It's Gingerbread Time! {Fabulous Follower Freebie}

We are beginning our gingerbread unit this week, and I am so excited!  This is one of my favorite units to teach.  I will have more gingerbread goodies to post later in the week!  

I want to thank everyone who supported my Teachers Pay Teachers store during the Cyber Monday + Tuesday Sale!  I purchased some fabulous products that I will share in a later post!  

For all of my fabulous followers of my little blog and my Teachers Pay Teachers store, I have a sweet little freebie to say thanks!  We will be using it during our gingerbread unit.  Click on any of the pictures below to download.

Thanks to Pink Cat Studio for the adorable gingerbread clip art!

100 Followers Giveaway and Goodies for Everyone!

Sometime during my lengthy absence from blogging I hit 100 followers!  I am amazed, and honored that you want to listen to my rambling :)

In celebration, I would like to give away a $25 gift certificate to Teachers Pay Teachers! 

It's a win-win. You get some fabulous new products for your classroom, and you're supporting a fellow teacher!  I want to make this a quick giveaway so that the winner will have their certificate in their hot little inbox by the weekend.  I am going to try Rafflecopter, so here we go...

a Rafflecopter giveaway

And because I love all of my followers, and I want everyone to be a winner...I have a little something for you.

I was creating a background to match some clip art and got a little carried away (AKA-procrastination).  I ended up with a ridiculous amount of backgrounds.  

All 43 are yours.  You can download them for free from TPT for personal and commercial use, just give a little linky love in your creation.  Now, here's the disclaimer...this is my first stab at this, so hopefully all will go well.  If not, email me, and I will actually read one of the 15 different pins I have on making backgrounds and fix it :)

Nicole, over at The Kinder Kid, has created some fabulous space themed things.  I was on the fence about doing a theme this year.  I created a Bloom's Chart and used a space theme, because the metaphor fit, but the space theme started growing on me.  Then I read Nicole's post, and that confirmed it for me.  The alien headband is killing me! I love it!  Hop over and check out her creations, and I will be posting my creations soon.

I start back for training on our new math curriculum tomorrow, and I am in complete denial :)

Number Sense Winners and Some Insect Station Freebies

Ok, a day late, but hopefully not a dollar short! 

     

The winners of my Number Sense Giveaway are:

  

   

  

Congratulations Ladies! 

Erin, email me so I can send your goodies to you!

(ofprimaryimportance @ gmail.com)

Iraines, I have emailed your goodies!

And now some goodies for my all of my wonderful followers.. we are still need to wrap up our plant unit on Monday, but then we are headed straight into insects, another one of my favorite themes.


Here are the two Write the Room activities we will be using next week.

Click here to download this freebie from TPT.

Click here to download this freebie from TPT.

If you download either, please leave me some feedback and let me know what you think!  Happy Saturday!

Long Time No Blog, Plant Freebies, and a Giveaway!

Wow, spring break was fabulous, but it feels like everything has been moving at mach 3 since we started back!  We wrapped up our weather unit practicing color words and incorporating a bit of poetry with our 3-D rainbows.  I have to give my kids kudos for this one because they largely completed this activity independently during our literacy work stations.  They turned out pretty cute, and they just make me smile!

We started work on our plants unit.  The kids are loving it, and I have to admit it is one of my favorite units to teach.

I will post some more pictures (and freebies) of our fun later this week, but in the meantime, here is a sight word game that we are using in our literacy work stations.

Click here to download this freebie from TPT.

I have been trying to create some free choice activities for our math stations.  I wanted activities that focused on number sense and could remain in our free choice baskets for an extended period of time.  Here's what I came up with to add last week.

This game is played just like traditional dominoes, but instead of the traditional dot patterns, students must find a match with various representations of the number (numerals, number words, objects, tally marks, dice ten frames, base ten blocks, addition, subtraction, and coins).  My kids absolutely love them.  And I love that they are practicing so many skills!

You can find them here at my TPT store.

Our second addition was Bingo Bonanza.

You can find this pack on TPT.

Again, the focus is on number sense.  Bingo is always a hit, and this pack includes bingo games that can be used throughout the year as students build number sense.  There are 8 bingo cards and caller cards for 11 different versions of bingo.  

