My Many "Modes" & Check out my bargains!

I've noticed that my "teacher brain" works in cycles.  It goes something like this:


May: (after school get out of course):  Shut Down Mode Teacher brains shuts off (lots of time spent reading, relaxing and mentally reviving)


June:  Organization mode!  I scour blogs & pinterest for the "best" way to organize for next year and I SHOP!  Mostly I shop for containers and other organizing "stuff."


July:  Fun mode! Start putting all those fun organizing containers in my classroom and decorating!


August:  "Oh Crap" Mode b/c now I am starting to wonder...what am I going to teach them for the 1st two weeks, when will I get my finalized list so I can actually label everything and praying that I have a good class!


September: Time Warp Mode  Seriously is October, routine and normalcy ever going to get here?  Let's speed this month up!


October/November/December:  Seasonal Love Mode  These are my FAVORITE 3 months b/c routine is in place, we're rockin' right along learning lots and the seasons are so much fun!


January/February/March:  Slow Motion Mode  Oh..Em..Gee the LONGEST 3 months of the year!   


April/May:  Emotional Mode  I can do this, 6 more weeks!  :)   These kids need to go to first grade...I am exhausted!  : (   Oh, look how much they've learned, bless their hearts.  : )   Really?  We're still doing THAT?  Didn't we learn not to do THAT the first week of school?  : (  Oh...I am going to miss them soooo much next year. : )   


I am in Organization Mode now but throughout it all I ALWAYS in cheap mode!  See the bags at the top of my post?  That's my haul so far.  My hubby just roles his eyes as the bags pile up!  So...here's what I've found so far (it's been raining a lot this week...shopping is keeping my girls and I sane!!)

5 small containers from Hobby Lobby for all those items that are too small to put in big tubs like q-tips, button, etc.  Or...kids could use them for sorting.  5 container for $3.00 (60 cents a piece) not bad...so of course I bought 3.

Sorting trays from Wal-Mart.  $1.00 (bought 4...one of each color they had)

Traveling soap containers to organize my playing cards.  2 for $1.00 at the dollar store

Love this idea:  my genius coworker Jill puts a bucket and small dust pan at each table for cleaning up scraps.  LoVe!  Buckets were 2 for $1.00 at dollar store and small dust pan/broom was $1.00 at same store.

Duct tape to recover my old worn out clipboards.  $3.00 (I think) from Target.  I usually get my tape from HyVee when they have it on sale but I loved this polda dot design!  Couldn't pass it up!

Crayon buckets to sort crayons by color so kids "missing" colors can easily grab a new one.   Stealing this idea from Jill also.  I've seen it on pinterest also but they actually spray painted cans.  I am not that artistic...pretty sure I'd make a giant mess of that!  So, Target dollar isle had red, green, blue and yellow ($1.00 each) Hobby lobby had orange, purple, pink and the zebra (for black and white crayons!) for $1.99. I figured I'd spend more than that on spray paint.   Only missing color is brown...I might just put those in the orange bucket???

This was my most expensive purchase...$5.00 from Wal-Mart.  It has up to 28 compartments.  If you saw my earlier post about my alphabet stamps you will know my love/hate relationship with these stamps.  I am hoping to organize the stamps so that all 26 letters and a stamp pad will fit in this case.  Haven't attempted it yet but I will let you know once I give it a try!  Wish me luck!


I am 100%   70%    50% sure that will be my purchasing for this summer.


Thanks for making it to the end of this long post. . .you must have a really good attention span!  


Have a great weekend!

200 Followers Freebie, Blog Issues & Basement Make-Over

Yesterday, every time I tried to get on my blog, I got an error saying my blog was infected with malware....what the bleep?  I don't even know what that is!!  After hours of research and some nice friendly advice from Top Teachers I think I have it fixed.  This morning I got on and everything seemed fine....and nice surprise I reached 200 followers!  : )

To celebrate I am giving away my new TPT product,  A to Z intro pages, for today only!  Before I go to bed tonight it will go back to $2.00 so grab it now if you're interested and thank you for following my humble little blog!  Click here to go to my TPT store and get your feebie!

On another note, and totally unrelated to teaching, is my basement makeover!  Here is a picture of it before we even owned the house:

This winter my husband I and painted up a storm and now it looks like this:

It is, of course, a man cave!  You can see all  my hubbies hobbies in one room (he is in basement heaven).  

