Olympic Field Day

Happy Saturday everyone! I am Jill from Chevron and Centers. We had field day last week and I would like to share some of our wonderful memories with you!

I love field day almost as much as my kinders do! They look forward to that magical day in May as soon as April rolls around. This year our AMAZING P.E. teachers as well as specials teachers planned an Olympic field day.

Each class is assigned a country. Our class got Austria. We did some research and found out a lot of cool facts about Austria! Did you know that Edward Hass invented the PEZ candy in 1928. My kinders didn't know what PEZ candy was so we had a taste test. Austria is known for its cakes and pastries. The Sound of Music was filmed in Austria!

We started our event with a parade of the countries! Our school is very large we have 850 students and we are only a K-2 school!! So half of our school does field day on Thursday and the other half on Friday. So the other classes sit out in the hallways and cheer for the parade. It is so much fun!!

My sweet kids getting ready!

Team America leading the parade! I love our specials teachers they are amazing and I couldn't imaging teaching without them!

The lighting of the torch. One of my sweet kinders had the honor!!!

We participated in several dances from different countries!

Our blurry congo line:)

Water relays are always a favorite. They love every minute of them!

Who doesn't love getting to soak your friends ha! I don't have any pictures of the squirt your teacher race but it was fun! The kids don't know that we also have a squirt bottle!!! Their faces are priceless when we fire back:)

I absolutely love these pictures of the long jump!

Next up is tug-of-war. Check out those game faces!!!

And to finish off the day the kiddos asked for selfies with me. How could you say no to those faces. I am going to miss these kiddos so very much! I have loved every minute of watching them grow and learn. They will be fabulous firsties and I am so very proud of them!

Thank you for stopping by the Kinder tribe to check out our field day festivities! Does your school have a field day? Please comment below and tell us all about it!!!

Organization: Tips for Wrapping Up the End of the Year

Hello everyone! It's Katie from Miss Kate's Desk. I am officially on summer break!  The last couple of weeks of school I did some things in the classroom to help my sanity for when I come back in August to get my room ready.

Here was my room on the last day of school with table bins cleared and some items off of bulletin boards.

Check puzzles, manipulatives, & games.
I try to get the students involved if I can.  The end of the year has lots of random assemblies and days where our schedule is a little funky.  On one of those days we go through our puzzles.  I assigned each couple of students a puzzle to put together and check that it has all of the pieces.  If it didn't, I either threw it away or saved it for a project.

The puzzles went back into the cabinet.  We also organized the other items inside.  We went through other games and manipulatives too.

Organize your classroom library.

There are many different stickers and labeling systems that teachers use for their classroom libraries.  Even if each book has a sticker on it to match a label, students will still get books in the wrong tubs.  I had a few volunteer students go through each tub to make sure the books inside had matching stickers and tubs.  This took maybe 20 minutes.  If I waited till August with no other help, it would take me double the time.

Go through old supplies.

I know this isn't always the case, but some years we have extra supplies after we pass out any that is being sent home with students.  This year our art teacher was looking for some pencil boxes.  For some reason I had 4 or 5 in my room that I put in a bag to give to her.  She also needed markers and we had some leftover with no names on the box.

I also plan to give to the office and some of our specials area our extra hand sanitizer since they do not get students bringing supplies to those areas.  We use it a LOT in the classroom but for some reason always have a ton left.

Find ways to save yourself a little bit of time when you return back to your classroom and pick some helpful students.  Go through and purge old supplies, games, books, etc to save you time and give you space!

End of the Year Parent Gift

Hi everyone!  It's Cori from Mrs. B's Beehive with some fun ideas for end of the year parent gifts!  At my school, I have a room mom who helps me with school events, such as our fall carnival and Christmas program.  My room mom also helps me organize the "after party" for the graduation. All of these things can be very stressful for the room mom.  She needs to be organized and have good communication skills with the rest of the parents. I always greatly appreciate the hard work that my room mom's put in, they definitely have a big impact on a successful school year!

I'm always on the lookout for good ideas for a room mom gift.  I have a previous post on my blog about a room mom gift that I gave a couple years ago where I found this adorable glass on Etsy.

