Saturday, May 31, 2014

I'm Back!

I just realized I haven't blogged in over a year. I guess that makes me the worst blogger ever!

I was crazy busy with school this year, I am currently in school for teaching and this was a really LONG year with a REALLY LONG winter. Thankfully, I am done for the summer and am now spending my time in kindergarten again! That means, I will have lots of great stuff to blog about...

I am so ready for the summer, I have a ton of fun plans and am just ready for the warm weather! We have had some nice summery days in NY so far but, not as many as usual.


Although I have neglected my blog for the whole year (I can't believe it has been that long), I have been frequently updating my TpT store! I now have a full year of weekly centers and so many other products...

After doing a bear research unit in kindergarten a few weeks back and going to see the Disney movie bears, I decided to make an animal research unit. It was so cool to see how excited and motivated the kids were when learning about animals. They were really interested in all of the cool facts, I was shocked when they remembered so much information about the bears! They are still talking about the facts and information the they learned. 

I also found an awesome website while researching kid friendly information about animals. The San Diego Zoo has a great kids website. They have videos with information on the animals, pictures, activities and even live cams of some of the animals. The live cams were the coolest thing, the kids loved them and are still asking to see what the pandas are doing all the time!

I researched eight zoo animals and did a research unit on them, that is in my TpT store. This is the product that I had the most fun making, I did a ton of research and it was so interesting! Everyone is probably so sick of me telling them these little facts about elephants and all of the other animals all the time!


I have a ton of activities that are perfect for kindergarten or first grade. Learning about bears was perfect for us because we were going to see the Disney movie Bears, but this would be absolutely perfect for anyone who is going on a class trip to the zoo or for any other time!
Another thing that I realized while doing the bear unit in class was that you can put up any PDF on the Smart Board to easily fill out a sample as a class. I have a fill in fact page, which was perfect for K, and we just put up the PDF full screen on the Smart Board and filled them in as a class. Then the kids were able to copy the answers down on their own pages. I never even thought of doing this and realized how easy this made things!
Here is a sample fill in fact page:
(Sorry for the terrible quality iPhone picture)

Thanks for reading!
I will be back again this week, no more year long breaks for me!