Two Hoots and A Holler: 100 Days and Still Learning!

Hoot #1

We finally celebrated the 100th day of school! We managed to squeeze it in right before our "snow day". For our 100th Day Celebration, we allowed our students to rotate through different stations. The following pictures are some of the stations that the students did throughout the day.

The students counted and sorted their snacks! Yes, it was a hot mess, but they loved every minute of it!

 We counted out fruit loops and made a necklace using yarn. We always tape one end to the table.  This helps to keep the cereal from falling off the other end.

 Mason is busy making his 100 Day puzzle.  Kamille is looking at her check list to see what station she wants to go to next.

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We built a tower using 100 cups! Great Job!

 

 We made our 100 Day Class Snack! We did not have enough doughnuts.  Being the "problem solvers" that we are, we came up with another solution! Two Cheeto Puffs make a zero!! The Jitterbugs loved creating it and ate every bite! 

Of course, a celebration isn't complete without a hat!  Our kiddos LOVED making and wearing these fun, adorable 100 day hats! 
 

We are 100 days smarter...that makes us "smarties"!  Students made their Smartie craft and wrote what they can do now that makes them a "smartie".  

Last but not least, check out this what this little cutie wore on the 100th day!! This was too cute!!!

Hoot #2

We believe that kids learn through play, and learning can be fun!  We hate to see that play is being taken out of a lot of the kindergarten classrooms across the nation.  We still find ways to incorporate free play and structured play into our class.  Our students NEED this!  They are only 5 and 6 years old, for goodness sakes!  Jodi stumbled across an idea on Pinterest where a teacher (sorry, she couldn't find the original pin) used famous structures and buildings around the world for students to recreate at the block center.  What an excellent idea!  We created this book to use in our classroom.  Our students LOVE making these buildings and structures from the book.  Students have to use problem solving skills, math skills, social skills, and geography skills to build these structures.  It peaks their curiosity when they see the picture, and they begin to ask a lot of questions!  Watching students build these buildings and structures is AMAZING!  Their creativity and imagination is allowed to run WILD, and it is absolutely beautiful!  

Click HERE or on the picture below to hop on over to our TPT store to grab a free copy of this book to use in your classroom!  

This Week's Holler...

This week's holler goes out to Hilary Gard at Primary Planet! Hilary lives in Indiana and teaches 2nd grade.  Just like Jamie, she is lucky enough to only live 2 minutes from her school!! We absolutely love her text to text connections that she has done with her class.  Jamie already wants some huge eye to put above her writing board! Check out her blog and find out how she uses these huge eyes! She has some wonderful ideas for everything you could imagine!  Click on the image below to hop on over...

Two Hoots and A Holler: In With the Fun, Out with the Snow

Hoot # 1

Well this news just came to us this evening...we will have our FIRST OFFICIAL SNOW DAY TOMORROW!! In the south, when the word "snow" is used by the weather man you either laugh because you think it will never happen, OR you panic and run to the grocery store! Earlier this week "blizzard like conditions" were predicted in our area for tomorrow.  Blizzard and Mississippi do not go together in the same sentence, but it must be true because school is cancelled for tomorrow!  It is hard to believe that we will have snow when just a few weeks ago it was flip flop and shorts weather.  The weather down here in the south can never make up its mind, but we sure are thankful for our 3 day weekend!  

Hoot #2
 Over the past couple of weeks, I have been looking around my classroom at things that I hardly use.  I bought one of the "Find It" games that has the alphabet letters and objects inside.  It was one of those things that when I saw it, I just HAD to have it! (I am sure you can relate to this feeling of just "having to have" something for your class.)  It has been sitting on my shelf all year long, and this "thing" that I just HAD to HAVE hasn't found its purpose in my class.  Then a light bulb went off!  I had an idea on how to incorporate it into my differentiated centers.  Since I have students who still struggle with letters, this would be a wonderful activity for them to learn while having fun!  The recording sheet and instructions are FREE on our TPT store.  Go over and grab it!  My students love this!  I will definitely start next year off with this activity during center time!  The best part about this is....you could totally make your own "Find It" game using beads and a water bottle.  It would be a lot cheaper and super easy to make!  Click on the picture below or click HERE to go grab this freebie! 

This Week's Holler...

This week's holler goes out to Abbie Jinnings at Tales From the First Grade!  She is a first grade teacher from Indiana with tons of cute ideas.  We really love her "Carpet Mark-It" idea! Looks like we will be buying some sharpies and large Velcro in the near future!! Also, if you click under her label "books to read", you will see tons of cute activities that go along with so many books! Be sure to check out her blog!!

