Bridal Shower

This entry is not related to kindergarten or school at all, but more about a party I am planning for a great lady I know! 
So, my friend Brandy is getting married September 23! She lives about an hour and a half away from where my husband and I live, and she helps out with his high school band (Go Tribe!) a lot! I got together with some of the band parents and other friends here and we decided to throw a semi-surprise shower for our friend! (It's a semi-surprise because this year, Brandy has other work arrangements that are not allowing her to be at band camp as often as she has in the past. So I had to tell her part of it. She knows it's happening, just no specifics!)


Brandy and Shaun's wedding colors are black and white, so my decor is mostly black and white. It will be outside at a friend's house (Thank you Beth!) who has a beautiful backyard area!
I got all the little goodies - plates, cups, plastic tablecloths, and even the favors - at Wal-Mart and Dollar Tree!


These are the favors I've put together. I got the idea from (you guessed it!) Pinterest and just tweaked it a little to make it less expensive for myself!

I bought all this - emery boards, nail polish, 

and hair ties and then put it all together as a

 cute favor for the shower guests!

These next pictures are of the activities I have planned for the shower:

As people arrive, I will give them a card to give the bride and groom advice.

When the cards are filled out, I will tie them together with ribbons, like this:

I  added a few embellishments to the cover page of the "advice book."

As I was using the glitter glue on the hearts and the G, the lid kept touching the wet glue and messing up what I was doing, so I put a rubber band around it to hold the lid down. Just a little trick that dawned on me,. Thought I'd share! :)  

This isn't an activity, but is my gift to the couple and will serve as a centerpiece for the entrance or gift table.

This is a traditional game: "How well do you know the bride?"  

Every bride needs a tiara! :)

 While at the beach this summer, I saw a "redneck wine glass." It was a red solo cup mounted on a glass candle stick holder. They sell them in souvenir shops for $6.95! I thought, "I can make that!" And I did! The candle stick holder was $1, I got a sleeve of the purple cups for $1, I got a roll of black ribbon and a roll of white for  47 cents each, and I had the sticker letters in my scrap-booking drawer! (they spell out "Mrs") Some hot glue and viola! A pretty and slightly silly redneck wine glass!

So, these are the fruits of my labor! I laid everything out before packing it up to take over the party sight! It's going to be a great party! 

It's July!

I am having a fabulous summer! 
My husband and I have been to the beach: 

We've been to the zoo:

My husband's band, The Reticent, had their CD release party: 

I've been to a bridal shower:

I'm planning a bridal shower for that very same bride-to-be:
http://pinterest.com/cwhathcock/bridal-shower-ideas/

...but I can't help but notice that it's already July! 
As you may know, I have a slight addiction to Pinterest. If you're not on there yet: what are you waiting for!?!? If you are on there, feel free to follow my pins: pinterest.com/cwhathcock 

While I am enjoying my summer, I am also always thinking like a teacher. When I go into Dollar Tree, I always want to see what's new in the educational aisle, I want to go to flea markets so I can see what little odds and ends I can find for my classroom - furniture, centers activities, decorations for themes and/or holidays, etc. You know, a lot of teachers tell me that they spend less and less on their room each year, and while I understand it, I think finding the cutsie little things is half the fun! :)


I have two Pinterest Boards that are very broad and ever-growing: Back to School and Teacher Tools. Each time I find something useful, I just pin it there and I always make time to go through my pins to refresh my memory on WHAT I've pinned and to make sure that I try to USE some of the fantastic ideas that are out there! Being a teacher is so much fun when you find all these other great teachers out there who LOVE to share their ideas with the rest of us!
This is a neat little tool that I found just this morning and it made me say: "Wow! What else am I missing out on?" Do you all know about this - Random Name Generator:

You can type in your class list and create a seating chart, groups, and it will create random groups of whatever size you need! No more popsicle sticks! :)

I also plan on having a "No Name" area in my room. It starts in kindergarten -- students need to learn to put their names on things! I typically begin the year by rewarding kids for writing their names on their work, then I back off when they are more automatic about it. (This picture is from http://mrsbrowndotcom.blogspot.com/ - a cute display for hanging things with no name!)

