Low Cost Book Laminating with Clear Shelf Liner

Our School is adopting Journeys for our ELA curriculum and it’s amazing! However, the books they’ve given us are flimsy – to say the very least. My kindergartners will bite, digest and eat them before the first day is finished! So, I thought I would come up with a way to laminate some of them to preserve their integrity for at least a while. This book cost less than 50 cents to laminate.

The books I plan to laminate are much smaller and I expect one roll of Clear Shelf Liner will laminate 6 books. That is approximately 17 cents per book. I’m making this a parent volunteer job J

The Kissing Hand

Click HERE for Activity

One of my favorite books for the first day or in the first few days of school is "The Kissing Hand," by Audrey Penn. We usually read the book and talk about what they do when they miss their family or loved ones and are away from them. I think it's like group therapy! In kindergarten, most of my kiddos are not used to being away from family for an entire day. Even children who are used to daycare, have hardly experienced the structure a full day kindergarten brings.

Below is a craft that I created to help my children engage and think about what they do to make the day smoother for them. At the same time, children can share what works for them and it helps them to know they are not the only ones missing home. Besides, the cutting and pasting gets their minds off their sadness.

If you haven't read the book, then you can pick it up by following the affiliate link below.

The Kissing Hand In this contemporary classic Chester Raccoon seeks love and reassurance from his mother as he ventures out into the world to attend his very first day of school.

You can pick up a copy of the cutting and pasting activity by clicking HERE.

Kindergarten Rubrics

Hey, All!

I don't know about you, but rubrics are at the forefront of my mind - perhaps this is weird - but it just stems from my United Way background. It's also a huge part of our new teacher evaluation systems. It was at United Way that I first truly learned the importance of Evidence Based Practice. I want to know that the progress I'm making with kids has something to do with a reliable measuring tool and effective teaching strategies. Of course, there's always room for error and there may be outliers, but I've found that the best way to set children up for success is to provide them with clear expectations.

Kindergarten is a world of its own - not that you need to know that! For this reason, a huge part of B2S (Back to School) is ensuring children understand what a rubric is, what it looks like, how it's used, and how it translates to other subjects. This is why I've created these fun and inspiring rubrics for you to use! The Owl rubric is FREE with a download for personal and commercial use - my gift to you!

Please see the FREE Example below for how I used a rubric to teach coloring as well! - Don't forget to post examples along with criteria for each of the different levels. We call it "level of learning," in our classroom.

Hope you enjoy!

Mandy

Handwritten Font Tutorial

Hello, All!

As the weeks wind down, we get closer to school starting and I find myself wondering how I can make this year "easier." This makes me chuckle a bit - it's never easy the first weeks in kindergarten. Kindergarten is where the action is! Even so, after last year, I find myself finding little tidbits of how to make the year smoother.

Last year, I had lots of handwritten notes home on student behavior (positive and corrective). I have carpel tunnel and so this can be difficult on a regular day -- not to mention, writing the six to eight notes home daily. So, I thought creating my own handwritten font would be a great way for me to write notes home that would still have a personal feel, that I could type out (I type much faster than I write - techy gen. here!)

Hope you find this tutorial helpful.

This was my first attempt at creating a font of my own. There are a few problems with this font. The most glaring problem is when you write a contraction.

The space is humongous.


Another problem with this font is printing in large-scale. The website generates vector points, which do their best to create graphics that can be scaled to any size; however, this means jagged edges.

As you can see, the edges are not clear and are jagged. Printing with a large font, might not fit to your liking. The large-scale fonts only amplify these imperfections; however, to offset these imperfections, try using a bold font to smooth out the edges.

Some of my letters are slanted forward and some of them are straight up and down; that is mostly my human error.

Overall, I am happy with the font and plan to use it in the future for writing notes home for my students! I am a cursive writer, and writing in print is a struggle for me.  I also am a much faster at typing, but typing in regular fonts seems impersonal and distant. This way, my students can read along, it is somewhat personal and I do not have to hurt my hand trying to write only in print.

TO CREATE YOUR OWN FONT:
Step 1: Visit MyScriptFont.com

Step 2: Download the template provided.

Step 3: Write in a thin to medium tip black ink marker on the provided template.

Step 4: Scan in your font on 300 DPI, or if you’re unsure, a high resolution.

Step 5: Upload the scanned template.

Step 6: Name your font

Step 7: √ Select True Type Font for a Macintosh Or √Open Type Font for Windows

Step 8: Click “Send File.”