We have the Harley wall (the pink guitar is my daughter's!):

The car wall:

The Wet Bar:

And my favorite part of the room make over was the license plate wall:

We pulled the license plate theme to the other side of the basement as well:

It feels really really good to have that checked off our list.  Well, there is one more part.  There is a small entrance room to the basement with a movie theme.

We are waiting for our movie posters to arrive.  On the way, thanks to Amazon and on-line shopping, are posters from the movies ET, Star Wars, Blue Brothers, Indiana Jones, Goonies and Back to the Future.  Yes, we are a product of the 80's. . . and ok with admitting it!

Thanks for checking out my very NON- teaching related post!  Don't forget to get your freebie....it will be available for 10 more hours!

Done and finally feeling normal!

This is my whole school.  Isn't it neat?  Every year my principal thinks of a creative way to take an all school picture and one of our very talented parents sets it up and takes it for us.  Love it!!  Can you find me . . .I'm the one in black.  Haha!  




I've actually been done for a week now but it usually takes me that long to decompress.  Sigh.  Feels good.  I've been reading, lunching with friends and running my kids to their activities.  It's WONDERFUL! 


I've even had time to add a product to TPT.  It's a collection of A to Z intro pages we are going to use this coming year and also some beginning sounds picture cards and upper & lowercase letters.  We are going to use them for a pocket chart center. 

Click the picture of the cover if you'd like to check it out!  Only $2.00!

Summer Calendar Freebie

3 more days!!!  Hip Hip Hooray!  I'm just a little excited!  I have about a million things to check off my list in the next few days but right now I'm just blog hopping and relaxing- the end of the year chaos will start tomorrow.


I don't know about you but over the course of a school year there are a lot few worksheets I had copied and ready to go but did not actually get around to using.  (I hope copier lady is not reading this Shh.....)


Anyhoo. . .at the end of the year I take the majority of those pages and put them into a "summer work" folder for my students to take home.  I also include a summer activity calendar.  For a copy of the calendar click the picture. (clipart from DJ Inkers)  


I know all my kids will work in the folder over the summer and be SOOOO ready for First Grade and next year those First Grade teachers will say "WOW" and everything will be perfect.  Right? Well. . . a teacher can dream!  : )

Have you heard this song?

Kindergarten Wall

A few years ago I was desperately searching for a "fun" upbeat song to use in my end of the year DVD for my class and a friend of mine told me about this song.  It's called Kindergarten Wall by John McCutcheon and it's adorable!!  Click the arrow above to listen.

This year I'm using I Hope You Dance by Lee Ann Womack.  Do you do an EOY video for your class?  What song do you use?

CVC & CVCe sort (freebie)

My kiddos are doing pretty well with spotting magic e in a word and sounding out the word.  We've done lots of sorting, sounding out & drawing both CVC and CVCe words.  Click the picture above to receive a free copy of this sorting activity.


Here's the "bummer" part of the CVCe story....when I went to DIBEL my students this week some of them sounded out the nonsense words and put LONG vowels in the middle!  GRRRRR!!!!  Note to self:  do not introduce magic e until AFTER end of year testing!

8 more days....cha cha cha!!!

Teacher Appreciation Sale

Dear Teachers Everywhere:

When God created teachers, 

He gave us special friends 

To help us understand His world 

And truly comprehend 

The beauty and the wonder 

Of everything we see, 

And become a better person 

With each discovery. 

When God created teachers, 

He gave us special guides 

To show us ways in which to grow 

So we can all decide 

How to live and how to do 

What's right instead of wrong, 

To lead us so that we can lead 

And learn how to be strong. 

Why God created teachers, 

In His wisdom and His grace, 

Was to help us learn to make our world 

A better, wiser place.

YOU are appreciated for all you do!

Visit my TPT store May 6-8 enter the promo code above you'll receive 28% any of my products.  

God bless teachers!

12 Days...Woot!

Just getting done with a 4 day weekend!  What a nice break...and a little sneak peak into summer!

12 days left and LOTS of testing to do.  We are going to do lots of extra recesses, wiggle breaks and "fun" activities to keep school fun these last few days.  Plus there's graduation practice to break up the days.


Crossing my fingers for no rain!


Have you seen Harry Kindergarten videos on You Tube?  If you haven't...shame on you!  They are all GREAT and my kids LOVE them.  Above is a new one I found today- perfect for the wiggle breaks my kids will need these last 12 days (I just like writing 12 days!)

