Commotion in the Ocean BIG giveaway!

If there is one thing I LOVE (and so do my students) it has to be the felt board!

We have so much fun retelling stories and making up new ones!

Last year, I discovered an AMAZING website, April's Teacher Resources, that has tonnes of felt board sets, magnetic board activities and storytelling theme kits (my favourite!).

My friend, April, and I have teamed up for an awesome Oceans of Fun giveaway!

April will be giving away her Commotion in the Ocean felt board set and I will be giving away my Under the Sea Literacy and Math Activities and my

Under the Sea Write the Room activity!

It's so easy to enter!

You can enter up to 5 times by doing the following:

- Follow my blog (you are here already!)

- Follow my TpT store

- Follow Mrs. Albanese's Kindergarten Class on Facebook

- Follow April's Teacher Resources on Facebook

- Leave a comment telling us your favourite product that April has for sale on her website

{click here}

You will receive one entry per comment.  Please leave all comments on this post.

Easy peasy, right?  You have until midnight on Thursday, May 31 (EST) to enter.

One winner will be chosen using Random.org.

Good luck!

Under the Sea.....and the countdown begins!

I'm so sorry for not blogging in a while and I appreciate the e-mails from everyone to check on me.  I'm great - just so busy!

It's Victoria Day today here in Canada...which means a day off!  Yippee!  I'm up early because we have all kinds of fun things planned with our little ones.  First it's a trip to the garden centre...time to plant our herbs!

Anyways, if you are anything like me, when you read the title of this blog post you have the Disney song "Under the Sea" in your head.  These past few weeks, since we started our Under the Sea theme, that song has been constantly in my head!

Here's what we have been doing in my room this week...

This is my Write the Room Under the Sea activity.  The kiddies take a clipboard with a worksheet and find all of the hidden words around the classroom.  SO.MUCH.FUN!

I brought my kinders to the Library so that we could use the Smartboard.  They loved this activity!  It's a Message in a Bottle.  I paired them up and using the clues on the whiteboard they had to match the letter to the picture and solve their message.

I had 3 different messages so that they don't just copy the person sitting next to them.

Here's what I have planned for tomorrow and Wednesday.
We have been learning about word families and in this activity the students must make a word and draw it. 

I think that they will love searching and counting the creatures in the sea in this Look and Find activity.  Since we are getting really good at putting words in alphabetical order I thought my students would have fun with this cute activity (look on the right hand side of the photo).

You can find all of the above activities in my

Under the Sea Literacy and Math Activities pack on TpT.

We set up a pretend store in the afternoon during our math block.  My kiddies are getting so good at identifying coins!

(Yes, this has nothing to do with Under the Sea but I thought I would share anyways!)

And finally...the countdown begins!  One more month to go and it's summer vacation for me!  As I mentioned earlier, it's a long weekend for us and I have been enjoying mine so far.  We took our kids to Canada's Wonderland on Saturday.  That's an amusement park that's literally a few blocks away from our house....so we bought our Season Passes...guess where I am going next weekend?

Click on the picture to download.

Here's a little freebie for you from my newest unit,

 Summertime Fun! End of the Year Literacy and Math Activities.

I know that many of you finish this week.  Lucky ducks!

Hope you will be able to enjoy this with your kiddos before summer break starts.

We will be doing many activities from this unit in the next few weeks.  I love how it ties in really well after the Under the Sea theme.  As for this week, we are going on a field trip on Thursday and Friday!  Fun!!!

Spring into Art Show!

Last night my school had our Spring into Art show and let me tell you, it was a HUGE success!

Yes, a lot, I mean, a LOT of work was put into this by the students, teachers and educational assistants.  I don't think I would have been able to accomplish such a great display and wonderful art work without the help of Mrs. Chiovitti and Mrs. Sampogna.

I know that I have said this before but I really do have the best team working with me in Kindergarten!  I love them all!

Okay, now on to the show....
The theme for the Kindergarten display was Under the Sea.

We made a background for the wall directly across from our table display (thank you to Scrappin' Doodles for the clipart that we enlarged)

This is a paper mache lobster that one of my SK classes made.

Here is what my other SK class made...adorable jellyfish!

They look great hanging from the ceiling!

This is an octopus that a JK class made.

This is a starfish that another JK class created.

Here are some turtles under our tree...

The tree was so easy to make, thanks to Deanna Jump for her idea and directions!

I love how the Rainbow Fish craft came out!  And it was so easy to make too!

These are paper mache blowfish.  Every fish was amazing!

These seahorses are cute too!  They were made using shaving cream and paint!

More pictures of our display...

We had a great time last night!  I know that all of the kiddies were so proud of their work and so were we!

Now it's on to SK Graduation next month.

But we are busy practicing, practicing, practicing!

Oh, and one more thing!

I was so happy to hear from Sandra at Classroom Companion letting me know that I won her Thirty-One contest! 

If you haven't been by her blog yet, you should definitely pass by and tell her I sent you!