I also recently found the new Etsy shop from The Ordinary to Extraordinary Classroom called PartyOwl the Time!  She has great items that work for both parent volunteers and faculty as well.  You get adorable tags that you can attach to a variety of treats.

This year, I decided that what I would want most if I were a room mom, was an Amazon gift card  : )  I created this little card that you can use and attach an Amazon gift card to.  Click on the picture for the free resource! One of the pages has room mom on it, and the second page is editable so that you can use it as you see fit!

I attached the card to a class picture that I had all of the students sign.  Hopefully this will be a nice memento for my room mom, in appreciation for all of her hard work this year!

Let me know if you guys have any other great parent gift ideas!

Teaching at the End of the Year

Hello teacher friends! This is Kelly from My Fabulous Class. Today, I am going to share some FUN teaching ideas to help you survive the last few weeks of school.

I try to maintain my classroom routine for as long as possible. I really feel it helps keep the kids STAY CALM if they know what to expect. My kids still do Literacy and Math Centers until the last week. Yes, they get interrupted by school musical and field days, but when we are in the room, we keep the routine.I did create a few extra fun games to share with you.

First up, Fly Swat – Missing Addends. You can get this game FREE in my store. I bought the fly swatters at the Dollar Tree. In a small group, lay out all of the flower cards. I made missing addend cards for making 5 and making 10. I put the fives on pink card stock and the tens on blue to easily differentiate. Flip over  a missing addend card. First student to swat the correct flower gets the point. Whoever has the most points at the end wins.

I made a similar game for CVC words. I put students in groups of four. Students take turns being the “word caller.” and the other students swat the correct word. You can grab this game FREE HERE. This game is great for a word work center.

At writing center, I just placed some stamps I found at Walmart and told students to make stories with them. They LOVED this simple activity. It kept students very engaged while I was completing my DRAs.

Another great math game were these sunglasses. I bought the sunglasses and stickers at Walmart. I placed different patterns on the stickers. Students wrote down the number equations. You can get the recording sheet FREE HERE.

Have you ever had your kids bowl to work on subtracting from ten? I LOVE this game…but it can get LOUD. I found this recording sheet at Mrs. Ricca’s Kindergarten.

Finally, I found these cute foam feet at the Dollar Tree. I wrote sight words and we played a version of musical chairs. I put the feet in a circle. When the music stopped, students had to read the word they were by. If they could read it, they got to keep it. If they couldn’t, they would sit down. This was so fun, I bought more feet to write letters on for next year.

I hope you found some great ideas to help you survive  teaching at the end of the year!

Kindergarten Round Up + a FREEBIE!

Hey everyone!! Emily here, from Carnes' Corner.  I'm so excited to be here with you!

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For the second year in a row, my kindergarten team has hosted a "Kindergarten Round Up" for our incoming kindergartners.  We LOVE doing this, because it gives us an opportunity to meet the students who are going to be spending the year with us next year AND it gets the students excited about kindergarten!

I wanted to share some tips to make YOUR kindergarten round up a successful one!  Of course, we were so busy, I didn't get many pictures...I know; terrible blogger status...bare with me!

SEND OUT INVITATIONS
*I designed an invitation for us, and our principal emailed it out to all of our incoming families! They had two afternoons to chose from...of course, the second night was definitely busier than the first!  (I may even recommend dividing it, and assigning nights for parents.)

SIGN IN STUDENTS BY GROUPS
*We divided the kiddos in to three groups when they were with us, so to help with that, we used three different clip boards (each with different colors).  We use coordinating sharpies to write their name tags, so that when we took the kiddos to our rooms, we could just say "blue group come with me", etc.

HAVE A PHOTO BOOTH
*Our art department had an old barn left over from their art show, so we borrowed that and one of my team members made some precious cowboy photo props (think hat, sheriffs badge, etc.)
*This worked well for TWO things...we now have pictures with each of the kids so we remember who they are AND the parents had fun taking pictures of their kiddos. :)

KEEP THE PARENTS IN A MEETING
*The parents stayed in the Multi-Purpose room with our AP and discussed all of the important topics, got a tour, etc.  This kept them busy while we had their kids, and allowed them to concentrate on all of the boring parent stuff!

