November Arrival Bins…Part Two!

I posted these arrival bins earlier this week and I’m so excited for you to see them! They are the perfect addition to your morning tubs!

Here is a closer look at the reading and language arts items. You can check out the math items in this blog post: November Arrival Bins Math.

I loved all of your suggestions last month. These letter/sound/sign match-up cards are perfect for your students!

I’m excited for my intervention students to use these acorn onset and rime puzzles. Picture clues are included to assist your emergent readers. Twelve different puzzle cards are included.

We have been busy clapping our syllables in our classroom. These fall syllable clip cards will be perfect for my students. Twelve different cards are included.

Now that many of my students have learned their letter sounds, we are planning on moving on to digraphs. These digraph punch cards can be used all year.

There are two different levels of the November word cards. Twelve different words are included. The picture below features the cards where students fill in the missing beginning letter. The other version simply features the word that students can practice building on their own with magnet letters.

And last, but not least, are the letter tracing cards! There is also an editable version. This would be great activity for practicing sight words as well!

I forgot to tell you that there are color and black and white versions of all of the activities, AND editable student direction cards.

You can purchase this ELA arrival bin separately here: November Arrival Bins ELA Version or you can purchase the bundle with all of the math and literacy activities here: November Arrival Bins–the bundle.

Thanks for checking out this post! I’m excited to start working on the December Bins this month!

October is here!!!!

Yay!  It’s FINALLY fall!!!  I’m so excited!  This is one of my favorite times of the year! October is off to a crazy busy start, but I’m having a TON of fun in the process! My students are loving our new additions to our arrival bins. I added these to my TpT store a few weeks ago.

There is a total of 12 activities that focus on the following skills:

• 2D shapes
• Counting
• Number recognition
• Number sequencing
• Number formation
• Rhyming
• CVC patterned words
• Ending sounds
• Letter formation
• Sight words

AND there are editable items!!! I tried to create activities that require fine motor activities as well. I try to sneak in any fine motor practice where I can! Here are a few of the ELA items:

And here is a closer look at the math items:

Would you like to win a FREE copy of this bundle?  I will be giving away 3 sets of my October bins!  Click the link to below to enter.  All you need to do is answer one of the following questions (or answer both for more entries).

• What is your favorite fall activity?
• Leave a comment about what types of activities you would like to see in the November arrival bins.

Please make sure that in addition to your comments that you enter on Rafflecopter as well.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Good luck everyone!!!

 

 

Arrival Bins Winners and Back to School fun!

Thanks to all who entered the contest!!!  I meant to post this earlier today, but I’ve been sick with a horrible head cold!  Jennifer McAdoo and Amy Braswell are the winnners!!!  I’ve emailed your prize!!!

I’ve been busy with all things school lately!  I’m so happy to say that I am teaching a straight TK this year!!!  I absolutely love my sweet students and we are off to a great start!!! Here are a few things we’ve been working on:

These shape busses are always a favorite activity!

I’ve also been busy updating my Back to School pack! Here are a few pictures of some of the included.

This is a close-up of the shapes on the bus activity that’s included in my Back to School pack.

Lunchbox syllable activity. Both color and black and white versions are available for all activities! Simply print what you need!

Click any of the images above to be taken to my TpT store for more information in this packet. I hope that all of you have a great week!

Dental Health Literacy Ideas…

Hi everyone!  It’s been a LONG time, and I’ve missed you!  I know around this time every year it seems like I start to blog on this poor little neglected blog.  Life as a mom of four littles gets pretty crazy sometimes!  Well I’ve been working on updating some of my old units and I’m excited to say that I recently updated my Dental Health unit!

This unit is full of activities to keep your kiddos engaged.  I always love to introduce a theme/topic to my students with a book.  The emergent reader included in this pack focuses upon the sight words will and get.  The repetitive text is perfect for beginning readers!

My students also absolutely love the read the room/vocabulary activities.  The words can also be used at the writing center–I just love seeing the look on my kiddos faces when they are writing words and sentences independently!

Another thing we have been focusing upon in my class is ending sounds.  The activities in this unit are perfect for small group instruction as well as independent literacy centers.

