Kid President"s "20 Things We Should Say More Often"

I was introduced to the Kid President this year by a fellow teacher and I am so very thankful that I was. The Kid President shares so many great videos that inspire kids and adults to be better people. This video is a list of his 20 things that we should say more often. A fellow teacher at my school linked this video to our 7 Habits that we practice at my school. She walked through each item on his list with her students and asked them which Habit they thought it fell under. (Such a great idea!!!) If you aren't familiar with the 7 Habits of Happy Kids you can find a link to the website here. I like to show this video to my students every now and them to remind them of how we should be kind to each other and how they can choose to add these things to their daily life. I hope you enjoy the Kid President as much as my students and I have. You can find a link to his website here. Enjoy!

Happy Friday and Hairy Money

Counting coins was one of the hardest things to get my special education students to understand. Switching between counting by 5s, 10s, 25s, and 1s was just to much for them to handle sometimes. Thankfully I was taught a fabulous way to teach counting coins, Hairy Money.

My Anchor Chart

Let me start by showing you the anchor chart that accompanies this lesson. Above you will find my Money chart. Each hair that a coin receives is worth 5 cents. A quarter is worth 25 cents so it has five hairs, a dime is worth 10 cents so it has two hairs, a nickel is 5 cents so it just gets one hair, but poor penny is doesn't get any. While my students are memorizing the value and names of each coin they are also learning how many hairs they each get. We practice drawing hairs on sets of coins many times before we begin counting the hairs. This is also a great way to practice the kids' counting by 5's skills. I also like to practice with quarters, dimes, and nickels for a while before we throw in pennies. This method of counting money really works well with my students because they only have to focus on counting by 5's to find their answer.

I found this GREAT chart on Pinterest today!! I think I will be revamping my chart this weekend!  One of my students is obsessed with who is on each coin, so he will love to be able to see their names. They also give their penny a dot.

Much better anchor chart!!

Hope you can find this helpful the next time you are teaching counting coins!
Happy Friday!!

Thanks for visiting!!
~Lyndsey

The Beginning of my Blogging Experience

           Learning is quite a fabulous thing, isn't it. I try daily to help my students to understand how great it is that they can learn and also how much fun it really can be. That's why I chose the title I did. I love to learn new things and I love to see kids learning new things. So, I decided to create a blog all about learning and teaching. I find myself reading educational and personal blogs daily. I use them to find new, fun ideas for teaching my kiddos and also to admire the fact that people find the time to create such amazing blogs. After 4 years of teaching elementary special education I hope that I can now use a blog to share things I have learned with others out there. This is my first blog and I am still learning how to use a blog to its full potential. 
          My name is Lyndsey Key and I am a Special Education teacher. I hope to use this blog to share my experiences of teaching, share lessons I have taught (successful and unsuccessful), and show how fabulous learning and teaching can be.



Thanks for Stopping By!
Lyndsey Key