First TPT/Teachers Notebook product for sale!

I am extremely excited because I just put my first product up on TPT! My mom, who has been teaching 2nd grade for 35 years, and myself, who has been teaching kindergarten for 3 years, decided to put our collective brains together and start making products to share with other teachers. Our first product we are selling in the TPT shop is an ABC Order picture sort pack! It includes 8 picture sort card games, each with a different theme: school, miscellaneous, sweet treats, animals, Christmas, spring/plants, weather, and ocean! Each set comes with 2 different recording sheets for you to choose from depending on your students' skill levels and/or time allowed for centers! The great thing about having so many options in this game pack is that your kiddos can play it numerous times and it will seem like a "new" game each time!

Here is a little preview of what you get in the ABC Order Picture Sort Pack:

I hope y'all will go check it out! And even if you don't feel compelled to purchase anything, there are some free products in the store for you to download! And more free downloads in past posts in this blog, too! Here is the link to the product on TPT: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/ABC-Order-Picture-Sort-Literacy-Game-Pack. Here is the link to the product on Teacher's Notebook: http://www.teachersnotebook.com/product/caitlino/abc-order-picture-sort-literacy-game-pack. Thanks for looking!

It's the end of the year....

I really don't know how y'all are so diligent at updating your blogs all the time. I'll post an entry, then get swept up in the busy-ness of the school year and not even look at it again until next month. It's my goal to be better at that next year. Of course, next year I am going to have about double the responsibilities as I have the past three years, so I think my best laid plans may not come fully to fruition. Due to two teachers on my kinder team transferring to another school, I have now become the "veteran" teacher on my team in my FOURTH year of teaching. And we are having not one, but two brand new teachers take their place, so I'm really going to have to be on top of my own stuff so as to make sure I am fully available to help the newbies get settled in. I remember how amazing and wonderful my team was to me in my first year of teaching, so I hope I can even do half as helpful a job as they all did for me.

That being said, I took a bit longer getting checked out of my classroom at the end of the year than usual and took the time to really go through and organize everything. I figured by the time August rolled back around I'd be much happier knowing a lot of those little things were finished already. I have a feeling this summer won't be as relaxing as I'd like because I'm feeling like I have to keep thinking about all of the things I need to take care of for the beginning of the year. I even brought some of my teacher's edition reading and math books home for the summer in case I got inspired to create some new activities for the first few weeks of the year.

This year I had one of the toughest classes I have ever experienced in regards to behavior. Let's just say my little lovely class was a bit, ahem, renowned throughout the school. But the strangest thing about that is that I think I miss those kids more than I have ever missed a class in my life. The extreme "pulling my hair out" feelings I felt throughout the year must have created extreme love for them in my heart! They were such a loving bunch. Kindergarten is the most wonderful grade to teach. The kids just absolutely adore you and love school with everything they have. You can make them excited about ANYTHING! (Hint: Tack on the word "special" and they'll be all over it. Special new notebooks, special new pencils.... they'll eat it up... even if it really isn't all that exciting!)

I'll miss my kiddos from this year, but the great thing about teaching is, once they're your kids, they're ALWAYS your kids... no matter how old they get. Is it not the best thing ever when your old students come back to visit?

One thing I will try not to think about: Beginning of the year Kindergarten students. Yikes. /shudder ;)

Happy summertime!

--Caitlin

Whether the Weather...

I've been wanting to post this stuff for awhile, but I always seem to get sidetracked with... teaching! As we all know, it feels like the work never ends. Oh well, better late than never! Our reading unit just recently ended with a weather theme that I am going to pick back up when Spring rolls around... though it already feels like it is here in Arizona, we don't really have a winter... ha! I wanted my kids to keep a daily weather observation journal, so prior to starting that we began to brainstorm a weather word wall. I was so impressed with the vocabulary they came up with! We brainstormed 3-4 words a day, added them to a sentence stem, and the kids read and wrote the words.

When we began to do our weather observations, my kids used the word wall WONDERFULLY and their writing came out so good. We went outside everyday and I videotaped the kids with a microphone (a pencil topped with a styrofoam ball!) as they pretended to be "meteorologists". I created this journal for the kids to use - they had to choose one weather "word of the day" to write in the box at the top of the daily journal entry. They then have to use that word at least one time in their actual writing entry. Feel free to download by clicking the link above the pictures:

Google Docs: Weather Journal (Clipart courtesy of Scrappin Doodles/Fonts from Kevin & Amanda)

In an attempt to get my kinders to start doing more independent work, we read the story "What Will the Weather Be Like Today?" by Paul Rogers. After we read it whole group, I split the kids up into 5 separate groups, gave them their own copy of the book, and gave them one certain page to study and describe to me all the different picture clues they saw to let them know what kind of weather day it was. After they found all of their clues, each group created their own poster to describe what they would do on their certain weather day. I wasn't sure how the whole small group work would fly, considering they hadn't produced many projects on their own, but they did a great job! They all created their respective posters together and then presented it to the class. I was very happy with how they worked together. Here is one of the posters my Sunny Day group created: 

Most kids just drew detailed pictures, but a lot of them wrote sentences describing what they did. Love it!

