My Summer Bucket List

I am super excited to be joining my dear blogging friends in their Summer Bucket List linky party!!!

 I can actually join because I AM ON SUMMER BREAK!!!! :) YAY! I joined this linky party last year too and actually completed a few of the items. Here is what I am looking forward to do this summer.

1. Finish decorating my house. We moved in a month ago and I still need to get pictures hung and a few decorative things done. This requires $$$$$ so I plan on slowly completing this project!

2. Read Debbie Diller's math stations book and implement math centers.

Last year I began literacy centers so this year I am going for the math centers too!

3. Complete the rest of my Letter RTI units and get it bundled. I also want to create a decorative unit for my classroom.

4. Spend as much time with this little peanut as possible. We have a couple of things planned and I am SO looking forward to it!

I hope you will link up too! What's on your summer bucket list???

Hate Me Now

Okay...you can totally hate me now. Tomorrow is my LAST DAY OF SCHOOL!!!!!!!!!!!!

We are having a FUN Day. Every year we end our school year with Bubble Day. Bubbles and Bubblegum which is HUGE you know...since you can't chew gum in school. We play with bubbles outside, measure things with bubble gum sticks, see who can blow the biggest bubble, pop the loudest bubble, etc, etc, etc. I am SUPER excited to be adding this unit to tomorrow from Abby at The Inspired Apple:

 

This unit is SO much fun! Lots of great activities for the last day. We will be tasting different flavors of gum and graphing our favorites as well as creating these cuties:

I'm dying from the cuteness! My kiddos will be SO excited! :) The only downfall...they will have to pop them before leaving. Can't take balloons on the bus. Something about they might pop and scare the bus driver and cause her to wreck??? I have no idea, but I'm not taking any chances!

I'm sad to see my sweet babies go! They have been such a great class, but hey...a girl's gotta have a break! How many days do you have left?
PS...For those of you who hate me...you can get me back in August. We start back on August 7th!

Four days and counting

We only have 4 days left! I'm not counting though!!! Today was our field day. Am I the only one who thinks it is more exhausting to do something fun and non stressful than having a normal work day? We seriously played outside ALL day and it was beautiful. Tomorrow is our 100% AR reward day. We are HUGE at our school with Accelerated Reader. We do rewards for 50% and 100% at each marking period. We usually have some sort of water day for our end of the year reward. Wanna know what we are doing tomorrow? I'll give you a hint.
 
Yep. That's a water slide. Woo hoo! We are expecting beautiful weather and the kiddos are super excited!
Thursday is our school talent show. We have some seriously talented kiddos! I love it! Friday kinder is having a dog day. We may have a couple of little visitors. I'm thinking serve Scooby snacks and maybe sneak in a dog themed movie?? What's on your agenda? Are you close to being finished?

Are You Ready for Kindergarten?

Our district began a big Kindergarten Readiness push about 6 years ago. Our school really started pushing for making sure kinders were ready when school started. We began by really trying to make sure all those kiddos that would qualify for preschool were targeted and enrolled. It never failed we would get incoming K students who had never attended preschool because their parents didn't know it was available. Huh? How could they not know it wasn't available.
We also began "assessing" kinders in late April to see if they were ready for K. This was all done in a game like setting. We assessed on letters, sounds, colors, shapes, and numbers. Our principal then sat down and talked about what things the parents could be working on throughout the summer so that their child was better prepared when school began. We also gave all parents these PATT Mats from Frog Street Press.

I love these! PATT stands for Parents Are Teachers Too. They have so many great activities to work with your child. The front is colorful and fun and the back explains each activity and what to work on in detail. We always right their name correctly (the way we want them to learn it) at the bottom so they can work on that as well!
In the past, we held a ABC and 123 night throughout the summer and gave out lots of prizes (cookie sheets and magnetic letters) to work on activities at home. The past couple of years we have had not as good attendance due to ballgames and vacations, so we did it all in April!
My favorite part: We put a name with a face. I love that we can identify the kiddos when we make class lists and I think they are a little bit more comfortable with us too.
What do you do to get your kindergartners ready?

Fabulous Feedback Linky Party

What a great idea that Christina from Bunting, Books, and Bainbridge had!!! She is hosting a Fabulous Feedback Linky Party!

We all love feedback. It really help justify our hardwork and let's us know what you want to see more of. Here are some of my best feedback comments. If you see one of your comments, email me and I will send you 1 free product from my store!

If you are like me, you are really starting to already think about the beginning of next year. This was a very popular item for Back to School Next year....My Vertical Behavior Chart system. I implemented it this year (after 10 years of the strike method - BLAH) and I am SO happy with it!

 

My alphabet beginnings sound pack is perfect for back to school Kindergarten! Lots of great activities and blacklines!

 

This unit is for the end of the year, but helpful to have at the beginning of the year to start preparing your Kindergartner's scrapbooks.

 

 

If you are like me, your wishlist is HUGE!!! I can't believe I'm already thinking about next year! EEK! Don't forget. Most of us have 20% off in our store, but you also have to put in TAD13 to get the extra 10% off!

Where Have I Been? (And a sale)

I know. I know. Where have I been? It has been like uh, 6 weeks since I posted!!!! I'm so sorry! My life has been CRAY CRAY! You all know how crazy this time of year gets! We only have 11 days of school left and it CRAZY! In the last six weeks I have:
-pack up our old house (while having bronchitis)
-moved in our new house (while having bronchitis)
-unpacked at our new house (while having bronchitis)
-held Kindergarten registration for our new kinders
-held an ABC/123 night for our new kinders (we assess them to make class lists)
-held our Kindergarten Finale program (we aren't allowed to call it graduation)
-planned and held my daugther's 4th birthday

Understand where I have been? I really hope to be back. My nights are spent still trying to get this place organized! Last time I checked my google reader it said 1000+. I miss you guys. I will be back this week with a few updates of what we have been doing. In the meantime, I wanted to let you know I will having a sale in my TPT store! All of my items will be 28% off!

 

I cannot believe I never posted about my newest product. I slowly but surely did 5 separate long vowel units. That is the last "big" ELA concept we do before the end of the year. After that, we pretty much review. I made a unit for each long vowel that gave you the following:

 

4 literacy centers:

-Game to read short vowel and long vowel words
-Write the room long and short vowel words
-Sort and record long and short vowel words
-Sentence scramble for sentences with long vowel words

You also get 7 student activity sheets that include word searches, sentence completion, and lots of great review for the students. After completing each unit, I bundled them and placed them in my store with a 20% discount!

 

 

 

Lots of my Kinder and 1st grade friends are throwing a sale too! Make sure you check out their awesome items! Also, I would love for you to leave me a comment and let me know you are still with me! I promise to be back on track!!!!! :) Missed you guys!