This week our school is celebrating Nevada Reading Week.  The theme for this year is "Read It! Dream It!  Do It!"  My school decided to tie this theme to college and careers as a lead in to our Career Day next week.  The teachers made a t-shirt with their college logos to hang on the bulletin board outside the library.  My students were so excited when I showed them mine with "the big E."  :)

Our door was based on Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  We first read then book, and then we got to the fun!  My students were super excited when I told them we were going to do a directed drawing.  They actually cheered!  That definitely made my heart smile.  We first did our drawing in pencil and then traced it in black Sharpie.  I then asked them to cut around their caterpillars, but not on the line.  They thought I was crazy, because I am always reminding them to cut on the lines.

My example.

The next day, I got these goodies from my school's art teacher.  I have to say I have an awesome art teacher at my school!  I went in to ask for one thing, and I came out with paintbrushes, watercolors, and paint shirts.  If you have never used liquid watercolors, I highly recommend them.  They are so much better than the ones you can get in the store.  However, they can stain - hence the paint shirts just for watercolors.


I called my students over table by table to paint their caterpillars.  They really enjoyed doing this!  Smiles were all around!


I leave you with a picture of me in my jammies today with my classroom door.  I hope that you are enjoying your Reading Week as much as my students are!

Thanks for dropping by yesterday for the debut of my new blog layout!  I am loving it!  I hope everyone had a wonderful Tuesday.  My Kinders began working on our door decorations for Nevada Reading Week.  I can't wait to share them with you later in the week!  Now onto my Math Monday on Tuesday.  :)

Do you ever get excited about something that in the real world wouldn't be a big deal, but it's a big deal in your classroom?  Well, that was me a little over a week ago.  I found out that we could finally get on YouTube on our classroom computers. See, my district likes to block a lot of websites and YouTube was one of them.  I would always find great videos to show my Kinders, but then I would forget to download them to my jump drive to watch at school.

So in honor of now having YouTube available in classroom, I thought I would share some of my favorite math videos.

I love these two videos for identifying 3D and 2D shapes.


Here is a fun little ditty about counting by 10s to 100.  My Kinders really get into dancing to this song!


My students love this subtraction song!


What are some of your favorite videos that you enjoy using in the classroom?   I can't wait to find some new videos to share with my Kinders!

You might be thinking right about now, I don't remember ever following a blog called Teaching is Sweet.  You would be correct. Teaching Is Sweet did not exist until about 3:30 today. You may remember me as Mrs. Lattin's Kindergarten.  I was toying around with the idea of getting a new look and found Christi at Design by Christi.  She had an amazing portfolio!  I contacted Christi and in no time flat, a new blog design was in the works.  When I decided to do a new blog design, I decided to change up the name too.  So here we are - Mrs. Lattin's Kindergarten is now Teaching Is Sweet.  I hope that you stick around and enjoy the new blog design.  I love it!  Christi did an outstanding job!

I am going to post my Math Monday post on Tuesday.  I was just too excited to share my new name and blog design!

Wow!  Is it just me or do short weeks seem longer than a regular week?  We did not have school on Monday for President's Day.  We were also off on Tuesday for Staff Development Day.  That means I only had three short days with my Kinders.  I tried really hard to pack a lot into those three days.

We learned about President Washington and President Lincoln this week. We read several books about the presidents.  One of our favorites was George Washington's Teeth.  My Kinders just couldn't believe that George Washington had lost all of his teeth.  {This definitely reinforced our dental health unit we just completed.  lol}

We completed my President's Day Position Words book on Thursday.  I was so proud that my students were able to identify different position words as it has been a while since we practiced them.


We also completed directed drawings of both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.  These turned out super cute!  I loved how each one was unique!  Here are some examples from my Kinders.



On top of all the President's Day activities that we did this week, we got to use the classroom set of iPads for the first time today.  My bestie brought her class in my room with the other classroom set.  We decided to let them explore, and boy did they!  They were having so much fun!  Just picture about 55 Kinders in one room with iPads.  Let's just say we had to turn down the volume on a few of them.  lol


My principal told us that there is money to buy apps, and I have absolutely no idea what to buy as I am an Android girl. Please leave a comment with your favorites.  I am looking for some great apps that align with the Common Core Standards.  Thanks!

I hope you have a lovely weekend!

