Dressing for Turkeys!

Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and I decided to celebrate by putting a fun little freebie on my Teachers Pay Teachers store!  Instead of eating turkey and dressing, let your students dress their Turkey!  Great for building vocabulary for ELL's and fun for writing and just being silly by teaching kids about playing with words!  Happy Turkey Day everyone!

It’s a Gobble, Gobble GIVEAWAY ya’ll!  My favorite part of blogging is being able to interact and learn from such wonderful teachers around the world and I have teamed up with a few of them for this fantastic giveaway.  To embrace the season of Thankfulness, we are going BIG for this giveaway because we are SO THANKFUL for each and every one of you!  All you have to do to win all of the units shown below is follow each blog! That’s SEVEN chances to win. Here’s even better news…

TWO winners will be chosen!!

Write a comment for each blog you follow and get a BONUS entry if you blog about this giveaway on your blog or facebook page!

Giveaway ends Sunday, November 6^th, 2011 at midnight central standard time. The winners will be announced on Monday!!

Click on each picture to take you to each blog!

Giveaway Terms 

This giveaway is free to enter. All giveaways are opened to U.S. residents ages 18 and up unless otherwise stated. Giveaways are one entry per person per blog following. I do not and never will collect or sell your information. Nothing from this blog can be copied, edited, or sold for personal use. Thanks for playing by the rules. (Leave it to a teacher to follow giveaway rules, lol!)

Please post entries on Kreative in Kinder. GOOD LUCK! Gobble Gobble!!

Wow, time does fly when you're teaching little children!  I can't believe it's October already!  I have been busy creating and want to share two new items I have posted on Teachers pay Teachers.  

This file was created to supplement our noun unit and then will lead us very nicely into creative story writing.  I attended the Empowering Writers workshop this past Summer, and loved their "Getting Ready To Write" for K-1.  It aligned so well with my philosophy of how young children evolve in the writing process.  

Along with that, I finally put my "Show Me Pictures" idea on paper.  I have been using this for over 15 years with my young students who draw one thing on the paper and declare it finished.  I want to develop creative thinkers who use their imagination when they draw and in turn when they write.  Here's a sample of that.

I begin with a mini lesson, all the children gathered on floor, and draw a simple stick figure.  "Tell me about my friend."  I ask the children.  "Oh, he's a boy", claim the boys.  "No, it's a girl!"  reply the girls.  "How do you know?", I ask.  Here's where the fun begins.  As I begin adding color and details, the children are glued to image and what it is becoming.  It's different every time, a clown at a circus, juggling balls, then a man at the lake fishing on a bright sunny day, you never know what's in my head.  Over the years, I have added random shapes, and stick animals to the mix.  The kids always enjoy this activity, especially when I hand out the black line and they get to show me what's in their brain!  We use this activity to bridge into adding details to writing.  However, don't leave the pictures too soon, as the saying goes, "a picture is worth a thousand words", and young children begin as illustrators and evolve into authors!

Whew!, three weeks in and we are busy, busy, busy in our Dual Language Kindergarten Program!  We are blessed to have the biggest kindergarten in our entire district!  Our classes are full, but our kids are really making progress and the craziness that is part and parcel of the beginning of any kindergarten year is beginning to subside!  I haven't blogged in a while, as you can imagine, with classes overflowing, the many things we kindergarten teachers have to do at the start is magnified with each new precious little face.  So with arriving early and staying extra late each day, I haven't had the energy to blog in the evening.

With this being the 10 year anniversary of 9/11, I am recalling the day when I stood in the center of my kindergarten classroom in Katy, Texas, and another teacher came in to whisper in my ear what was going on.  I realized how protected we are within the four little walls of our classroom, I was doing what I love, meanwhile, the world outside was forever changing.  The principal put a little TV in our lounge, and during lunch we saw the first images of what was happening...we sat in silence, confused, and bewildered.  Who would do such a horrendous thing?
But as teachers, our lives are centered around children, they are the reason we come to work everyday and endure the endless paperwork, meetings, and  other undesirables of the job.  They are the future and we touch their lives everyday.  I love this quote from Ken Robinson on Ted Talks, I think it speaks to our indelible impact on children..."everyday our children spread their dreams beneath our feet...we should tread softly on them."
Have a blessed week!

2 Days In...

Just finished the second day of school, and boy am I exhausted!  My love of young children always makes me forget the work it takes in the beginning to acclimate them to "Big School"!  Their endearing little faces and sweet voices recharge me everyday, and everyday we get a little further down the road to becoming a little "School Family".  As tired as I am at the end of the day, I still can't imagine doing anything else with my life!
May you be encouraged, recharged, and enlightened everyday by antics of 5 year olds!!!

School Starts Monday!

 Oh, my goodness!!!!  I cannot believe that school starts on Monday!  Isn't it funny how we prepare for weeks and weeks and we still never feel like we're ready????  I have so many check lists going that I feel like I'm running in circles!  Not to mention that only 2 printers are working at our school right now, and neither of those are color!  So, off I go to buy more ink for my printer, and guess what...my printer now, no longer works either!!!!!  AAAAAhhhh!  Oh, well...take it in stride, right?
Even with all the hurdles, I always look forward to the beginning of school, like a little kid, I get restless with anticipation!  I hope you are too!
For the past two days, our staff has been involved in some extraordinary training by Eric Jensen.  He has done extensive brain research and specializes in Poverty and the Brain.  Being at a Title 1 campus, I am always trying to learn more about how to reach my kids and truly change their lives.  I think we have found someone who really "gets it"!  He has so many common sense ideas about reaching these kids and truly changing their lives.
One thing Eric kept saying over and over, "You have more influence on these kid's lives than you think".  Wow, that's good to hear.  Another one was reaffirming to my own thoughts, "IQ is NOT fixed!"  If you've ever felt you had unmotivated kids, check him out...in his words..."there is no such thing as an unmotivated kid, only kids in unmotivated states!", and sadly enough, many teachers contribute to this!  We must notice their states, and then use strategies to change them!
I am pumped for the new school year!
Let's go change some lives...
Good luck and God Bless,

Starting up my TpT store!

Ok, so I have finally begun uploading some of my crazy teacher creations to Teacher Pay Teachers.  So to celebrate finally getting this done, I have my first free download available!  Yay!
As a kindergarten teacher, I am always frustrated with trying to correct my student's weak and incorrect pencil grasp!  So, like the crazy teacher I am, I made up a song/chant to do before we pick up our pencils to write!  Hop on over to TpT and grab my first gift!

Welcome to my blog!

I have been dabbling with different ways to communicate online, district teacher website (too limiting in the cuteness factor), then last year I tried a weebly, this year I have decided to try blogging! I love all the ways to share in this domain, it will allow me to touch base with parents and teachers!
As stated in my blog title, I am a kindergarten teacher in a Dual Language program. Last year was our first year to implement this exciting new program, and the results were amazing! Our program is a 50/50 two-way program where half of our classes are native English speakers, and the other half are native Spanish speakers. This allows our students to have a "model" for the alternate language. In the 50/50 model, our students get half of their instruction in English and half in Spanish. They will continue in the program until 5th grade, when they will be...bilingual...biliterate...and bicultural! How exciting is that?