Key Chain Explanation and Freebies

Hello and happy Monday!

 There might or might not be a permanent countdown to weekends and breaks going on in both of our rooms this year.  (More towards the might be!!!!)

 This might be the most challenging year for both of us!  We both have CHATTY kiddos this year and they are also not particularly kind to each other.  I can handle a chatty class, but when they are just plain mean to each other it is tough to love coming to school each day! Our school’s focus this year is kindness and we have had school assemblies, the principal read to our classes and talked about kindness, we have done bucket fillers and bucket dippers activities galore, and STILL they are just unkind to each other.  It is rough!!!

Thanks for listening to my rant!!!

On a more positive note…

We had someone ask us to explain our Key Chains in more detail.  So here goes!

We started doing these 12 years ago when I first started teaching 2^nd grade and they are STILL a hit with our kiddos every year.  The key chains themselves have gotten cuter over the years but the concept is the same! 

What we do is to start each kiddo out with a key ring and a key chain with their name on it.  (the first keychain can be a die cut, clip art, etc.)  We use to do a die cut key, but Katie made some really cute name key chains this year that we used instead.  Then each kiddo starts off with a first day of school key chain.  After that they can start to earn key chains for really anything you want!  We do memories and academic key chains.  They can earn a super speller key chain for getting their words right on the spelling test and a dinomite dictation key chain for having perfect dictation on their test.  We earn key chains for birthdays, lost teeth, field trips, homework completion, holiday parties, random good behavior key chains, etc. 

At the end of the year the kiddos take their key chains home and is a memory of all their 2^nd grade accomplishments.  It is a pretty easy and quick reward system.  Not our only one!  But we do like that our kiddos who are doing a good job are recognized!  We print out or die cut our key chains for the year and keep them in these handy dandy little accordion files that we found at the Target Dollar Spot!

(We found these one day when we were on an ice cream run over our break time and just happened to stumble into the Dollar Spot on the way! And YES we are really blessed because we can leave during our break time and it is also an hour!!!!)  We either send the printed key chains home for parents to cut out and hole punch or we have our office aide do them for us.  So once they are ready to go all you have to do is hand them out to the kiddos who earn them! 

Here is an example of one of my kiddo’s key chains.  Remember, it is the beginning of the year so it isn’t very full yet!  By the end of the year they look really cool with all of the key chains on them!

If you are interested in using these you are welcome to a couple of freebies of some of the key chains we use!  We are also working on a packet for TPT that would have TONS of the key chains that we use!

Click here to grab the freebies!

The last thing that we have to share is a freebie class book!  We read The Mixed Up Chameleon in our Harcourt book at the beginning of the year.  It is a cute story, but NOT enough meat to fill up an entire week!  So we usually use some other Eric Carle books and do other activities after the first few days.  One of the things we do goes with The Grouchy Ladybug.  Click here to grab our The Grouchy Ladybug Continued class book! ( We LOVE all the free graphics that From the Pond offers!!)

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