Sequencing is an important activity that we work on all school year and we are beginning to transition to story comprehension and our writing.

We are always working on syllabication and these clip cards are the perfect thing for reviewing this skill.  I also love how my kiddos are using clothespins to strengthen their fine motor skills :).

That is all for now, but I will post more math activities this week and I guarantee–you are going to love them!  If you would like to check out my unit on TpT you can check it out here.

Rodeo week fun!

Our local city has a spring rodeo every year at the end of April and my class joined in the fun last week as we learned about cowboys  and cowgirls.  Here are just a few of the fun activities we completed. 

I started out the week asking my students what they knew about the rodeo.  Their answers were hysterical!  😂😂😂. A few students thought the rodeo was about singing and dancing.  I recorded their answers on chart paper.

Then I told them what a rodeo really is and explained that it is actually a sport with many events.  We watched quite a few short clips of rodeo events from YouTube.  Here were some of our favorites.

Every Cowboy Needs a Horse Song

Rodeo Event clips–we just watched a few minutes of each event so students would get a general idea of what it was.  I don’t even think I played the sound for them!

Bull Riding Clip

Barrel Racing

Roping

Steer Wrestling

Saddle Bronc Riding

The boys of course loved watching bull riding!

We read a few fun “Wild West” themed books.  My class especially enjoyed reading Little Red Hot by Eric Kimmel.  This is a different version of Little Red Riding Hood and it is adorable!  We also read Pecos Bill by Steven Kellogg.  This tall tale is so fun to read because it talks about Pecos Bill invented the first rodeo. Here is a picture of our books we read.  We are also getting ready for farm week so those books are displayed as well. 

My class absolutely loved playing this sight word game called, “Yee-Haw!”  It’s very similar to bang.  You place the sight word cards in a basket, shuffled face down and students take turns pulling cards.  If they can read the word then they can keep the card, if they cannot read the card the. They have to put it back.  If they choose a, “Yee-Haw” card then they have to put all their cards back in the basket. The person with the most cards is the winner.    

We also sorted pictures by vowel sounds in a pocket chart.  This is a great activity to prepare us for our end of year testing that is just around the corner!

We brainstormed about things a cowboy and cowgirl may need and wrote about it. We used our Western themed vocabulary words to help us with writing.

 We practiced our addition skills with this fun wagon wheel activity.  I substituted wagon wheels for dice to make it a little easier for little hands. 

And we of course practiced counting and writing tally marks.  My class needs all the practice they can get with this!   You can pick up this tally mark activity for free here in my store:  Western FREEBIE

 The last activity we completed was a little Mustang shape art/craftivity.  These turned out adorable!   

If you are interested, all of the activities and more are included in my Giddy-Up Wild West Math and Literacy Pack.  Here are some more photos from this unit:

I hope y’all have a rootin’ hootin’ hollering week!

Some shamrockin’ fun!

It’s March!  Hurray!!!!  One of my favorite holidays is just around the corner.  I thought I’d share some of the fun things we’ve done in the past to celebrate.

We always read Jamie O’Rourke and the Big Potato.  I always try to read out loud with my best Irish accent (which I’m sure is ridiculous…😂).  Last year my class made these adorable potato people.    My class also completed these leprechaun directed drawings from First Grade Blue Skies.  They turned out SO adorable!!!

 We also worked on writing questions.  First we brainstormed some question words whole class and made a poster.  Then during our stations we worked on writing down the questions to ask a leprechaun.  I had this large leprechaun cut-out that I purchased from Dollar Tree.  I taped it to the door and had students ask the leprechaun a question.  Oh my goodness–this was SUCH a cute activity and I absolutely loved the questions that my students wrote in their leprechaun letters.  

I uploaded this fun activity as a FREE item to my TpT store!  Just click here to download.

We also had a little visitor at our house!  My kiddos were SO EXCITED!!!  He left little green footprints and shamrocks everywhere!  Here is a photo:

The visiting leprechaun also left green milk in the fridge!  Ha!

