Saturday, Saturday! Some cute little freebies for you!

I just ordered some new clipart from KPM doodles {just LOVE her work!} so while I'm anxiously awaiting for her to send it, I made a few little things for the beginning of the year next year. I bought some birthday certificates for this year but these are just as cute and for free!

Click on the picture to download!

I also made this little alphabet order worksheet to use - some of my kids would still benefit from this now! It is cut and paste so if you need something to keep your kids busy it works perfect :)

{click picture to take you to the download}

I have some play - doh mats already where the kids roll the play doh into snakes and make the number with it but they're pretty worn out and have seen better days! So I made a more fresh looking mat - they can be used with dry erase markers also to practice tallies.

{click picture to take you to the download}

I would love it if you rated my products on TpT - I need some love! :) 

Hope you have a fantastic Saturday - we have a wedding tonight so I'm off to get ready!

0

"Hopping" addition and my farm pack complete!

Happy Friday friends!

I was at Target last night picking up diapers and formula for Mister sir when I browsed through the dollar spot and found these fabulous little rabbit hoppers in a large clear Easter egg! At first glance I thought "ooh, I can make a word search in the egg with all sorts of cute stuff" and the little hoppers are just a cute plus. BUT when I got to school this morning I was trying to think of some other ways I could practice addition during my intervention time when it hit me!

This is what I came up with:

 

I made two number lines with strips of paper. Working with a partner (one kid to a number strip) they put the rabbit at the end of the line and the number that it landed closest to was part of their problem. I added tape on the ground to remind them what they were doing. After doing this a few times I don't think they'll need it anymore. Once their rabbit was on the number, they had to pull that many linking cubes out. They wrote the number sentence on their "whiteboards" (plastic plates) and then counted the cubes all together to get their answer.

They were NUTS about this and were all successfully creating number sentences and adding correctly on their own! WOOHOOO!

While I was at it I made some strips to practice number words and also some with sight words. They'll have to read the word and then record it - eventually I'll make a recording sheet. Just not today :)

On another note, I finished my "Farming for Math and Literacy Fun - Kindergarten stations" packet on TpT. Go check it out! Lots of good stuff! {click on the picture}

2

Our community map and a farm freebie!

Hi friends! I only worked a half day today because my little girl has Pre-K orientation this afternoon! I can't believe it! I almost couldn't handle my emotions at my school's Kindergarten orientation thinking about her going to "big school" as we call it. :)

This week has been the STAAR test for the 4th and 5th graders here in Texas and Oh. my. word. am I tired! I can't imagine what those teachers feel like that actually have to give the test! Just keeping my little ones super quiet and in my classroom alllllll. day. long. was enough! Thank goodness it's over for this round of testing!

We did get a lot done, though! I had to keep them occupied with some extra crafts just to keep us all sane! I have some pictures of the map we created of our community and the regions of Texas that we learned about - it's nothing super cute (from our curriculum), but it got the job done!

 Map of the area right around our school

 Each kid colored their house to look like their own - 

this little one knew there was an "e" in there somewhere, haha!

 United (grocery store) and the Movies

 playground

I've been working on a Farm unit for all of you - our farm unit is in October-ish so I'm going to recreate it over the summer to work on some of those beginning of the year skills. I should be finished with it tonight but here's a little freebie from the pack!
{click on the picture to take you to the download}

I'm working on a "Dinosaurs, Fish, and Creatures, oh my!" Unit next - any requests for skills to include in it?

If you're still with me now (thanks!) don't forget about Tammy's giveaway that my Spring pack is included in! She's picking a winner tomorrow so if you haven't entered yet, get yourself entered!

Hope you have a wonderful Friday tomorrow!

1

Stations this week!

Hello teacher friends! I've been wanting to share how I do my centers with you guys for a while - I've done them a few different ways but this is my favorite so far!

It keeps ME organized and my kids get to go at their own pace so I'm not forcing kids to switch or hurry up and finish without doing quality work.

I have 5 different groups - they are grouped by ability so when I pull them for small group they are all together. Depending on what they're working on during stations, they may work together or independently.If you look at the pictures below you can see a little border around each name - this is their small group, so when I call them to my teacher table I just call the "blue group" etc.

These are my stations drawers. Do NOT buy these at regular price! Jo Ann's has them for $30 after Thanksgiving and Michael's always has a coupon for 1/2 price. They're regularly around $70! eesh!

