Blog - Pencils to Pigtails

10 Ways to Celebrate Christmas in the Classroom

December 13, 2017

This time of year is so crazy AND fun! I LOVE teaching kindergarten around the holidays. The kids are so excited about everything. They love to listen to holiday-themed books, work on fun crafts, & they are more inspired to write than ever.

I wanted to share 10 easy ways I’ve been preparing for the holidays just in case you can use these in your classroom or with your children at home. The ideas in this post will work for multiple age groups and if you aren’t allowed to celebrate Christmas with your students, you may be able to put your own spin on some of these activities.

Snowman Freebie – Let me start with my class gift. I loved how cute these turned out and that they will keep my kids’ hands warm this winter. I have lots of walkers in my room. I was able to find a 3 pack of children’s gloves at Walmart for $1.47 and 6 packs of Hershey’s bars for $3.00.

You can head over to my TPT store to grab this snowman template for FREE by clicking on the picture below.

2. Salt Dough Ornaments – Adorable & so simple! I like this easy recipe:

2 cups flour
1 cup salt
1 cup water

Mix in a large bowl and knead with hands until you get the right texture. It feels like something between homemade play dough & sugar cookie dough. You can add a little flour if it gets sticky.

I let my kids decide if they wanted to make a tree or heart. I was surprised that most students chose to make a heart.

Simply roll the dough out & use the cookie cutters to cut out your desired shape. (Our heart is huge but it had to be in order to get 5 & 6 year old hands to fit on it!)

Use a straw to poke a hole in the top & let the children place their handprint in the heart or make little “ornaments” on the trees with their fingerprints. You can either let them dry like this for several days or bake in an oven at about 150 degrees for a couple of hours until they get hard.

We really had to wiggle the spatula around to get them off the pan so it would be best to use parchment paper. Plus you could write their names beside each ornament instead of drawing a diagram like we did. 🙂

We let the kids paint these themselves using green for the trees and a different color for the balls. The kids also painted the hand and the outline of the hands a different color.

Write their names & dates on the back and you are ready to gift! (This is something that will be cherished for years to come!)

3. Snowman Fingerprint Ornaments – Another easy project is painting their hands with white paint and letting them “hold” an ornament. I have the child count to 10 and carefully remove their hands. When they dry, you can add their names, the date, and decorate the fingers to look like snowmen using a permanent marker. This is another thing that I would love to keep if Aniston made one for me. Unfortunately I had to use glass balls from Walmart, but you can find shatter-proof ones on Amazon if needed.

4. My sweet friend Michelle made these applesauce ornaments with the kids. They made our room smell delicious! The latest recipe I’ve seen was to mix up 2 cups of applesauce and 2 cups of cinnamon (a tablespoon of glue is optional.) When the dough gets fairly stiff, roll the dough out and cut out your favorite shapes with cookie cutters. Don’t forget to make a little hole at the top with a straw. You can bake these just like the salt dough ornaments or let them dry for several days.

Are you starting to wonder what in the world our class tree looks like? My mom found it at a boutique that was going out of business several years ago and we thought it would be perfect in my classroom. Here is our finished tree! 🙂

During indoor recess my students are allowed to color paper ornaments that I keep on hand for them. (This is a very popular activity and of course, I love how quiet they get when they are working on these.)

Don’t you think it is perfect for a kindergarten classroom???

5. Letters to Santa – Writing letters to Santa can be a little overwhelming for kindergarten students. They have so much to say but they just aren’t ready to write a paragraph yet. Am I right? We can submit letters to our newspaper and I never want all of my letters to be the exact same. This year I decided to create a resource to help guide my students. It includes a word wall, sample letters, fill-in-the-blank templates, planning pages, Christmas-themed writing paper, & all of the supplies you could possibly need for your Writing Center. I loved the way our letters turned out. You can grab your copy by clicking on any of the product covers below:

6. Build a Santa – We also filled out a fun glyph I created to build our own Santas. The students LOVED this. Next time I will precut the pieces for them. They turned out so cute. They loved putting their own spin on Santa’s look. 🙂

You can grab this fun glyph, craft, & writing activity by clicking on the product cover below:

7. Christmas Letters with Transitional Words – This has been my best-selling product during the holiday season. I think it is because we have had increasing pressure to teach students how to use transitional words at a younger age. It can be fun with this resource in which students will plan what they would write in a letter & use time order words when they go to write the letter. It really is an exciting way to teach this skill.

