stop eating fuzz out of the air." We then continued with a five minute discussion about the incident, and in the end she finally confessed to biting on purpose. Of course I had to tell the assistant principal because this is the 8th bite from her this year. Homegirl must be hungry with a taste for human flesh. So on that lovely note, I decided that after lunch something had to be done. I know that the inconsistency with having the sub for so long during my surgery completely threw them off and I needed to regain control. So when they walked in from lunch, I was on them like white on rice. I used my best teacher voice and barely let them move a muscle without reminding them to sit the correct way in their chair, stop talking to a friend, stop eating things from their toolbox, stop drawing on the table, stop spitting on the floor, stop screeching obnoxiously, stop chewing your shoe laces, stop throwing things, stop using their pencils as toy cars, etc. You catch my drift. And it was super TOUGH. It felt like the beginning of the year all over again. But guess what, those kid walked in on Thursday and were right back into our routine and their behavior was about 2 million times better. WOO! Mission accomplished people. I still had to be on them frequently both Thursday and Friday to remind them, but nothing like Wednesday. I think they realized that I'm back  and I don't tolerate nonsense haha

 

I must share that I am so excited about our Writer's Workshop! While the sub was in our room, I had her do WW a bit differently to make it easier for her, so I was slightly anxious about getting back into it. But the kids jumped right back in this week and were totally into it. Look at their amazing work, I cannot believe how far they have come! Based on how many of them wrote at the beginning of the year, I never could have imagined that they would be able to write like this completely independently!

 

 

I love how this little one wrote about the "pinkish" car! How sweet :)

 

 

This one cracks me up! Where do they come up with this stuff?! The picture shows the catfish jumping at the penguin. HA!

 

 

 Look at the little crutches she drew for me in her picture! Adorable! She wrote that I am "budflie" (beautiful). AW!

 

 

 Aren't they fantastic?! I'm so proud of them.

 

 And now for the Friday fun! Of course we were celebrating Dr. Seuss day, and it was soooo much fun. Normally celebration days are fun, but exhausting by the end of the day. Surprisingly, this day was super chill and a total blast! Here's what I wore:

 

 

Sweet lord that leg brace is sexy, lookin' good girl! No, in all seriousness, that thing is hids. My teaching bestie and I made these shirts last year. We printed the cute "Thing" circles on fabric transfer paper and bought some red tees from Walmart. Pretty cheap and everyone loved them because they had our names on them! Here I am with 2 of my very favorite fellow kindergarten teachers!

 

 

Gotta love that thing hair! I just wrapped blue pipe cleaners around a headband. The kids thought it was hilarious! And of course the cat in the hat is in the middle!  here are some the of the fun things that we did!

 

We made these fun hats using yellow sentence straps for the band and blue strips for the thing hair. Aren't those thing handprints the cutest?! I got the SUPER adorable idea for the handprints from the fabulous Katie Mense over at "Little Warriors". I put my own little twist on it by making it into a hat! They thought this was awesome because I called them by their "Thing" name all day. They even started calling each other by their thing name. Too cute!

 

 

 

The kids had worked on my Dr. Seuss "Rhyme Time" activity and it seemed to really help a few of them with rhyming. I think it helped to be able to see the same ending. I had them underline the matching endings in the words. You can grab a copy of this for free by clicking HERE.

 

 

One of my fellow kinder teachers found this awesome Cat in the Hat color-by-number mystery picture. I searched and searched for where to find this and couldn't locate it anywhere! I'm guessing that the creator probably had to take it down from TPT due to copyright issues. If you know where it is from, please let me know so I can give credit! My kids loved doing this.

 

 

Ok, prepare yourselves for the most amazing looking Dr. Seuss snacks ever. Oh. My. Word.

You know all the pictures of the super cute snack ideas everywhere? Well I attemped to recreate them for my littles to enjoy. And it was an EPIC fail. How on earth do people make their things look so perfect? I was sitting there at 10:00 on Thursday night trying to fluff up the cotton candy to make it look like hair and it would not fluff. Like at all. It just clumped together. It looked like my things had not washed their "hair" in weeks. Sigh. Check it out:

 

 

