Thanksgiving TpT Sale!!

In honor of Thanksgiving next week (and 4 more school days until break- woohoo!!), I'm putting all of my TpT Thanksgiving products on sale. All those items/activities are 20% off from now until Sunday, Nov. 23.

Head over to my store and check it out!!

Thanksgiving Count and Write! Assessment

Do you ever have those teaching days where you get to school in the morning and you think, "what am I doing with my kids today?" No? Just me? Oh well. Monday morning was definitely one of those days. I knew what we needed to do in Math, just not exactly how we were going to do it.

We've been working with the CCSS standard of counting and cardinality- focusing on writing numbers 0-10. And since it's Thanksgiving and turkey is on everyone's mind, I created this:

Quick, easy, to-the-point. My kids loved it! And I loved it because it was very telling as to which kids can count and write their numbers and which kids need some help. I used it as a summative assessment, but you could also use it if you're reviewing numbers 1-10 or however you'd like. It's available in my TpT store for just $1.50! There are other Thanksgiving items as well, so be sure to check it all out!!

All about nouns!

This week we've been learning all about nouns. We made a fun anchor chart brainstorming examples for the four types of nouns- person, place, thing and animal. Hopefully having this chart up in our room will help my Kindergarteners!

To assess, I made this page:

It has 8 pictures (2 of each type). Students have to cut and sort/organize the nouns into the different categories. Its available on my TpT site for only $1.50! 

How do you teach nouns? 

Letter Search Fun!

And once again, I'm back! Things have been just a tad busy in my life- selling our townhouse, moving our things into storage, living with my parents, house hunting, starting school, etc. Hopefully buying a house will be in our near future and I'll have a fun home office to work on things!

In the meantime, I've been working on some fun letter searches:

They work great as morning work/extra practice for my Kinder kiddos and a great way to practice uppercase/lowercase letter matching. PLUS when you find all the letters, they form a large version of the letter on the page! Hidden fun!

Get the A-C set here on my TpT store. Hopefully the next few will be up soon! Be sure to check out the rest of my shop, including a fun counting freebie I recently added!

April Fools!!

Today is April 1 aka April Fools Day aka a day teachers dread. Seriously, there's only so many times I can hear a kid say "you have a bug on your head...April Fools!" or "your shoe's untied" (that one was especially awesome today because I was wearing sandals- no laces!)

But instead of hating the craziness, this year I embraced it. And played a pretty awesome prank on my Kindergarteners.

I told them I made brownies...except that I had made brown E's!!!

Thankfully, nobody cried and they all thought this was the best prank ever! Especially because I let them take an "E" home in a bag to prank their families.

Did anyone else play a prank today? What did you do?

Valentine's Day Fun!

Ugh, once again I've neglected my teacher blog. I don't know how all those wonderful teacher bloggers do it! I feel like every time I'm doing something blog-worthy in my classroom, I either don't have my camera or I'm too busy with the kids to take pictures.

Thankfully, on Valentine's Day I remembered my camera AND took some pictures! Since the Candy Corn Bandit (thanks Babbling Abby!) was such a hit in October, I decided to recreate it for Valentine's Day. 

The set up: before Specials I told my kids I had some candy for them after PE. While they were gone, I put up the clues around the building and hid the candy with my across the hall neighbor. Then, while we were out clue-hunting, she put the candy back on their desks. It worked perfectly!

They came back from PE to this:

No more candy!

But, there was a clue...

We found another in the library...

And by the gym! The kids all thought it was so funny the "thief" was so close to them while they were in PE.

They took off down the hallway! Thankfully I have understanding administration who don't mind a crazy class running through the hall :)

Another clue by the front doors...

And then another in the cafeteria!

That led them to the front office.

And back to the room where the candy was waiting!

It was so much fun and such a huge hit! After, I had my kiddos sequence and label all the places we found clues. Great way to tie in some key standards while still having Valentine's fun.

100th day of school!

Since we started school on Aug. 1, we celebrated the 100th day of school this past week. What a fun thing for my sweet Kindergarteners! We did all things 100: made 100 thing posters, drew 100 things, did 100 exercises, wrote a book about 100 things, etc.

Two popular activities in my classroom were the 100 exercises and the 100 year old picture. Both are always a hit, and this year was no exception!

Both activities are available in my TpT store. And since today is Super Bowl Sunday, everything in 15% off! Check it out!

We also took pictures with our frame I made from Pinterest. It's such fun to see how they've grown from the 1st day to the 100th!

Donors Choose CONTEST!!

I have a new project on the website www.DonorsChoose.org and I'm sponsoring a contest to get the funding started! When you donate $2 and use the match code DISNEY, you'll be entered to win a $20 donation to the project of your choosing. Every additional dollar beyond $2 (with the match code) gets you an additional entry.

