Lettering Delights MEGA Sale!

 

Holy moley! I love it when they have the dollar days, but this is even better!  Lettering Delights is having a summer clearance and there are tons of items for FIFTY (50!!) cents! I was just clicking away and adding to my cart. 

If you haven’t shopped at Lettering Delights before, you should check it out! Just click on the cute monkey guy on my sidebar.  From there you can sign up for the newsletter and get $50.00 in free fonts, graphics and alphabets.  I love lettering delights because everything is always in your library – so you can check there to make sure you don’t already have it before you buy!

You can also download their free software called Creative Companion here.  It will help you manage your alphabet stash!

And do you have one of these?

I just got mine and have only played with it a little bit – but I am so excited to really work with it some more!  Lettering Delights has also come out with a HUGE set of SVG simple cuts that can be used with the Silhouette.  You get 50 sets for $49.00!  Here are just a few of the images:

Click on the Lettering Delights button on my sidebar to learn more!

If you need a tutorial for how to use SVG images with your Silhouette, check out THIS blog!

Happy Shopping!

Da da da daaaaa!

Have you seen my new Zero the Hero pack yet?  Stop over here and check it out!

Let me know what you think!

Third time is a charm??

I can’t believe I am having such a hard time giving these CD’s away! I hope that THIS winner contacts me! (within 48 hours!!)

I am looking for some ideas, folks.  What do you want to see here?  I am heading out of town and am looking for some things to blog about while I am gone… Leave a  comment below to let me know what you would like to see!

A New Winner!

I had to choose a new winner for the Penny and Pals giveaway because the first winner never contacted me! Bummer! 

I’ve been in Minnesota hanging out with my pals Kim Adsit and Deanna Jump  (and new pal Shari Sloane!) so I haven’t been able to choose a new winner until today. After being with 2 southerners for 3 days, I feel like I am coming home with a southern accent!

If you haven’t seen Kim or Shari present you MUST! They are fantastic!  Deanna will be presenting this summer at Frog Street Splash ~ she would love it if you would come and see her!

So, without further ado….

Ugh, this winner didn’t contact me either! See above for the NEW winner!

MN Conference

I am off tomorrow to take part in an awesome conference with some amazing presenters!  I am hopping a plane (thanks to frequent flyer miles!) to Minneapolis tomorrow!  Normally, I would drive the 5 hours, but an hour fight is so much nicer!  I hope to be back with some great new ideas next week!

I’ve got my pencil and notebook ready!

I’m flippin’ out!

I’m flippin’ out (bun not in a Jeff Lewis way though!) I am making flip charts!  I went to a 2 day (INTENSE) training for ActivInspire and Promethean Active Boards.  We sat from 8-4 for 2 days learning all the ins and outs of the software.  I had a good idea where to start since I have had my board for 2 years, but I mostly figured things out on my own.  I was glad to find that there was an easier way to do most things and they’re all pretty easy to me now! {Even containers!!}

I was inspired by Debbie Diller’s Math Workstation book to create a few flipchart pages.  They’re pretty simple because I want to be able to share them with other teachers in my district, but take a peek:

There are 2 options for this one – at first the children can pull a colored dot (duplicate), and then later use the highlighter.

Super duper simple – just grab a coconut and match it up with the domino.

This one is using a cute little revealer (magic ink) that I downloaded from promethean.  Again, super simple, but great for beginning number concepts.

With these 3 pages, I wanted to use the dot sheets that Fran made over at Kindergarten Crayons.  This is a good way to introduce as a whole group.  The children will put the numbers in the right order first, and then count out the correct number of cookies (which are hidden “in” the jar) to the correct spots.

This one uses the hidden feature. The children tap the apple to reveal a side of a die, count the dots, and write the correct number.

This is the 5 frame game that is in Debbie Diller’s book.  This page is intended to use for whole group teaching and to teach the game.

Here is the game for partners.  I played it with my 9 year old daughter, and she thought it was super fun! Simple, but fun!

Spin the spinner and add the correct number of apples to the wagon.

This one looks very blah, doesn’t it?! But, I was able to master containers!!! The shapes are nice and colorful, so once they are up there it looks a little bit prettier!

Grab and graph – the shapes are hidden behind the square.  I added the math talk bubbles so that the kids (ahem…I) remember to use that wording!

Same concept as the apple tree, just using pennies.

And as a partner game.

What do you think? I am still working my way through chapter 4, but I am LOVING this book so far!

I have one more thing I need to admit….I had my first back to school dream of the summer on Saturday. Seriously.  So. Not. Ready.  It was the usual horror story of not being ready – my room still in boxes, nothing ready, the kids were HORRIBLY naughty.   Ugh, I hate those dreams, and it is way too early in the summer to start!

Sight Words {and} Chants

Every week, I introduce the kids to two new sight words.  I have a sign on the outside of my door that looks like this:

Sorry – it’s not the best picture – the flash didn’t like the laminating! Underneath the construction paper flap are two sticky notes with the weeks’ sight words on it.  The children have to tell me the sight words each time they enter the room.  They get SO excited whenever there is a new sight word! 

You can download your own password sign by clicking on the picture below.  You will just need to supply the flap! Just add a sheet of construction paper or cute scrapbook paper and tape it on!  I quickly made three versions – click on any picture to download all three.

  

Psst: You can use these signs for more than just sight words! At the beginning of the year use it for letters, shapes, numbers, etc.

Each week, we also write our new sight words to hang on our fridge.  This picture came from a friends classroom:

(You could easily do this with letters too!)

