Must-Have Monday : {Teacher Week}

Teacher Week is back! I'm linking up with Blog Hoppin' for the first day, Must Have Monday! As I was browsing through some others that have linked up, I noticed we had a ton in common with our teaching necessities!

Number one, hands down is my document camera. How on earth did I ever teach without that thing?? It is such a lifesaver for someone who has to model EVERYTHING in kinder.

I love to use the Papermate Flair pens! They are the best to write with and come in so many fun colors!

And while we are on the writing utensil topic, I use the Sharpie chart markers all the time! They are perfect for making anchor charts and other poster creations.

A must have is also my flash drive and laptop. I am constantly perusing blogland and pinterest for ideas and it makes it so easy to save things directly to my flash drive so I know where to find it again!

I'm also fairly certain I can't live without velcro dots. I've used them for my calendar, ten frame board, and tons of other stuff for easy hanging. Makes life easier when the calendar numbers won't stick to magnetic surfaces through your very thickly cardboarded calendar. :)

One thing that my kiddos can't live without is the Dr. Jean CDs. I swear she has a song for everything! This year's class begs me to play her songs every time we go sit on the carpet together. She is a genius...

My neighbor teacher and I share an office that connects both of our classrooms together; and at any given point in time there will be leftover snacks hidden away that didn't get used. Our favorites? Cheez-Its and Skittles. Bad for the waistline, great for the tastebuds. ;)

                            

Hope you'll join in! I promise after this teacher week I will actually post things that are happening in my classroom... not just linky parties. But this one is too fun not to join in!

Sneak a Peek at my Purchases! Linky Party

I've linked up with Blog Hoppin' to show you the awesome stuff I bought during TPT's Back to School sale!

I definitely took advantage of the great sale, but I always end up regretting NOT buying a bunch of things too! Oh well, I guess I can't go too crazy with purchases. :)

In my district we have brand new benchmarks for kindergarten. Normally we always just have a pre-test and a post-test, but now they are changing it so that they have 3 separate benchmarks to be given 3 separate times of the year. They recently informed us what was going to be on the 1st quarter math benchmarks and we flipped out! Due to the new common core standards, everything is getting shoved up and we are having to teach concepts earlier than ever but have been given no new curriculum to accomplish it. But lo and behold, some of my favorite bloggers came to our rescue and I bought 3 math-related units to help boost our kiddos' skills and get them to even higher levels of thinking. I'm so excited to get the ball rolling!

The first thing I bought was Deedee Wills' Complete Set of Daily Math Journals. I've had my eye on these for awhile (cause I seriously love everything she does) and last year we really implemented interactive math journals into our schedule so this was the perfect addition! I love that her Aug/Sep prompts are simple enough to help my kinders get into the basic routine (barring kiddos skipping ahead to random pages every 5 seconds)!

I also grabbed Deanna Jump's Math Magic: Common Core Games and Activities Pack. I don't know how I missed this before, but I didn't know it existed until I went scouring through her store to see what new fandangled thing I wanted to buy! Glad I found it, I think it will work perfectly!

Finally, I bought Growing Kinders' Fun With Numbers (Part 2) Pack. Those dastardly teen numbers are always so tricky for kinders to grasp and I think this will be an amazing resource. The circle maps included will go perfectly in our interactive notebooks!

Want to see what other treasures people found this weekend? Go link up here at Blog Hoppin' to join in!

TPT Back to School Sale!

Good news! The annual Teachers Pay Teachers back to school sale is on from now through tomorrow, August 13th! Now my humble little shop has only one thing for sale thus far, but I'd be honored if you checked it out! I have an ABC Order Picture Sort Literacy Game pack with 8 different games and 2 different personalized recording sheets for each themed game! Here's a preview of what is included below - click the picture to get a larger view!

To go see my TPT shop, click here! There are also a few free downloads on there you can take advantage of - a color word match game and an uppercase/lowercase monster letters center! Thanks for looking! And don't forget to use the code BTS12 for all your purchases during this sale to get up to 28% off at different stores! I know that's what I'm about to go do!

