FFF Day 3 - The Naughty Leprechaun Giveaway

Happy Saturday friends!! I hope you've been following along with my flashbacks, fotos, and freebies this week!

If you missed out on the fun already, it's not too late!

You can still enter for a chance to win both giveaways here:

Welcome to...

Let's start with the flashback and fotos!

Earlier this year, we had so much fun planting our very own little flowers :)

The kids added the soil to their cups and then planted the little seeds.

Each day we completed our Plant Observation Log as we watched our tiny plants begin to grow!

  

 


You can snag a copy of the Plant Observation Log by clicking below:

Before we get to the giveaway, just a quick reminder about the HUGE Cyber Monday sale coming up on TeachersPayTeachers! This is the perfect time to snag all of the holiday goodies and other things that are loading up your wishlist. Here are a few things from my store that you might be interested in:

And now the extra fun part... I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT TODAY'S GIVEAWAY!!! EEK!

Earlier this year I had the awesome opportunity to give away a copy of the super fab and totally  AMAZING "The Naughty Leprechaun" story by Stephanie Hicks. She has so kindly offered to let me give away another copy to a lucky follower!

Let me tell you a bit about it! This is an adorable tradition to do with your littles each year. The Naughty Leprechaun tells the story of 2 leprechauns named Liam and Leyland. One of the brothers is a naughty fellow, while his twin brother is always making the right choices! Your kids will get to decide which of the twins they would like to visit them for the 3 nights leading up to St. Patrick's Day! If they get a visit from Liam, they will find treats the next day. If they get a visit from Leyland, there will be mischief waiting for them :) They need to make good choices to have a visit from one of the brothers, or else it will be left up to chance! The whole story and the pictures are seriously adorable. With whimsical illustrations and a creative story, this activity totally reminds me of the elf fun we have around Christmas, and it comes at a time when our kids are getting a bit cray-cray and we could use it!

I am so happy that Stephanie and I are pairing up to do this early so that we can get the news out about this. This would make an awesome Christmas gift to a family or teacher that you know. My kids had a total BLAST with this last year and I can't wait to do it again!
Take a little peek at this special treat!

Hooray! I'm so happy that I have this opportunity to give a copy away to a lucky one of you!! Be sure to enter below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Get yourself entered before it's too late :)

Love and hugs!

Awesome Leprechaun Traps and Our Ocean Display

Helllllo and Happy Wednesday, oh beautiful ones! What a crrrrazy week this has been! Yesterday we were busy little bees, still learning about the wonders of the ocean! My kids are so into this. It's interesting to see what topics the kids respond to. Last year, my kids were obsessed with our unit on outer space, and not really into ocean animals. This year my kids are going bananas over it! I can't wait to do our space unit. That is one of my favey fave things to teach. Moving on.... After school yesterday I raced to physical therapy where he proceeded to tell me that my knee has tons of built up scar tissue from the surgery. So tomorrow I am going back in (and having to miss school again, UGH) and they are going to put me out again. While I am asleep, they are literally just going to bend my knee and rip all of the scar tissue. Ew ew ew, ow ow ow. Those are the things that were running through my head while he was telling me. I'm hoping it doesn't hurt too bad because I am planning on going back up to school later in the afternoon for the student showcase. It is basically a night when the kids come in with their families and share all of the wonderful things they have been learning about! I just cannot miss it. So I plan on going, even if I have to lay on the ground and roll into school.

 

Now let's get to a little bit of fun :) As I told you on Monday, we have been having so much fun with "The Naughty Leprechaun" story. We even created a graph to vote on which leprechaun we wanted to visit (the nice or the naughty). On Monday they picked the nice leprechaun, so on Tuesday morning they found a magic pot-of-gold full of yummy treats and a new lucky friend waiting for them! He even had a note to explain why he was there :)

 

 

They were so excited about their new friend, who we named Clovers, and were completely determined to catch him when he came to life that night. How lucky it was that the kids all created Leprechaun Traps as their March family project. What a coincidence (hehe)! They turned out SOOO super cute. They had a blast presenting them to the class and explaining exactly how they would work.

 

 

 

 We also had fun with a few more ocean activities from my new Ocean Animals unit! To start out our unit, I had the kids fill out the K and W part of their KWL chart independently. Then, we created a big KWL chart together and the students added ideas that they had written on their paper. This was the first time I did a KWL this way and the kids did such a fabulous job. It's always awesome when they can actually do things independently. Check out how great they are:

 

 

  At the end of the day yesterday, the kids voted again for which leprechaun would visit, and they chose the nice twin, Liam to visit us again! We carefully set up all of the traps around the room to prepare for their visit. We couldn't WAIT to see if we would catch him or Clovers in action!!

 

 

 

When we came in today, we found that those sneaky leprechauns had escaped our trap and that Clovers was sitting on a flower, hiding his magic from us again. They did leave some magic gold coins in each of the traps! Wowie wow! They carefully cradled them in their hands, so excited to be holding a little bit of leprechaun magic.

 

 

And today we finally finished up all of our end-of-quarter assessments. Can I get a WOO HOO?! I am so relieved. We were getting pretty burnt out (and by 'we', I mainly mean 'me'). We used the rest of the afternoon to prepare for the student showcase. My team did such a terrific job and we are so proud of it! Here's a sneak peek of how awesome it looks:

 

 

 

 Gosh, I just re-read this post and it is all over the place! haha So sorry if this was ridiculously confusing. And to end on a random note, because apparently that's the kind of mood I am in right now, this is the adorableness that is sitting next to me! Funny little fuzz head :)

  

 

 

Hope you are having a stress-free and fabby fab week my sweets!

Hugs and love!

 

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!