Big News... TPT is 3 Million Teachers Strong and they're having a sale to celebrate!

Good evening, friends! Have you heard the news? TPT just surpassed 3 million teachers strong! What an accomplishment! They're celebrating by offering up a huge discount February 27th-28th... and we're all joining in the party! My entire shop will be 20% off... which means, by using the promo code TPT3 at checkout, you can get 28% off everything! Such a great deal! I just posted my newest pack, March into Sight Words {Sentence Building Activities for March} filled with St. Patrick's Day, baseball, and spring themed sentence and sight word activities. You'll find tons of printables, centers, recording sheets, and more!

I'm excited to clear out some of the things I've been wanting to buy off of my wishlist, so this sale is coming at the perfect time! Click on the picture below to go straight to my store!

Valentine's Flashback!

I never got the chance to post about our classroom Valentine fun, so I'm doing a little flashback post tonight to share some of the activities we did! We participated in Valentine's themed centers all week both in math and reading and the kids were loving every second of it. I used a couple of activities from some fantastic units on TPT from Julie Lee and Growing Kinders - love them! Here's a photo peek at our math stations:

I'm cringing at the fact that I didn't get a picture of the finished product from the bottom right corner - this was the beginnings of the gift they were making for their families. They created a pattern with paper squares to make a frame; then I painted their handprints in the shape of a heart and attached a cute little poem at the bottom. They turn out adorable every year... wish I could share!

For our annual Valentine's Party, we ended up having to make a few changes from our usual plan. Every year we have a pancake party to go with the story If You Give a Pig a Pancake, but this year our district just made a new rule that there could no longer be any cooking in the classroom. So we had to nix that idea and we came up with a donut decorating station instead. The kids loved it and it was so much simpler than finagling cooking pancakes on the griddle!

At our party we have four stations that the students rotate around to. Normally I have set times and switch the groups at the same time, but for this one, since we were more strapped for time, I let the kids rotate to a different table on their own whenever they finished each one. Luckily I have a great group that can be trusted to handle it! The stations we had were:

1. Donut Decorating

2. Valentine's Heart Hat

3. Candy Heart Sort and Graph

4. Valentine's Writing Center - "Who do you love?"

Graph courtesy of Teacher Bits and Bobs

The kids also had decorated their own Valentine containers, which always turn out so adorable and creative every year. I had the kids put their mailboxes on their desks so that it would be easier for the kids to find the mailbox they needed to deliver their cards to. They were so excited! I got spoiled by my sweet little class with the most thoughtful gifts.

Such a fun day... and I love when Valentine's Day falls on a Friday... sugar the kids up and then send them home for the next 2 days!! ;)

My Journey Through HM Journeys for Kindergarten...

So this is my first year with a new reading curriculum; and my kinder team and I have been roughing our way through Houghton Mifflin Journeys as we figure out what works, what doesn't, and what we need to make to supplement our curriculum. While we were thrilled to finally get a curriculum that fit with the Common Core Standards, no reading curriculum is ever really one-size fits all. By and large, we do really like the stories that came with this edition, but there really isn't anything that came with it to use as a reading comprehension piece. Now, the good thing is, we have been making and creating our own resources for YEARS, so this is nothing new for us! My team has been collaborating all year as we all try to create things to kind of boost what are, um... shall we say... less than stellar "workbook" activities the curriculum comes with. I thought I'd share a few of those activities that we've come up with in case any of you were in the same boat with needing a few ideas and resources to make it a little more exciting!

A few weeks ago, we read the story "Dear Mr. Blueberry" by Simon James. This actually was one of my students' favorite books that we've read this year. It's a story about a girl who imagines she has a whale in her pond and proceeds to write letters to her teacher asking questions about whales. Her teacher writes back to her with answers and facts about whales.

After we read the story, I had each table group get together and decide on one question they wanted to ask about whales. I gave them a bit of discussion time and these are the questions that each table came up with:

Since the story is in letter format, I had each student write their table's question in friendly letter format using a little template I created.

Every year my kindergarten students seem to love all things non-fiction, so they ended up with some really great questions! I got out my stash of books about whales to see if we could use informational text to find out the answers.

We were able to find most of the answers to our questions in the books, but I wanted to present facts about whales visually too. I used one of my favorite animal non-fiction resources, the National Geographic Kids website!

                                        

Their "Creature Feature" section has tons of animals to choose from and every one I have gone to has had a video, fact pages, photos, and even sound bytes. The kids loved being able to watch a real whale in action. After we found the answers to our questions, the kids filled out another little page to show what they had learned, like this:

Then we put those two items, along with a super easy whale craft, to create the finished product to show what we had learned about whales!