I haven't found the perfect poster, yet, but I also intend to use sign language in my classroom this year. There will hand signals for everything! I don't want to use numbers like this one here, I want to use actual sign language letters. The ASL letter for W will mean "water," R will mean "restroom," S for "sharpen my pencil," T for "trash," N for "nurse" (I haven't completely decided on that one!), I for "I have a question" (easier than the Q!); there are lots of different things you can do with sign language and my problem might be limiting the signs! In kindergarten less is more!

I saw this on Pinterest, as well, and I haven't decided yet HOW I will do it, but I know I will do it - have something with rewards my students will get to DO instead of things they get to HAVE. I love this idea! Buying prizes for prize box on Fridays gets expensive! 

I would much rather reward kids with a game, a dance, extra recess, a movie, a story on tape, sitting with a friend during work time, anything like that! 

What kids of things do you do in your rooms to reward instead of with treats  and prizes? 

Graduation Day!

It's graduation time already! These last few weeks have been so busy and stressful lately! Here is something funny that happened to me today - The assistant principal sent around a few second graders to collect teacher edition text books. I was having trouble finding my math book with the bar code (we have two copies of the math book). So I was scrambling around the room, searching all my book shelves, trying not to make these kids wait on me. (I hate feeling so disorganized!) It made my day when one of the boys said, "Don't stress yourself out over it! We can wait." :)
Anyway, kindergarten team decided last year that we should take pictures of the set up so we could reference them this year! So here they are - last year's graduation set-up photos!

I didn't get the hallway, I guess, but we had the hallway leading down to the cafeteria decorated too! I'll add this year's photos next week after my kinders graduate! :)

I was so exhausted graduation day, I forgot my camera! My husband is a band director and we went to Washington DC so his band could march in the Memorial Day Parade! (It was amazing!) If anyone is interested, my photos from that trip are on my facebook page and here: https://picasaweb.google.com/carmenhathcock/WashingtonDC

So anyway, we had only 2 kids stay after graduation and only 3 come to school today. And believe me, we put them to work! Here is our classroom now:

And the hallway:

A Wild Day!

Today was the W Day in our ABC countdown and we did a few really cute things! We ate watermelon and read some "wild" stories! The end of the year is always kind of wild anyway, so it felt very appropriate to have W stand for wild as well as watermelon today!

We read Miss Bindergarten Has a Wild Day in Kindergarten

and

Where the Wild Things Are!

I found this adorable writing paper on Pinterest!

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Wild-Thing-Text-to-Self-Connection-Freebie

Here are a few of my students' writing! Too cute to keep for myself! 

"When I feel wild, I knock stuff down." (For the record, I do not believe this for a second about this child!:) )

"Maybe I will not be wild."

"I would feel wild if my room turned into a jungle."

"When I feel wild, I want to run outside crazy."

And the best one....(I know it's hard to see...)

"When I feel wild, I will not be wild!"

I LOVE IT! :)

Hopping into First Grade!

Sooo, here we are. The last two weeks of school! (My class graduates kindergarten on May 29th! Oh my!)

We LOVE the Froggy book series in our room! (If you are unfamiliar with the series, I highly recommend any and all of them and guarantee that you and your kiddos will fall in love that little guy as we have!)

This picture will take you to an author profile for Jonathan London and all things Froggy!

We have been reading the Froggy books all year long, and I put out my summer read aloud basket a few weeks ago and the kids were particularly interested in one book called Awesome Amphibians!

So, we read Awesome Amphibians and a few more Froggy books and then made our very own frogs! (I got the frog pattern from a friend and fellow kindergarten teacher at my school.) So I had my kinders color their giant frogs as morning work and then write a story about the frog (or toad, as some of them noted the bumps on the picture!).

 "My frog is jumping on a lily pad and it went in the water."

"My frog is loving the water because it lives in the water. If it doesn't go in the water, it will die." 

"My frog is poison. Do not touch my frog because it's poison". 


I couldn't resist sharing this, too! I was assigned a School Buddy this year since it is technically my second full year. This is what I found on my door handle last week. :) 

 So cute!

And this my message board that I use to display some of my gifts from my students! I also added my School Buddy's note! :)