Spring Has Sprung

Whew!  Life has been busy!  We finally got back to full time learning in person and I haven't had a chance to even look up!  It has been a wild ride these last few weeks, but it has been the best feeling ever to be back in the classroom full of students!  If you follow me on Instagram, you have probably seen a lot of what we have been up to, but I figured I'd give everyone an update just in case you've missed out.

Since we have been back in the classroom, we had a chance to celebrate Read Across America Week, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, and now we are on Spring Break.  Told ya it's been hectic!  It's been so much fun to be able to bring out all the fun activities to do with the students.

Read Across America Week was during our first week back and things were a little thrown off by some weather issues.  Fortunately, we were able to postpone the fun during the next week and I was still able to cram in some fun activities.

The next week was St. Patrick's Day, so there was more fun to be had!  Here is a look at some of the fun activities we did this year.

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This past week was the week before Easter and spring break.  My class was so hyped for Easter this year, and we made sure that we had as much fun as possible.  Here is a look at how our week went.  You can also find other fun videos on my Instagram account, including a look into our "Peep Day."

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These last few weeks have felt like August in March/April.  We have had to adjust and spent lots of time going over rules and procedures while trying to continue with the things we normally do this time of year.  I plan to take time to rest up during Spring Break and be ready for the last few weeks of the school year.  We still have lots of exciting things coming up in our classroom, so stay tuned because we may just have some eggs hatching next week!

Exciting Things Are Happening at Kinder Crazy!

 

I have a HUGE announcement and I'm so excited to share it with you!  We are expanding!  Kinder Crazy now offers its very own monthly subscription box, perfect for teachers, homeschool parents, librarians, and anyone filling similar roles.

Each month, I will release a new Kinder Crazy Subscription Box that will include a children's book to use as a read aloud with ready-to-use activities that are centered around the book, its characters, or a specific theme.  Classroom materials for many of these activities will be included with reproducible masters or a class set of copies that are ready to go.  In addition to all the classroom fun you get every month (reading, math, science, cross-curricular activities--the possibilities are endless!), there will be lots of goodies hand-picked and curated just for you!  There will always be a special teacher gift (think t-shirts, tote bags, tumblers, etc.) as well as some self-care items (and sometimes even a tasty treat) for you to enjoy!  Every box will be valued at well over $50, so you are always getting your money's worth!

The first box will be the April box, featuring the beautiful children's book, I Am Enough by Grace Byers.  I am so excited to share this book and all the fun activities with you, encouraging and supporting a positive mindset in children!  The box will be mailed out on March 25th, so you will receive it by the first of the month.  Typically, orders for each monthly box will end on the 15th of the previous month so everything can be packed and mailed out on the 25th to keep your subscription coming to you as smoothly as possible.

Pre-orders are currently open until March 1st and will receive exclusive items in your April box for showing your excitement and support for this new subscription box!  Ordering for the April box will close on March 15th so that I can pack and prepare all this amazingness for you!!!!!  Be sure that when you order, you select your current t-shirt size for this gorgeous tee in the April Box!

I know everyone is so anxious to see EVERYTHING in the box, but I hate to ruin all the surprises!  So, each month I will do a sneak peek of some of the items to give you some ideas.  I have posted the sneak peek for April's box already, so here it is again in case you missed it.

Make sure you follow both my accounts on Instagram so that you can watch as I post more sneak peeks of the items in my stories each month.  One account is Kinder Crazy Blog and the other is Kinder Crazy Box.  You can also like Kinder Crazy on Facebook.  Lots of fun and more content are posted on my pages throughout the week!

If you are ready to join the fun and give the new subscription box a try, head on over to place your order here!  I'm excited for you to join the fun and be sure to let me know if you have any questions!

Scavenger Hunt Birthday Surprise

Waylon celebrated his 11th birthday last month.  This boy loves to party and loves having his friends together for some fun, so I knew he would be disappointed that he didn't get to have a birthday party....but I had something even better planned!  I was going to surprise him with a birthday trip!