Versions include:

Number Bingo

Ten Frame Bingo

Tally Mark Bingo

Addition to 5 Bingo

Subtraction within 5 Bingo

Mixed Addition and Subtraction 0-5 Bingo

Number Word Bingo

Addition to 10 Bingo

Subtraction within 10 Bingo

Mixed Addition and Subtraction 0-10 Bingo

Number Words

Bonanza Bingo (includes representations from all versions)

I have used these in small groups, and they are also out in our free choice baskets.  Since students will be self selecting versions during work stations, and to avoid a potential management nightmare, I printed each version on a different color.  

So far it has worked beautifully!

I would like to giveaway a copy of my Number Representation Dominoes and a copy of my Bingo Bonanza Mega Pack to 2 people.  

Here's how to enter:

*Follow my blog & leave me a comment

*Follow my TPT store & leave me a comment

*Blog about the giveaway for 2 additional entries

Easy peasy, right?  I will pick 2 winners on Friday night, April 20th.

I will have more plant ideas, pictures and freebies later in the week!  Wishing everyone a fabulous week!

Weather Activities (with feebies)

Our theme for the week is wild, wacky, wonderful weather. I wasn't going to make anything new for this week.  I have tons of weather related things, but when I started looking back through them there were a few skills that I really wanted to hit again before spring break.  For some of my little lovelies digraphs are finally starting to click, others can put the correct sound with the digraph, but they are only identifying the digraph when it's the initial sound.

Thus, the Rainy Day Digraph Sort was born.

Download this freebie from TPT

And some more freebies...

Download this freebie from TPT store

A simple write the room with weather words.  There is one set of words, but the cards are slightly different.  The blue cards have the entire word, and the red cards have blanks that they must fill in when writing the word. I am planning to hang both sets and then let the kids know which color cards they are looking for.  There is also a recording sheet that will work for either set of cards.

Due to the size of our school and the need to give us all plan time our kids have science as a special.  I miss teaching science and incorporating it with the rest of the learning that goes on in our room.  It has been ridiculously windy here lately, so I thought it would be fun to do something with the wind.  I saw a wind sort on Little Giraffes and decided to set it up as a station this week.

Download this freebie from TPT

I have just opened my TPT store.  Everything is free, so if you download any of these freebies I would really love for you to rate them and leave me feedback!  Pretty, pretty please!  You could even follow my store while you're there!  I have also uploaded some of the other freebies from my blog, and will try to get the rest uploaded this week.

St. Patrick's Day Fun

We have been having lots of fun this week.  We are fascinated with all things green, and sneaky little leprechauns!


I have been bad about snapping photos, but here's a peek at some of our literacy work stations.

Making a list of green things

Pot of Gold Mini book from Scholastic

See the post about these goodies here

We did our syllable sort in the pocket chart as a whole group and then students have been practicing during work stations.  Some groups started making their own syllable cards to add to our sort.  They are always so motivated to create and add to our current stations.

Syllable Sort can be found here

We are also doing a St. Patrick's Day themed write the room.

St. Patty Write the Room Recording Sheet

We also brainstormed adjectives to describe our sneaky little leprechaun friend and completed a bubble map that we will be using tomorrow for students who choose to write leprechaun stories during writer's workshop.

Leprechaun Bubble Map

And at our math work stations we continued with the theme.

Fill Your Pot from Musings of Me - can't seem to find her blog anymore :(

Surveys are always a hit, and I tried to sneak in a bit more practice with adding and subtracting fluently to 5.

Potato Survey

We also practiced ordering numbers in a pocket chart.  I use a multiplication pocket chart that I have folded down to make a hundred chart.  They can also practice counting by 5s and 10s in the smaller pocket charts.  The cards are sized smaller to fit the multiplication chart we use, but feel free to grab them below if you like.

St. Patty Number Ordering

We also sorted, graphed, and practiced addition with Lucky Charms.

Tomorrow and Friday we are hitting inferring hard as we follow clues hunting for the leprechauns pot of gold.  Hope everyone is having a great week!

St. Patty's Day Poem and Freebies

Our Dr. Seuss shared reading was such a hit that I decided to create one for St. Patrick's Day. 

 


Here is the pocket chart version:

I also made a student version:

If you download them, leave me some feedback and let me know, do you prefer Google Docs embedded in the post, or just a screen shot with link?  The embedded documents make posts seem ridiculously long sometimes, but if that doesn't bother anyone, embed I will!

