Oh, the wonderful thing about writing...............

Writing.........it's one of the hardest things to teach in the beginning of the year, but the most wonderful thing to see at the end of the year!  It also helps that my kids LOVE to write.  They love when I tell them, "Today is a free write day!"  I get cheers like I have just announced we are going to watch Frozen for the third time! But in all seriousness, watching their writing improve throughout the year is one of my favorite parts of kindergarten.  I am just in awe at their amazing writing abilities!  Here is an example.  The picture on the left is one of my student's writing from 1st quarter, and the picture on the right is one of my student's writing from this week!  I LOVE TEACHING KINDERGARTEN!!!!
     
                                                                                             (I got the movie Frozen from the Easter                                                                                                          bunny and a kite too and candy too and my       (My favorite color is pink.)                                                  dad got a Frisbee and my mom got a book.)

Please Shine Down on Me!

Today we celebrated our wonderful planet with beautiful sunny skies! Our students have missed many days outdoors this winter due to the bitter cold temperatures here in Minnesota. We can hardly believe we survived the near 30 closed door noon hours! In other words, we had almost a month of temperatures below -10 degrees!!! 

Today, however, was a beautiful day and we took advantage of this blessing!

Everyday Heros In Writing

The class spent some time writing about what they want to be when they grow up. We couldn't help but publish this simple activity in the hallway for all to see. They did such a great job writing about their futures as doctors, veterinarians, and builders. Check out some of their work below!

Photo Editing Favorites

As you scroll through all the great blogs out there you may notice that there are some pretty cool photo editing tools available for bloggers to use. The great thing about these photo editing tools are that they are affordable (FREE with limited use) and user friendly. Check out our two favorites below.

PicMonkey
This photo editing website is really easy to use and allows you to add some really cool touches to your photos. This is the fastest tool in terms of getting started. If you have a simple project, this is the tool to use.

Once you dig into the cool features it offers, you may be tempted to pay the small monthly fee for unlimited use. Its up to you. The monthly fee is $4.99/month or $33/year.

A thing to watch for: Your image will be lost forever if you do not save it to your desktop. Be sure to save it as soon as you like it, so it won't be lost.

Canva
This website has you create an account in order to get started. Don't let this scare you away, though! It's not worth it to skip the fast tutorial before you get started. You will learn some neat tricks here. They also have additional tutorials if you are nervous about jumping in.

Canva.com offers some great additional clip art and labels to go with your pictures. It has a very large catalog for you to use, but just make sure you check if there is a price before you start clicking away. Most images are $1.

We like to use Canva especially when disguising student faces or for collages.

Both tools have some really great features, and we use them both. But, before you get started weigh the pros and cons of each and spend some time playing around with them. Although PicMonkey is the fastest and easiest to use, Canva has much more options in comparison. But with more options comes more time to learn all of it's features. It's really up to you, your budget, and the time you have to create! Best of luck!!!

Wonderful Find

As many of us do, we search blogs of fellow educators. Well, tonight I came across a blog by a fellow educator. Valarie has a great blog with a wide range of ideas and tidbits for anyone to implement into their classroom. Check out out --> All Students Can Shine

To see a sample of her work here is one of the great notes she has provided for teachers to send home with to help parents.

Get this product for free at her TPT store HERE.

Spring, Spring is in the Air

We are elbows deep in spring activities this week. Check out our cutest and best selling Garden Write the Room. The kids just love being detectives while they find and document all these cool words.

Below are the mixed up sentences that the kids put together during their Daily 5 Work on Writing. The kids always enjoy putting together these puzzles and this activities really ties well with our writers work shop and making their sentences make sense. Check them out HERE.

Eggs O' Plenty!

I don't know what I love more, getting set up for holidays or doing all the fun activities during the holidays. Right now we have been tapping into our creative minds and designing fun hands on learning activities for our munchkins in school.

Check out our latest score of goodies that just arrived in the mail. Two questions come to mind: where can I hide them and what can I put in them? Oh, so excited!