His actual birthday was on a Tuesday, and during that time our school district was still participating in virtual learning.  So, he was stuck going to school with me everyday and working from my classroom while I was working and teaching virtually.  Some of his friends from class also have teacher parents (so they were in the same boat), and we decided to go eat after school and do a birthday dinner for him.  To his knowledge, that was my only plan for his birthday, and he was completely fine with that.

However, to his surprise, I had a little fun planned for him around lunchtime that day.  I had been planning a trip for him all along, but kept it a secret.  Of course, we know that anything can happen with COVID right now, so I had to work very hard to contain my excitement in case our trip got canceled for any reason.  I had decided to do a Scavenger Hunt with the help of some of my teacher besties and their kids.  I didn't want to make the clues hard and have Waylon frustrated, so I just tried to come up with some simple, fun rhymes.  Here are my clues I had for him.  Nothing fancy or cute, just fun on the fly!

Turns out that he loved my silly rhymes more than I expected!  He got his first clue from me and the game was on!

Waylon had help from Annaleigh and Emily, two of his best friends since preschool, and they are the ultimate hype girls! They were so excited and ran to each clue with him.  It was so funny because they each had their light sabers with them as they were running from room to room (or wherever the next clue was).

Mrs. Fletcher had a clue for the birthday boy!

I got some of the other teachers in on his birthday surprise and they each had one of the clues in their classroom.  He was definitely entertained by the fact that each of the clues had words that rhymed with the teacher's last names.

Mrs. Blackburn got in on the fun!

One clue was even out on the playground!

This scavenger hunt turned out to be way more fun than I ever imagined!  It was the perfect way to reveal his birthday surprise and give him a fun birthday memory!  I was working with limited space, so I didn't have anything super exciting planned for the big reveal, but he still seemed to love finding the final clue in my storage room! 😂 Guess it's not all about the wrapping, after all!

He was going to Disney World and he couldn't believe it!  The best part...we were leaving on Friday!  So, he only had to wait a few more days and started counting down immediately.  He is a Star Wars fan, so seeing everything in Galaxy's Edge is a dream come true for him.  Stay tuned for more pictures and a post about our actual trip, which was amazing!  In the meantime, if you are interested in planning a trip of your own or to just get some pricing, contact Pixie Dust by Ernay, who is the most amazing Disney Planner ever and completely free to use!

Mrs. Davis is a Disney lover, too, so she was very excited to be part of the scavenger hunt!

The Snowy Day

We all love a good snow day here in Kentucky and "The Snowy Day" by Ezra Jack Keats is such a fun book for me to read to my class every winter.  I truly enjoy all seasons and the changes they bring, but as soon as cold weather hits, all I can think about is the magic of falling snow!  Being at home with a winter wonderland of white falling is definitely one of my favorite things in life (don't hate me!) and I love sharing that excitement with my students.

We have still been doing small groups of students for three hours per day, but I've tried to make this time fun and educational. (Side note: We are still learning on Google Classroom the rest of the time.)  I've worked hard to find that balance of letting them experiences the joys of kindergarten that they have been missing out on all year, but also taking advantage of these face-to-face learning opportunities.  Kids love a good art project and we had a blast with our puffy paint experiences, so I gave them another chance to use it!

We started out by reading "The Snowy Day" by Ezra Jack Keats.  This book received a Caldecott Medal for its illustrations and it's one of my favorite things about this book.  The white snow and the little boy in his red snowsuit are iconic and always stand out in my mind when I think of this story!  If you haven't read this book or don't have your own copy, check it out on YouTube.  There are so many good read alouds there if you need a book you don't have and it works in a pinch.  I also like to use this super cute animated version, which I used with this lesson.

Click here to find the book on Amazon

After reading the story, we talked about all the things Peter did in the snow.  Then, we used this set of pictures to help with our story retelling.  To start out, I had the students color and cut out each piece from the story retelling set.  Then, they glued the "snowy hill" onto a piece of blue construction paper.  This is when I let them make some more puffy paint.  You can check out this blog post for details on how to make your own.  They painted the snowy hill, which gave them a guide so it didn't end up all over the paper and their hill had shape, but I let them have control over how it turned out.

