Fire Dog Hats

Welcome to kindergarten, 2013! This is my first actual blog post of the school year, although I hope to go back and post-date blog about some of the things I've taken pictures about this year. The blogging isn't going quite like I expected because I have been dealing since May with sever tendinitis in both wrists, and it is difficult and painful to type. So, while I have composed lots of posts in my head this summer and fall, none of them have made it into electronic form! At least none until now...

October is Fire Safety month and our "Bomberos" unit is in full swing! We have been talking about what fire fighters wear and use, and what they do. Our fire department shares different goals for different grade levels regarding fire safety (I think this is a national program? Not sure), and for kinder the biggest thing is for kids to learn that fire fighters are safe and not scary. Every year children die in house fires because they hide from the "monsters" that try to come and get them in a fire. With their respirators on, fire fighters really do look scary! We have been learning about the special clothes and equipment they wear, and why they need them in Spanish and English.

I've used several resources throughout this unit which I will share below. One of my favorite new finds this year is a Sesame Street video on YouTube. It's a little less than 12 minutes long, and it is so clear and well-done that even my students with very little English were able to understand. Elmo and Maria are at Hooper's store when there is a fire, and they have to get out and call 911. Elmo gets scared of the fire fighters in the masks, so they show him all about their clothes, and invite him to the fire station. At the end of the video, he isn't scared anymore and eats dinner with them. My kids loved it and it hit all the right points!

Dot, el perro bombero by Lisa Desimini

My sister, Miss Coco, is a volunteer firefighter and brought us her turnout gear to look at and play with. We used it as realia for our ELD lesson, and for the rest of the week the kids will get to play with it during free choice time. They were surprised by how heavy the clothes are, and super excited to get to touch them!

Another of our favorite stories is Dot, el perro bombero. Available in English and in Spanish, this sweet book again shows clear pictures of all the firefighters' clothes, and tells the story of a fire department Dalmatian who goes with her unit to a fire and saves a cat from a burning house. The kids love it! Then we made Fire Dog Hats. LOVE this project! Over the last several days, each student has had the chance (in a small group with my assistant at the back table) to paint a piece of white 9x12 construction paper and one white sentence strip with black bingo dotters (that we found at the Dollar Tree). Then today they each cut out a red hat and a yellow K-9 badge. Next, our 5th grade buddies came down and helped us trace their shoes on the big white paper (we folded it in half and just cut once to go faster). Finally, the buddies glued it all together and sized and stapled the sentence strips. Aren't they the cutest little fire dogs ever? =)

Lastly, I've created some fire-safety-related patterned texts at a variety of early reading levels. You can find them for sale in English and Spanish on TeachersPayTeachers!

Fire Safety Resources:

1. Readers by Mrs. Doring
2. Reader by Hubbard's Cupboard (in English, Spanish, French, and German!)
3. Mailbox Magazine link to fire dog hat patterns
4. Books on Amazon

Clifford, el perro bombero by Norman Bridwell

Dot, el perro bomberoby Lisa Desimini

¿Qué haydentro de un camión de bomberos?by Sharon Gordon

~TpT BTS13~

In 29 minutes I will have finished my first ever sale on TeachersPayTeachers. Back to School 2013! Woo hoo! Not that I did much (any) work for it, but I did sell one product today. =) And I reached an exciting personal milestone: I have earned enough money from TpT and had it in my PayPal account to pay for Gingerbread Man centers I really wanted to buy for this fall! I still haven't earned enough to buy even a good lunch, but who needs to eat when you have cute centers?

If you missed out on the sale (and you read this), check out my still-low-priced (I think?) alphabet charts and number lines in English, Spanish, and both! More products to come this fall!

Blogging from Paradise

My laptop's view of the ocean on Ka'anapali Beach

I am blogging today from MAUI! We've been here a little over 24 hours but this is my first chance to just really sit down and put my feet up with my laptop. I saw yet another reminder on fb to migrate your Google Reader info to Feedly, so I finally took the time (30 seconds!) to do that. Which brought up all my fun blogs that I've been putting off (so many unread archived emails!) this week because I had a million things to do before we left. Tonight I actually read through several posts uninterrupted and even had time to comment on one or two. It was wonderful!

I'm really looking forward to some leisure time this summer to really join the conversations going on in the blogosphere and thoughtfully consider how that might impact and improve my classroom teaching. I'm also definitely going to order The Next Step in Guided Reading by Jan Richardson to join up with the book study by the gals at Freebielicious. I've enjoyed the book so much already, and I haven't even read it yet! I just saw that the Kindle edition is cheaper than the paperback with no waiting for shipping... I don't have any room on my bookshelf in my shared classroom anyway, so maybe this will be an iPad read!

The view from our cabana if you actually stand up

On that note, do you like reading on eReaders? I generally do, but sometimes I get lost without the physical book, if that makes sense. You know the feeling when you have 11 tabs and 3 programs open on your computer and you minimize one and then can't remember where you were going and what to do next? I don't get that from real books. But I do LOVE the search feature, and I'm not really a take-notes-in-the-margin-and-read-them-later person. I'm more of an underline-it-to-make-it-pretty-and-then-misquote-it-later kind of reader. "Well, Katy Wood Rays says that... Or it was something like... Well, I'm not really sure but I remember thinking that... Or maybe it was Reggie..."

I think I'll sleep on it and maybe buy it tomorrow! Maybe then I could actually be caught up by the time I get home. Off to bed in paradise!