You can grab it by clicking on any of these product covers:

These project ideas really make transitional words fun!

8. Christmas Photo Album – This turned out to be one of my favorite activities we did this year. I’m thinking that 1st or 2nd graders could really make this cute. We created Christmas themed photo albums to reflect on our year. The included album written by Elfster is the perfect way to demonstrate expectations & get your kids’ wheels turning. These make awesome Christmas gifts for parents!

The best way to purchase these projects is as a bundle! You get 4 products for the price of 3 with this Mega Christmas Bundle!

9. – Christmas Books & Christmas Carols – We have so much fun singing Christmas songs. Our favorite is one we sing to the tune of Bingo. “There was a man with a long white beard and Santa was his name-o! S..A..N..T..A….. S..A..N..T..A….. S..A..N..T..A.. and Santa was his name O!” We repeat it each time replacing one more letter with a clap until on the last verse the kids are clapping all of the letters in his name. The best part about this song is that all of my students can spell Santa now!

These are some of my favorite books to read during this time of year!

Bear Stays Up for Christmas

The Gingerbread Man

and Little Blue Truck’s Christmas

10. Poinsettias – Every year on Black Friday, I head over to Home Depot or Lowes to grab around 40 poinsettias for $1 a piece. (There is a limit of 12 per person so you may want to bring some people with you.) The day we come back to school I read a book about how it is better to give than to receive. I ask my students to choose a couple of adults who have helped them this year and write a Christmas card to them. They hand deliver the poinsettia and the Christmas card to a person of their choice. The poinsettias have been spread all over our building and most students choose to take one home and give one to a parent. The kids look absolutely adorable walking down the hall with flowers bigger than them. This is by far my favorite tradition and the most popular one. Teachers Pay Teachers shared my recent post about it and it had over 100 shares and over 3,000 likes! I am so happy that this fun tradition will be started in other schools next year.

I would love to hear about your traditions in the comments. Merry Christmas from me to you!

Happy Teaching & Mommy-ing this week!

5 Little Pumpkins – STEM, ELA, Crafts, Math, & More!

October 25, 2017

Who doesn’t love the 5 Little Pumpkins poem? We’ve been reciting this poem for years in my classroom. My students always love it. This year I heard that it was one of my students favorite songs so I had to create a resource just for him. You can grab one in my TPT store by clicking on the product cover above.

If you want to see a video where I explain all of this with more detail, go here:
The 5 Little Pumpkins – FREE Video Explanation

I start by introducing the word wall cards found in my resource on TPT. This is the perfect time to discuss ordinal numbers with your students. Although most students are familiar with them from lining up or winning a game, there is often still some confusion there.

I then read 2 different books, one was an old copy of the poem in a book and the other was a Pete the Cat version. Finally, I held up the poem that I printed out of the resource and we practiced saying it again while using hand motions. (I describe this more in the video posted above.)

We are working on retelling the major events of a story and this poem lends itself perfectly to that standard.

I showed them a colored sample of my expectations and then asked students to color their gate and cut and glue their pumpkins in the correct order with the correct speech bubbles.

I wasn’t picky about what colors they used as long as they were able to place them in the correct order with the correct speech bubbles.

They worked really hard on these!

They turned out so cute!

If you have some students who need a little extra support or take FOREVER to finish a project like this, I have included some differentiated sheets with the speech bubbles or pumpkins already on the sheet.

The next day we revisited the poem. This time I brought out my retelling glove. The kids went wild for it! The pieces that you will need are included in the resource. I just hot-glued them to an old black glove I had laying around.

(See the video to learn more.)

I had the rest of the students sit down and handed out 5 masks. Those students stood up and we talked about the importance of being in the correct order. I was the narrator and each pumpkin recited their lines perfectly. Every child was able to have a chance to act out the poem and it only took a few minutes of our time.

Tomorrow the kids will get the black & white versions of these. We will color them and cut them out and then I will staple them to a sentence strip to make the cutest headbands!