My kids complete two stations a day - we work in stations and small group with me for about 40 minutes during ELAR. The drawers are labeled with the letters A-J. Every Monday my red group starts on A and B. Then on Tuesday I switch them to C and D, and so on. The other groups will just move down behind them. I always start the red group out on A and B so I don't get things confused for myself. My kids that are on "A and B for that day have to complete A first, check it with me, and then they finish B. The first one is usually a more "work" station so I can assess and the kids can practice where the second one is usually a more "fun" station (stamping sight words, a game, writing sentences with letters on the lockers, etc). If they finish both stations then we have early finisher games - like the fiddle sticks game I posted about earlier. I fill my station drawers on Monday and don't change them all week.

 Here is my rotation chart - I just have it up on the white board by magnets. I could've just taped the group names because I do not move them (afterthought!) but the letters definitely need to be movable - next year when I have less whiteboard space because of the Smartboard I might make this on a poster and then just use velcro for my letters.

Here are some of the stations that I have them working in this week:

Find the missing letter from sight words

 Real or nonsense? (From my Spring Fever packet) CVC... next week we will do the CCVC words

 Sequence ending sounds game from Deedee Wills

 Sight words write the room

 Computers

 Handwriting practice! These little books came from Dollar Tree and they love them!

 CVCe words from Melissa Freshwater

Does that make sense?! I love hearing everyone else's ideas and ways they do things in their own classroom - every one in my team all has their own way of doing stations- this is what works best for me! I hope it was useful in some way! Thanks for sticking with me this long!

6

Wonderful Sunday!! A freebie and news of a BIG GIVEAWAY!

Oh. my. goodness. It's SO pretty outside (84 degrees and sunny - my idea of PERFECT weather!) so Josh and I decided we needed to do some yard work. Let me just say my arms are going to be SO sore tomorrow! I can already feel it in my right shoulder ha!

My school was open this afternoon so I ran up there to print a few things out, laminate, and change out my stations - I just kinda left it all there on Friday so now I'm catching up! Ella (my 3 1/2 year old daughter) came up there with me and was a SUPER helper! She's getting to the age where she loves to help out - with anything! Even chores! woohoo! She played with some shape tiles I have while I cut out materials for next week. Isn't she cute?! She kept on saying "Momma, where is the wombus?? (rhombus)" haha they must be working on those big shape names at her school!

Ok, I pinned a picture of a wonderful sight word practice idea last week from The Daily Cupcake...A Kindergarten blog and it was repinned 115 times overnight! I was going to make some for a station this week so I thought I would share the end result with ya'll! I made it into a little packet so it would be easy to share - there's a recording sheet included. Click here to get your free copy!

. 

Ok, last but certainly not least...I'm part of a giveaway! If you were interested in my Spring pack, here's your chance to win it PLUS some WONDERFUL packets from Tammy over at 123....Teach with Me!

Go check out her post to see everything you could win!

Ok here's what you do to win EVERYTHING!!!....be sure to....

1.) Follow BOTH blogs

2.) Follow BOTH TPT stores  Tammy and Nicole

3.) If you mention this giveaway on your blog, your name will be entered twice!!

4) Leave a comment on Tammy's post about the giveaway

Good luck! And thanks for sticking with me this long! Have a wonderful evening!

5

Hip hip horray! A freebie and a giveaway!

Ok teaching friends! I finished up my "Spring Fever" packet and I'm pretty proud of it! It ended up being 47 pages (it felt like more when I was making it, haha!) but it's only $5.50 on TpT.  I'll be using it the next week or two during my stations. I posted it this afternoon around 2 and just got my first email that I had a product purchased! WOOOHOOOOOO! (Ok, its only $3 that I get from it but its just really nice to know that someone else out there thought it was good enough to buy!) Now I know why all you other teachers are out there creating and sharing!

Here is a little freebie for you from my packet. The first 3 people to write a comment saying they follow my blog and store (please follow :) and include their email address will receive my Spring Fever packet for free!  Who's out there?!

11

Introducing....my TpT store! Hooray!!!

Good morning!

I have been working on my first unit for TpT and I am SO excited! If you haven't noticed, I added a TpT store button on the right side of my blog - the free mini packs that I've shared with you here are now located there if you want to find them again. I would LOVE it if you follow my store and leave me some love!  I love to create things for my own classroom and now I'm getting to share it with fellow teachers. This is the Spring pack that I'm working on - hopefully I will finish it today or tomorrow! Here's a preview so you can see what is coming up!

This pack will be in my blogging friend Tammy 's 100 follower giveaway over at 123...Teach With me ! Go check her blog out - she's got some fabulous ideas!

I am trying to get better about taking pictures of my kiddos working! I only got a few yesterday. Here's us working in small group with my Planting word families (free!) pack. I finally was able to print and use them yesterday morning! So they're not laminated yet - I'll be working on that tomorrow! First we made nonsense words, sounded them out, then recorded them on our plates. Then we figured out which onsets match the word family and recorded them. On their recording sheets they wrote one nonsense and one real word for each family.

