I WILL Survive....Turkey Style

I am jealous and unfollowing happy for all of you bloggy friends who are already enjoying their week long Thanksgiving Holiday. I have 2 days or 14 hours or 420 minutes or 50,400 seconds. In the words of my favorite Thanksgiving song, I WILL SURVIVE!

This is Gloria Gobbler's Sequel: You Can't Gobble Me

And you just have to love Can't Stuff This...

Here is a fun time filler engaging sight word activity.

Click here to download. =)

Here is a fun song to add to your poetry journals.

This month will have also been working to earn feathers for good behavior...and reviewing shapes. 

I am sorry for not blogging about this sooner but I've been running around like 

a chicken...or turkey with its head cut off! Lol!

This adventure started with a letter from Mr. Gobbles. 

He was on the run from the farmer. He wanted us to look for shapes that he had hidden around the school. As he was running around, his feathers were also falling out! Poor Mr. Gobbles.

After finding TONS of feathers and 6 different shapes, 

we headed back to our classroom.

When we returned there, we had a package waiting for us.

Inside the package were shape riddles.

After we solved the riddles, we read another letter from Mr. Gobbles. He told us that he had been by our room but the farmer was still after him. He was so scared that when he was trying to talk that not all of the sounds in the word were coming out. We needed to help him find those missing letters and sounds.

To complete our adventure, we made Indian headbands. On the headbands, we made patterns with the shapes we solved riddles about. The kiddos had been working to earn feathers from Mr. Gobbles for making helpful and kind choices.

If you want to check this fun and engaging adventure out, hop over to my TPT store. :)

For those of you already celebrating and relaxing, think of us as

WE SURVIVE the next 2 days. =)

I hope everyone has a relaxing and fun filled time with family and friends. As I count my blessings, I remember each of you. =)

From My Heart to Yours,

Buttons and Bunnies

I love my bunny. He is one of the sweetest and most treasured gifts I have ever received.

I love that little bunny nose! =)

Bunnies, Easter, and Spring are all things I love so I try to get as much of them in as possible.

I have several Mr. Potato Heads. You may not realize this but there are LOTS of different ones. Here is the Easter version:

How stinkin' cute are they??!!??

We play a game called Build a Potato that my kiddos are crazy about. Since Easter is near, we are going to Build a Potato Bunny Style!

I'll give you a peek at what you do but you'll have to go here to read more about it!

This game is played kind of like hangman (but you WANT to earn parts) or Read My Mind. Each kiddo has his/her own board and a marker. We play as a team. For each letter that is guessed correctly, the team gets to add a piece of the Potato Bunny. The team continues solving the mystery word and earning parts. Once the bunny is built we take him apart and start over! =)

I really cannot begin to tell you how much my kiddos adore this game. They are going to be so happy when I bring Mr. Bunny Potato Head to school! =)

And for another fun Spring activity my kiddos love, hop on over to my TpT store and check it out! =)

I have some bunny ears they wear when working at this literacy activity and that really engages them!

Thank you for all of the sweet heart notes you leave me. I hope you were able to read A Heart of Patience and take a minute to reflect on what you can do differently in your classroom. I know I try to be very patient but there are times where I am going craaaaazzzzzyyyyyyy on the inside and wanting to do some head bopping! This reflection from Conscious Discipline always reminds me that I MUST start with ME when there is a problem:

*Whomever you have placed in charge of your feelings, you have placed in control of you! p. 28

We often start feeling upset and having trigger thoughts when we look at a child's behavior for 3 different reasons:

*We think the child is misbehaving on purpose to upset us, the classroom, or another child. assumed intent

*We think the situation is WAAAYYYY worse than it really is. magnification

*We find ourselves using negative words to describe the child or their behavior labeling

When we lose our patience, we are allowing our buttons to be pushed. A behavior we see is causing us to have trouble with the feelings that it brings up in us.

