Happy Easter!

I hope this Easter you will have peace and love in your heart. You will laugh and take joy in the small things. You will enjoy the company of those you love and remember those who gave you joy! I wish you excellent health and that your spirit will be filled with a lightness that you may enjoy the day and those that come after. All the Best, Sarah

Spring Bunny Craftivity Freebie and Sleepy Bunny Song

Visit My Facebook Page and tell me your favorite thing to find in an Easter Egg!

I hope you enjoy this Spring Bunny Craftivity There are two patterns included. One to make a class set of sweet bunnies and one for a home school or family that may just want to make one or a few bunnies. This is a great art project for The Little White Rabbit by Kevin Henkes.


This is a sweet video for the preschool or kindergarten set. After waking the Sleeping Bunnies the children can hop and jump with them until they are sleepy again!
For more Spring Songs visit this blog post. There are three spring songs.

I hope you enjoy this Spring Bunny Craftivity with the ones you love!

What Do You Love About Spring?

This is a wonderful freebie for place value study with Easter Bunnies. I'm going to put a couple in my math centers! Thanks so much to Primarily Inspired ABC
For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.

by William Wordsworth

Daffodils are one of my favorite things about spring. I love new the new leaves. Birds making nests and the refreshing newness of the world. What are your favorite things about spring?

Photo from here
These are lovely and would be easy to make with children. I think children will add some lovely fun and it would be a sweet gift.

Splat, Parts of Speech, Balanced Equations Freebies

I have put together some freebies for everyone this week. I hope you can find something you can use. Please leave a comment if you can. It always warms a blogger's heart. Also feel free to pin to your boards. I make it easy for you to pin by having a Pin Button for each picture! We had an amazing workshop by Kathy Bumgardner at our school last week. It was packed with ideas for getting children to examine the text. She has a great website so check it out. After the workshop I decided to use a book we were currently reading in our classroom Secret Agent Splat by Rob Scotton. We had read the book several times but this time we really took the book apart. We found the characters, settings and listed the major events as a group. Here is the anchor chart we created together.

After we created the anchor chart, read through the book again and checked our major events by using the text I decided to type the major events as given by the children. I used power point to create my document using the events named by the children. The next day we reviewed the major events together. The children then cut out the strips and put them in order working together and using the anchor chart. I think it is so important to use what the children create. They have ownership of the material.

They worked together to put the major events in order. I let the children work on the floor or wherever they felt comfortable. They used the anchor chart for a reference and discussed the text. Here is a finished product.

We are working on parts of speech and balanced equations in our class also. I created these freebies to use in my classroom. The lines are clean and simple. Some of my honeys seem to be overwhelmed by the extra fluff we love to add to printables. I needed to do away with the extras and create some clean sheets that were focused on the skills we need to learn. I love swirleys and twirlys but I needed to bring these skills into sharper focus! Check out the printables. I hope you can use them.

Nouns and Verbs


Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives and Balanced Equations
I hope you found something you can use in your classroom.
All the best, Sarah Tharpe Winchell

Songs for Spring by The Learning Station

If you haven't discovered the musical group The Learning Station you and the children you love are missing out on some musical fun. The Learning Station has over 99 music videos on you tube. I am sharing some of their spring songs with you in this post. The first one is The Hungry Caterpillar with Lyrics on the screen. This would be a great addition to your study of Eric Carle's Very Hungry Caterpillar

The next one is a favorite with the younger set.
The last one for today is Spring is Here with Lyrics The songs with lyrics posted on the screen are a great way to encourage reading and language expression. This is also a fun interactive song. It includes the butterfly walk, the frog jump and many more!