Here's what you have to do:

Donate $2 to my project and use the match code DISNEY when you check out- your $2 turns into $4 for my classroom!

Contest runs from now until 7pm on Wednesday Jan. 22, 2014.

My favorite holiday!

My favorite holiday is fast approaching...Thanksgiving! I just love everything about it, and I love teaching it in Kindergarten. There are so many fun and cute activities- handprint turkeys, how-to writing, so many fun stories, I could go on and on.

I've been doing a lot of work with my TpT store lately, so naturally I had to come up with a few turkey-themed activities. I think they turned out super cute! I've already tested them out on my own kinder babies, and they were a hit! See a few preview pics below and then check out my TpT store to get your own! 

Enjoy! 

TpT store update!

Hello everyone! Once again, I've been MIA. This school year has been crazy busy and it's already a quarter of the way over. I can't believe that! The past two weeks have been especially crazy- return from fall break (2 weeks off!), fall festival, 1st field trip, welcoming a student teacher, fire drill, Halloween and parent-teacher conferences. I'm looking forward to next week being normal!

I haven't been blogging much, but I've been adding several new items to my TpT store! Be sure to visit my site and check it out. We've been working a lot on informational text, so I created several labeling pages which my kiddos love. Hopefully soon I'll be back with some pictures of what we were up to the first 9 weeks of school.

Happy November!

Pete the Cat!

Well, I've jumped right back into the swing of things with my 21 new babies. It's hard to believe school has already started and at the same time, I feel like I never left. I've got a great group of kids this year and they're already doing some awesome work!

One of the first thing we do at our school is start learning the color words. How can you do that and not read Pete the Cat? The kids LOVE that book and it's such a cute way to introduce color words.

We focus on one color word a day, and our first word was "red". After reading the book, I gave the kids a baggie with a sentence cut up. They had to put the words in order and illustrate their picture. Here's what they did:

Are you amazed? I was!! We drew the cats together, step by step. I really liked doing this with my kids and intend to do more of it. No more "I can't draw a cat!" comments. So happy with how this activity turned out, and can't wait to do the rest of the color words! 

First day of school!

Can you believe school has already started? It's crazy, but true. We had a half day on Thursday, and it was great! Crowded, but great. I had 21 out of 22 kids show up- which is my best first day attendance ever. They are all super sweet and I can tell it's going to be a great year!

We didn't have much time for any fun crafts, since half days tend to fly by. We read "Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten" and then drew what we did to get ready. Looks like many of my kids got new shoes. One was even so specific as to say he went to WalMart to get ready. So precious!

While they were working on their pictures, I took a few minutes to get a picture of each using my new frame courtesy of Pinterest. It turned out really cute and I can't wait to use it again on the 100th day of school!

Aren't they precious? We half another half day on Monday and then jump right into full days. It'll be a long and tiring week, but I look forward to getting to know my sweet babies and starting the year off right.

Help my class!

School starts in 11 days. 11 days!! That is craziness. We're on a balanced calendar, so we have 9 weeks of school, then 2 weeks of vacation. It's a pretty nice schedule, but still a little crazy to go back to school in July.

I've been busy getting my classroom ready for the new year (pics to come soon) and seeing what I still need to get. One big thing is non-fiction texts. I have a HUGE classroom library of fiction books, but very few non-fiction books and even fewer that are on the kids' reading levels. So I've made a new Donor's Choose project- and I need your help!

Visit my project page  and give whatever you can! $1, $20, every penny helps. I'd love to get this project funded before school starts!

thanks for your help!

Promethean Board!!

This past school year my school had a fundraiser to raise money to buy interactive white boards for our school. The plan was to buy them for 3rd and 4th grades, and then as more money came in move down. So that meant that Kindergarten would be last :(

Luckily, to help raise even more money, they made it into a contest. Whichever class raised the most money would get the first board. I had a SmartBoard at my previous school, so I knew how awesome they were. I wanted that board. I was getting that board. And then I turned into a fundraising monster.

My room mom and I went crazy!! Bake sale, penny drive, you name it! We kept going and going, even when other classes would start to get close to us in funds. In the end, I'm proud to say that my kids (yes- my kids really did most of the work) raised over $1100!!

And look what was just posed on Facebook:

I feel like Jesse Spano singing "I'm so excited! I'm so excited!" Now I really can't wait to get into my room and get ready for the new school year. It's going to be awesome!!

TpT FREEBIE!

I know most of us are in the middle of summer (some blogger friends just started summer, craziness!) but I'm already planning to go back to school at the end of July. You read that right, JULY. Technically students don't start until August 1, but teachers report back much sooner. So I better get ready!