TAKE THE KIDS FOR ASSESSMENT(ish)
*Like I said, we had the kids in three groups.  We rotated each group in 15 minutes segments (math assessment, letter assessment, bingo/behavior assessment).  I created one assessment sheet for each child, so that all of our info was together.  The kiddos just traveled with their papers:

Here's a sneak peek of what we had the children do on the sheets:

And the recording sheet the "behavior" team used...

To make your kindergarten round up go a bit more smoothly, I want each of you to grab the assessment packet for FREE!!  Just head over to my TpT store to download it!

End of the Year Purge

Hello there! Kirstin here from Hip Hooray in K! Excited to share my EOY Purge with you today!

I have a confession. I am a MAJOR pack rat during the year. I  never know what I will need or how much of it. So I save, save, save. By the end of the year me and my room are in need of a total purge and you may be surprised to find out where I start.



Yep, that's right. After YEARS of stashing books to build my classroom library, I am shocked I head into my library first. 

But then, again maybe I am not. After all, my libraries look like this after weeks of busy-ness have left them unattended to. 

I start by organizing both my leveled and interest-based libraries, weeding out ratty, unloved, low-interest books saving room for the favorites to breathe. I weed out the books with broken spines, ripped pages, and out of date content. I fix them up and get my book boxes back to new. 

What I end up with looks like this. 

About 50 books that haven't been read much, and aren't doing us much use.  But, since I hunted and gathered for them I can't give them up to easily. I hold a little garage sale in our classroom, where kids can take any of these books home for the summer for keeps!

Although they may not be read much at school where we have a full library, at home, where there may not be as many books, I hope they are gold. Summer reading and books for my kiddos to own.

I love being able to do this each and every year. All the books that still don't have a home I donate to SCARCE book rescue. 

Through this process I also reclaim all the thematic books that I had in my book spotlight rack.  These are books we read that go with our themes from the year. After we read them I put them into this small holder. My kiddos love these books and often put them into their own books boxes during book shopping. I keep them in circulation until the end of the year when I do my library purge and organization. 

End result - clean and organized libraries ready to be put away for next year!

Does your library need as much help as mine at the end of the year?

How do you get your library set for the next year? 

Thanks for stopping by Kinder Tribe!

-Kirstin

What Worked Well Wednesday Linky: A-Z Countdown to Summer

Hey, y'all! It's Breanna from A Pinch of Primary!

I am so excited to be popping in to the #KinderTribe blog again for the #WWWW linky.

I don't know about you guys, but we are full-swing into end-of-year madness. We have 13 days. THIRTEEN. DAYS.

If you have never heard of the A-Z Countdown to Summer, you need to check it out somewhere. Keep reading this post, check out my Instagram (Molly from Miss K's Little Rays is doing Z-A countdown, which is so cool!), check Pinterest...ANYTHING you can to try this awesome and engaging ABC activity to end the year.

To start this, I mapped out a calendar of what I wanted to do and created a paper chain with the letters in reverse order. My calendar is according to dates and just so happens to correlate with a lot of holidays, field trips, and activities at our school this year. The chain serves as a great visual for how many letters/days we have left. Some of the days are what some would call 'standards-based'...others are simply letting them have fun and play. They're 5 and 6 and it is just what they need at this time of year. :)

Click HERE to find a 'generic' version of the calendar without the dates and my school-related events!

Click HERE to find my poster that I used next to my paper chain!

Here's a glimpse at some of the fun so far:

I do not send home the calendar with my kids because I like to have them predict what they day will be. It brings up a fabulous discussion/review of letter sounds!! For example, Monday was 'L'. One of my kiddos said elephant, so we had a discussion about the beginning sound/letter for elephant. Another teacher on my team sent the calendar home so parents were able to send items in, plan ahead, etc. I planned for a few days of treats and small gifts, but nothing major and definitely nothing that is breaking the bank. Hello, Dollar Tree and Target Dollar Spot. To make this as easy as possible, I like to prep my entire week on the weekend or on Thursday/Friday when I do all of my lesson planning.

It is a fun way to keep the kids engaged and ready to go each morning. In my experience, it's a quick behavior fix as soon as I say it is time to do the countdown activity.

Do you do an A-Z (Z-A) countdown in your classroom? How's it going? I'm sure you all have amazing end-of-year tips and tricks and I'd love for you to link-up and let me know! :)

An InLinkz Link-up