She has such amazing ideas and it's so colourful and cute!

I'm totally exhausted so it's bedtime for me.

Have a wonderful Friday tomorrow!  Yippee!

I {heart} teachers! Let's have a sale!

I love my job...no LOVE my job!

Really!

I remember growing up and having some people discourage me from entering the teaching profession.  In fact, I worked nearly a year in the advertising industry when I finished university...glad those days are done!

I'm so glad I listened to my heart and became a teacher....and best of all, I love teaching kindergarten!

As a thank you to all my fellow teachers out there, I am having a sale in my TpT store for 3 days starting tomorrow.

It's 20% off everything and if you use code TAD12 you can a total of 28%!

Be sure to stock your carts now for this huge Teacher Appreciation sale!

Sending all of my teacher friends a big "thank you!" for all of your hard work, dedication and love for your students!



A big thank you...and freebie!!!

Oh, my goodness!

I cannot believe the OVERWHELMING response I got from my friends in blog-land the other night!

For those of you who didn't read my previous post from the other day, I entered a Facebook contest to a fantastic store in Toronto (Canada).  They sell embroidered items and I was hoping to win so that I could use the gift certificate towards a few things I need want in my classroom.

Well, I WON!!!

Thank you so much to everyone who "liked" my comment (and those of you who actually wrote a comment - so sweet!).

I really wanted to say thank you for taking the time to do that for me so I created this *free* emergent reader and teacher big book for an Under the Sea theme for everyone.

We are actually starting an Under the Sea theme very soon so I know this will be a great way to introduce the unit to my kiddies....thought you might like it as well!

Click on the picture to download.

Next Wednesday is our art show and I cannot tell you how busy we are at our school getting ready for that!  My little kinders have been hard at work...one class made the cutest jellyfish using tissue paper and balloons and the other class made paper mache lobsters that came out awesome!

Adorable!

Sorry I haven't posted pictures for a while...I feel like my plate is so full right now I honestly forgot to snap pictures in the classroom!
I'll post pics soon!

As for me, I'm so beat!  What a week so far...really need Friday night to get here so that I can relax (I hope!).

 

TGITh tomorrow (okay, so I totally made that up but it's one day closer to the weekend!)

I need your help...quickly!!!

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HELPED ME *WIN* THIS CONTEST!
YES, I WON!  YIPEEE!!!

PLEASE DO NOT SUBMIT ANY MORE VOTES.  CONTEST IS CLOSED.  I APPRECIATE EVERYONE'S HELP!

Hi friends!

I need your help...

I entered a contest on Facebook to win a gift certificate for a fantastic store called You Name It Baby in Toronto. 

They embroider lots of amazing things and I would love to win some things for my classroom.

Here's where you all come in to the picture...

please, please, please "like" my comment on the You Name It Baby page

(click on the picture to get there).

I have about 85+ likes so please click the comment under my name (Alessia Albanese) on the right hand side of their wall page.

The person with the most "likes" wins!

Contest closes tonight so we have to act fast!

Oh, and as a thank you to everyone who "likes" my comment, you can choose one Write the Room activity and I will e-mail it you for FREE!

***Please leave me a message below this post telling me you "liked" my comment on Facebook, your e-mail and which Write the Room packet you would like.***

If you refer a friend to "like" my comment, let me know and I'll send you another Write the Room packet!

Sorry that I am using my blog to advertise this but I really need the votes to win tonight! Contest ends at 11 pm EDT!

I appreciate all of your help!

Going Buggy and a {FREEBIE!}

I have truly been enjoying this weekend!  Hope you are all too!

While I was out on my usual shopping escapades yesterday, with my three year old, I came across these adorable multi-coloured pom-poms.  Let me tell you that my three year old, although young, is quite the shopper!  She can pick up anything and tell you exactly why you should purchase it.  Needless to say, I left Walmart and then the Dollar store with a few more things then anticipated - including Disney princess floatation wings, 3 swim goggles and an outdoor paddle play set!!!

Here's what I created with the pom-poms for my kiddies this week.
I've included this game *for free!* in my Mini Unit Going Buggy!  Keep reading to get your free copy.

We wrapped up our Frog Unit and since we talked about insects (which frogs eat), I thought it would be fun to create this mini-unit of insect literacy and math games (like the one in the picture above).

You can click on the picture for your FREE copy!

My students just LOVE to Write the Room.  It is a staple centre during Literacy Centre time.  But they are always wanting to go there!  I'm going to be putting out my Going Buggy Write the Room for the next 2 weeks.

I have had several requests to create a Rainforest Write the Room.  These requests were actually from last month so I apologize for finishing it now but here it is!

I'll give this new Write the Room away to the first 3 people to comment below and tell me what they did this weekend!

Up next...drumroll.....our school-wide Spring into Art Show.  Yes, it's in just over a week so you can imagine how crazy this week will be for us.  We are almost finished our projects, just podging everything and putting the finishing touches on it.  I'll post more pics this week.

Enjoy this beautiful Sunday!