I absolutely love how they turned out and I can't even tell you how much my students enjoyed this activity as well! Love it when a new idea turns out well... cause as every teacher knows, they don't always! Haha!

Fast forward to this week, where we read a story called "Atlantic", which was about the Atlantic Ocean. One of the comprehension focuses for the week was identifying Author's Purpose, which isn't always the easiest thing for my little kinder kids to understand. Throughout reading, we continually discussed what information the author was telling us, and used the big word "WHY" to think about why he would be telling us about such things. I wanted just a quick little activity for my students to show their thinking after reading the story, so I quickly made up these little labels for their interactive notebooks that helped them write and illustrate about the author's purpose.

As for sight words... hoo boy, there are a lot of words for them to learn in this program. As of last week, my students are now expected to learn 6 different sight words a week... SIX! It's hard to dive in and help the kids master them when we have a flurry of words all of a sudden, so I've had to come up with some new and creative ways for my kids to practice their new words. Some of them are tough for them to remember, too, like "who, what, with, how, where"... since they are all so similar. Back in December, I started putting together monthly sight word sentence activity packs to help them practice reading the words, writing the words, and building sentences in a fun way. I've since released a January/Winter pack and now have recently put my newest one for February, "Sweetheart Sentences", in my TPT store! It's been great to see my students using them and building their confidence with reading the sight words and putting mixed-up sentences together. Here's a sample of one of my January mixed-up sentence stations:

In my February pack, there are three different sets of these mixed-up sentences and two different sets of predictable sentence activities, all with various recording sheets! I've also included 22 different Read It, Write It, Build It, Draw It! printables that review every sentence used in the pack.

To make these sight word sentence building packs, I am following the sight word list from Journeys. However, you do NOT have to have Journeys to use these! All of these words are from regular Dolch lists as well, so you can use them however you can to best fit your needs. Click on the picture below to check it out in my little shop!

100th Day of School!

Oh my word... I have disappeared off the face of the blogging earth since December. You know how crazy it gets at the end of the semester.. we had 2 huge kinder events, then the holidays, plus I went out of town for New Year's! To make it up to you, my lovely readers, there will be a freebie in this post!

Today was our 100th Day of School... I can't believe it's already here. The first half of the school year went by SO fast. To celebrate the day, every activity we do in class is related to the 100th day. I introduced the "100 Word Challenge" to my students right at the beginning of the day. Any student that wrote 100 different words by the end of the day got a special 100th day sticker! Since they love all things write the room, they were all over it. It became their go-to fast finisher activity!

This friend decided to go with a more phonetic spelling approach on some of his words... oops!

Next we did our big "What I Think I Will Look Like When I'm 100..." craftivity. I got the idea from Deanna Jump forever ago on her original website and I absolutely love how they turn out. I wasn't able to get a picture of the ones my kids made this year (cause they were still drying in the hallway) but here's a favorite from last year:

Gotta love the hair and the pearls! After they dry, I'll cut them out, glue them to another piece of construction paper, and have the kids write their name into the phrase "_________ at 100!" They did such a good job creating them this year.

For the rest of the afternoon, we completed four different 100th day themed centers.

Froot Loop Necklace

100th Day Hat (template courtesy of Fran at Kindergarten Crayons!) The kids are given a sheet of 100 stickers to decorate the hat with.

100 Skittles Sort and Graph

Stamp to 100! They use bingo daubers to count and mark the gumballs all the way to 100.

Here's the freebie for you... if you'd like to grab this Stamp to 100 activity, click on the link HERE!

It really was an enjoyable day with my kinders. The centers ran so smoothly... I chalk that up to me having a small class for the first time ever in life (20 kids)! I think it's going to be a great second half of the year!

Show us what you bought and Giveaway WINNERS!!!

I don't know about you, but I definitely scored at the big TPT sale that happened this week. I'm so excited about the things I bought! It made it all the more sweet using the $50 TPT gift card I won from the wonderful ladies at Blog Hoppin', who I am linking up with today to show you what I bought!