February is Dental Health Month so my Kinders and I have been learning about how to take care of our teeth.  A father of one of my students is a dentist.  When he asked if he could come into the classroom, of course the answer was yes.  He brought in tools of trade {some of which made me cringe  lol}, x-rays, a cool cavity checking machine, and many other items.  My Kinders went crazy looking at all of the great items!  

We spent several days learning about our teeth.  We talked about what foods are good for our teeth and what foods we should limit.  My Kinders also talked about what tools they needed to use to keep their teeth healthy.

We also read many books about teeth.  Here are some of our favorites.

Hello!  I hope everyone is enjoying President's Day!  I have a fun activity to share with you today. My class has been working on the different combinations of the numbers 3-6.  The first thing we would do each day was to play Shake and Spill.  My Kinders loved playing this game!  We then made a chart with all of the combinations of that number. {You can see what the charts for the number 3 look like in the picture below}  It was fun to see how my Kinders got better and better at this each day that we played the game and made the charts.

When we got to the number 5, I remembered a fun book that my son had in his bedroom "library."


I borrowed his book to share with my class.  I first read the book straight through.  Then, I had my Kinders help read the book with me.  Finally, I turned on my projector and acted out the song with cubes as my Kinders sang.

After I acted out the song, we made this cute activity to go along with the book.  I first gave each student a 6 inch by 9 inch dark blue piece of paper and had them cut out a pond.  Their ponds were so original!  I loved them!  We then glued the ponds to the top of a light blue piece of paper.  {Next time I'll use green.  I wasn't thinking of grass.  lol}  I then gave the students a 3 inch by 9 inch piece of brown paper to make a log.  I showed them how to use a brown crayon to make the lines on the log.  {Next time I will use a smaller piece of brown paper.  We had some really big logs.}  My Kinders then glued their logs overlapping their ponds.  The students were then given a strip of five frogs to color.  They then cut them out and glued some on the log and some on the pond.  We then finished the sentence starter and wrote an addition sentence to go with our pictures.




I just love how these turned out!  Each one is so original.  My students really enjoyed doing this activity!  What activities do you do to practice number combinations?

I just finished this position words book and wanted to share it with my followers.  It contains the position words below, above, between, on and beside.  I hope that you can use this in your classroom!  Click on the picture to get your copy.  {The preview looks a little funky, but when you download it, it is correct.}

Graphics by Scrappin Doodles and The 3am Teacher

I hope that you have a wonderful President's Day!

I hope that you had a wonderful Valentine's Day with your kiddos.  We had a full day of painting, sorting and counting candy hearts, and most importantly, opening all of our Valentine goodies!

I wanted to share a couple of things that we did this week leading up to Valentine's Day.  On Tuesday, we completed this Valentine Book Review by Lori.  We read Froggy's First Kiss and then my Kinders completed the book review.  I just loved how cute the pictures turned out!






Thank you Lori for the great activity!

Another activity we completed was Teri's Love is ... writing activity.  It was fun for me to walk around and see what love meant to my little Kinders.  Here are a few examples from my class.

Love is...sharing with your friends.

Love is...loving people.

Love is...hearts.

Love is...when people give hugs and kisses.

Thank you Teri for this fun activity!

I just wanted to share a couple more pictures with you. The first one is a gift that one of my little Kinders brought me for Valentine's Day.  How cute is this?  I love the heart spatula!


The next picture is of the cookies I made for my son's teachers and assistants.  I just love when something I find on Pinterest actually turns out the way it should.  :)


What was your favorite activity that you did in your class today?

If you have been a follower for awhile, you may remember my summer project of organizing my classroom books.  If you are you new, you can see my past posts here, here, and here.


One section of my library contains my books that stay in my library throughout the whole year.  These containers contain alphabet books, math books, and school themed books.  Books about Clifford, Froggy, and Biscuit are also housed here as "whole year" books.


The other section of my library consists of my seasonal/theme books.  As each season/theme comes around, I switch out the books in this bookcase.  There is always a buzz throughout the classroom when new books appear.  My bookcase currently houses Valentine books and books about teeth.  {This bookcase also makes it convenient for me to grab a read aloud when it is story time.}


I love how my classroom library is working this year.  It is always new and refreshing for the students.  They love to visit the library and even go there during "play center" time.  It always makes me smile when I see them make that choice.  :)

Thank you for letting me share my new classroom library with you.  I hope you have a wonderful Valentine's Day tomorrow with your students!