New computer and a freebie!

Side bar:
So my hubby was using my computer last night (while I was fast asleep like a good girl) and he spilled his beer  on it.  It would turn on, the mouse still worked but the keyboard was ka-put!  Thankfully he waited until after church today to break the news.  His exact words were, "Hey honey. . . can I buy you a new computer?"  I have to admit, that was the best way to break the news.


So, after a long day of moving files (thank goodness that was still possible) everything is set back up, nothing important was lost, and I now have a faster computer.  Yeah spilled beer!


Now...on to the teaching stuff:
My pocket chart center this time of year is Scrambled Sentences.  The kids put the sentence in order and then write the sentence paying particular attention to putting spaces between their words!  Click here for a free download of 14 scrambled sentences.  The pictures on the cards are from DJ Inkers.

Building Numbers 10-30 (Freebie!)

         

         

Next week we are working on Building numbers 10-30.  One of our activities will be "Number Detectives." I've included the directions for the activity in the free download.  Click here for your copy.  

By the way....13 days left for me!  Woo Hoo!

Subtraction....sigh

     

Subtraction is so much fun to teach.....hahahahahaha! 

Ok, sorry, had to get that out of my system.

My kids love "When You Subtract With a Pirate" video and for a few of my late bloomers it helped them come to their "ah-ha" moment.

I think next year I need to start practicing counting backwards sooner.  My kinders ROCK at counting up which I give 99.9% credit to the fact that we count up all year long!

I use domino cards with my kids starting almost the 1st month of school.  I hold a few of them up and the kids shout "dominoes" and then we run through a few cards.

We start simple with ones that look like this and start by counting all the dots:

Then we add harder ones like this:

Then we stop counting all the dots because some genius child figures out we don't need to count every dot sometimes our brain knows how many dots are in a cluster (Ok, I usually point that out to them but one day there will be a genius child who does it first!)

Once the big "ah-ha" moment arrives we start saying the "big" number and counting up!

We make a big deal out of NOT counting every dot.  Using the card above as an example the conversation would go something like this:

Me:  "Oh my goodness kindergarten, do we really need to count every dot?"

Kinders:  NO!

Me:  That's right!  Don't waste your time counting dots when your brain already knows how many are in the cluster!  How many are in our big cluster?

Kinders:  4

Me:  Woohoo!  Someone turned their math brain on HIGH!  That's right, there are 4 dots in the big cluster.  Let's count up!

Ready. . .  4, 5, 6!

(While they are counting I'll circle the "4" cluster with my finger and then touch the 2 other dots while we count.)

Usually we are doing this while waiting for a few straggling kinders to make it to the floor for story time or the line so we can leave the room.  Quick time filler and voila. . . counting up skill. . .done!

BUUUUUT. . . . .every year about this time I realize (oops) forgot to practice counting down.

Next year I'll remember.

Probably.

Handwriting Zoo Freebie

One of my very favorite units to teach is my Handwriting Zoo.  I used to HATE not enjoy teaching handwriting all all!  I never could explain the lines and the letter spacing in a way that the kids understood me.  Then one day I had an "ah-ha" moment and started assigning the letters animal names.  Turtles are short so we called a, c, e, i, m, n, o, r, s, u, v, w, x & z turtles.  Giraffes have long necks and so do the letters b, d, f, h, k, l & t.  Monkeys have tails like letters g, j, p, q & y.  Capital letters are "Large and In-Charge" just like a gorilla so capital letters are known as gorillas.  I even created a story, some posters and other various activities to accompany the unit.  For more info on the Handwriting Zoo click here to view it on TPT.  It will be on sale for the next few days.

Click here to see another activity I use the animals for.

Anyways, on to my freebie.  Once we got past writing all the letters for practice I then want the kids to carry that over into writing words.  But, of course, a lot were not.... augh!   So I created an activity where the kids cut out the animals and match them up to the correct letter.  For example: the word "lip" would be giraffe turtle, monkey (see above).  At first I printed the animals out on label pages (avery 5160) and made them into stickers but this activity takes quite a few animals so after I ran out of labels I just printed them on to regular paper.

(hint: if you use regular paper and not labels just cut the page into strips and then it's easy for the kids to snip off one animal at a time.)

