Rockin' In My School Shoes

We all love Pete The Cat, that much is certain.  My Scholastic book order catalogs were waiting for me when I returned to school a couple of weeks ago.  I was happy to see that they are offering Pet The Cat: Rockin' In My School Shoes in their back-to-school catalog.

I purchased a hardbound copy of the book over the summer and I had my fingers crossed that Scholastic would make it available to the children right away.  Although I'm happy about the availability of the book, I was disappointed that they are not offering a CD with it as they did last September when they opened the year with Pete The Cat.   CDs are so much easier than looking for the songs online, in my opinion.  My wonderful husband came to my rescue.  He downloaded the music off the website and burned CDs for my partner and me.  He used artwork from the book and printed it on the CDs.

He personalized them for us by adding our names to the school bus stop sign on the School Shoes discs and the license plate on the Four Groovy Buttons discs.  Thanks to my husband, we've been rockin' in our school shoes all week long:)

Here's a picture of our little "Pete the Cat."  (Actually it's Indiana.)  With Indiana, as with Pete, it's all good. (Groovy!)

Have an awesome week.

Karen

Friday Freebie

Here's a link to my latest Friday Freebie  I hope you enjoy using it with your little ones.

It's a little book called Eating Shapes.  Enjoy, and have a wonderful weekend!

Karen

Welcome to the New School Year

Well we survived the first six days of school!  Yay!!  Tomorrow night is Back-to-School Night and I'm certainly looking forward to the weekend.  I've stayed at school until just before seven the past two evenings, and I'm getting behind here at home.

I love my new kiddos.  They're a darling group.  We added a Transitional Kindergarten at our site and it seems so funny that every child in that class was born in November!  They will celebrate all of their birthdays in one month, and it's a short month at that.

We started a painting techniques book this week.  Each day, after the new color is introduced, the children get to experience a new painting technique.  We introduce the colors in the order in which they appear in Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?  So the first painting was brown.

We started with bubble painting because I think it's the most fun.  If you haven't done this with your class, I highly recommend you try.  To create the medium, combine dishwashing liquid, a few drops of glycerine, tempra and water.  Mix it well.  Then pour it into a shallow container.  One at a time, have the children use a straw to blow into the mixture.  Bubbles will well up quickly.  After they have a good froth going, they hold their paper over the bubbles and lower it until it touches the container.

This creates a lovely effect.  Unfortunately, I didn't take a photo of the finished product.  I'll have to post one at a later date.

We've been having a great time with the Brown Bear unit I put together over the summer.  If you haven't seen it you can check it out right here.  Below are photos of some of the goodies included in the unit.

This is a coloring sheet.  There is one for each animal in the story, and I've borrowed the flamingo from Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? so that we would have something to go along with pink.  The children love having their own pictures of the critters that hang on our wall next to the calendar board.

These, of course, are the color wall cards.  I included number wall cards as well.  I haven't taken a photo of them yet.  (Actually, you can see the number one card peeking through the tree at the bottom of the picture.)

And here is my favorite component.  The "Count Along With Brown Bear" book I created for the unit.  First the children rainbow write the number.  Next they cut out the corresponding number of animals for that page.  Then they trace the numbers at the bottom of the page.  Last, they read the book.  I love the scaffold of placing dots under each word.  It makes it so much easier for the children to follow along.


I hope all of you are off to a great start.  We have the best job!

Karen

Starting The Year With Brown Bear

Whew!  I finally finished and put up my first packet on Teacher's Pay Teachers.  It was a new experience trying to get things figured out.  But we did (my husband is wonderful) and it's available now.  We had difficulty putting up the preview page, and we're still waiting for that to be resolved, but it's up! You can find it right here.

Since TpT only allows four thumbnail photos, I thought I'd preview a few more here.

This is one of the number wall cards.  Card number one has one brown bear, number two has two red birds and so on.  I ran out of animals after number nine, so we ended with ten teachers.

I also included a set of color wall cards in the packet.  As there aren't any pink animals in the story and I wanted a pink wall card, I used the flamingo from Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?  

There is a black line coloring sheet for each color, including pink.

This is one of the color word task cards (there are 10.)  If you have letter tiles, they world work well.  If not, I have included a page of letter tiles that you can print, laminate and cut out.  Using the squares at the bottom of the task card, the children build the color word seen above the animal.

Included in the packet you will also find a counting book, math talk cards (I'm really excited about them,) sorting and graphing sheets, color word handwriting sheets and story sequencing cards.  You can see pictures of all but the sequence cards when you click the link at the beginning of this post.

Look for another Friday Freebie on Teaching Blog Addict at the end of the week.  It'll be fun!

Have a marvelous Monday,

Karen

Dollar Tree Finds

When I went to school yesterday, my partner called me in to show me some things she purchased at Dollar Tree.  I was anxious to see what she found because I hadn't yet made it over to check out their Back-to-School merchandise.  After peeking at her goodies, I made time to go later in the afternoon.  Here' what I found:

Crayola color board books.  They are pretty big.  About 14 inches long, is my guess.  They only had the four colors in stock.  I don't know whether or not they are available in orange, purple, brown or black.

Award certificates for knowing the shapes and tying shoes.  

I don't teach how to tie shoes anymore, but I am hoping these certificates will motivate those who don't seem to care about learning that skill.  I get so tired of tying shoes. 

My favorite item was this little Eletelephony board book.

I have always liked the poem and so I couldn't resist picking up the book.  Now the children can enjoy it with me.  

Happy Friday!

Karen

End of Summer

We just returned from our last trek of the summer.  It doesn't seem possible, but school starts next week!  We stopped off at The Paper Source in Berkeley where I found the cutest Folkmanis hedgehog puppet.

She'll be a wonderful addition to my January bag of tricks.  She looks to me like she just stepped out of  Jan Brett's The Hat or The Mitten.  Hmmmm.........maybe I need to get busy and knit Hedgie her own little "hat."

My next find was at "love at first bite," a Cupcakery we patronize whenever we're in town.

In addition to a Lemon Pistachio cupcake, I picked up the cutest game.  I'm planning to add it to my free choice cupboard.   I think the spatula spinner on the "cake stand" is so cute!  Don't you?

I've been busy creating activities for my new TpT store.  It's so much fun!  I was devastated when I read that Fran Kramer from Kindergarten Crayons is leaving kindergarten.  I learned so much from her and now that she's no longer in K I decided I'll have to create my own activities.  The first one is an "I have...Who has...?" game to go along with Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Eric Carle.  It's a freebie and you can grab it here.  I have...Who has...? Brown Bear Edition.

We're finishing up a beginning-of-the-year packet with activities that connect to Eric Carle's Brown Bear book.  We hope to get it on TpT no later than Thursday.  I hope you'll check it out!