Two Hoots and A Holler: Our Start to the New Year

Hoot#1
We are back!! Boy, we had a wonderful Christmas Break! We spent some time with family and friends,and we spent a lot of time laughing and making memories! 
We hope yours was just as enjoyable!
Last week, our letter of focus was the letter C. On Fun Friday, we read "If You Give a Cat a Cupcake." 
Then we followed our reading with this cute activity!

 The frosting is made of shaving cream, glue, and food coloring.  The students got to choose the topping that they wanted on their cupcake.

   

We also made caterpillar's from the letter C.  

The children had a blast make these crafts! 

Hoot #2 
It has been all about Winter here in the Delta! Believe it or not, we have had the weirdest weather this season! We actually wore flip flops over Christmas break! This was the first week that students needed to wear winter coats! So we set off to explore anything that had to do with snow!

Mrs. Jamie's class did a little writing with their tear art snowmen.

Ms. Jodi's class did these cute kids catching snowflakes on their tongues. Check out that hair!!!!

Mrs. Jodi's class did a directed drawing of this cute snowman.
They did a really good job on these drawings, and they were so proud to see them hanging in the hallway for all to see.  

 

This Week's Holler...

This week's holler goes out to Ciera Harris at Adventures of Room 129. Ciera is a Reading Specialist who we got to meet at the Nashville Teacher Meetup this past summer. We love that she is a looping teacher.  We have looped in the past, and we thought that it was one of the best learning experiences as educators ever!  This really gave us an insight to all the needs of 1st grade.  It definitely made us stronger Kinder teachers.  We also love the her idea for her (almost) paperless reading circles.  
Check out her blog and read all about it!

Two Hoots and A Holler: The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

Hoot #1

The elf came back to the Rockstars this year!  This year my students chose to name her "Twinkle Star".  She has a friend across the hall named "Jolly"...they are bad to the bone when they are together!  My students love Twinkle Star!  It is so funny to hear them talking to her.  She only had to go away twice this year.  She got grounded from our class until our behavior improved.  Santa made her work in his workshop while she was away...my students were not happy about that at all!  Check out some of the shenanigans  that have gone on in our room...

 She loves to read!  Christmas books about Santa are her favorite! 

Jolly and Twinkle Star got into the Christmas ribbon!  They left ribbon all over our class, and Twinkle Star got a little tangled up in all that ribbon!  We think Jolly helped to tangle her up in all that ribbon! 

Our tree got toilet papered, and the next day she had to have a day to rest!  I guess that wore her out! 
 

Here was her letter our class stating Santa made her stay in the North Pole.  It showed up on our morning meeting Power Point!  The picture below was when she came back.  

Hoot #2 
What a day of giving it has been! Today was our Christmas party! We started the morning with the Polar Express movie. The children drank hot chocolate and ate cookies while the children in the movie drank hot chocolate on the train ride to the North Pole.  When the boy receives the bell as the first gift of Christmas, our students got jingle bell necklaces!  As the movie ended we ate pizza and created our own desert!

 Each child created their own editable Christmas tree using pointed cones, twizzlers and M&M's. 
We had so many parents come this year! What a blessing!!

We wrapped up the day, exchanging gifts with one another.   The students got to open their gifts!  We were so proud of how grateful and excited they were for their gift!  They opened it right away, and shared with everyone! 

Someone got a make up kit! Lovin' the blue eyeshadow! 

Great times were had by all!  Love those smiling faces! 

BUT......  
before all of the festivities started, We made sure that we thanked those that are so near and dear to our hearts! Can you guess who that might be????

 

 Here they are!! Our assistants! Mrs. Amanda, Ms. Betty and Mrs. Amy make it possible for us to do half of the crazy ideas that we come up with and we know it!! As our gift to them, we had these shirts made for them by Vinyl By Dana. Are these shirts not awesome?!?! Awesome shirts for awesome people! We are so thankful for them each and every day!

Of course, we had to have shirts of our own! So for Christmas I had to get Jodi a shirt! These are absolutely adorable! The picture doesn't do it justice.  Check out our Instagram for a better pic. Theses were also made by Vinyl By Dana. You can check Dana out on Facebook or Instagram.

Here is the whole crew!
During this holiday season, we are going to spend it with family and friends, as we hope you are. So this is our last post for 2015! Thank you all, who have cheered us on and supported our dreams! Thank you for your ideas and pushing us to grow! 

