We had an awesome day in kindergarten today! Along with our Easter baskets making and our Easter party, we had an egg hunt! We went into school this morning with no plans to have an Easter egg hunt and ended up having a a really fun time.

We bought a package of plastic eggs to put into the kids' Easter baskets and when the kids saw them this morning, they were all asking if we were having an Easter egg hunt and got SO excited. We thought it might be fun. Unfortunately we only had enough eggs for each kid to get two, so we had to have a parent bring in more eggs, then we were able to have each kid get six eggs.
We wanted all of the kids to get the same amount of eggs and we wanted them all to get the same candy. We had to label the eggs somehow, so we decided that labeling them with sight words would not only be fun but would be a great sight word activity as well.
We made an egg for each kid with each word on it. Each word had the same candy in all of the eggs with that word on it. For example: all 18 eggs with the word "said" on them, had jellybeans, while all 18 eggs with the word "here" on them had chocolate eggs in them. The system worked perfectly!

We hid them all around the room.

We gave each kid a bag with their name on it and a check-off sheet. They had to check off the words as they found them. We used words that they are just learning, or that they are having a little bit of a difficult time with so that they could really get some extra practice.

Once they found the eggs they were able to take them all home, since there was candy inside we didn't allow them to open them and check what was inside until they got home.
The kids were quiet and focused while they were finding the eggs, the sight words were awesome. I would definitely do this activity again! You can also do this with numbers, math problems, letters, etc..

If you want the check off sheet, you can get it for free by clicking here.

This is the what the check off sheet looks like:

Thank you to mycutegraphics.com for the cute bunny graphic!

There are four on a page. If you want to use the same words that I used, you can print the same sheet. Download the file from the link above and you will be able to insert your own words.

Peek at my Week: Easter

This week I am linking up with Mrs. Wills Kindergarten for A Peek at My Week!

We were supposed to have this entire week off for spring break, but because of the crazy amount of snow days we had, we are now only off on Friday.

We are doing a lot of fun activities this week and we are not doing much new material. Since this was supposed to be our spring break some kids may be on vacation, and we don't want them to miss too much.

On Tuesday, we will be having a fun little Easter party for the kids. They will be making baskets and filling them with treats, we will also be having some special Easter snacks.

Here is what we are doing this week:

To view the resources we will be doing this week, click the pictures below:

Here are the resources that we will be using this week:

We will use my March Teacher Time Saver for our morning work every day.

This week we are studying letter Ww. We use these alphabet activities each week as we study the letters.

We will be doing a stamping activity during our ELA time on Thursday. Our kids love stamping.

We use activities from this guided reading pack for our guided reading groups each week. The kids love the magic reading wands and we use the books as well. 

My absolute favorite resource, is my Interactive Math Notebook. I have started to create themed pages,  we will be doing some Easter themed pages this week.

We will be doing these fun Springtime Bunnies centers this week as well! 

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

A Peek at My Week: Birthdays and Spring

This week I am linking up with Mrs. Wills Kindergarten for A Peek at My Week!

This week we will be a pretty normal week for us but we will be doing some fun birthday themed activities as well as some spring stuff.

Our first day of spring on Friday was a half day because of snow, so we still have some of out first day of spring activities to do this week.


Here is what we are doing this week:

Here are the resources that we will be using this week:

We will use my Spring Teacher Time Saver for our morning work every day.

This week we are studying letter Jj. We use these alphabet activities each week as we study the letters.

We are working on some activities for blends this week.

Fridays we try to do some activities that are fun. We will be doing a stamping activity during our ELA time on Friday. Our kids love stamping.

We use activities from this guided reading pack for our guided reading groups each week. The kids love the magic reading wands and we use the books as well. 

My absolute favorite resource, is my Interactive Math Notebook. We will be using some pages about number bonds and decomposing numbers from the interactive math notebook this week. 

We will be doing these fun Birthday centers this week as well! 

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Our Penguin Research Unit

We were way behind on the penguin thing this year. It was a crazy winter in NY and we never got to it in January like we always do. We finally got to our penguin research unit last week. 

The kids had so much fun! They loved learning about penguins and they amazed me with all of the facts they remembered.

Each kid created a penguin research folder and all of their penguin stuff went inside. We are actually keeping these folders for parent conferences. They are a great compilation of student work.

It is just a large piece of construction paper folded in half with the cover glued on.

Some of the activities we did involved creating a class chart to brainstorm first or, it was an activity that we did together. Normally, I would create a chart on a piece of chart paper, but since I already had the charts in the PDF, I just put them full screen on the SmartBoard and it was perfect! I always forget that you can put any PDF full screen on the SmartBoard to do a sample or do it together. 

We even had some kids come up to fill in the answers on this one. 

Here are some samples of the things we did.

One of the last things we did involved writing what they learned about penguins. They did an awesome job! Look at the facts they came up with!

"They live in Antarctica. They have webbed feet. They have chicks. Penguins can waddle."

"Penguins have webbed feet. Emperor penguins have yellow on their neck. Penguins are cute."

"Penguins have webbed feet. They live in Antarctica. They can swim. They have feathers. They are black and white. They could make a rookery. Their babies names are chicks. They eat krill. They have a pouch."
This little cutie did this all by herself. I could not believe the amount of facts she remembered!

We learned how to draw penguins too!

We ended with this simple penguin project, you can also use construction paper. Next time I probably would use black paper instead. Get the template for free here.

After we finished the whole unit, each child got a ribbon for their shirt. They were so impressed with themselves! One kid even wore his back to school yesterday.

You can get all of these activities and more in my Penguin Research Unit.