The "Count" of Halloween

I am so excited to finally be posting this book! My mentor teacher introduced this book to me when I first began working with her 11 years ago! (I cannot believe I have been teaching that long. EEK!) She began using it 30+ years ago when she was student teaching!!! She has now retired and is moving to a beautiful island in a beautiful new home. Sigh. I asked her about using the book, tweaking it a bit, and posting it on TPT and she said SURE! So...here it is!

 

This is an ADORABLE numbers 1-10 craftivity book to complete in your classroom during the Halloween season! There are many different ways you can do this ranging from print and color to full on crafting! We do so many crafts at Halloween in our classroom so we go ALL OUT!

 

I begin this book at the beginning of October in my classroom (think next week) and do 2-3 pages a week until the holiday! Each student makes their own book. I know 200 copies seems like a lot but it is so worth it when you see their little faces light up as they read it and take ownership in that they made it! We mostly do the craft version except for the last 2-3 pages, just due to time.

 

I try to finish these up a few days before Halloween. I make sure they are bound and we pass them out at our Halloween party and read/sing the book to our parents! Did I mention this book is actually "sung" to the tune of "The Muffin Man".

 

I swear you will love this book! Just click on the image above or below to grab yours!

 

 

The Price is Right

Please tell me y'all watched The Price is Right as a child? Please tell me I'm not the only one that is that old. I loved that show! Still do. I remember watching it when I was home on maternity leave. Good memories!!! Imagine my excitement when Lakeshore Learning contacted me about doing a review on their Plinko game? Uh, yes!!!!

I whipped that puppy out in reading groups today and they LOVED it! The games comes with nice wooden chips with great pictures. The students drop a chip at the top and it makes it way down the board. The chip will land in one of 3 spots at the bottom: Say the Beginning Sound, Say a Rhyming Word, or Say the Ending Sound. This game was perfect for my higher reading group. They are sounding out CVC words and can identify the ending sound of words as well as rhyming words. Look at how much fun they had!

I promise your kiddos will love this game. My other kiddos were dying to try it. Give them a few months and they will all be ready! This game is great for K and early 1. Lakeshore also has this game for other grade levels as well!

Do you want to get your own PLINKO game. Well, Lakeshore just made it a little easier. They are offering a 25%  promo code for my readers. Just click below to go there.

Halloween Math and Literacy Activities

I LOVE FALL!

 

(via Small Town Blonde)

I love everything about it. The colors, the smell, the clothes, the food, the feeling, the weather, the holidays. I love celebrating Halloween in class. (Well, let's be honest - I love celebrating all holidays in the classroom.) I am very fortunate that we are able to celebrate Halloween (and all holidays) in our school and district as long as we relate it to Common Core.
I can't believe that I never posted about this but after A LOT of time and energy, I finally got my Halloween math and literacy unit finished last weekend!

This is a great unit to use in your classroom in the month of October. Included are:
9 Literacy Games/Centers -
-Sentence Scramble - sight word sentences
-Beginning Sounds
-Boo! Game - practice letters and sounds
-Boo! Game - practice sight words
-Boo! Game - practice CVC words
-ABC order - Letters
-ABC order - Sight words
-See and Spell - Best guess spelling
-Read and Clip - choose correct sight cvc word

6 Math Centers
-Count and clip - Count objects 1-10 and clothespin correct number
-Count and write - Count objects 1-10 or 11-20 and write correct number
-What Comes Next? - Write the number that comes after the number shown
-What's the Word? - Identify number words to 20
-Spooky Patterns - Complete the AB or AAB pattern
-Ten Frames Fun - Count the number in the tens frames
Just click below to go to my TPT store and grab yours!

I hope everyone enjoys this beautiful FALL day. (Yep. I can say that because it really is FALL now!)

Behavior Management Update

I am linking up with What the Teacher Wants! Behavior Management Linky Party.

I thought I would update you on how my new behavior management system is going. In the past, I used the "strike" system (see here). It was similar to What the Teacher Wants! system, but I wasn't smart enough to do the dollars for rewards! Last year I did do a weekly random reward system but it wasn't consistent.
After 10 years of the same behavior management system, I FINALLY made the switch and I am oh.so.glad I did! If you remember, I created this vertical behavior chart system.

It is similar to the "clip chart" system in which students can move up and down. I LOVE it! Here it is in my classroom.

I swear y'all...it works!!! I was seriously worried about my babies this year. I knew I had a "potential" bad behavior problem coming from preschool. This so works for him! He has made it to the top (PINK) 2 days in the last week! He wants so bad to work up the chart and I love it! He is the sweetest kiddo and I am so proud of him! The kiddos try so hard to clip up so they can earn a jewel. I clip up for random things like:
-being one of few sitting quietly on the carpet
-being one of few having their name on their paper
-sitting with a lonely friend at lunch
-cleaning up an area they didn't mess up
-working hard
-answering a hot question

I will be honest...I was skeptical. I just didn't think kids would change their behavior once they started going downhill, but they do! I was also a little scared of attempting daily behavior logs (also in my unit) with K kiddos! I am here to tell you that THEY CAN DO IT. We have been implementing them for 23 days and they do it completely independently now! They check their behavior, get the log out of the folder, color the correct apple, and place it back in their folder!

I will never go back to the other behavior system. If you are on the fence about a system like this, go for it! You won't regret it!

If you are looking for more great ideas for classroom management, just head over to What the Teacher Wants!!

A Mother's Cure Fundraiser

A sweet blogging buddy Alisha from The Bubbly Blonde has a dear friend who has been diagnosed with Stage 3 cancer. This is her with her sweet little girl Emma.