I began creating my own weather unit with some math and literacy games that I hope to get out on TPT come Springtime. In the meantime, I used a couple of games I created. One of them was the "Striking Short -I" word sort. They loved this game! After they sorted all of the lightning bolts, they used the recording sheet to write the words in the right word family section. Here's a glimpse of what it looks like:

You can download the game for free here on Google Docs! (Clipart courtesy of Scrappin Doodles/Fonts from Kevin & Amanda): Striking Short I! Word Family Sort

Before I end this I just wanted to send a huge thank you to Deedee Wills at Mrs. Wills' Kindergarten and a host of others for having a February contest -- I was one of the lucky winners and I got 7 FABULOUS February units to use in my classroom. I was able to use a few of the literacy activities from some of the ladies' units and my kids about died over them. Thank you Deedee and your fellow bloggers for having such a generous contest!!

First week back...

So the first week back from break is over. And I must say, it has happened. Yes, again. What is it, you ask? Christmas. Break. Magic. Perhaps you all have heard of this wonderful occurrence. Christmas Break Magic is the thing that happens while the students are gone so that when they come back, they are ready to rock and roll and get down to business in class. I don't know what it is, but it always happens! The first or second day back I'll find myself looking around the classroom and realizing, "WOW! Everyone is in their seats! WOW, I am not running myself ragged going around to nearly every student who is needing help or off task! WOW, they can do more independent work and are doing it quietly!"

It's amazing, it really is.

I love Kindergarten, but I REALLY love post-December kindergarten. I can do so many more cool things with my kiddos just because they are finally ready to do them!

We are in our weather reading theme for the next 3 weeks, so that's what most of my posts will be about in the meantime. We started weather observation journals and their writing has grown so much! Every morning we've been brainstorming different weather describing words to put in a sentence stem: "I like _________ days." They nearly filled up the whole big pocket chart with their words they came up with. They've been using a ton of them in their writing as well, so I'm loving what the chart has done for their vocabulary.

On Thursday we watched a video about temperature on brainpopjr.com and then went outside with real thermometers to check our own weather temperature that day. They were having the best discussions with each other about what was happening and why.

I have no pictures this time, sadly! I never think about it until after the activity is done. I've gotta be better at that!

Have a great long weekend! And hello to my new followers! :)

"Currently" linky party!

Oh Boy 4th Grade is having a linky party about all of the things that are "currently" going on in your life!

Go join in the fun at Oh Boy 4th Grade!

Happy New Year!

Oh, I've neglected my sad little blog for two months. But now I'm back, hoping to get ahead of myself to post on a more consistent basis. I start school again on Monday after a rather glorious break and I am hoping that my little kinders will come back, calmed down, and ready to be more independent workers! It has happened that way the past 2 years with my kiddos, so I am keeping my fingers crossed. It really is an amazing thing. All of a sudden I'll set the kids to a task, then look around and realize no one has come up to ask me a million questions, no one is out of their seats, and I am not having to whirl around the room 24/7 helping every student with something different. It's a wonderful thing, I tell you. They grow up over Christmas!

Here's an overview of what I did with my kinder kids during the month of December:

Our entire Kinder team decided the do the Elf on the Shelf with our classes, and it was such a blast. The kids LOVED it... and "Jordan" (as my kids voted on for his name) was a good motivator for good behavior! Every day the elf moves to a different location (after he returns from the North Pole to tell Santa who was naughty and nice, of course) so the kids would pile into the room in the morning on a desperate search for Jordan. And it didn't matter where he was, they laughed hysterically about it. You can register your elf's information online, so we thought up facts and descriptions to say about our elf and watched a video from Santa about what his job was. Every so often, I'd have "Jordan" bring a special surprise or treat from the North Pole. We made peppermint floats one Friday afternoon - combine ginger ale and vanilla ice cream, shake green or red sugar crystals on top and then stick a small candy cane on the side of the cup. So fun! Another day he brought a box of candy canes, and on the last day before break, he brought a huge present - a package of play food for our kitchen/home living center, since it had literally nothing but the scraggly toys that came with whoever the previous owner was. Haha. We also kept a journal to write about where our elf was each day. There are so many fun things you can do with it! I highly recommend it to any moms or teachers out there.

