Blog Hoppin' Teacher Week: WHO!

Hi, everyone! Try not to be too overcome with shock... this is my second blog post of the day! I'm linking up with the ladies at Blog Hoppin' for Teacher Week 2014. Today's topic... all about me!

I don't usually share too much about my personal life on here, but I've shared glimpses here and there. Here are 10 things you might not know about me!

Thanks to Amy from Step into Second Grade for the great graphic!

It was hard to come up with the 10 things I wanted to share! Hopefully this gives you more of a glimpse into my life. It's been fun reading about all of the other bloggers who have linked up... you see the great things they have going on in their classrooms, but it's awesome to see what kind of people they are outside of school as well!

Click on the banner below to link up with Blog Hoppin' and share more about YOU!

GoNoodle Brain Break Blitz!

Have you ever been entrenched in the middle of a teaching day only to find yourself struggling to keep your students' attention or keep them in their seats? Have you exhausted all of your usual "attention getters"? (I'm looking at you, clap-clap-clap clap clap and "1,2,3 Eyes on Me"). Sometimes kids just need a little brain break to get refocused on their learning - that's where GoNoodle comes in! GoNoodle is a website that offers free brain break videos that help channel classroom energy for good. You'll find 2-5 minute video brain breaks for three different main categories: calm, energize, and focus. It's super easy to sign up - you just fill out a small information form, choose a class champ, and voila! You're on your way to GoNoodle brain break fun.

I started using GoNoodle in my classroom last year after taking a district PD class on brain breaks in the classroom. The second I introduced it to my students, they were hooked, and so was I!

This month I'm connecting with the fine folks at GoNoodle and am linking up with the GoNoodle Blog for their August Brain Break Blitz!

Click on the picture to go to the Brain Break Blitz and link up!

 

Here are three brain break questions to get the inside scoop on why I started using GoNoodle in my classroom....

 

1. Why are brain breaks so important for today's kids?

I believe kids learn best by DOING. I've been teaching kindergarten for six years now; and every group is the same. They cannot sit for long periods of time and you only have a short window to capture their attention on what you are teaching, especially at the beginning of the year. Keeping students engaged and involved in their learning is so important! Sometimes kids just need a little extra boost to get refocused and ready for the next task at hand. This is where brain breaks come in! It's a way to get the wiggles and fidgets out after doing a long activity; or a way to calm down and get ready for the rest of the day when they come in from an energetic, active recess outside. It really makes a difference when my kiddos can take a brain break, get their bodies moving, and then are ready for focused learning once more!

 

2. If you were stranded on an elementary classroom island and could only bring 3 brain breaks, what would they be?

That's an easy one. A class favorite is the "Let it Go" music video from Frozen! I also love the Dinosaur Stomp from KooKoo Kangaroo. For calming brain breaks, I love the Safe and Calm video. I tried that video after my kids were particularly wiggly after coming in from recess and it did wonders for them! They were ready to go for the rest of the day.

 

3. GoNoodle can be a great motivator! Share a tactic or idea for using brain breaks to engage the classroom.

GoNoodle has been an amazing behavior motivator for my students! I tell them that they can earn GoNoodle time every time they follow directions as a group, and it is amazing to see how quickly they shape up! This morning I had to give my poor kiddos a big pre-test and they were going to have to be in their seats, and quiet, no less, for a long period of time. I told them if they tried their best, they'd earn GoNoodle time, and they did SO well... hard for little kinder babies to do at this time of year! I actually let them have two brain breaks in a row and they couldn't contain their excitement as we watched our GoNoodle meter inch closer to the end! After completing the two brain breaks, my kids were able to get all their energy out and were calm and ready for our next lesson of the day. Without those brain breaks, it would have been tough to keep them totally engaged!

 

Do you use GoNoodle? Link up with their blog for the August Brain Break Blitz and share ideas for how YOU use brain breaks in the classroom! Click on the Brain Break Blitz photo at the top of my post; or you can click here to join in!

 



TPT Back to School Sale! It's Finally Here!

Big news, if you haven't heard (or have been living under a rock)... the TPT Back to School Sale 2014 is ON! My entire TPT shop is on sale for 20% off and you can get an even bigger discount by using the promo code BTS14!

 

 Thanks to Krista Wallden for the great graphic!

 

I recently put 3 brand spankin' new products in my little shop...

 

 

Here's a closer look at the CVC Sentence Snapshots pack... I just uploaded this product today! Click on the picture to take you straight to the product page in my TPT store.

 



You'll also find my top 3 best selling products on sale! Just click the picture to go to my little TPT shop.

 

Looking ahead to prep for the entire year? My students love using my monthly sentence building activities... it makes them feel like "big kids" to build and read sight word sentences on their own!

