St Patricks Day!

Firstly, Happy St Patricks Day to you all!

I am not Irish, but sure do feel blessed to teach 21 gorgeous little lucky charms!

We celebrated St Patricks Day in KS today by making Leprechauns! They turned out great! The children giggled at their little orange beards and big green hats! They were proud to take them home today.

It's amazing what you can do with a paper plate! 

Firstly paint half the plate with orange paint. This will be your beard.

Secondly, make a hat. I found mine online by doing a google search for 'Leprechaun Hats' and copied it onto card stock.

Children then coloured the hat with light and dark green pastels

The students then cut the hat out and added some eyes to their Leprechauns. I assisted with drawing the faces and stapled the hats to the plates.

This is the result:

'To be sure, to be sure' they sure look great! 

Vistaprint Obsession!

I am obsessed with Vistaprint! 

I am constantly on the hunt for a new deal or special on their website (www.vistaprint.com).

Any teacher will understand the thrill of the chase for a useful classroom resource at a bargain price.

I must admit I have an addiction to stationary and personalised stationary is the BEST cure! 

I thought I would share some of my recent purchases and designs.

Classroom banner displayed in my front window:

Get well soon postcard note, great for clipping onto any important notes a student may have missed when they were absent:

Thank you postcard for parents who assist or contribute to the classroom:

Happy birthday postcard for students celebrating their special day at school:

My personalised notebooks for notes to parents. I was lucky enough to have these made for me and sent as a surprise from my incredible husband Matt:

I found the wording on the business cards and postcards below on Pinterest (after reading some other teachers blogs), but personalised them to suit my needs:

2D Shape Pizzas

Today my gorgeous class increased their knowledge of 2D shapes by making a 'Shape Pizza'.

We used paper plates as the base of our pizzas. Students then coloured the paper plates to make the pizza base.

I printed off the shapes onto different coloured paper and students cut them out and added them to their paper plates (pizzas).

Students then completed the worksheet provided by recognising and counting how many shapes they had used to make their pizza.

What a fun time we had! 

If you wish to create this with your own class here is a link to my activity on Teachers Pay Teachers:
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Mrs-Steffensons-Kindergarten

Counting to 10 Ladybugs

My class created these gorgeous Ladybugs today!

They were so simple, but so effective!

I used plastic red plates, big spot stickers (which we're actually white, but the students coloured them black), created a head shape (which the students also coloured black), ruled a black line down the plate for the wings and added some paper eyes. 

I then created a worksheet which allowed the students to write a sentence and trace numbers.

Counting out 10 spots, colouring them and pasting them on the plates linked to our Maths program too.

They were truly engaged in this activity and I was very happy with the way the ladybugs turned out! 

Happy Helpers

My class recently went on our big excursion to the Zoo. Parent helpers were invited to take a small group around the Zoo. I decided to thank them with this little 'thank you' gift: 

I bought a little garden shovel and made a card that said 'We dig you! Love Mrs Steffensons class'... I also laminated a photo of the class at the Zoo and attached it to the shovel and card. I had such lovely feedback from the parents that received them.

I'm back...

Wow! What a few months.... I have just returned from the most incredible around the world honeymoon after two amazing weddings!! That's right, two weddings! I married the love of my life Matthew Steffenson on the 30th of August in Sydney, Australia. One day later we flew to the USA (with a little "mini moon" break in Hawaii, USA for two days) flying onto Minnesota, USA for our second wedding reception! After honeymooning to London, Scotland, France, Germany, Italy, Prague and Dubai we flew back to Australia and the next day I started teaching again! I missed my gorgeous students, it was lovely to see their smiling faces again! I am no longer Miss West and am now Mrs Steffenson, something that has taken a little while to get used to!

We have been busily learning new things and creating lots of memories. Here are a couple of the new ideas I have had:

I recently acquired some Kinetic Sand, so I decided to incorporate it into my Literacy Groups. Students loved the unique idea and feeling the texture of the sand... The activity included digging for sight words in a tub of sand and putting them into alphabetical order. They then had their own individual container of sand (old video boxes) and used a pencil to write sight words (at their own ability level) into the sand. When students got a word correct, they put a counter into a cup at the end of the Literacy group rotation the student with the most counters (words correct) was the winner! 

The Little Red Hen

This term we are placing focus on Nursery Rhymes and Fairy Tales. We have been reading about The Little Red Hen this week. Have a look at our creations!

Photo showing table set up with pre-made example for children to view. 

All that was required was a half circle (I used half a paper plate and traced around this), one circle (I traced the bottom of a large coffee mug) two hand prints (traced my own), goggle eyes and yellow card stick with triangles for beak and pre-drawn cockerel. Stick together and voila a little red hen!