Please take time to check out The Learning Station! All the best,

Women's History Month Writing Project with Free Booklet

The months seem to fly by at school and right after the whirlwind of February you have March. March also has many special days in it but March is reserved to remember and honor women.  Whoot whoot!!! I don't know about you all but some days I feel like I need to honored after completing a day of just the ordinary stuff.  The wonderful thing about women is for the most part they just do the job at hand, dust off their hands and move on to next thing.  It is that "get her done" attitude that women have that make us special.  My Mom used to say if you want to get the job done quickly and right get a woman! Now I love my hubby and he is the best but most men seem to need to little "pattin" sometimes to get going.  I'm not bashing men they happen to be some of favorite people but dang it girls ...we deserve a month.  So let's celebrate!  
I created this Women's History Project for our first graders. This is what it looks like. You can grab it here for free.   I have also included the rubric I created as well. The photo above is the work of one of my honeys at school.  More projects are coming in soon. I also want to share this link from What Do We Do All Day?...reading, playing and learning with kids. (Her blog title just reinforces my argument, I just love it!) This link provides you a great list of books for Women's History Month.  Please take time to leave a comment if you can. We all have to stick together!

 

     
Take time to give yourself a treat this month! You deserve it!
All the best,

Four Easy St. Patrick's Day Crafts

 I love St. Patrick's Day! My husband's family is Irish and we were so excited to find his grandfather and grandmother listed on the records at Ellis Island arriving from Ireland. My daughters embrace their Irish roots and well I just tag along because it is fun! The children I have taught love St. Patrick's Day as well. We could all use more imagination and magic in our lives.
I have created four simple crafts for you and yours to create at home or school. Most of the items are available in your home and a few you may need to purchase but these crafts are inexpensive and fun to create. There will be a lot of pictures in this post so keep reading so you can see all of the crafts you can do.
I created golden rocks by purchasing a bag of rocks at the Dollar Store. I purchased acrylic gold paint, gold glitter paint and green paint from a craft store. Each bottle was 95 cents. I used the paint for several of the crafts.

I painted the rocks at my kitchen table! These are so much fun. You can hide them and have a gold hunt. I have also thought about putting math problems on them and letting the kids turn the rocks over to match. You could do letters or shapes. I love the ones with the green shamrocks on them. Use your little ones fingers to print the shamrock and a tooth pick to paint the stem. I also used the toothpick to create the dots.

I had soup for lunch and not being one to waste something I painted the can gold and used ModPodge to stick on the drawings. You can also use a liquid glue such as Elmer's mixed with water to attach the drawings. Remember you must put glue or ModPodge on the can and then paint over the drawings. When you are letting children paint cans put a loose sock over their hand. They can hold the can and not get covered in paint if that is a concern for you. This makes a fun gift.

The next craft uses coffee filters. Color the coffee filter with bright washable markers (the more color the better I really did not color enough on my examples) and spray with water. The colors will run together to create a rainbow. I did this on my counter at home. I have also done this project on my student tables as school. The brighter the colors the better. After the coffee filter dries fold in half and cut the edges. These make a pretty display in a window.

The last one is Rainbow Coloring with Shamrocks. You can grab the sheet here to color. I ask the children to pick their three favorite colors and color the shamrocks. Then they can pick any colors to fill the in sheet.
I hope you enjoy these crafts with the ones you love.

St. Patrick's Day Crafts with Teacher Mom of 3

I am so happy to guest post today for Lauren. She asked me create some crafts for her readers. These crafts are inexpensive and fun to create!I have created four crafts for St. Patrick's Day. Hop over to visit my guest post


All the best,
Sarah

Craftivity Bunny with a Hat Dr. Seuss

I created this fun craftivity to go with your Dr. Seuss Activities. If you don't use it now this bunny can be made without the hat for spring time or Easter. Either way he is adorable. You can find the pattern here. If you missed it last week. Here are the free math centers I posted.

Enjoy this Green Eggs and Ham Song by The Learning Station!

Please visit Tracey at The Teacher's Chair She is having a big contest! There is a 25.00 gift card and a lot of free products for the winner.
March is Women's History Month. Please check back for a project that I am doing with my first graders. I will share the book and the rubric I have created. All the best, Sarah