                                       

The day Jordan the Elf dropped off some candy canes, I decided to do a little candy cane activity that can be found in Deanna Jump's Christmas unit on TPT (which is fantastic, by the way). We taste-tested our candy canes and then made a web of all the different words we could use to describe our candy canes - I was so impressed at the words they came up with! We then completed the candy cane graph/poem from Deanna's packet - I love how it turned out! Only one student didn't like how they tasted! We analyzed our data (sorry, didn't get a pic of that) and made our own graphs to go along with the big one.

Since we were in school an extra week longer than usual, it gave me tons more time to plan holiday-themed centers. I used a couple of activities that I got last year from Cara Carroll - Santa number word match and gingerbread word family game. The kids loved them, Cara, so thank you for sharing! They also created candy cane patterns using paper squares.

Near the end of our holiday unit, I came up with an Elf on the Shelf writing craftivity. The kids had to write a letter to our Elf to tell him why he should tell Santa that they should be on the "good list". Some of their responses were hilarious! One kid said, "Because I never get spankin's at home!" and others included "I get a green light every day!" and "I won't hit my sister anymore." HA! Very persuasive. ;)

 Here is an "in-progress" elf. They turned out SO cute. When I get a chance, I'll post the tracers for you guys.

I'm putting together a weather unit that I'm hoping to get posted for my first product to sell. You can do so many fun things with weather; I love it every year!

I am going to enjoy my last day off tomorrow with some church, football, and friends. Oh and as an aside, I am still relishing my amazing night at the Phoenix Coyotes game tonight - I got to witness our captain, Shane Doan, score his first ever hat trick. It was an epic night! Go Yotes!

"I'm thankful!"...for this linky party!

The lovely ladies over at the fabulous blog What the Teacher Wants are hosting a Thankful linky party! Such a perfect idea for connecting with others with Thanksgiving only 3 days away (um...what?!).

1. What are you thankful for in your classroom?
I am super thankful for my amazing, wonderful kinder team. We have so much fun and work so well together that it makes this job much easier! I don't know what I'd have done without them my first few years of teaching; they are wonderful. As far as actually IN the classroom, I am so thankful for my projector and my document camera. I don't know HOW I ever taught kindergarten without a document camera with all the modeling that is required. It's my lifesaver. My projector allows me to use technology with my kiddos to my little heart's content! I am also so thankful for my students. They can drive me crazy at times, but I love 'em to bits.

2. What person are you most thankful for?
I'm going to cheat and change person to <b>people</b>, because I am so blessed to have the most amazing family in the world. My mom, dad, brother and I love spending time together and we laugh about all our little inside jokes we have about everything. God has definitely blessed me with my great family and I'm so thankful that we are so close with one another.


3. What 3 blogs are you most thankful for?
I am definitely thankful for Deanna Jump's blog. Hers was the first teaching blog I ever came across and I was so amazed by her incredible activities and lessons she did with her students. It opened me up to a whole new world of ideas and things to do with my kinder kiddos and I thank her greatly for sharing with us!

I'm also thankful for Cara's blog at The First Grade Parade. Her creations are really second to none. I'm so grateful that she has shared so many wonderful things with us for free and I REALLY wish she taught kindergarten because I totally love all of her ideas but can't use them all in kindergarten! ;) She inspires me to make fabulous supplemental materials for my class and I love seeing what new activity/craftivity she comes up with next. Love, love her ideas.

I'm also thankful for Fran over at Kindergarten Crayons. How she finds time to teach AND make fabulous resources is beyond me! I'm so thankful that she is so generous with her wonderful creations and allows us to download them all. And the thing is... every single thing she creates is FANTASTIC!

I love so many other great blogs, so this is just a little highlight of the best of the best. Thanks to everyone out there in teaching blogland for sharing, talking, and laughing!

4. What guilty pleasure are you most thankful for?
I must say, I am a girl who is a sucker for sports. HUGE Diamondbacks and Coyotes fan. My family has Cardinals season tickets. I live for March Madness. I watch NHL on the Fly and MLB Tonight for fun. If I am at home and one of my beloved teams is playing on TV, I'll be the first one turning it to that channel. Sports are such an amazing thing to be a part of; and I love both watching and attending the games. I love it and am so thankful for it! And another one that is even more of a guilty pleasure, but I'm not sure I'm thankful for it... BRAVO reality TV shows. Seriously every single one. Real Housewives? Sucked in. Flipped Out? Gotta watch. Top Chef... don't even get me started, love love it.

5. What are you most thankful for? 
I'm most thankful for my God who blesses me beyond measure and loves me. I'm thankful for my family, friends, my job, co-workers, and every single student that has ever walked through my classroom door.


Go join the linky party over at What the Teacher Wants! Super fun! Happy Thanksgiving. :)