HeidiSongs Teaching Resource

Can you believe Christmas is coming ALREADY??? Whew! Here are a few FUN ideas and activities for you to try this month to help GET READY for the holidays! :) Counting, bulletin boards, singable books (of course!) and more! 1. Ice Cube Trays in Sets of TEN! I found these ice cube trays at the local 99 Cent Only Store. The kids love to count the holiday erasers, putting them into the slots so that they are grouped in sets of ten.  We do this same activity at other times of year with other themed objects, such as spiders near Halloween, or farm animals when we study our farm unit. Generally, I use my Count-Ten trays that I got from Cuisenaire for this. But you could also just use plain old egg cartons and cut them down so that there would be only ten spaces. The great thing about using this sort of tool is that it forces the children to group quantities into sets of ten as they count. This works great, especially if you are working with ten frames.  (In case you didn’t

1. Turkeys and Scarecrows Bulletin Boards I sent home a turkey for the kids to decorate with their parents any way that they chose, and then the children brought them back to share. They told the class about their turkeys and tried to write about what was on the turkeys this week. I put the turkeys, along with some cute scarecrows we made, on a bulletin board. I think it turned out pretty cute! Sorry I am passing this idea on to you so late, but maybe you can use it next year! I am including the master today as a free download! Next year I will try to include the directions for the scarecrow as well. The problem is that I have so many ideas to pass along that my blogs get WAY too long- and then I suspect that folks don’t have time to read them all the way through! 2. Pilgrim Boy and Girl Color Word Worksheets I decided to go ahead and try to draw a pilgrim girl and boy so that I could add to my collection of clip art that I could use to make things. And my fir

This week, we are back to normal in the classroom, and getting ready for the Thanksgiving Holidays. I personally am very thankful that all of my testing is completely done, and most of my report cards are FINISHED - at least the ones that I need for conferences this week anyway! I will be conferencing after school each day with all of the parents in my classroom either this week or next. Last weekend, one of my good friends, Vanessa Levin of Pre-K Pages.com , was emailing me to see if I had any new ideas for Thanksgiving themed literacy activities. So we started kicking some ideas around, and together we brainstormed up a couple of fun ideas! Naturally, since she teaches Pre-K, her activities have more of a Pre-K slant, while mine have more of a Kindergarten twist to them, of course! The great thing about being able to draw my own artwork on the computer is that I can modify it as needed and even give it away as much as I like! So I hope you will enjoy gobbling up these turkey

Welcome to week 11! I have 2 free downloads, an activity for learning concepts of print, and two great bingo games all ready to share with you today. Well, I am finally healthy and trying to get back into the swing of things! Anyone would think that my students had never heard of the class rules before Monday! Two and a half weeks with two different substitutes pretty much “undid” just about all of the procedures that I had firmly in place when I left, and I had to start over with the rules and consequences. My students spent two days (and a few of them three!) testing me to see if they would still wind up in time-out, etc., if they did not follow the rules! I had to really “crack down,” but by Thursday I had my “perfect class” back again! I guess we’ll have to wait and see what I come back to on Monday, since I had to leave them AGAIN today, (Friday), to present at the National Association of Education of Young Children Conference in Anaheim, CA. Luckily, this is less than a