For our STEM activity, I grabbed a bag of pumpkin candies at Walmart. (They were $1.98 at mine.) I paired the students and gave each group a planning sheet so they could design a fence to hold their pumpkins using clothespins and craft sticks.

Don’t you just love seeing the kindergarten kids attempt writing?!? I think this one says, “We are going to make our fence long.” I apologize for not getting more pictures.

I was so impressed with the fences they came up with! They are so much better than the one I had built as a practice!

This is the one I came up with….

Here are some pictures of the ones my students came up with….

I just love seeing their little brains at work! They loved this activity and especially the end when they were able to eat the pumpkins. 🙂

We also completed a writing activity. Students had to predict what the pumpkins did after they rolled away.

I loved this one. He was doing his best and using his resources, such as the word wall cards on the board!

I spy a soon-to-be writer! This sweet child was writing “The pumpkins rolled to the pond.” Remember that this is the beginning of our kindergarten year so this excites me!

Tomorrow we will make our paper towel roll craft. I LOVE this and I know my students will too.

The students will use this to retell the story. I love that they can roll different parts of it down to describe the events. You can watch the video if it isn’t making sense to you!

I printed this color version as a sample but my students will color a black & white version to create theirs.

We’ve been completing the math printables for morning work. My students are really starting to build a strong understanding of the numbers 1-5.

You can click on any of these product thumbnails to grab a copy of your resource. So much fun! I love that I can pull this out every year. It has so many great things to keep your students engaged during that crazy week leading up to Halloween.

Happy Teaching & Mommy-ing this week!

Easy Jack-O’-Lantern Candle Holders

October 20, 2017

Hi sweet friends,

I wanted to share an easy craft with you today. I’ve been doing it for years with my students and they absolutely love it. I have a very chatty class this year (I’m probably kidding myself… who doesn’t???) but when we are working on this project they get pretty quiet.

It’s kind of been a running joke in the building about Mrs. Statum’s Modge Podge. We are right in the middle of a long stretch of time when you could have a pop-in observation so I’m just imagining having this spread out everywhere when an administrator walks in. I’ve been assured that if I have this mess out they will come back at another time! 🙂

For this project, you will need:

Orange Tissue Paper

Black Tissue Paper

Mode Podge (or a mixture of drop glue & water)

Smooth-sided glass jars (Mason jars or pickle jars work great!)

Newspapers

Paintbrushes

The mess really isn’t that bad. First, spread newspapers or old butcher paper out on the tables. My sweet assistant precut strips of orange tissue paper out for me. If you have a couple of shades of orange it turns out really cute. (See photo above.)

At some point in my life I must have went on an orange tissue paper shopping spree and have tons of it. I think it could take me the next 20 years or so to use it all with this project. It’s a little hard to find unless it’s Halloween so I assume that’s why I bought so many? Anyways, you will probably be fine with a couple packs. In the first picture on this page, I let my students cut out their own faces using the black tissue paper. You can do that or go ahead and do it for them. One of my fabulous assistants decided to precut some adorable shapes for the students to choose from this year.

I put a little Modge Podge into 4 cups (it doesn’t take much), give everyone a paint brush (the cheaper ones the better!) and demonstrate what to do. First, put a little of the glue on the jar, wrap your tissue paper around it and “paint” it on.

I tell students not to add their faces until they are completely finished. I also encourage them to have all of their pieces painted down. You will have a few students with pieces sticking up everywhere. Thankfully I had some wonderful assistants with me this year who went around sticking the pieces down that were sticking up for the students who needed a little extra help.

We start with the jars upside down and when they are ready to add their faces we turn them right side up.

The mustache! I just love it!

The little bug eyes are so cute!

My students are so proud of them. While they were working I was constantly hearing, “This is really fun, right?” or “I love doing this so much Mrs. Statum!”

I’m so glad that we were able to take a break for a minute from all of the pressures of testing requirements and enjoy a fun craft. You can grab a bag of battery-operated tea lights from the dollar tree to really make a cute hallway display until you are ready to send them home.

This craft would be perfect for a homeschool group or to do with your own children.

If you try it, please let me know how it goes!