I also wanted to make these fun and delicious jell-o Cat in the Hat hats with red jell-o and cool whip. WHAT HAPPENED?! I'm not sure. The cool whip kept sticking to the sides of the cup, and the jell-o would not stay in a round shape, and it was a hot mess. When the spoons and spatulas, didn't work, I just started man handling it. I was like digging my hand into the giant bowl and putting handfuls into cups. I'm not proud of it. Truly, I'm not. I'm clearly no Betty flippin' Crocker. And it dyed my hands red for the rest of the day. I put some red sprinkles on top to attempt to salvage them, but no, it did not help. Look at them! Yikes! We were just about to eat our snacks when my assistant principal comes walking in. He took a peek at the jell-o cups and said, "Aw, how cute! Did the kids make those themselves?" Sigh. I should have saved myself the embarrassment and said, "Oh absolutely! Didn't they do a great job?" But we all know what would have happend. That one creep in the corner would scream, "NO WE DIDN'T MS. BOSLAND! WE DIDN'T MAKE THEM AT ALL! YOU DID!" and then I would be stuck trying to keep the big mouth quiet and save myself from my lie. So instead I just told the humiliating truth. "No, they didn't. Though I realized it looks like the 5 year olds made them, I actually did." heh heh. He looks down at my hands. My very red hands. I was caught - red handed. Awkward silence and he is smirking. "Oh... well they look great!" he says. And then he leaves. Nicely done, Khrys. Nicely done.

 

 

 

 But in the end, they were both very tasty so that's all that matters! The kids loved them both. They were practically shoveling it into their faces. I was too. I forgot how delicious jell-o and cool whip are together. I sat in the corner stuffing myself full. Yum.

 

 

At the end of the day, we watched a little bit of "Horton Hears a Who". They voted on their very favorite Dr. Seuss movie (we graphed it but I totally forgot to take a picture of the cutey cute graph) and Horton won. I was thrilled because I LOVE that sweet elephant.

 

 

 Overall, it was an awesome day. And I made it through my first week back, ALIVE! Hooray! I really am happy to be back. I love my job and my littles :)

 

 

 I am also linking up the the fabby fab Farley over at "Oh' Boy Fourth Grade" for the March Currently! Come join the fun if you haven't already.

 

 

*Listening: I'm not sure how I feel about American Idol. I like watching it, but sometimes it feels like a total waste of time becasue it goes on fooooooorever and most of it is boring. I just play it in the background while I am working so I can follow along without wasting a ton of time.

 

*Loving: I was ECSTATIC when I woke up this morning and took the dogs out because it is actually cool outside! Holy crow! It's a Christmas Dr. Seuss Day miracle! Loving it. I have the doors open to let the air in and it rocks. Though the dogs are making me want to scream because they keep running onto the back patio and barking at the ducks in the pond every 3 seconds. No wonder the neighbors are always yelling at me. But I'm throwing caution to the wind today and letting them bark because the air just feels so nice!

 

*Thinking: Where do we get the time to accomplish everything on our lists? I always feel like there are a million things that I need to do. Even when I finish one thing, there are still so many more to do. It's an endless circle really. How do we do it!?!?

 

*Wanting: I. Need. To. Walk. You guys, I am beyond sick of the crutches. I still have at least 3 more weeks left on them. At least. I never thought I would become such a pro on them. I could race. Do they have those? Crutch races?! Because this mini-hulk over here could win.

 

*Needing: Ooooh doesn't a margarita sound so good?! It is only noon right now so needless to say, I will not be partaking. BUT once 5:00 tonight hits, all bets are off ladies! Woot woot!

 

*Like: Kidding Around - Me and my kids have this hilarious sense of humor together. We are always kidding around and being silly :) It was super nice to get back in there this week and laugh it up with my lil' homeys!

*Love: Kicking it At Home - Being home today, sleeping in, and hanging with my fuzzy pups. And blogging of course!

*Hate: Killing Time - As I mentioned in my "Thinking", there are so many things on my mind all the time and I feel like every second counts. I hate waiting in long lines forever, sitting in hours of traffic, and getting stuck in 2 hour conversations with random people who tell me their entire life story that I couldn't care less about.

 

Sheesh - sorry to end that on such a negative note! HA! And that's what I am up to Currently! What are you doing currently!?

 

In my last post I mentioned a fun sight word Kooshball game that I have been playing with my kids on the SmartBoard. I've had a ton of people asking where I found it! I decided to post about it so you can snag it for yourself! I found it on the SmartExchange website. You can click HERE to take you directly to this game listing. It is totally free if you have a SmartExchange account, which is also free to sign up for! I have also uploaded it into GoogleDocs. I'm really not sure if it will work correctly or not because I've never attempted to upload a Smart file before, so if it doesn't work right, please let me know so I can try to mess around with it! Click on the picture below to download the game:

 

 

I did not realize that this post was going to be so ridiculously long, so I apologize now! And thanks so much of you are still here reading! Don't forget about my "Naughty Leprechaun" giveaway! Only 2 days left to enter! EEK!

 

 

 



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LOVVVVVVE and BIG FAT HUGS to all of you!!

XOXO