I’m looking forward to this silly little leprechaun visiting again (and I’m looking forward to Shamrock Shakes)!  We also have a little tradition of making green dinner that night.  I usually just tint some pasta and alfredo sauce and serve with broccoli–yum!  What do you have planned for St. Patrick’s day?  I’d love to hear all about it in the comments below!

 

 

 

Teaching Major Events and Creature Reports…

The last month of school we worked on identifying major events in text and how they effect the characters (Common core standard RL 2.3). We reviewed what a character is and how we could identify what a major story event is. This standard is important because it helps to make connections to the text and understand the plot. We read Verdi by Janell Cannon and narrowed down the story to three major events. Students discussed with their partners what they felt was one major event from the story. We then worked on completing this worksheet together and created this poster about the story. He Here are some pictures of the graphic organizers that we used.  If you would like a FREE copy of this simply click one of the pictures below :).           Students also researched an animal and created reports. I made a little Amazon Creature Reports form for them to use to guide the process. I totally meant to take pictures of this to show you guys, but ran out of time at the end of the year. If you are interested, you can pick up a copy of my creature report organizer and writing papers by clicking any of  the pictures below.     Ok, I’ll admit that I may be been a tad inspired by the Octonauts when I created the creature reports :).  My kids love that show!  

Now that’s a good idea!

Have I mentioned to you all how excited I am about teaching kindergarten next year! I can’t hardly wait! A few months back my new kinder colleagues and I had the wonderful opportunity to observe some other kinder teachers. And let me tell ya–these ladies were super clever!

Check out this idea–genius! She cut 8 1/2 x 11 pieces of felt in half and then sewed them to make little “pockets” for students dry erase markers. This allowed kids to have quick easy access to an eraser! When students were finished she told them to place the tops on the markers and put them to bed! Love it! What a good idea! I’m definitely adding that to my summer to do list :).

Another great idea we saw was using paint chips for segmenting sounds. Students just move some type of marker to identify if the specified sound is in the beginning, middle or end. Clever right! Here is a picture of what that looked like:

I have lots of projects planned this summer (mostly DIY mommy and classroom ideas). I’ll make sure to post the different pics as I move along on my projects!

A Peek into my class…

I never did get around to posting a classroom tour at the beginning of the year (oopsie). Here are a few pictures:

View from the door. It was open house the night that I took this picture.

 

Culture dolls and culture reports. They turned out SO cute!

 

I love, love, LOVE the way my writing board turned out this past year. I cut black poster board in 1/2 to make it look like a clip board. I super glued tacks to clothespins and then covered them with washi tape.

I ended up making quite a few decor items for my class.  Here are some pictures of some of the things:

 

 

I’m very happy to say that I have now finished and added these decor items to my TpT store.  Click any of the pictures below to be taken to my store to check it out :).

Here are some sample photos of just a few of the many items included in this decor pack.

 

As a special introductory price this item will be 50% off for the first 48 hours!  Thanks for looking and I hope that you liked taking a little peek into my classroom!

 

 

 

Mini-books anyone?

Hi everyone!    I’ve been busy working on a few things to get ready for next year and guess what everyone?  I’M GOING BACK TO KINDER!!!!!  I’m so very excited!  Here are some new things I have posted to my store if you are interested 🙂

I was brainstorming some ideas for teaching sight words to my littles and I was thinking you know I just wanted something simple that is easy to prep!  This pack is perfect for that–all images are black and white.  Simply print, have students stamp or write the words and then cut and assemble!  Easy peasie!

Here’s a little collage of the product, and if you would like to download a FREE sample click the book below to see my TpT store.  Click the “preview” button and download a preview of the file.

The other thing I’ve been working on was updating my color word flip-books.  I also wanted to create something that was easy to prep and would be ideal as a center activity.  Eleven color books are included in this product.

Simply print the pages, students trace the words of the colored items and color the pictures to match.  Then they simply cut on the dotted lines and assemble.

I have also included a FREE sample of the color blue flip book.  Click the picture below to be taken to my store and simple click the “preview” button to download the sample.

I have lots of other products I hope to post in the next couple of  weeks.  So stay tuned!