If you are looking for more fun classroom ideas and haven’t read my last post with an introduction to our Johnny Appleseed week, go here:

Johnny Appleseed Craft, Fingerprint Apples, & More on Pencils to Pigtails’ blog

Happy Teaching and Mommy-ing this week!

Johnny Appleseed No-Cook Apple Pie Play Dough

September 29, 2017

We are finishing up our Johnny Appleseed week and have had so much fun. This has been the first time that I’ve really enjoyed studying about apples and Johnny Appleseed. I really learned a lot myself while putting together my resource on TPT and I was especially glad that there were plenty of activities to keep my students engaged ALL WEEK. (Did I mention it is the week before fall break? Now you really know what a miracle that is! 🙂 )

If you haven’t done so yet, you can grab my resource on TPT by clicking on the product cover below. You will find the recipe along with mats and a ton of really fun activities inside!

It took me a little while to get around to having the play dough mats laminated but it is definitely a must-do. We mixed up the ingredients together in about …. uh… 3 minutes? Seriously, its super simple. Then the kids were ready to get busy. This is the perfect center activity but we did it as a whole class just because we didn’t have enough time to get through our rotations.

You can see that once you get all of the items mixed together it is the perfect consistency – not sticky at all!

The kids had so much fun practicing letter formation and building the little pictures that went along with that letter. While they were working my assistant and I went around asking them which letter they were working on and to produce the sound.

The best part was how it made the classroom smell – just like a delicious pie!

During our indoor recess time I let students get out all of the pie mats and we mixed up some different colors so they could make various types of pie. They LOVED this!

What do you do to celebrate Johnny Appleseed? Let me know in the comments.

If you haven’t read through my blog post about the erupting apple volcano, apple sauce, and tin foil hat crafts, click on the picture below!

You can also click on this picture to read about our fingerprint apples, nonfiction class book, and more!

If you haven’t done so yet, you can click on any of the product covers below to grab your copy!

Phew! It’s time to enjoy fall break! I always spend quite a bit of time working on resources for TPT during our time away from school and I’m excited to get several Halloween resources posted. The best part of my fall break will be hanging with my girls though. Aniston goes back to the eye doctor so we will see if the patching is working. Say a little prayer for us if you get a chance.

Happy Teaching and Mommy-ing this week friends!

Erupting Apple Volcano, Yummy Crockpot Applesauce, Aluminum Foil Hats, & More!

September 26, 2017

We have had so much fun today. I can now say that I truly love teaching kids about Johnny Appleseed. In the past I’ve done a few activities to celebrate Johnny Appleseed but never enough. I just didn’t really enjoy teaching about apples. Well… all of that has now changed. 🙂

I compiled everything I could possibly think of that the students would love doing this week into one really fun and inexpensive resource. Teachers, you can grab one by clicking on the product cover below. (This would be perfect for homeschool groups!)

When the kids entered the room, they got right to work coloring their baskets and placing the apples in the correct order across the top. I had a sample ready for students to reference as needed.

We started this morning by reviewing our nonfiction book about Johnny Appleseed. Corinne from Chirp Graphics is such a talented clip artist. I just love her illustrations and how they really add to everything we do in my classroom. You can find her store here: Chirp Graphics on TPT .

(You will have everything you need to put together your own class book in color or black & white if you purchase my resource on TPT.)

The students were told to go back to their seats and draw what they had learned about Johnny Appleseed.

I just love kindergarten drawings. Aren’t they adorable? 🙂 I went around asking students what they learned and they were able to give me several facts about Johnny Appleseed, such as his real name (John Chapman) and that he was featured on a United States postage stamp.

Later we got out the craft that we started yesterday and added an aluminum foil pot to his head using the included hat template.

They turned out so cute!

While the kids were working this morning, my assistant and I were busy peeling apples and getting everything ready for our applesauce. It was a huge hit. 🙂

The recipe included in the resource is the best one I’ve tried. The apples didn’t get so dark and it wasn’t too cinnamon-y.

I usually have several kids say they don’t like it, but this time they all seemed to think it was good.

I like using these little plastic cups. You really don’t even need to mess with spoons. A tablespoon works nicely for divying it out evenly among your students. Each child received a cupful which was a few tablespoons each. We had enough for more than 20 cups.

