finally 4!

Sweetie finally turned 4!  She’s the youngest in my class…and she was sooo excited that she finally turned 4 and she was a “big girl like all her friends”!  She was even more excited to share mini chocolate cupcakes and juice with all her friends at snack this morning!  You would have thought she’d won the lottery!

And she got to wear our class birthday vest and birthday hat and she stood in front of the class as we sang happy birthday to her!  Our birthday vest has balloons on it and our birthday hat is shaped like a cake with candles on top (I got two hats at the Dollar Tree last summer – great find).  Everyone knew it was her birthday and this made her even more excited!

She also got to pick a sticker and pencil from our birthday box.  Our birthday box is a shoebox I wrapped in birthday wrapping paper and I keep our hats, vests, pencils, stickers, and birthday cards (from the teachers) in it – very handy!  I try to make them feel special on thier birthday – after all,  it is the day they were born and it only happens once a year!  I think Sweetie was very happy with her day and I got the feeling she felt very special!

For those of you that might want to purchase a birthday vest or two this is the website I got them from.  I also got two star of the week vests for my leader of the day.  Not incredibly cheap – but well made and totally worth it in my opinion!

eating rainbows

There was recently a birthday in my family and I wanted to surprise this person with a very special birthday cake.  I didn’t know what to do until I came upon this discussion board.  Then I knew what I had to do!  Make a rainbow cake!  Below are some pictures of the steps I took and how it turned out…it tasted great too!  I figured that one could easily turn this into cupcakes to share with a class of students if doing a unit on colors or rainbows…enjoy!

Celebrate good times…

Today we had a class pajama party!  It was in honor of Ms. Bennet’s birthday!  The children were very excited because even Ms. Bennet and I wore pajamas!  They just couldn’t get over that.  Ms. Lezze-Faire even got into the spirit – she came to visit our class for a few minutes today and joked about how we all forgot to get dressed on the same day!  The children laughed and told her she was being silly – we were having a pajama party of course!  It was great.

We did our usual morning routine of journals, morning message, and circle time.  Then we had our snack of cupcakes and juice – and sang “Happy Birthday” to Ms. Bennet.  We told them they could bring a stuffed animal to school (which is very special since I don’t usually allow toys from home) and so we went around and everyone told us about the special friend they had brought with them to school.  Next we let them all take their shoes off and get comfy on the carpet with their stuffed animal to watch a movie.  We watched “The Sword and the Stone” – Ms. Bennet’s favorite children’s movie.

After the movie I let the children dance with thier stuffed animal.  They loved this part.  Then I told the children we were going to play sorting games.  First I told them to sort themselves into boys and girls.  Done.  Then, short sleeve/long sleeve.  Got it.  Then by various pajama colors: pink, purple, red, and blue (everyone’s pajamas fell into one of these color categories).  This one took a little work – but we got it.  Then I told them to sort themselves by sock color, white/not white.  They got that easily.  After each sorting we counted each group to see which one was the biggest.

Fun times.  Sporatically throughout the morning I would turn into the “Tickle Monster” and run around tickling various children that came near me!  They loved this too!  Then as a special treat we ate lunch in our room with our stuffed animals!  This excited them because we never eat lunch in our class!  It was a great day!