Currently Mustach'd

Is it really that time already? Last month flew by. I can't believe the first day of school is in 2 days! My next post will feature my classroom with tons of pictures, but in the meantime, here is Farley's "Currently" link-up for August! And it is covered by a fabulous mustache. So why wouldn't you want to join in? Check it out here: Currently Mustach'd!

P.S. I have no clue why the picture keeps going all the way to the right of the page! I guess it's like teaching, things never go the way you plan! Ha!

Tell me more, Tell me more!! {Linky Party}

Hello friends! Today I am linking up with Amy Lemons for her "Tell me more!" linky party to share a little bit more about myself. Go check it out here to join in! It's fun learning about everyone's lives and interests. :)

1. I was born and raised in Arizona. FYI: It's HOT. But I can't imagine living anywhere else!

2. I am the oldest in my family, I have one younger brother. My family is super close and amazing.

3. Every few years my parents would save up and take us on these amazing cross-country road trips. We'd drive the entire way and I saw so many incredible places along the way. It made some of the best memories of our lives!

4. That being said, one of my favorite places to be is Disneyworld. I was fortunate enough to travel there with my family for 4 years in a row during my college years. It's so magical!

5. I played college basketball for 2 years in Nebraska on a full athletic scholarship. I never thought I would get the chance to play past high school, so it was a really cool experience. I played on the team that won its 10th straight conference championship.

6. My favorite, FAVORITE book is Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. She has 6 other books in the series which are equally as incredible and is currently writing the 8th book! But I have to wait till 2013 to read it (not fair). Any other Jamie/Claire fans out there?

7. My favorite movie is It's a Wonderful Life, which also happens to star my favorite actor, Jimmy Stewart. I love old movies.

8. I am a Christian; and my relationship with God is one of the most important things in my life.

(graphic courtesy of Cara Carroll)

9. I am a HUGE sports fan, especially of hockey and baseball. I will cheer, win or lose, for my hometown Coyotes, Diamondbacks, Cardinals, Suns, and Arizona State Sun Devils. And... I will be the first person to turn on the game if it is on TV, probably before even any guy would get to it. Haha. I have gotten to witness many amazing feats in person at many of these sporting events!

(Me with one of my favorite players, Ian Kennedy (left) and Bryan Shaw.)

10. In keeping with the sports theme, I have the honor of saying that I have been CIRCLED WITH THE TELESTRATOR on TV during a D-backs game by one Mark Grace. My sign said, "I love it when Gracie reads promos!" It was referring to an inside joke the TV broadcasters had running at the time...

11. I love music. I sing on the worship team at my church. My favorite bands are Switchfoot, The Civil Wars, and Jars of Clay. Here's a fun pic with my favorite band ever! (Switchfoot)

12. I play a sport called pickleball. It has a silly name, but it is so much fun! I would best describe it as a cross between tennis, badminton, and ping pong. I've played in competitive tournaments and won gold, silver, and bronze medals!

Well, that's enough about me! Link up over at Step Into Second Grade to find out about more of your bloggy friends!

Lakeshore, Target, and Kohl's finds this summer!

Well today I took the first of many back to school shopping excursions and came home with lots of goodies! Since a lot of my bloggy buddies have been posting their new finds, I thought I'd share mine too! I haven't been back to school to assess the situation that is my classroom (aka: hot mess) so I've held off on buying too much stuff until I see exactly what I need for the year.

In the meantime, though, I took an excursion to Lakeshore, Walmart, Kohl's and Target and found some great stuff!

