Our little family is growing!

I haven't formally shared on my blog yet, and I am so excited to announce that we are expecting a baby BOY in September!!!  (He is due the first week of school, but let's not talk about it or I might start crying!)

We found out January 2 that we were pregnant and quickly after I was struck with morning sickness.  That is the main reason I haven't been blogging that much this year!  I am so lucky in the fact that my morning sickness started around lunchtime and got worse through the night.  Luckily I was able to get up every morning and go to work without feeling sick.  I seriously don't know how people get to work each day feeling sick when they wake up.  Once I hit the 14 week mark, I was feeling better and my energy level was slowly coming back.  Now that we are in the second trimester and I am feeling better we are are so excited, nervous, blessed, nervous, and anxiously waiting for this new season of our life.

I am definitely the person that doesn't know how to comfortably hold a baby, let alone change a diaper...so I have been spending time reading, but mostly texting my friends every time a random question pops into my head.

Today marks 6 months of being pregnant and I want to share with you some photos of our journey over the past several months.


We had our gender ultrasound at about 15 weeks.  The ultrasound tech. found out the gender and then placed one of these little cards in the box for us.  We waited a couple of days later (no I didn't peek!!!) and opened the box on my birthday!  I definitely was shocked when we found out it was a little man growing in there, for some reason I was thinking the little bun was a girl the whole time!


My husband and I wanted to have a gender reveal party to tell our families that we were having a boy.  We had them spray us with silly string (I wrapped the cans so they couldn't tell what color it was until they sprayed us) and they sprayed us to see the BLUE string, meaning we were having a boy!  Right as they sprayed us, Hercules (of course he had to be involved) came around the corner wearing a blue shirt with blue balloons.  For my family, this is their first grandchild, and for my husband's side this will be their first grandson.  

At the 20 week mark, we had another ultrasound and got this adorable picture.  I think he is just the cutest already, and it was the most amazing experience to see him wiggling around on the screen.  We even saw his mouth open and close.  :)


I told my class I was pregnant once my belly was more evident.  The students graphed their guess on if I was having a boy or girl.  Of course the boys cheered when they found out it was a boy! 


This is a picture of me from this weekend, about 4 days shy of being 6 months pregnant.  Each day my students greet me with, "Your baby is growing!!!"  It really is a treat to teach Kinder and try to avoid/redirect their questions like, "How will your baby get out?"  Good thing I am quick on my feet! ;)



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Kindergarten Assessments

I always used to stress about assessments, I wanted to have the PERFECT assessment and data so I was prepared for report cards and conferences.  Well, that stress is over because I created a versatile, simple, and thorough assessment pack that I can now share with you, too!


Use this Kindergarten Assessment Resource to assess and re-assess your students all year long. I like to use the same assessment at the beginning, middle, and end of the year (or before each report card is due)- and using the same assessment can help show growth over time. Some of the assessments need to be administered one-on-one, while the printable option can be done in a small or whole group setting.

It is colorful, engaging, easy to prep. and will keep you ORGANIZED!



How this resource works:

There are 4 components to this resource:

1.  Assessment Score Sheets: The assessment score sheets are where you will record all of their scores for every assessment you give them. These can be kept all year long to show evidence of growth for report cards and conferences.

2. Assessment Booklet and Flash Cards: The assessment booklet and flash cards are the same assessments just in a different format. The assessment score sheets contain every word (letter or number) in the same order shown in the booklet, so you can quickly track which words they do/don’t know. This is the same for every assessment. They read from the booklet, and you keep track on the score sheet what they know. You can also decide to print a flashcard version and use those to assess the students instead of the booklet.

3. Assessment Printables: There are 60 printables for you to use as different assessments. The best part of these, you an use them whole group or small group.

4. Oral Assessments: These assessments are given orally like segmenting, blending, etc. These assessments are tracked using the "assessment score sheets."

These assessments are perfect for beginning, middle, and end of the year in Kindergarten to use for report cards and conferences!


Here are the assessments that are included:

English Language Arts:

1. Uppercase letter names

2. Uppercase letter sounds

3. Lowercase letter names

4. Lowercase letter sounds

5. Writing uppercase letters

6. Writing lowercase letters

7. Oral blending

8. Oral segmenting

9. Name writing

10. CVC words

11.Sentence writing

12.Self portrait

13.Beginning sounds

14.Middle sounds

15. Ending sounds

16.Rhyming Words

17.Sight Words 

Math:

1.2D Shapes

2.3D shapes

3.Colors

4.Recognizing numbers to 30

5.Writing numbers to 30

6.Counting

7.Base 10 Blocks

8.More/Less

9.Sorting

10.Ordering numbers

11.Addition

12.Subtraction

13.Weight Comparison


For more information on this Kindergarten assessment pack, head over to my TpT Store!


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Teacher Observation: tips and a lesson plan idea!

Being new to my district, I am required to be observed by my principal three times a year.  I actually don't mind being observed as long as I am prepared and feel excited about my lesson.  I want to share with you the outline for my lesson, as well as some of the activities that the kids did!

The topic of my lesson was the life cycle of the butterfly.  I picked this lesson because we are learning about life cycles, it's spring, and it's one of my favorite topics! ;)  Here is an overview of what I did during the lesson!  
Note: I used my Life Cycle of a Butterfly unit for this lesson plan.  

lesson plan for kindergarten
Lesson: The life cycle of a butterfly
Grade Level: Kindergarten
Duration: 35-45 minutes

Big Idea:  Discover the pattern in the life cycle.
Essential Question: What is the correct order of the life cycle?

Common Core Standards:
Actively engage in group reading activities with purpose and understanding.
With prompting and support, describe the relationship between illustrations and the text in which they appear (e.g., what person, place, thing, or idea in the text an illustration depicts).
Identify the front cover, back cover, and title page of a book.
Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.
Describe familiar people, places, things, and events and, with prompting and support, provide additional detail.
Add drawings or other visual displays to descriptions as desired to provide additional detail.

Objective:  The students will be able to independently order the 4 stages of the butterfly life cycle.

Lesson: 
Introduction- (5 minutes) Read aloud the Monarch Butterfly.  Display the pictures and talk about the lifecycle.  

PowerPoint (5 minutes):  Show the life cycle of the butterfly powerpoint.  Read it through one time, the second time ask the students questions and allow for discussion.




Vocabulary (5 minutes):  Display vocabulary pictures and discuss the order of the life cycle.  ELD discussion:  What is your favorite part of the life cycle?  What step comes first?  What step comes last?



Directed drawing (7-10 minutes):  As a class, guide the students through drawing the life cycle: steps 1-4.



Assessment:  (5-10 minutes):  The students will independently cut and paste the life cycle in the correct order on their paper.

Extension Activity (10 minutes):  For the rest of the week, we will write about each life cycle stage in our journal.  Today, we will write two sentences about the egg stage.

That is the end of my lesson with the kids!  It was really short and sweet, the kids were engaged the whole time, AND they were having fun learning.  (The perfect combo!)




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