Step 9: An image with the font line: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,” will show up. Then you go download the font to your computer.

Step 10: Download to Font Book for a Macintosh and for Windows Users, download to your Font Folder.

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial!

Mandy Fyhrie

Brain Playdough Recipe and MindUp

I just finished my first summer camp as an English Language Learner (ELL) teacher and mentor teacher: three weeks in second grade. It was amazing! The theme this summer was “how things grow.” There were so many directions and so many ways we could take this theme. Ultimately, two other elementary teachers and I decided to teach “how students grow,” or “how students learn.” The decided theme was a perfect fit for our primary learners as they approached another school year. If we can be mindful of what we need to learn and how we learn, we can become better learners. This was also a perfect theme that matched my desire to teach social and emotional intelligence and mindfulness to help cultivate well-rounded students.

We used the MindUp™ curriculum {The MindUP Curriculum: Grades PreK-2} as a basis for our lessons; this was my first experience with the Hawn Foundation, and it was a positive experience to say the least. Each of my lessons was adapted to meet the needs of English Language Learners. We taught about the different parts of the brain, their function and how they influenced their learning. We also talked about calming techniques. Yes, I had second graders, ELL students who had limited English language, saying words like “hippocampus,” “amygdala,” and “prefrontal cortex!”

On the first day, we took the brain play dough and labeled the different parts of the brain and talked about their functions with partners. To purchase the MindUp curriculum, please click the image below. I will also be creating a lesson pack to accompany the MindUp curriculum, which I will teach in my first 6 weeks of kindergarten this fall! To keep an eye out for a sneak peak and when it comes available, FOLLOW ME on my blog, check me out at mandyfyhrie.com and at TPT!

Below is the recipe I accidentally created while attempting to replace flour with cornstarch. For those of you chemists, you can probably tell me why, but it sounded logical enough to me. The disaster worked out in my favor. It formed into a perfect brain! My students all knew immediately what it looked like and I didn’t have to mold it much to look like one, either!

Ingredients:

4 cups cornstarch

1 ½ cups salt

¾ cup oil

1 cup water

Red food coloring

This yields enough dough for small 1 ½ inch balls of play dough for twenty students. It’s the size of a child-sized basketball and much heavier!

Add the dry ingredients to large mixing bowl and stir.  Form a well in the middle of the dry ingredients. Add 15 to 20 drops of red food coloring to one cup of cold water in a separate container. Add the oil to the water and food color. Pour the liquid mixture into the well of the dry ingredients. It will be extremely chunky and very thick, which is what you want. Once you have all the ingredients incorporated, add the mixture to a nonstick pot on the stove. Stir on medium to medium-high heat for 10-15 minutes. Continue to stir with a wooden spoon. It should be chunky, and will turn into a fat-colored solid and semi-transparent. Smoosh it down with your spoon, and stir it back on top. You shouldn’t be able to stir the mixture like a liquid. It will look like kneading hot, lumpy, bread with a spoon.

When you are finished cooking for 10-15 minutes, place the mixture on a cutting board to cool. Once it is mostly cool, put the mixture in a plastic bag, squeezing out all excess air and store in the refrigerator.

Before use, let it store at room temperature inside the plastic bag. Mine lasted the full three weeks of language camp, and I’m sure it would last much longer as long as it is stored appropriately inside a plastic container between uses.

                                                                                                                          

Sugarland Board Game Printable Freebie!

Games are kinda my "thing." In third grade, I created a board game for our science fair and won. The teacher next-door was so impressed that she purchased it and still uses it in her third grade classroom. It's no wonder that games are so fun for me; however, what I've noticed is that although times change, kids are not as different as we may think they are. Children are super engaged when it comes to games. It's a great way to have children's engagement levels go up and learning rise, while maintaining an element of fun.

Use this Sugarland Board Game printable to engage your kiddos over the summer! I've included some kindergarten-friendly recording sheets, but you can easily create your own to suit your own needs. The boardgame is K-6 appropriate; however, my sister, who's 26 wants to play, too! So, I won't limit the board game to primary students :)

To obtain the freebie, click HERE.

Carnival Themed Bulletin Board Printable Freebie

Use the carnival-themed bulletin board printable to decorate your classroom. I used it outside my door, and put all the kiddo's names on the individual snack-food characters. It was a huge hit and lasted all year long.

Characters come in black and white and color. I glued googly eyes on the characters and popsicle sticks after printing the characters on colored copy-paper.

Hope you enjoy and please don't forget to leave feedback!

Click HERE to get freebie!

Enjoy!