Mother's Day!

I just wanted to show you what  I am making for Mother's Day because I thought it was so cute- AND easy. What could be better?  OH yeah, it involves candy, too- and some actual writing from the children.  Here it is!

This idea and free download is from Lovely Little Snippets - and I love it with all my heart. They turned out so precious!

Stefanie was so sweet, sweet, sweet to share this!  Thank you, Stefanie!

 

Here is the front and back up close.



I am having the children write a story about why their mom is the sweetest to go along with their candy bar. Here are some of their stories so far just to give you an idea.

Here are some of their precious covers:

 I LOVED this one because he said this is how his mom's hair looks when she blow-dries it.  

Some precious pages:

My mom goes to the gym. When she goes there I miss her.

 I love my mommy because she does do good stuff.

 I like my mom because she makes me eggs.

 I can't live without you mommy because you are so special.

 I love my mom because she goes for a walk with me.

 She makes a ham. And she makes a turkey.  She's a good cook.

SOOO- the books are turning out so absolutely precious, and the kids were so excited about this "sweet" idea,  that I am also making these, too,  to go with the MOTHERS bars!

Kinzie's Kreations shared this adorable  M&M Mom freebie at her blog if M&M's are more to your liking!  

The finished products looked like this:

I am going to have the kids wrap them together in ribbon with their book.

 

Kinzie shared this sweet printable from Over the Big Moon to go with this treat. How much do you love that?!

Have a sweet day!  Carolyn





Birds and Kevin Henkes

We had so much fun with birds this week that I wanted to share it with you.

We read Birds, written by Kevin Henkes and illustrated by his wife, Laura Dronzek.

 

It is such a special book to read and share with children. Look at these pages!



If there are lots of birds in a tree, and they all fly away at the same time, it looks like the tree yelled,

 SURPRISE!



This page was maybe my favorite to share with the children. We talked about all different types of birds and the colors they may leave in the sky, if their feathers left marks. I had seen an idea from Ready, Set, Read with feather painting and feather patterning to go along with this story. I just loved the idea of feather painting!

I made this paper so that we could make our own feather paintings. I printed it on light blue for the sky color.  If you would like a copy, just click on the picture.

 I let the kids  use different feathers for yellow, blue, and red paint. 

These paint bricks worked really well. I just had to remind the kids to be a little careful "flying" over the words- so we could still read them.  

I  also made a bulletin board in the hall with some of our artwork. I had the children only paint the feather marks on the paper for the bulletin board, and then tell me which birds they chose to make the marks. 

As I called a couple children at a time up to paint , the other children worked on this Types of Birds Easy Reader from Debi Forsyth.  It is free at her TPT store.  

I made this little paper to go along with her book, to show the children what each bird really looked like, so they could use it as a guide as they colored their books.  If you would like a copy of my bird pictures, just click on the picture below.  

I actually saved the page as a picture, and printed it out as a 5x7 picture, just to save some ink.  Then, I cut each one in half (since there are two strips on each page) and stapled a strip right onto the cover of each child's book.

The books came out so sweet!

My post about Birds and Bird Nests has LOTS of other bird ideas you might like to use.

This is my  Bird and Bird Nest Prezi at my TPT store, if you would like that, too.  I used it to show the pictures of the birds we talked about before we made our books. The children loved choosing which birds they would pretend left marks in the sky. 

I also just updated my Author's Prezi and listed it at my TPT store.  I included Kevin Henkes because I LOVE him and his books.  I use so many of his books throughout the year. The children loved learning more about him- and seeing some of his work.  The other authors I have included in my Prezi are  Eric Carle, Theodor Geisel, David Shannon, Jan Brett, Laura Numeroff, Donald Crews, Shel Silverstein, Norman Bridwell, Robert Munsch, and  Mo Willems.

Thank you for stopping by!

Five for Friday- Good Friday Edition!

I am linking up with Kacey for Five for Friday! Thank you, Kacey! I just finished a wonderful week off from school doing lots of things and nothing with my family.  It was wonderful!

Here are my five favorites of the week...

This week I posted about teaching and using  The Chunky Monkey Reading Strategy.

My kids have a ball with it- and doing lots of hands on activities to learn and remember chunky monkey helps a lot.

 

My Chunky Monkey Prezi is part of my Beginning Reading Prezi at my TPT store. They have lots of videos and links to great online sites and activities.

I also posted about the fun I have teaching the children how to How-To!  How-To books are so much fun to teach, and the children love writing them. 

 I also included LOTS of great TPT freebies that I found to help reinforce sequencing!

I found some other all time favorite How-To books some of my students made.

The first favorite was the one paying homage to the macaroni and cheese color crayon- the crown jewel of the 64 color crayon box with my class:

 I loved how he made the "black stove color" as he called it!

This one was my guide to dressing like a Princess. (Or how to "jes up like a pinsus!" )   

 (I love her hangers!)

After cleaning my closet, I am going to take a harder look at her advice in this book. I think my problem is that I often forget that very important third step - to "git" my crown.  That must be my problem...

I am so excited because our Family Reading Partnership is hosting Dr. Jean on April 26th for our Annual Kids' Bookfest.  She is going to do a program for our Pre-K and K teachers Friday afternoon, and I even get to go out to dinner with her Friday night!  I can't wait!  My job today is to put stickers on all of these books and cds that we got to send home with every Kindergarten and Pre-K student in our school. Here's one box...

 Emily and I are going to have a Will and Grace marathon and stick on stickers.  (She doesn't know it yet...)

This was a CRAZY weather week here.  People didn't know whether to shovel or mow!

It was almost 80 on Monday.  Jeff got a sunburn on his neck from being outside.  But don't worry- he could cover it up with a winter scarf on Wednesday because it was so freezing cold and snowing!  It's sort of fun to keep us on our toes like that. Today is beautiful and will be almost 60.  I'll take it.

Finally, I had a fun family week. I got to see all the kids a lot which I LOVED.  We watched my daughter's dog in the beginning of the week.  

He must have his tummy rubbed at all times, or he gently guides your hand back to remind you to keep rubbing. 

Emily and I broke out the T25 and made ourselves endure  had fun working out with that. I grew to love Tonya, the girl who does the modified workout, with all my heart.  I found myself saying, "What's Tonya doing?" a lot after Shaun T gave his orders... 

Anyway, it does me a lot more good when it is actually IN the dvd player being used then when it is in the box. Hmmm. 

And finally, these are some of my FAVORITE, FAVORITE Easter songs.  <3  I just love them.  

Nicole Nordman's Why

Newsong's Arise My Love

Have a beautiful, wonderful, happy, healthy Easter!