Going on the whole egg hunt theme, we thought how fun would it be to incorporate it into our Daily 5 work?!? We made this Search and Find using words that were hidden in the eggs themselves. All you need is a magnifying glass and a pencil to write down your findings. Download it HERE for FREE!

We hope you find this freebie helpful as you make your plans for your upcoming Spring and Easter units! Also, check out more great Spring activities at our TPT store, HERE.

3, 2, 1 BLAST OFF!

It's Friday night and here I am blogging about our AWESOME space week that we had. It was so much fun that 3tKteam has decided to extend our space one week longer. The kids are loving it and keep asking questions wanting to learn more. There are also so many fun things you can do with space these days. Oh, how we love it!

The kids read books about comets to astronauts on the moon and they were just thrilled! I quick snapped a pick of Space 3 Sounds of -ed from one of our small group teacher times during our Daily 5. They loved it! (I don't know if it was the absolutely adorable little aliens that they liked or feeling like big readers.)

We also read a story about the several theories of the existence of aliens. Then, the kids loved writing about the day they would get to have a pet alien. It was such a fun way to tap into their imagination. Haha! I can't help but giggle as I think about what they wrote. Oh... the silliness! Check out this and more space writing activities HERE.

Another skill that we have been reviewing this week was addition. We decided to touch on doubles facts since that is an expectation that the students will have in 1st grade. Might as well get a head start, right!?! Well we started it all with our Space Doubles Facts Book. We spent some time talking about the different ways to read number sentences and then practiced our double facts. The kids especially loved quizzing their peers on their facts. Oh, how they love playing teacher. It was so cute!

Patterns, patterns, and more patterns. That is what we love and can't get enough of. So why not make star patterns. The kids had fun doing it AND it was a great way to review our patterns.

Please check back next week to see how we implement more fun into our Space theme. We also have these activities (and free ones, too) on our Teachers Pay Teachers Site. Check us out!

It's Pizza Time!

Okay... So, we all love sitting down with our own children and asking them how their day went. Often times it includes any funny or special things they did during their day, what they ate for lunch at school and the Pepperoni Report. Simply put in the words of a five year old, "Who got in trouble today."

Yes, we all love pizza. Who doesn't? 

Well in our Kindergarten classrooms we have a behavior management system that is often talked about for years after their first year in school. Each student creates their pizza on the first day of school and it is posted on the bulletin board closest to the door. 

At the start of each day the students start with a 4 pepperoni pizza. For those students that need extra reminders throughout the day to display desired behaviors, they are asked to pull a pepperoni off their pizza. Their shoulders often drop to their toes and their head hangs in disappointment. Oh... the pain in pulling off a pepperoni! It is so hard!

 At the end of the day we take just a few quick minutes to reflect on their behavior. Those that lost a pepperoni end up having a discussion about the unwanted behaviors and parents are contacted if needed.

For those students that keep all 4 pepperonis on their pizza (which happens to most students on a daily basis), they earn a Pizza Point. It is our classroom $$$ system that the students use to buy fun prizes as a reward.

When setting this up at the beginning of the year I explain to my students that their job is to be a good listener when they are at school. Just like their grown-ups, they will get paid for doing their job. They can then use their money to buy things. Just remember if you have this discussion with 5 year olds their answers may not be censored when you ask them what their parents buy with money!!! ... Oh how we love Kindergarten!

Hello, World!

Hey, Y'all! Yes, we just said y'all and we are from one of the states bordering Canada. We are just that excited to kick off our new blog for all our many followers to see.

As you can see we are the 3tKteam. That is short for 3 Teacher Kindergarten Team and much faster and easier to say. The three of us have over 20 years of teaching experience (combined) and thought it was time that we started sharing some of the work we do.

We all LOVE our job and strive to push ourselves professionally each day. So, come along for the ride and follow us on this journey of all the funs things we do in our Kindergarten classrooms. It is a blast and we hope you are ready for all the fun we have!