Alisha is doing a wonderful thing to help her friend raise money to cover her medical and living expenses and YOU can help! Tons of bloggers (including myself) have donated products from their TPT store to this cause. For only a $20 donation, you will receive all of these donated products!!! That's over $130 value!!! For such a great cause. I hope you will click below and donate!

Kindergarten Common Core

Our school is in the 2nd year of implementation of Common Core in our schools. Last year was a "trial" year and we did our best to implement it to our best ability, but with little resources. Now that we have had a full year of implementation, we know what we need to make this successful. Our school has been good about asking what we need to help us with Common Core. I can tell you one thing that will really help us implement Common Core.......the new Kindergarten Common Core Workbook.

 

This book contains OVER 600 pages of worksheet, posters, and activities! There is a small preview, which I downloaded and it looks great! Y'all - it even has cute graphics and bright colors and since it is a download format, you can print them when you need them instead of shelving a big book on your shelf and having to "make copies" from the big book. I cannot wait to start using this in my classroom. I hope you will check it out and see if it is something you can use in your classroom!

Color Words

Well, we have been in school for 23 days and we have learned all of our colors and color words. We spend about 1-2 days of each color/color word before moving to the next. I use the Frog Street Press songs to help us memorize these. I swear....kids remember if it is in a song! To wrap up this unit, we are using Doodle Bugs Teaching's Color Word Unit.

(I use A LOT of her units..they are super cute!) This is the PERFECT unit to review colors words! The kiddos are having so much fun using these centers and it is really showing me who knows and who doesn't know their colors words.

I love my kiddos this year! They are such a good sweet class and work so hard! How is your year going?

Class Lists (And a Freebie)

I am a class list freak! I swear I keep checklists for everything. I have one for AR, Math In Focus Assessment Data, Spelling Test Scores, Writing Scores, Homework Scores, etc, etc, etc. And not only do I have checklists....but you know they have to be cute. I used to get mine from The Mailbox (when our school had a subscription) but we no longer have that so where to get them???? Well, I just made my own!

I have uploaded them to my TPT store and you can get yours for free here in my TPT store! And did I mention they were editable?? I know. You can thank me later. If you download, I would love for you to follow my blog and my TPT store! I also love feedback! Thanks so much! Have a great week!

Currently...All About Me

I am teaming up with Farley from Oh' Boy 4th Grade for her currently series.

  Here is what I am currently doing:  

 

I am also linking up with TBA for their Open House Week. 

    Let's see: All About Me   I am 33 and have been married to my husband for 5 years. We have a little 3 year old named Lilly who is my world. Love that girl so much! My husband is a home builder so we will build and move every 2-3 years. We are currently starting our 2nd house now!!! :)   This will be my 11 year in teaching Kindergarten in a small rural school in Kentucky. I was SO fortunate to get at job right out of college in my dream grade and my dream school! I honestly don't want to teach any grade but K...That is where my heart is!   My teaching style is strict...but fun. I run a pretty tight ship, but we have fun and they also gets lots of loving. I feel like when they leave me they are very independent and ready for 1st grade. We laugh, dance, sing, read, learn, and have fun!

Fairy Tale Fun

Do you teach Fairy Tales in your kindergarten classroom? They use to be a Kindergarten Standard for our district. Sadly, with the new CC, that is no longer the case. I know it isn't detrimental if they don't know classic fairy tales, but I do think it is sad. My little 3 year old can recite just about any nursery rhyme there is and by 4 she will know all of the classic Fairy Tales. I just think it is something children should know - instead of Spongebob Squarepants (don't get me started).
Before Common Core, we taught a nursery rhyme and/or Fairy Tale a week. We usually introduced it in class, our librarian did activities in library with the Fairy Tale, then on Friday as a reward we had Fairy Tale Friday. What is that? Well, our school (the wildcats) has Wildcat Winners for students K-2 every week from 1:45-2:15. This is a weekly reward for all student who did not go to red all week in behavior. Grades 1-2 go outside but my OCD and paranoia do not allow me to take 60 kindergartners on the playground with 120 1st and 2nd graders at the same time so we do something a little different.
In the past (before CC) we had a special visitor come visit our classroom about 15 minutes before Wildcat Winners. Who is this visitor???? The Fairy Tale Fairy of course!

Isn't she precious?? I covered up her face because I didn't get a chance to ask her if I could post her picture. This was a WONDERFUL woman who was an instructional assistant in our school. She retired this year and we miss her oh.so.much! You can see that she must have been reading Tortoise and the Hare.

The kids were mesmerized by her! I swear it was the cutest thing you have ever seen! She read the story to the whole class and talked about what made it a "tale". Then the students who did not have  red card all week got to stay and watch the video (okay...VHS back then). We then compared and contrasted the story and movie.

It makes me sad to see the awesome things we don't have time for anymore. We do still have Fairy Tale Friday and just show the video but sadly don't have the staff for dress up nor can we pull them from other duties to do that.

I still think it is VERY important that kiddos know the classic Fairy Tales. The 2nd week of school we read The Little Red Hen and talked about responsibilities and how to help at home. I kid.you.not. NO ONE in my class had ever heard this story. I think that is so sad!!!!

This week we read The Three Little Pigs because we were learning the letter Pp. I have found the CUTEST YouTube videos to teach some of these fairy tales. Have you heard of Debbie and Friends?? Here is her 3 Little Pigs video. Love it!
WARNING......You'll be singing this all day long!

 

 

I also love her version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.



Debbie and Friends also have a website where you can order her CD's and DVDs. This is not a review and  I'm not getting anything to write this - I just think they are that awesome and wanted you to know! So, do you teach Fairy Tales? If so, I would love to hear how!