The kids followed along and colored in the picture to show how they felt about our crockpot applesauce. I also had them respond to the question of whether or not they liked the applesauce by writing “yes” or “no”.

While our applesauce was cooking we prepared for our “Erupting Apple Volcano”. Students filled out one of the printables in the resource with the ingredients needed and later filled out what happened to the apple. This was by far the simplest “experiment” I’ve ever done with a class and it was greeted with plenty of “oohs!” & “ahhhhhs!”.

The kids were begging for me to do it again and again. I was able to use the same apple again with my writing group during our extension time. (Just in case you are in a similar situation.)

Tomorrow we will be making homemade apple pie play dough and working on our individual “I Can Count” readers. The resource comes with the cutest fall themed alphabet mats. I KNOW my students will love practicing letter formation with it!

I’ll be back again this week with an update of how the play dough turned out.

If you haven’t read my last post with an introduction to our Johnny Appleseed week, go here:

Johnny Appleseed Craft, Fingerprint Apples, & More on Pencils to Pigtails’ blog

If you want to grab the resource, click on any of the product covers below.

Happy Teaching and Mommy-ing until tomorrow!

Johnny Appleseed Fun – Craft, Fingerprint Apples, & More!

September 25, 2017

We started our unit on Johnny Appleseed today. I’m thrilled that all of the activities included in my TPT store will be more than enough to keep us busy for this entire week in both reading and math. (A little science experiment is thrown in there too!) You can grab your copy by clicking on the cover below.

I started by asking my students what they knew about Johnny Appleseed. They were really trying but all they could come up with were sentences like, “He liked apples.” or “He picked the seeds out of apples.”

I told them that by the time I read them the nonfiction book included they would know so much more about this important man.

We read through the book that is included in the resource and paused to discuss each page. The illustrations in the resource are clip art images from Corinne with Chirp Graphics. She is so talented! They are absolutely precious.

The students could now tell me so much more about Johnny Appleseed. They were especially intrigued by the idea that Johnny Appleseed was a vegetarian and so is Mrs. Statum! 🙂

After we finished the book, I had them go to their seat and instructed them to draw a picture with lots of detail in the space provided. Meanwhile, my assistant and I made our way around the room asking students the questions on one of the differentiated writing pages included and writing down their answers.

I had them use a skinny marker to trace the words that we wrote. (Remember- this is only our 2nd month of kindergarten.) There are some easier and more difficult writing pages included but I just wanted to use this fill-in-the-blank one.

There is an adorable craft included and we finished the first part today. Tomorrow we will add aluminum foil pots to the heads. I’ll share a post tomorrow after school so you can see how much cuter they are. For now, this is how Johnny Appleseed looks.

We glued them to long construction paper. I laid out fall colors as I thought that would make a pretty display in our hallway.

I think they already look adorable and can’t wait to see them when the pot on their heads is transformed into an even more eye-catching one with aluminum foil.

Later I divided the kids up into 2 groups. One group worked on these fingerprint apples and the other worked on the headbands (This was mainly because I only had a few sets of ink for the stamps.) As they finished they moved on to the other activity.

We will wear our “pots” to lunch tomorrow in honor of Johnny Appleseed’s birthday. I printed the pot on regular paper but later wished I would have used cardstock so that the handle stood a little bit straighter. Oh well, you live and you learn!

I set morning work out for tomorrow on each child’s table. I went ahead and created a sample for some of my lower students to reference as needed.

This unit has so many fun activities for you to practice number order and number recognition. It’s so much fun that your kids won’t even realize how much they are learning!

~~I will post again tomorrow with an update of what else we were able to finish~~. (You can now click the link at the bottom to see the next post! So much to do this week with this resource… easy crockpot applesauce, apple picking games, erupting volcano apple, apple pie play dough, & more! It’s going to be a fun week for me and my students. I know they are going to love those play dough mats. They turned out really cute.

Click on any of the covers below to grab your copy of the resource. Activities for the entire week for just a few dollars??? Yes, please!

Happy Teaching and Mommy-ing today! ~~See you back here tomorrow!~~

You can now click here to see my next post!