 



 

PS: The price will go up when the October and November packs are added!

 

If you need a few ideas for back to school, look no further than these!

 

Counting Tools for Back to School {A Counting & Cardinality Activity Pack}

 

 

Easy as ABC! {Alphabet Activity Pack} 

Now, I'm off to clear a little space off of my little ol' wishlist! I have a feeling I am going to end up with a lot of new clip art sets and other fun activity packs to start my kinder kiddos' year off great! What are some products you've been eyeballing and waiting for the sale to arrive? Share them in the comments... I always love to hear about more great teaching tools!

Double Linky Duty! Five for Friday and Currently August

Phew! This week has been so busy in preparation for the first day of school! It is coming up fast (Wednesday for me). That's why I've been MIA for awhile... but today I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday!

For the past couple of weeks, I've been hard at work getting my classroom ready for my new batch of kinder kiddos. Is it just me, or does it always seem like you have all the time in the world, and then you look up and Meet the Teacher Night is staring you in the face? Well, that's my world right now. Here's what my classroom looked like when I first came back from summer break. I'll be doing a classroom reveal in a later blog post, so stay tuned!

I went to Lakeshore the other day (LOVE!) and, after two separate trips, this is the haul I came out of there with! Half chart paper, velcro squares, alphabet stickers, nametags, birthday pencils, 2 sets of alphabet stamps, labels, decorative cutouts for my students' cubbies, and (this was a splurge) magnetic display trays! I also picked up a couple of games I thought my students would love. How fun does the Launch and Learn Rhyming Words game look? The kids push a button and a disc comes flying out at them. Then they have to match it to the rhyming word on their game board. I can't wait to try it with them!

I decided my word wall needed a little revamping so I took to TPT in search of some printable letters and found these adorable chevron ones from a fellow Arizona blogger, I Heart My Kinder Kids! They are FREE in her TPT store! It made my word wall look much prettier. Confession: My letters before had Comic Sans font. Gasp.

If you're wondering what this is, it's a little SNEAK PEEK at a craftivity from my newest pack coming out on TPT... I am SO excited to share it with you! I have seriously worked all summer on this unit... I'll have it up this weekend for sure, so keep an eye out!

The blog world has had its mind blown today because two amazing things happened on the same day... Friday AND August 1st... which means I'm also linking up with Farley for her monthly currently fun! Ha!

{Listening}: This is one of my favorite songs ever. I think this was the first Florence and the Machine song I'd ever heard and I was hooked after hearing it!

{Loving}: Okay. Let me tell you about my favorite book series in the entire world: Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. If you haven't read these books, please go RUN and get them!!! They are amazing. Myself and others I know who are great fans of the series are so excited because they are making it into a TV show - what an amazing thing to get to see your favorite book come to life! And every clip/trailer I've seen looks amazing. I can't wait to watch!

{Thinking}: I thought I was all ahead of myself cause I've been going in and out of my classroom for the past two weeks... but then an unexpected all day training the day of Meet the Teacher night derailed my plans somewhat! So now I have to go in on Saturday to finish up some stuff just so I won't stress about it the day of. It's actually kind of nice to go on the weekend every once in awhile because there are no other teachers around to chat with and distract me... you know how we are!!!

{Wanting}: Chocolate. I've been living at the gym all summer and watching what I eat with the My Fitness Pal app... but now that the first week of school is approaching I think I deserve a little chocolate to get me through it all. ;)

The rest of the stuff is all pretty self-explanatory! I hope you'll link up with both Kacey and Farley for both of their linky fun! Have a great weekend!

Big Giveaway with Searching for Teacher Balance!

Good morning! As teachers, we always get excited when a fellow colleague reaches a goal or a milestone... and it's no different in the blogging world! Sweet Marcy over at Searching for Teacher Balance is celebrating her 1 year Blogiversary! Yay! She's throwing a huge giveaway with tons of amazing bloggers who have some incredible items up for grabs - many of them winner's choice! The giveaways are broken down by grade level - you can enter one, or ALL! If you enter the kindergarten giveaway, you could win my Summer Lovin' Sentences pack:

Read the post from Marcy's blog below to enter and WIN! Good luck!!

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I seriously can't believe it has been a whole year since I decided to join this amazing teacher-blogger community.  This year has taught me a ton about challenging myself as a teacher, while staying true to myself.  There have been plenty of hurdles which we know are far too normal in our profession, but it is readers and bloggers like you that have allowed me to keep going.  As a way to say thank you for all of your support I am hosting a huge giveaway, which is only possible because of the amazing bloggers below.  Be sure to enter and tell your friends to enter; there are so many amazing products being given away.