Have a wonderful Saturday!

3

Fiddle sticks!

April at Wolfelicious is hosting a sight word idea linky party and I can't resist to join! A few of my kids have had some problems recognizing sight words, so I started scouring the internet (ok, ok, Pinterest really) looking for fun ideas to practice them. I feel like I already play some fun games/ chants/ etc to practice them and you all may already know about this game but I didn't and it is the EAsiest, PEAsiest thing to make ever and my kids are OBSESSED!

It's called fiddle sticks. Here is the original link to the blog I found it on - she's brilliant at Make, Take, Teach! She even has a video explaining how to play the game so you really can't get it wrong!

8

1,000 hits!

Woohoo, friends!

I've made it to 1,000 hits! I'm so glad people are out there looking at the things I've made and hopefully using them in their classrooms, too! I haven't been able to use them in my classroom yet - our printers have been down all this week and my ink is out at home! I've had Smartboard training from 4:45 - 7:45 yeseterday and today so going to Target to get more ink is not at the top of my list!

I'm super excited to get a Smartboard in my classroom - my kids are going to be SO pumped about it, and of course it will be WONDERful for small group lessons (yes, whole group, too!) and stations! I just hope it gets installed soon - there's a piece of paper saying "install here" hanging up on my wall.....the suspense is killing me! 

Ok, just thought I'd share some of the anchor charts I have in my classroom. I use anchor charts for EVERYthing. And my kids can tell you EXACTLY what Expository text is because of it (high five!) We all make it together when I first introduced the topic - on the word families I have them help me write the words, underline the ending part. I have more, just only those two up right now because my walls would be plastered with them if I put every one we did up!

Here are a few pictures:

6

Weather, yikes!

Uggghhhhhh! I'm such a chicken when it comes to severe weather! There was a huge line of severe thunderstorms from Amarillo down to Midland (Lubbock being in the middle) that was rockin' and rollin'. I wake up from the thunder....check my phone....see there is a tornado watch and severe thunderstorm warning. I roll over, try to just listen to the thunder, watch the lightning, no success. My paranoid self can't go to sleep without at least checking on it. I had to come out into the living room to turn the t.v. on - everything is fine but now it is 2 hours later and I can't go back to sleep! ughh! 

 I made this today and was going to post it later this week after I took pictures of it, but what the hey? Here is another cute little small group/station activity for word families. Click on the picture to download. If it gets a little blurry in google docs, just refresh the page and try again. It has done this to me several times - I'm not sure why but refreshing the page will fix it!

3

Math number games!

In my district, we are required to do both Math and Literacy stations in homogenous and heterogeneous groups every week. I L.O.V.E. Literacy stations, and I like Math stations as well, but I find it SO hard to fit in my Math lesson and stations in every. single. day. This is on top of all the counting practice we do in whole groups, too. I admit, Math is not my strong point. I adore teaching ELAR, but I struggle a little bit more with math. I still enjoy it - but I know it is definitely something I need to grow on!

With that being said, I have implemented Math tubs in my classroom (like so many of you have!). Each group only does one math tub a day so that over the week they will have rotated through 4 different tubs. BUT I find students finishing earlier or taking longer than my allotted "math tub time" so I needed to make some filler games that were still working on the basic math concepts my little kinders need.

So this is why I made this little pack. There are 3 "filler" games in it that can be kept in a file folder and pulled out by those early finishers to work on. They are very simple! You can laminate everything so that your kids can reuse the materials without a lot of waste every day. 

Click on the picture above to snag the math games! Let me know if you grab them, I would love to hear from you!

7

Happy Saturday!

Good Morning bloggie friends!

Since I've begun this blog I can't wait to get back in the classroom to take pictures of my classroom and things my kiddos are doing to share with you! The community of teaching blogs is just so wonderful! I have been a blog stalker for a  while now, so I'm so glad to now actually be a PART of the community!

I made this little letter sort for a station this week. I made one in February and some of my kids actually had a hard time with it - the different fonts kind of throw them off, but it's important for them to be able to recognize the letters no matter what context you find them in. 

Click on the picture to take you to it!

The A-dorable little snails are from Melonheadz graphics. Her clip art is SO stinkin' cute! Click on the link below to check her out! 

I'm part of another linky party - I love how Donna has divided the blogs up by grade level so you can browse through the blogs that most pertain to you!

I would love you to let me know if you grab this, and following would be wonderful, too! ;)

Happy St. Patrick's day!

1