Erupting Apple Volcano, Easy Crockpot Applesauce, Aluminum Foil Pots & More on TPT

Hurricane STEM Activities, Experiments, Demonstrations, the Red Cross & More!

September 15, 2017

Phew! This has been a week. You have no idea how many times I forgot what day it was. It has been that crazy. I’m a mentor teacher at my school so I’m juggling evaluating other teachers, being observed myself, 16 kindergarten kids at the beginning of the year, and coming home to a 1 and a 3 year old. Oh yeah, I have a blog and TPT store to keep up with too. Do you ever wish there were just a few more hours in the day? I could use them to catch up on some sleep and spend a little more time with my baby girls!

Enough rambling.. on to a super fun and RELEVANT resource! I just posted a new “All About Hurricanes” unit and a new “All About the Red Cross” resource. The best way to purchase them is as a bundle! You can grab it by clicking the cover below:

We had SO MUCH FUN with this unit. I had a parent come in this week and tell me that her son was telling her all about “hurnicanes” after we studied them. 🙂 I’m happy that the students are so excited about our activities that they are talking about them at home. I feel like that’s a good sign!

With Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma hitting Texas and Florida recently, I started to wonder if my students were nervous or frightened from hearing it discussed among adults or on the news. So I decided to create a nonfiction class book to describe these potentially catastrophic storms. I truly believe that knowledge is empowering for students.

I tried MANY demonstrations, experiments, and activities and have compiled the best ones in this resource – along with any “hiccup” tips from things that went a little wrong the first time. I wanted to be sure that every item needed is something inexpensive and found in your kitchen!

In the resource you will find detailed instructions, more classroom photos, planning sheets, reflection sheets, writing prompts, a map where students will make the connection about why the states that border an ocean are the ones most often impacted by hurricanes, and a sheet for students to generate ideas on how they can help victims of a hurricane. Of course that beautifully photographed nonfiction class book and some word wall cards are included which will help you lead a really good discussion with your group.

Here are some sneak peeks of what we did in class!

Students had a blast seeing if they could build structures to withstand the mighty winds of a hurricane (aka Mrs. Statum’s hairdryer! 🙂 )

You can head to my TPT store to see a free video of our “Hurricane in a Bowl” by clicking the picture below! (You will need to be on the “desktop view” to see the entire video!)

After I finished the unit, I decided to create a unit about how the Red Cross helps victims of disaster.

I bundled them together to create the perfect resource for this time of year!

I hope your students enjoy this fun unit as much as mined did!

Click on any of the covers below to find it in my store!

Happy Teaching and Mommy-ing this week!

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom – Coconut Tasting & Center Activities

September 8, 2017

We have had SO MUCH FUN with this unit. We decided to finish off the unit with a coconut tasting activity and some center activities. (These will be pulled out as needed throughout the school year.)

If you haven’t had a chance to grab the resource yet for your students or children, click on the cover below. You will use it year after year and it includes all of the activities you will find here and in my last blog post!

I was pleased with how EASY the recipe was. (NO BAKING so we were able to make them in my room!) In my resource on TPT, you will find the recipe and printables that the students can use to follow along while you mix the ingredients. They will also color in a smiley face if they like coconut or a frown if they don’t like the taste of it.

The kids were thrilled that they were able to form the ball themselves which worked out nicely and cut out a lot of work for me!

Earlier in the week I had given each student one sheet of the puzzle piece letters to color. I had those laminated and cut apart. The kids were amazed that their works of art were now one of our center activities. They have pulled them out to work on again and again. I loved how they took ownership of them!

Another group worked on counting the correct number of coconuts for these adorable coconut trees. (These are also available in printer-friendly black and white so you could have the students color these and save on ink!)

My 3rd group worked on matching lowercase letters to their uppercase counterpart.

The rest of the class was in a small-group setting with me. How do centers work in your classroom? I’d love to hear your ideas!

If you haven’t read through my other post about Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, head over here!

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Fun in Pencils to Pigtails’ Classroom!

You can click on any of the photos below to grab this jam-packed resource for your children or students!

Happy Teaching and Mommying this week!

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom – STEM Activities, Craftivity, and a Super Fun Resource!