For example, we often see Carla pinching Sarah on the learning rug. This triggers our feelings of anger and fear. Our trigger thoughts then turn to Why is Carla so mean? Carla knows better because we talked about this yesterday. I am worried that Sarah is going to get hurt and go home and tell her mom that someone is being mean to her.

While we are upset, we start wanting to punish Carla, make Carla feel bad by removing her from the rug, and start blaming the parents for not teaching her to not pinch at school.

Here is where Conscious Discipline comes in:

We must now tell ourselves to let go of those trigger feelings of anger and fear. We need to take a deep breath, hold onto that moment of patience and focus on what we want to happen. We are often upset because we don't know how to handle the situation...especially if it keeps happening over and over.

When we realize that this child is calling for help and doesn't know any other way to connect and interact with others, we must connect with love to that child. In the end, we can actually thank that child for teaching us to be more patient and understanding.

*This doesn't mean that there should not be consequences. Conscious Discipline does discuss consequences but not until the last chapter of the book.

Conscious Discipline is built on making commitments. There are several exercises in the book to help you remove your buttons and help you take ownership of your feelings. My kiddos know about not letting someone be the boss of your feelings. Take time to think about the behaviors that push your buttons and how you are feeling when you see that behavior. Ask yourself what do you want to see.

Somewhere in your room write on a sentence strip a commitment you are going to make when you see a certain behavior. Talk to the children about this and let them know the commitment you are making to yourself and them.

For example, tell your kiddos that you are going to make a commitment to stay calm with you see and hear friends saying hurtful things. Tell the children you are going to help them find a better way to solve the problem and to do that you need to be calm.

It really makes a difference when you allow yourself to not get upset and irritated...and there are times I still do (even with a few adults!!!) 

There are times that the kiddo who has a radar detector to my button's location is the child I need to write on the palm of my hand for that child will also need to be on my heart.

Remember this from The Heart of Patience poem:

I know I won’t be perfect but you need my best to help you learn and grow-

So, I pray for God to help me have a heart of patience that always shows.

Build a Potato- a Wonderful Word Wall Game

Last year I found an ADORABLE Easter Bunny Mr. Potato Head that I just had to buy! He was the inspiration for this game. When I found the Monster Mr. Potato Head at Target recently I had to share this game with everyone.

This game is very similar to Read My Mind and can be played with any Mr. Potato Head or Mrs. Potato Head. Each child has his or her own laminated game board. You can use dry erase markers (some are VERY hard to clean off) or a Vis A Vis (each child will need a baby wipe). If someone needs to erase they just use the baby wipe. I usually give them a Kleenex too so they can dry the game board off.

We start off trying to guess a 2 letter word. I draw the 2 blank lines on my board. If a child guesses "e", I will either write it in the blank or write it next to the blank as not being a letter in the word. If "e" is not one of the letters, then we know right away that the word could not be me, we, he or be and we talk about how we know this. As we are playing, I also share with them my thinking of what letter I might guess next and why. We continue until the 2 letter word is guessed. When the word is guessed correctly, the child who guessed the last letter that finishes the word gets to come add a piece to Mr. Potato Head. Then, we all spell the word together using several cheers. We continue playing until we have built our Mr. Potato Head. I have played this game in reading groups too. We played this today and my kiddos L-O-V-E-D it!!!!

Here is what my board might look like as we play.

Here is a child's game board.

Too cute!

Build a Potato

I would LOVE a heart note letting me know what you think. 

Word Wall Cheers

LOTS and lots of you already have these in your classroom.  We call these our "word wall cheers".  I took a Cheer laundry detergent box and cut the top off and put our cheers inside.  Each week we have 5 new word wall words.  We use our "cheers" to help practice spelling those words.  The kiddos LOVE choosing a cheer from the box.  There are loud cheers, quiet cheers, lots of moving cheers, and very still cheers.  The cheer box stays in the Word Study center and the kiddos can pull cheers to help practice spelling the words when they go to that literacy center.  Please leave me a heart note telling me what your favorite cheer is!  =)

Word Wall Cheers