Winner's Choice from:

Searching for Teacher Balance

Learning to be Awesome

Journey of a Substitute Teacher

An Apple for the Teacher

Sparkling in Second

Creative Lesson Cafe

Polka Dot Kinders

Table Talk with C and C

A Rocky Top Teacher

Pawsitively Teaching

Just a Primary Girl

Mrs. 3rd Grade

Mrs. Price's Kindergators

Specific Products from: 

What I Have Learned - Reading Comprehension and Strategy Posters

Positively Learning - A Sentence A Day

Tailor Made Teaching - Arctic Animals Nonfiction Close Read Bundle

Seconds at the Beach - Common Core Building Complete Sentences Mini-Unit with Pigeon by Mo Willems

The Kinder Garden  - Summer Lovin' Sentences

Wiggling Scholars - Review Writing Units  

Easy Teaching Tools - Family Literacy and Homework Ideas

The giveaway is broken down into grade levels/bands.  You can enter 1, 2, or all of them.

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a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thank you again for all of your support this year!  Here is to many more!

Time for School! {Predictable Sentence Builders for Little Learners}

I'm excited to say that I just finished my August/September sight word sentence builders pack just in time for back to school!

Click on the cover page to go to the product in my TPT store!

This pack is slightly different from my other sentence building backs in that it is specifically designed for beginning of the year kindergarteners. At the beginning of the year, we teach them how words make up sentences and how they can be put together using capital letters, finger spaces, and a period at the end. Predictable sentence activities are perfect for teaching these concepts!

Predictable sentences are sentence stems that use the same words every time with one different word that changes to make a new sentence. For example:

This helps students create a sentence that makes sense using repetitive words to help them get their sentence started. It also helps them gain confidence to write their own sentences during independent writing.

In this pack, there are 2 different versions of sentence building activities that you can choose from depending on your students' needs. The first version has each word split up into separate cards for your students to put in order to create a sentence, like you see my students working on here in the photo below:

The other version has the entire sentence in order on strips where the students will put the sentence stem in the pocket chart first and then add the picture and punctuation cards at the end; as shown in the sample below:

Pocket Chart clip art by Teacher Laura!

This version can be very helpful to students who struggle with putting the words in order!

Each set has multiple printable recording sheets for your students to complete once they have built all of the sentences. There are differentiated options that will fit most of your students' needs!

Also included in this pack are 20 different Read It, Write It, Build It, Draw It! mixed up sentence printable activity sheets! My students absolutely love completing these and love to show me their detailed illustrations! Here's a sample of one of these from my Snow Many Sentences {Sentence Building Activities for January} pack:

Want to check out Time for School in more detail? Click on the preview picture below to go straight to the product in my TPT store and you can see exactly what you'll get with this pack! These sight words fit exactly with the HM Journeys program... but you can use them with any curriculum as they are words from the Dolch list as well!

And guess what? My entire shop is on sale for 20% off through today... including this brand new pack! I'll be adding it to my Sight Word Sentence Builders for the Year BUNDLE next week... that's where you can find all of my sight word sentence builder packs for a discounted price! It's the lowest price it's ever gonna be right now... after I add this one, the price will go up a bit! So feel free to check it out and see if that floats your boat! 

Five for Friday and a 4th of July Sale!

Happy 4th of July, friends! I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday!

I signed up at the gym this summer because I am determined to tone up and lose a few pounds over summer break! The great thing about the gym I go to is that a bunch of friends go, too, so we are keeping each other motivated and going together! The photo below is from one of my favorite classes... we always end up using tons of different pieces of equipment so it keeps it fresh and fun!

One of my favorite things in life is hockey... specifically Phoenix Arizona Coyotes hockey! They threw a big NHL Draft Party at the arena and it was super fun! We all got to go on a behind the scenes locker room tour, sit on the benches, go in the penalty box, sit on the zamboni... etc! 

I was blessed to attend an Arizona teacher blogger meet-up this week! It was so great to meet all of these wonderful ladies. Callie from Teach-a-Roo made us all these adorable nametags and we went to the cutest little restaurant downtown! It was fun chatting and getting to know everyone!

I finally bundled all of my Sight Word Sentence Builder packs! Each pack includes monthly themed sentence building pocket chart centers, predictable sentence activities, multiple printables and recording sheets for both, and tons of Read It, Write It, Build It, Draw It printables for every sentence! It's a $54 value... but you can get it for just $30 right now - the price will go up gradually as I add the last 3 units, so grab it now for super cheap - I'm adding August/September this weekend!

To celebrate the 4th of July weekend, I'm throwing a big sale in my TPT shop! Everything is 20% off through tomorrow - including the sentence builders bundle! Just click on the picture below to go straight to my store. Everyone have a safe and fun Independence Day!