I just made these cute dismissal tags to use with my students this year. My plan is to print and laminate them, then punch holes and attach to their backpacks with zip ties. I think it will definitely help in the beginning of the year with the dismissal chaos. I will probably also put a label on the back side with the student's name and my name. That way if a child gets separated from the "herd" during dismissal, another teacher can easily identify them and help get them to the right place. Goal for the 1st week of school? NO LOST KIDS! haha

Best part? I'm offering it you to FREE! Just go to my TpT website and download the file. Then print and use as necessary. While you're on TpT, be sure to check out my other products! 

**UPDATE- since this has become so popular (and my cute hubby isn't working so we need the money) I'm now selling this on TpT for just $1. Sorry y'all!! But it's still a great deal and super useful in the classroom. Also you can message me if you need custom tags made, and I'll put them up on TpT for you. Thanks!

The day we had a fire

**I started this post a few months ago, but for whatever reason didn't publish it. Here it is a little late!



Well, so here I am again. Sorry I've been an absent blogger. I got a little busy with this small thing called GETTING MARRIED! I went from being Ms. H to Mrs. A :) Things in my personal life have just calmed down in time for things at school to get crazy. We're in the middle of state-mandated testing for grades 3-4 this week, and K-2 has their test next week. Yes, that's right. My kinder babies will take a standarized "bubble-in" test next week. The crazy thing? They're excited for it!

So anyways, this week 3rd and 4th grade are taking their tests. Wednesday morning my class was in the middle of doing our PALS lesson when "BEEP BEEP BEEP!!!!" Fire alarm. Did I mention 3rd and 4th were in the middle of testing? Did I mention it was pouring down rain and 45 degrees outside? We weren't sure if this was real or not, but headed outside just to be sure. We were getting into our spot (in the rain) when I heard the sirens. It was real!

Luckily, it was a very small fire that was contained to an emergency light in the library. However, it was still a scary thing and definitely a huge distraction for the kids. It was all they could talk about. So what did I do? Turned it into a journal prompt. Here's what some of them had to say:

"My adventure: We were doing PALS this morning and the fire drill went off. There was a fire. We got wet. It was scary for me and it was tiny."

"We had a fire. I was scared. We got wet."



Picture Labels!

Once again, I've neglected my blog. Things just got crazy and well, these days I'd rather spend time with my cute hubby than glue to my computer :) 

But, now it's summer and I have all the time in the world! And as crazy as it sounds, I'm already getting ready to go back to school. I'm working on a few things to add to my classroom, including these direction picture labels:

What do you think? I'm pretty happy with how they turned out, and I think they will really help my students keep track of 3 and 4 step directions. Not to mention how much it will help if I have any EE (exceptional education) students in my room this year. You can grab your own set on my TpT site! 

Dr. Seuss Week: day 1

This past week was Dr. Seuss week at school. I made sure to take my fancy-dancy camera so I would get some good pictures. I sure did! The kids had so much fun every day of the week. And I had a blast doing all the "fun" activities (and sneaking some good learning in with it!)

Monday's theme was "Cat in the Hat". I had all my kids wear a red shirt because I wanted to do this:

It was so cute! It's a little hard to see but they each have a "Thing __" sign numbered from 1-17. So precious! As you can tell, I was the Cat in the Hat. We had so much fun and the kids LOVED it! I think they also liked getting all the attention from the other students in the school :)

That afternoon we had an all-school assembly and luckily the weather was beautiful:

A local group called "Ride for Reading" showed up on bikes to deliver books for all the students!

So many books! My kids got to each pick a book which was very special for them.

Stay tuned for day 2: Green Eggs and Ham!

TpT store updates

Hello everyone! Sorry I have been MIA from the blogging world. I have been crazy busy with school and wedding planning. Luckily, things are falling into place. Now we just have to wait for the next 6 weeks to pass and then we can celebrate on our honeymoon!

I've also been busy adding a few things to my Teacher pay Teachers website. I added 2 super fun 100th day of school activities and created my first emergent reader book! It's a short (5 page) fill-in-the-blank book about penguins. It was a huge hit with my class! So much so that the other K classes all did it as well.

In honor of Valentine's Day next week, I've created a fun emergent reader using a bunch of sight words and color words. I'm sure my babies will have a lot of fun coloring each page! Here's a sneak peek:

Be sure to check out my TpT store and see what else I have. I'll be adding things as I come up with them! 

Penguin post!

In 2 weeks we have a celebrity visiting our classroom...SNOWBIRD! For those of you who don't know, Snowbird is the character on one local news station who announces school closings. Naturally, he's very popular among students and teachers. He will come to all the K classes and read a few books about penguins.

To prepare my students, we will be doing a mini-unit on penguins. I created this short fill-in-the-blank book for my students to complete as we learn more about penguins. I can't wait to see their illustrations for each page!

To download, check out my TpT website! This book is listed for just $2.50 and has 5 fill-in-the-blank pages- perfect for a week long study of penguins!