After painting the snowy hill, we watched the animated version of the story.  As each event happened in the story, the students added a story retelling piece.  They don't actually need glue for this part and can just place it on the snowy hill.  My kiddos thought that it was so neat for everything to stick in the snow and everyone's picture turned out a little different since the pieces didn't have to be in a specific place.

To complete our project, each of the students did a little Q-tip painting to make snowflakes on their background.  They loved sharing their pictures with each other and retelling the events of the story. 

It's All About That Puffy Paint

You guys had so many questions about puffy paint after my last post!  If you have never made it before, it's time to dive in!  It's sooooo much fun!

Okay, so I'm going to be very real here.  I know many of you are probably type A personalities and want to make some puffy paint.....so you need measurements and all that jazz.  I get it.  I get it.  That's typically me, too, but kindergarten has taught me that sometimes, you just need to dive right in and have some fun!  This is one of those times.  I have never measured anything for puffy paint and it always turns out! 😱 Crazy, right?!

It's very simple.  Basically, you want to mix equal parts of shaving cream and white glue.  If you feel the need to measure, go for it.  So you could do one cup of shaving cream and one cup of white glue.  I love to use puffy paint for snow, so I don't need any kind of food coloring added.  If you want to color your puffy paint, I'd recommend adding a few drops to your glue before you mix it with the shaving cream.  I think that helps with the consistency at the end.  Once you have your equal parts in the same bowl or plate together, mix lightly.  I like my snow puffy paint to stay pretty fluffy, so I don't mix it a lot.  Just go for it and I promise your end result will be amazing!

Step 1: Mix equal parts of shaving cream and white glue in a plastic bowl or container.

Step 2: If you want it colored, add a few drops of food coloring until you get the desired color. (TIP: You can also add the food coloring to the white glue BEFORE you mix with shaving cream.)

Step 3: Use your puffy paint!  Foam brushes or larger bristled brushes work best so you get all the puff!

How did your puffy paint turn out?  Share your experience with me and send me your pics!

Do I Remember How To Teach????

It seems like it's been so long since I had kids in my classroom and actually got to teach!  I think we all have that fear in the back of our minds that we've forgotten how to do our jobs.  Good news--you haven't forgotten!  I was so thrilled to have a small group of students in class last week and we kind of just picked up where we left off!  It felt soooooo good!

Teaching online through Google Meet and having a group of kiddos in my classroom are two totally different things and it felt so good to be back in my element!  I only had about 1/2 of my class in attendance since we are doing small groups, but it truly felt amazing.  We wore masks and socially distanced with our seating arrangement, but we also read stories, painted, did some writing, completed calendar activities, danced along with GoNoodle, and so much more!  

I only had my students for about 2.5 hours, so I wanted to make today fun for them as we get back in the groove of things.  So, I chose one of my favorite fun winter stories to read and we completed some activities to go along with the book.  Today, we read "Sneezy the Snowman" by Maureen Wright.  This is such a cute story and always gives us a good giggle.

After reading about Sneezy and all the ways he melts in the story, we discussed everything and then completed a little story sequencing activity.  We listened to the story again from a YouTube read aloud as we did our story sequencing and completed this together.  I love this version of the story on YouTube (it's also great if you don't have the book already)!

After we finished up our story sequencing, we completed this fun writing craftivity.  The kids each came up with a way their snowman melted to complete the sentence, so they were all unique.  After they completed their writing, we got ready to make the puffy paint to create our own melted snowman!

The kids enjoyed the puffy paint so much and squealed with delight!  I have these huge makeup brushes I got for free somewhere, so I use those as my puffy paint brushes!  They're perfect for all my puffy paint projects and so easy to clean!  Since our snowmen are "melted" there is no need for perfection.  They can put the paint on their paper however they want and then all all the fun stuff snowmen would have such as eyes, buttons, a carrot nose (made from construction paper), a hat, etc.  You can definitely accessorize any way you want!  For this project, I just put all the paint on one plate and let the kiddos get what they needed.

I can't wait to share some of our other fun projects from this week with you, so watch for more fun with puffy paint!