We want to wish all of you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!! 

This Week's Holler...
This week's holler goes out to Angela at The Bilingual Teacher! First we want to say that we are totally jealous that she can speak two languages fluently.  We have so many Spanish speaking students each year.  We know some of the basics but it is truly a gift to be about to speak both. We are also totally jealous that she got to go to NYC! We are sure it is a blast and look forward to some pics!  Angela has some really cute stuff! We have already printed off her lollipop addition to use in our classroom! Be sure to stop by and check her out!
 

Two Hoots and A Holler: Growing with Kindness

Hoot #1

This week we started our reindeer in the classroom. I have never done anything like this, so I thought it would be fun as part of the holiday spirit.  This is an idea that I got from Pinterest.  It is called R.A.C.K (Reindeer Acts of Christmas Kindness). It doesn't require a certain kind of reindeer.  I actually borrowed one from our preschool teacher. It visits in different areas of the room, like elf on a shelf, but that is where the similarities end.  If you haven't heard about of this, here is my version. When the reindeer first made its appearance, it came with a note explaining to the children that they were to help the reindeer earn its bells for Santa's sleigh by completing a mission each day. Each day the reindeer makes it appearance in a different location with a letter.  We read the letter and mission each morning.  The mission are just acts of kindness that you would try to instill any other day, it's just causing them to focus more on a particular kindness. The students love it! Each day they are so excited to see what the new mission will be. 

The students wanted to name our reindeer. Here is Sarah making her Glitter Girl debut!

Here are samples of letters that were written to the students.

Hoot #2
We got our results from our letter screener we did in August and then again in October.  It was absolutely AMAZING to see how much these kiddos have grown!  In August our school ranked 9 out of 14....by October we ranked 4 out of 14!  We were ecstatic that our kids showed so much growth!  It is little things like this that help remind us, "IT IS WORTH IT!"  It helped us to realize how far they have actually come in such a short amount of time.  There are no words for how proud we are of our kids!  And of course, ESGI helped make the actual assessment part A LOT easier!  It took hardly anytime at all to screen our whole class!  We have no idea how we survived without ESGI!!  If you haven't heard of ESGI, click on the link on the right side of our page to check it out! 

This Week's Holler...

This weeks holler goes out to Jennifer at Stories and Songs in Second!  Right now, she is part of the Pick 3 Pinterest Party! Jennifer shared some really cute Christmas crafts, foods, and centers (stations) galore! We love her Teacher Holiday Toolbox! We will definitely be putting that to use! She does a ton of collaborative blogging too! Really blogging buddies, she has a lot of great stuff! Check her out!

Two Hoots and A Holler: December begins...

Hoot #1

This week we have started two really big things...TESTING and CHRISTMAS! I bet that you've never seen those two words in the same sentence!! Well, it's true.  This week the window opened to start testing our students' reading levels.  Our district uses Fountas & Pinnell to determine each child's reading level.

I always get a little excited during this time of the year. Yes, each report card period we see growth, but there is something about the mid-year mark that causes me to reflect and see how much they have really grown since they entered my door for the first time!
Jodi and I also use ESGI to asses our students. If you do not know what this is, let me tell ya, it's the best assessment tool that I have ever seen and used! It has saved us tons of time! We can now get our report cards done pretty quickly! ESGI has all of the tests that you need for the entire year. Want to know more about it? Just click on the link on our blog to learn more and to receive a discount on the product! 

Hoot #2

We have also started all things Christmas! Santa's workshop would not be complete without his toy soldiers!

 Here we are creating our toy soldiers! Yes they are huge! That is one of the things that I love about them! They are basically the size of each child, give or take a few inches!

Be prepared to see many more holiday treats in the upcoming weeks!

This Week's Holler...

This week's goes out to Kim Adsit!! We have looked up to Kim for years, long before we dared to dream of blogging and TPTing!! Kim is now a retired kinder teacher.  When she is not presenting nationally, she is donating her time to her daughter's class.  Kim is still impressing little minds as well as educatiors around the globe!! She saves teacher LOADS of money by not only showing items that can be bought at dollar stores, but also shows educators ways to use those item in the classroom!  We are totally excited about her Christmas more/less activity! It looks like we will be going to Target after we eat a little turkey!! Check out her blog!

We had seen Kim present several times throughout the years, but we had the honor of talking to her as we walked to our rooms during a bloggers meet-up! We had recently talked in front of the group to introduce ourselves.  She said she loved our accents!! Now we are so blessed to call her friend! God bless your sweet heart Kim!