I tried to plan ahead on some creations I'll be making in the next few months, so I stocked up on Winter, Valentine's Day, and St. Patrick's Day clipart from the amazing Creative Clips and Ashley Hughes! I also got 3 new activity packs -- Let's Get Crackin' Math and Literacy Centers from The Printable Princess, Winter Math and Literacy Packet from The Moffatt Girls (I have the Fall pack and used it ALL the time!), and Filling in the Gaps {The Ultimate CVC Practice Packet} from Cara Carroll! I'm so, SO excited to print everything and get it ready for my students to use. I think they'll love every bit of it! And now that I'm armed and ready with some new clipart, I'm ready to make some new stuff!

I held my first little blog giveaway a few days ago to celebrate my blog redesign, and the winners have been chosen courtesy of Rafflecopter! Here are the lucky winners -- if you see your name here, you should be expecting your prize shortly! :)

Congratulations everyone! And thanks for entering. :)

Very Merry Sentence Building Activities for December

Phew! I furiously worked late into the night last night to get my newest pack, Very Merry Sentence Building Activities for December, into my TPT shop before the big sale ended tonight!

This December themed packet is filled with activities to help your students practice and grow their skills in sentence structure, writing concepts, punctuation, sight words, and reading/tracking print! The activities included in this pack are:

Build-a-Sentence {building sentences with word cards}
-2 different sets included with 8 different sentences to build!
-recording sheets included for students to write the sentences they create

Predictable Sight Word Sentences {building sentences with sight words and predictable charts}
-2 different sets included
-multiple response sheets included to fit your students' needs
-students can build up to 10 different sentences

Read It, Write It, Build It, Draw It!
-18 different sentence building printables to work on sentence structure, spacing, punctuation, handwriting, and sight word skills.

Click on the picture below to go check it out in my store, especially while the big sale is still happening! It will be 20% off until midnight tonight.

 

Speaking of the big Cyber Monday/Tuesday TPT sale, it's still going on for a few more hours, and my entire store is 20% off. If you use the code CYBER, you'll get an extra 8% off! Click on the graphic below (made by Krista Wallden) to go to my little shop. :)

 

My big blog giveaway also ends tonight! There's still time to enter and win an Amazon gift card, TPT gift certificate, and some great units from some incredible bloggers. Click here to enter and win big!

I'm off to go empty my wishlist! Happy shopping!

December Currently, a Giveaway, and a SALE!

Happy December 1st, everyone! Is it just me, or did this Thanksgiving weekend totally fly by? I'm linking up with Farley at Oh Boy 4th Grade! for December's Currently linky.

 

 

{Listening}: I'm over at my parent's house, we just finished putting up the Christmas decorations, and to end the night we are watching the old Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Christmas special. It's a tradition! I'll always love watching it no matter how old I get!

 

{Loving}: My new favorite TV show is Sleepy Hollow. I love it! Ichabod Crane cracks me up, and I love the actor they got to play him. It's such a great show, even if it is creepy at times!

 

{Thinking}: I do not feel ready to get back to work tomorrow. Now that I've done all this Christmas-y stuff this weekend, it feels like I'm on Christmas break! I know it will go by fast, though, it always does!

 

{Wanting}: I've been working hard on a new Christmas product that I am so close to finishing. I really want to get it in my TPT shop for the big sale that starts tomorrow! It may not be on there till late Monday night, but I WILL get it done!!

 

{Needing}: My kinder team does Elf on the Shelf in our classrooms for the entire month of December, and tomorrow will be the day our elf makes its grand appearance! I still need to wrap up the box and make it all fancy to appear in my classroom tomorrow. I'm so excited for the kids to find out all about it! Best behavior plan ever...

 

{Favorite Tradition}: Every year since I was very young, my family has the tradition of putting up the Christmas tree/decorations starting the day after Thanksgiving. Even though I live on my own now, I still come over to their house and we keep the tradition alive! We light the Christmas tree scented candle, listen to Christmas music, and decorate the tree to our heart's content.

 

If you'd like to join in the fun, click here to link up and share what you're currently into!

 

Have you heard the news about my big blog redesign giveaway? It's going on right now, and you still have 2 days to enter and win an Amazon gift card, TPT gift card, or a bunch of December products from some really amazing bloggers! Click on the picture below to read all about it and enter to win!

 

Finally, have you heard about the huge TPT Cyber Monday sale that starts TOMORROW? My entire shop will be on sale for 20% off; and if you use the promo code CYBER, your purchases will be 28% off the regular price! I've been putting tons of stuff on my wishlist in preparation for the sale, and I can't wait to purchase some of those items I've had my eye on for awhile. Krista Wallden (from Creative Clips) made this great promo picture to use for the sale. Click on it to go straight to my store just in time for the sale to begin in just a few short hours! Happy shopping!