Here's the haul from Lakeshore in the picture below. A ton of this stuff I got in the clearance section! They are also having a huge storewide 20% off sale until after Labor Day. The reusable bag was free -- woohoo! I found 6 non-fiction books for $1.99 apiece about various subjects we learn about and I am so excited to use them. I don't know why, but every year my kids love non-fiction learning. I was able to use 2 coupons on the games I got - the green box on the left ("Pop and Win Letter Sounds Bingo") is the one I'm most looking forward to showing my kids how to play. Anyone remember the board game Trouble? Well it comes with 3 different letter dice inside the popper thing - so the kids press down to pop it and roll the die to show which beginning sound they need to identify! How fun is that? The "Sight Word Steps" activity box on the right are non-slick nylon circles to put on the floor and play sight word games with. There is a pocket on the front of each circle to slip a word card inside, and I am also planning on making my own cards for different subjects to play other games with too! I'm excited to come up with different ways to use those...

Lastly, I found the Creative Teaching Press (love them) Chocolate Hot Spots circle stickers in the clearance bin, and they are PERFECT for some center games I need to make, most particularly for a couple of units I bought from the fabulous Mrs. Lee's Kinder Kids! Not to mention they also match my super cute paisley borders I have on my word wall. And of course I got the plan book for free with purchase, but I don't use it for that. Does anyone even write out their lesson plans anymore? It's typing all the way for me. Anywho, I use that every year as my calendar planner instead of buying one! Works great!

Oh, and just in case you didn't see my amazing new nametags for this year in the background, LOOK LOOK LOOK:

Really? So dang cute. And I think I may be forced to go back and buy the matching Eric Carle border. Maybe.

Next up, my Target Dollar Section treasures. I didn't go as crazy as I usually do buying teacher stuff there -- is it just me, or did they not have as much stuff this year? I got some new caddies, bins, and Dr. Seuss bracelets for Read Across America Day. I always like to give my class a little Dr. Seuss related treat on his birthday, especially since we do a big school wide Family Literacy Night to celebrate. I also snagged some paper plates in their summer clearance section - every year I hit this section up; the paper plates were only 29 cents! And the owl corkboard isn't for my classroom, it's for my apartment... but it was too cute not to share!

And raise your hand if you love the Kohls' Cares book section every time they bring a new theme in. The one going right now, if you haven't already been, is SkippyJon Jones. My class dies laughing every time I read his books, but I have a feeling it's more because of my terrible Spanish accent I try to use during the characters' dialogue. Haha. Anywho, I already owned all of the books that were there, but I bought the mini-Skippyjon because my kiddos will flip over it. So cute.

All I bought at Wal-Mart was gluesticks, because they are on sale this week for 10 cents apiece! The Wal-Marts here in Arizona don't have as much of the 88 cent teacher resources that some people have been posting around here, so I guess I'll have to live vicariously through you all in your excitement.

Tell me in the comments section about some of the great things you've found while shopping! Love seeing everyone's purchases!

I am going into my classroom for the first time tomorrow! Time to get the huge stash of stuff out of my house and into my school where it belongs!

Blog Award

I am honored to say that I've been the recipient of the "One Lovely Blog" award from a few people, most recently from Fun Games 4 Learning! It's a fun little way to learn about some new blogs, too. Here are the rules:

1. Follow the person who gave you the award.

2. Link back to the person who gave you the award.

3. Pass the award on to 15 new bloggers.

Here are some of the cute blogs I found while scouring blogger! Some are new, some are more established, but they all have great ideas! 

{kindertrips.blogspot.com}

{krogerskindergarten.blogspot.com}

{jenskinderkids.blogspot.com}

{simpsonsuperstars.blogspot.com}

{agardenofchildren.blogspot.com}

{kristincooksclassroomblog.blogspot.com}

{crayonconfessions.blogspot.com}

{kindergartenstars1.blogspot.com}

{sharingkindergarten.com}

{missnelsonsgotthecamera.blogspot.com}

{littlemindsatwork.blogspot.com}

{plantspress.blogspot.com}

{cobbkindersprouts.blogspot.com}

{kickinitinkinder.blogspot.com}

{spedventures.blogspot.com}

Enjoy!