I'm looking forward to some good ol' leprechaun mischief this week.  We will continue to work on inferring with a week long leprechaun hunt that focuses on setting.  This will be tricky, because the big kids are taking state tests again this week and we have to be SO quiet.  I'm thinking I need to come up with a backup set of clues so that if the weather is nice we can do a bit of hunting outside!

We will use adjectives to describe our sneaky friend and write about what it would be like to be a leprechaun.  We also have lots of St. Patty's Day math and literacy work stations.  

My bloggy goal for the week is to remember to take pictures throughout the week so I can share our fun.  Wish me LUCK with that one :)

Syllable Sorting Freebie

Just a quick post to share a syllable sorting activity that I made for literacy work stations next week.  Today while working on syllables during our daily auditory battery routine I realized that many of my ELL students are really having trouble with syllables.  We will continue our auditory work, but I wanted to give them some more practice in our literacy work stations.  This station has a pocket chart sort, a cut and glue sort, and an option for write the room.  For my kids that can clap out syllables they will also have the option to create their own syllable sort using blank syllable cards.

Download this freebie from TPT

Google Docs is being a bit weird tonight with the preview, so let me know if you are having trouble downloading it. 



We have also been doing a fun "Kiss Your Brain" activity with syllables.  We found 100 Hershey's Kisses on the 100th Day of school, but then I forgot to pass them out to the kids at the end of the day.  So I instituted the Kiss Your Brain Jar.  At the end of our literacy block I asked the kids to give me 4 syllable words.  If they came up with a word, we clapped it out and then wrote their name on the board.  At the end of the day, they kiss their brilliant brain and pick a Hershey Kiss from the jar.  This has been a huge hit!  I have kids running up to me in the morning to tell me 4 syllable words they came up with last night.  I think I am going to have to fancy up the jar, and change out the skill periodically, because my little accident has turned into a great motivator!

Read Across America Shared Reading

OK, I know everyone is busy preparing for the big week next week - or maybe you're super organized and you're all ready to go - but I wanted to share what we will be using for our shared reading next week.  Just makes me happy!

It was inspired by the fabulous Mrs. Parker on TBA last week.  She shared an adorable Read Across America Bookmark, which I promptly printed for my class.  If you haven't already, you must go and download them immediately!

As I was reading the bookmark I thought this would be the perfect shared reading for next week.  It has some easy, peasy sight words for my struggling ones and some vowel teams for my higher ones.


Anywhoo, with Mrs. Parker's permission, I have made a large version for shared reading and a corresponding pocket chart version.  

If I had a red pocket chart I could have achieved the same effect with only white cards :)


For the shared reading:  I printed odd numbered pages on white and even numbered pages on red. I put the sentences together in strips, arranged them on a sheet of poster board, and then traced a hat shape around them with a Sharpie.  I had to used a second sheet for the brim of the hat and just taped them together.


Here is the shared reading.


Here is the pocket chart version. (Again, I alternated the pages between white and red when I printed)


And last but not least, an individual student sequencing sheet.


Thank you Mrs. Parker for your inspiration!  Wishing everyone an amazing week of Seuss-filled fun and learning!

Valentine Activities and a Some Freebie Love!

I can't believe Valentine's Day will be here on Tuesday.  It seems crazy to be having a class party on Tuesday, but I guess it's better than Monday!  I loved this idea I saw on Mrs. Lee's Kindergarten, and I have been looking for a way to use it.

They are using Q-tips to represent teen numbers on ten frames.  Here is the Valentine version we are going to try in work stations his week.

And for my little lovelies that are still working on numbers to 10...

My students seem to think they are being subjected to unusual cruelty when we don't have a Write the Room station for either literacy or math, so I created a quick one for math - with a recording sheet.  We are working very hard on ways to make ten.

We are also going to give scrambled sight words a try this week.  I picked up some of the cute little plastic heart boxes that are everywhere.  I was just going to use my letter tiles, but they were to thick.  So I created some quickie letter tiles for our sight words, and a recording sheet.

Here are some scrambled color words we are going to try too! I am not sure how the color words will go so I created a black and white set and one that has colored letters, in case they need a little extra support!


Here's to a sweet week!