After they assign every letter the correct animal then they write the word as neatly as they can using the correct letter spacing.  

Clear as mud?

This method has worked wonders for me over the last few years.  What I like most is that if I see a letter not spaced correctly on the line I can say things like "What animal is the letter a?"  The kids can tell me it's a turtle and most of them do a mental head-slap and quickly fix their letter.

It's also really helped my kids know the difference between capital and lowercase letters.

Am I always super picky about handwriting....Goodness No (little Pete the Cat humor)  BUT when we are specifically practicing handwriting or concentrating on writing words neatly this method does the trick for me!

To get the worksheet click here.  To get the animal sheets click here.

The animals I used for this freebie are from DJ Inkers.

Subtraction Game Freebie

My awesome student teacher, Leah, found a fun subtraction game on-line the other day.  Of course, as a kindergarten teacher, my first question is. . . .can we make it cuter?  Of course we can!  We took the idea of the game she found and created this fun worksheet/center activity.  Kids roll a dice, fill in the blank, cross out the pins, and fill in the answer.  Easy and fun way to practice subtraction using pictures.

Shape Monster Revision

I recently revised my Shape Monster book/TPT packet to include a black and white reproducible book.  I also changed the monster graphics because I fell in love with these monsters from Thistlegirl.  Only $2.00 and it's one of my favs!  If you already purchased it make sure and download it again!

Am I the only one? Help!!!

Am I the only one who hates is frustrated by the containers these stamps come in?????     I use alphabet stamps a lot because.....well, I teach K.   Buuuuut.... I want to stomp on these cases and scream at the top of my lungs in frustration find a better way to store them.

Here's what I LOVE about the cases:
1. They are stored in ABC order.  Perfect....love it!  Makes it super easy to find the one you want quickly!

2. The letter is on the bottom of the case.  Perfect....love it!  Makes is super easy to replace the letters to the correct spot quickly (which of course all my perfect kinders do every time.............hahahahahahaha!)


Here is what I do NOT like about these cases:
1.  Little fingers find it hard to take the letter out of the case and replace them.  I'm blaming this mainly on the fact that the slot is only slightly bigger than the stamp and the fact that the stamps are stacked pretty tightly together.

2.  This is the one that really has me frustrated:  The lids keep breaking off of the cases!!  I have 6 of these sets now and only 1 set still has the lid on it.  Without the lid the stamps obviously don't stay in place at all!  While it is the highlight of my day to help the kids pick up 26 alphabet stamps (again and again and again) I think maybe I should find a better use of my time.  Sigh....

I think I have #1 solved. by buying these stamps:

They have a nice curved handle top on them which my kinders like a lot better than the flat ones.  However, the cases are almost exactly the same and I'm dreading the day the lids break off.

So my question is:  Does anyone have a better way to store these stamps????  I would really really really love to hear if you have a solution!  If I had a million dollars for your awesome thoughts I would gladly pay it but I don't get paid for another 13 days (teacher pay humor).

This post might have been a little dramatic.  If you read all the way to the end....bless you.  I tend to ramble when I'm tired.

Zero the Hero TPT Packet

Starting on things for next year...a little crazy but making these Zero the Hero books was on my mind and decided to do it and get it over with!  Plus, Scrappin Doodle had these adorable super hero graphics that I couldn't pass up!

Every 10 days of school we will get a reproducible book as part of our celebration.  There are 10 books in this pack plus a few math center activities. Click on the picture above to check it out!

Good News to Start the Week

Just had to share a quick "happy" with you!  Our district has been debating for an eternity a few years about implementing all day kindergarten at all 4 of our elementary schools (currently 2 have all day and 2 have half day).  I am relieved thrilled to say that tonight our School Board voted to put all day into all our schools next year!  WOO HOO!  Happy dance!

CVC Review Freebie & fun timers

Here's a super easy flip flap book to review middle sounds.  My students will have to think of 2 CVC words for under each flap.  Click the pic to download.


Also, if you are lucky enough to have a Smart Board click on the sand timer below to go to a site with lots of fun timers.  

Hope you are enjoying your Easter break as much as I am!!

Awesome Science Videos!

Was looking for some short videos to show my class for our plants unit next week and came across this great website called www.makemegenius.com   WOW!  Tons of great Science videos!

Here's one of the plant videos I found:





They had some good Earth Day ones too!

Enjoy!