September 7, 2017

Okay, so the truth is that I had absolutely no plans of creating a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom resource. Once, we got started on this book study though I just couldn’t help it! This book is so much fun. I kind of giggle thinking about how the first time I read this book I didn’t really get it. If that’s you – head straight to over to youtube and watch the Scholastic video. I started getting into a rhythm when I read the book and my kindergarten students went wild for it!

I couldn’t find what I wanted on TPT so piece by piece I added more and more activities to my resource on TPT until it ended up being a huge 160+ page product. You can click on the cover below to pick one up.

I wanted to review every fun activity included so you will know what you are getting. Although this unit can be used any time of the year – (and if you haven’t studied this book – do so now!) I like to teach it sometime between August and October. The major focus is the alphabet, letter recognition, matching uppercase/lowercase letters, and name recognition.

I usually spend a week covering the book. We start by just reading to the part when x,y,z go up the coconut tree. Students talk with a partner about a prediction of what will happen next in the story.

I like to tell students that if they didn’t get it right, they weren’t “wrong” – the author just surprised them. We talk about using all of the clues to come up with a viable prediction! 🙂

One fun activity are these magnet mats. I laminated mine and will use them year after year by just placing them on top of a cookie sheet and setting out a box of magnet letters.

(The EDITABLE black and white labels that you see on my tub from the Dollar Tree pictured above are available in my TPT store. You can click the photo below.)

My students loved these magnet mats. In the past, I had always used cookie sheets and magnet letters but giving them a focus with a mat took things to a new level. Students were much more engaged at that center.

I had my supplies laid out for my craft and STEM activity. Let’s start with the craft. I just love how different all of these turned out. In the resource, you will find templates for both a smaller and large coconut tree. I had originally planned on letting my students make very large trees until I realized how much construction paper this would use. I decided to make one large and spell out the word “Kindergarten”. (The colorful grade level letters are included in the resource.)

It’s a little hard to tell how large this actually is so here is another for reference.

I cut out the leaves, coconuts, and trunk pieces using the templates in the resource. I wanted my students to make their coconut trees as long or as short as they wanted to. Here is what they came up with:

Aren’t they adorable? I had an old version of the book that was missing a few pages so I decided to actually take the time to cut out the letters in the book for my students. It took forever. I actually had to make letters out of other letters because I was missing one here or there. I’ve made it much easier for you by including colorful alphabet letters in the resource.

I’m planning on letting my students practice writing numbers on the tree trunks tomorrow. They will start with a 1 on the bottom piece and continue writing each number as they continue up the tree. (I will pre-write the numbers for my lower students and let them trace over mine.)

The STEM activity was so much fun! In the resource you will find a letter to parents asking for supplies, detailed explanations, classroom photos, and printables for students to plan and execute their designs. Here is a sneak peek of some of my students’ work!

This truly was one of my favorite activities I’ve ever done with kindergarten students!

My students loved making the coconut name bracelets. It was so much fun that they didn’t even realize they were working on identifying the letters in their names, making sure the first letter was capital and the others were lowercase and arranging the letters in the correct order. The girls and BOYS all loved their bracelets and were so proud to wear them. In the resource you will find the letters and “charms” along with a more detailed explanation.

There are lots of other printables and activities included – too many for me to list here.

***Look for an upcoming blog post with some of the center activities included and find out how the coconut treat recipe in the resource worked out!

Click on any of the photos below to grab your copy!

You can read my next post about some of our center activities and our coconut tasting activity by clicking here!
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom -Coconut Treat Tasting and Center Activities

If you like this resource, head over here to read about all of the fun activities to go along with my favorite book – The Gruffalo!

The Gruffalo Actives, Puppets, Recipes, Measurement, & so much more!

Happy Teaching and Mommying this week!

Celebrating the Solar Eclipse in Style

August 18, 2017

I can’t take how cute this little one is in her Solar Eclipse wear!

I’ve been looking forward to the Great American Solar Eclipse for months and I can’t believe it’s actually here.

I have a terrible blister under my left thumbnail from making 17 jet-packs, protective eye-wear, and astronaut name-tags, but it was totally worth it. I wanted to share some of my ideas and a FREEBIE with you!