And I also add the word to magnetic white boards:

Throughout the day, I’ll mix up the letters and ask children to come up and fix the words.

Here is the sight word page for you as well as an alphabet page!

 

Disclaimer: I do not do letter of the week in my classroom.  However, for the first few weeks of school, our reading series has a review of letters.  We practice all letters and sounds every week, but there is a focus on a specific letter.

Okay, here’s the fun part!  It took me a long time to put these together!  I came across these sight word chants on the web (I saved them to my computer, so I’m not really sure where they came from!)

It was too hard to flip through the pages to find different chants so… I love popsicle sticks, so I came up with these babies:

The kids went NUTS over them! It took me FOREVER to type them up on labels!  I put the name of the chant on one side of the stick and the “how-to” on the other side.  (I trimmed around the name to make it fit better). I pull out a stick and we do the chant! The kids LOVE the push-up one – it is SO funny to watch them do push-ups! 

So, here are the labels for you – they sometimes get a little wacky when printed to a PDF so, I hope they print out okay for you!

 

(The names are first, and the descriptions follow consecutively)

I hope you like all the freebies in this post! Leave me a comment, follow my blog, or make a donation to my Donors Choose proposal if you feel so inclined!  Have fun creating!

It’s a Give away! Let’s Wiggle, Giggle, and Sing!

Up in my neck of the woods, it’s not very often that we have celebrities living just down the road (by road, I mean I-29 – ha! But she is only an hour away!)  But seriously, this celebrity is the Midwest’s treasure of the elementary teaching world.  Who is it you might wonder??? It’s…..

 

Have you heard of Penny and Pals?  Most kids in this area know who she is as well as her crew of friends that travel with her.  In my classroom, we LOVE to sing and dance to her songs! She often travels around the area to give concerts at schools, churches, and community events.  Flocks of people gather to see her – she is FANTASTIC! I’ve seen her many times in person, and she is so energetic and fun!

Here is a video of Penny in action! The kids LOVE her! Notice how they are all up and moving! (Just what we need to get the squirmies out of our little friends!)

~Listen for the “Mosquito Swat” this is a favorite of us North Dakotans where the mosquito is the state bird ~

SO……Penny has GRACIOUSLY agreed to give away not one, but TWO of her awesome alphabet CD’s to one of my lucky blog readers!!!!  Isn’t she AMAZING?!!!

 

The kids in my classroom LOVE those songs – she has one for every letter of the alphabet and they get the kids up and moving and singing! 

So, do you want to win these CD’s????  I know you do!

There are a couple of EASY things you need to do…

1. Head on over to Facebook and ‘like’ her fan page.  Just click right {HERE} and you’ll go straight to the page.  Leave her a little note too – she’ll like that

2. I know you’re following if you’re reading this, but could you please just click that little FOLLOW button on my sidebar.  It would make me ever so happy!

3.  Make sure you leave a comment so I know you’ve done these things!

This contest will stay open for ONE WEEK – It will close on Saturday, June 18 @ midnight.  I will select a winner using random.org on Sunday, June 19. 

Be sure to check out Penny’s website  to see all of her other CD’s!  Click {HERE}

 

 

(Here’s Penny at my school a couple of years ago!)

Plants and Seeds

Wow, I can’t believe I am going back to April for postings!  How crazy is that?! Obviously I was busy writing my final paper at that time and had no time to do anything else!

So, here is a glimpse of what we did in our classroom when we learned about plants and seeds!

We made our adorable Plant Books – the kids used these crayons to decorate the cover:

 

I love how they make the colors just POP on construction paper.  They are also fun to add to the art center every now and then to spice things up a bit!

 

We read lots of fiction and non-fiction books this week about plants and seeds.  One of my favorite authors, Kevin Henkes, has this BEAUTIFUL story:

I love, love, love, love, love this book! His illustrations are stunningly beautiful and I love how imaginative it is!

After we read, we brainstormed what OUR gardens would look like if they could grow anything we wanted.  Here is a sample of their writing:

 

 

 

 

   

Here are some pictures of our plant journals.  We included observations about our plants, things we learned, as well as story responses.

Here are our sweet little plants we planted.  Each child got to pick their own seed, but they didn’t get to see which pack it came from.  They made predictions of which plant they think they planted.  These sweet little labels came from Kim Adsit’s pack.

{LITERACY CENTERS}

We pulled miniatures out of a can and wrote the word next to the correct long vowel.  Don’t ‘cha just love the Lakeshore Miniatures?! 

This page came from my blogging buddy Julie Lee.  She is a total rock star! I get a lot of ideas from her.  The cute little carrots were found at the dollar tree.  This center we found was quite challenging for some kiddos, so I put a green mini-dot on the back of the first letter and a red mini-dot on the back of the last letter.  Simplified things a bit for those that were having a tough time.

Another great center inspired by Julie.  The children chose a fruit or a veggie and write a sentence using that sight word.  Can you spot what’s missing from this sentence?

At this center the kids chose a stamp and filled in the missing vowel sound. 

This one came from Julie as well.  The kids matched up the flower pot blend to the correct picture.

{MATH CENTERS}

Most of these centers were inspired by or from Julie over at Mrs. Lee’s Kindergarten.

Counting by 10s with watermelons. 

Adding with fruits and veggies.

Patterning

Coin values and coin combinations.

Practicing with time to the hour and half-hour. 

Some other ideas: (These are from the head start room down the hall!)

Aren’t these just lovely?  They look so pretty hanging from the ceiling!