If you haven’t already, head over to TPT and grab my Solar Eclipse resource. It is jam-packed with crafts, activities, differentiated writing prompts for BEFORE & AFTER the eclipse, party ideas, costume ideas, warning signs about the danger of looking at the eclipse, nonfiction books, templates to make your own class books, word wall cards to help you lead discussions, & so much more!

You can click on the picture to grab it.

I even made a video that explains a lot of the activities included and gives you a close up idea of everything you will find in the product – you can go here if you would rather watch a video than read through blah, blah, blah! 🙂

Solar Eclipse Activities Video by Pencils to Pigtails

Due to requests from my followers, I added a resource for 3rd – 6th grade which you can find by clicking the picture below! Some of the activities/crafts that I talk about in the video are included, as well as a research guide and opinion writing prompts!

We actually just had our first full day of kindergarten today and I jumped right in by talking about the eclipse. I started by asking if students had any background knowledge about the eclipse and then we went over the word wall cards from my resource.

Many of the kids pointed out that the moon will be “on top of” the sun and that it was not safe to look at it or you will “burn your eye up”. 🙂

I loved having a sample of the craft ready which is included in my product to demonstrate how the solar eclipse actually occurs. We also spent a long time talking about how dangerous it is to look at the sun without certified protective eye wear.

I read them the simplified class book today and then students created their own. Tomorrow I will read the nonfiction book and we will discuss the event in more detail. I am also planning to do the craft with them.

I started collecting 2-liters from the sweetest man about a month or so ago. He actually saved all 32 for me. Last week I got started spraying the 2-liters with a metallic spray paint I grabbed at Home Depot.

Of course, my daughter had to jump in and pose! 🙂

I rotated them after they dried and sprayed them one more time. I had precut the “plate masks” and this time I sprayed them as well. They just needed one quick coat.

Our school purchased special glasses for the event and I’m so glad they haven’t been recalled. It took a little time to make the first mask, but once you had your template, the next ones weren’t bad at all. I made sure that the glasses were nowhere near the scissors as I didn’t want to accidentally cut the lenses. When I arrived at school and tried them on my students, I realized that we definitely needed to add a rubber band in the back. The glasses we have are not sized for young children!

Here is a shot of the back for reference! You are basically cutting a small line on the sides of each plate, a triangle out for the nose, and small ovals/rectangles out for the eyes. Don’t try to put your glasses in until you are finished cutting! I hot-glued a rubber band we cut in half to the back and stapled it to make sure it stayed put. I also added tape to be sure there were no gaps or holes for sunlight to creep in.

I think this would be the safest way for young children to watch the eclipse. I am planning on having my daughter Aniston wear hers like this as well.

Hours later… ta-da!!!

Okay, back to the jet-packs. I happened to inherit some silver cardboard and hot-glued the 2-liters upside down to each sheet. I added some red tissue paper and orange felt to look like flames. (I would have rather used tissue paper for both colors but wasn’t able to find orange at my store.)

I used wide ribbon that I had laying around as the straps. I hot glued these on. Our fabulous interpreter happened to be walking by and popped in to help me. She went around and stapled the ribbons to be sure the ribbons wouldn’t easily be pulled off. After I tried them on my students I had to go back and make the straps much larger than I had originally thought. I think it would be a good idea to grab a child’s backpack to help you estimate how large you should make the straps.

As a final touch, I created these editable astronaut name tags which are available FREE in my TPT store! You can print them out and write your students’ names on them or I’ve included easy-to-follow instructions to type in your own names.

I used that same silver colored cardboard on the back of these. (Don’t judge my uneven cutting skills. I was in a mad rush to get these finished!)

Click on the photo to grab this FREEBIE for your classroom!

Sometime after 3 today it occurred to me that I had not sat down once at my desk. I guess that’s a typical first day of kindergarten for you!

I was so excited to have them all finished and ready to go!

How excited are my kids going to be when they come in and see their tables like this tomorrow?!?!?

I hope you have the BEST POSSIBLE eclipse experience with your students, family, or however you choose to spend it (whether it is watching a live-streaming event from indoors or SAFELY viewing it outdoors).

Happy teaching & mommying this week!