Turkey Fun

We did these ADORABLE turkeys from Doodlebugs teaching.Oh. Did I mention it is a freebie???

I swear...they are PRECIOUS! I followed her advice and had a bag for each student with all of their pieces. They cut them out and put them back in their bag. Then they assembled. Do you die from cuteness?

This is my sweet baby's turkey!

 

Look at that hat! I love it!

 

Hee. Hee. No neck! I love.

And. Well. You know this kid! :) Makes me smile!

We also completed our large turkey in the hallway. You can read more about that here and get the note to send home. (Maybe for next year!)

 

What have y'all been up to lately?

 

Leave a Comment Tags: crafts, freebie, thanksgiving

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Winner and Freebies!

I'm back with my winner!

 

Cherie Ong

 

Please email me or leave a comment below and let me know which Vertical Behavior Chart you would like. (Chalkboard, Polka Dot, or Chevron).

 

I know most of you are headed back to school soon. I spent all afternoon working in my room and plan to do the same tomorrow. I just wanted to remind everyone that I have 2 great Back to School Freebies in my store.

 

My Back to School Forms (which I have recently updated just a bit)

 

And my Editable Student Checklists

 

 

I've been working hard in my room and I hope to be back very soon with some sneak peeks! Stay tuned!

 

 

2 comments Tags: back to school, freebie

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Winner and a Freebie

We finally got a winner! Congrats to Lisa for guessing my ???????? on my Currently post. She was right when she guessed my next 3 vacations. I've decided to make a trip to somewhere near Destin for Spring Break with my family, my husband and I are going to Punta Cana this summer, and we are going to Disney in the fall!!! I'm so excited (and broke!) Be checking your email Lisa!!!

I also have a quick freebie for everyone! We are working on blends and I needed a little something extra for my centers so I made these quick Write the Room Blends freebie! I hope you can use it!

 

I have another Ice/Snow Day tomorrow (and I'm not happy). I'm so over it!

 

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A Peek At My Week and 2 FREEBIES!!!

Well, this week about whipped my booty! A return from a week at the beach, a 12 hour shift including parent/teacher conferences, a full moon, and a day FULL of pumpkins - whew! My body or brain was not ready for that. Thankfully, I have the sweetest class ever and they were very good! Here is my Peek at the Week. Lots of great units from my good blogging buddies!

I ADORE that Halloween writing from TGIF! I swear it is the cutest! Having said that...my kiddos aren't NEAR where my kiddos used to be at this time. We are implementing a new reading series and it is a lot slower than I have done in the past. It might be a little hairy...but we will get it!!!!


I have 2 freebies for you. Click on my plans above, and download the PDF from Google. It will then have clickable links to take you to my 2 freebies - 5 Little Pumpkins Book and Halloween Ordering! I'm linking up with Deedee for her Peek at my Week Linky party!

 

I'll be back tomorrow with a close look at our Pumpkin Day from Friday with lots of pictures. Including a big WHOOPS picture. Also to come this week. A look at our Red Ribbon Week this year!

Leave a Comment Tags: freebie, Halloween, linky party, peek at my week

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Writing Our Name (and a freebie)

One of the first things we start drilling is writing our name. Whew wee! Most kiddos come writing their name in all caps. It is the worst habit ever to break. I will never forget one year a little girl was SO mad at me because I was making her write her name correct. She kept saying "My mama said to write it this way." I always say "Well, at (school name) you have to write it this way."
Here's the deal. You get some kiddos who come writing their name like this:

And some who come writing their name like this:

Yep. I find that for sweet Carter and others like him...they can just get a little extra practice writing on lines. They are ready for pencil to lined paper. Clearly. Same for Hayden who just needs a little work on the a.)

Okay...so for these sweet babies:

The lines won't work for them. Nope. We are gonna need WEEKS of practice. So what do I do for those kiddos? Boxes. We don't even worry about lines. They need to practice each letter in their name. Here is what I give for them:

Here is an example of my little one practicing her name. If their name looks anything like the 2 pictures above, I also highlight their name all the way down.

This may take weeks! I have a few students who I 30 copies of these ready. I'm gonna need them! Once they get better. I begin just giving them their name dotted (no highlighting).

Once we are looking like my sweet little 4 year old above, we begin writing on the lined paper. We are all saying a big Woo! Hoo! when they start looking like above!

Would you like these for yourself? Well, lucky you! They are a Facebook Freebie on my Facebook page now! Just click below to go to my facebook page and grab them!!! The first line is editable so you can type in your own kiddos names! I give suggestions in the unit for the font to use!

7 comments Tags: facebook, freebie, handwriting

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Planning (and a freebie)

Oh my goodness! It is July 1st! That means my summer is MORE than 1/2 way over! :( Do you hear me crying? I'm back into school mode. Yep.....headed to my room tomorrow to get started. We go back on August 7th (I think). I know last year I had a lot of people request my Sequence and Pace Calendar. I LIVE by this puppy. I completely re-did it this year because our district purchased the Journeys curriculum so all of my letter sequence and sight words have changed. (More to come on that soon). Here is what it looks like this year.

I love it! (Thanks to Ashley Hughes for the ADORABLE chevron paper.) Here is my organization.

Red - Journey's Chapter/Unit and letter introduced
Blue - Math in Focus Content
Green - Social Studies and Science Curriculum (yep...we are required to implement social studies and science CC too this year.)

Rainbow - Our sight words (Remember: We do Reading Around the Rainbow. Be looking for a new version of this that follows the Journey's K Reading Program.)

Want this to create your own sequence and pace calendar? Well, you are in luck. I created one for FREE and placed it in my TPT store.

It is editable meaning that there are text boxes that you can type your own curriculum in. (I did change font to Comic Sans for copyright purposes). If you download it, I would love some feedback! I've also linked up with Freebielicious: Fabulicious Freebies on the 1st!

7 comments Tags: freebie, linky party, planning, teachers pay teachers

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Five Little Pumpkins (Freebie)

Whew Wee! I swear if I didn't know better I would think a blizzard was coming. My kids were WILD today!!!!! We only have 4 days this week! :) Kids are out on Friday then next week is....FALL BREAK! I am beach bound baby! Although my mind is on the beach, we are doing fall activities. We are studying pumpkins this week. Thursday is our big pumpkin exploration day! I will share more later in the week. I just wanted to quickly share with you a freebie I made to go with the poem "Five Little Pumpkins".

This is a little reader you can make with your students. The words are all there to go with the poem. Students only have to illustrate the pictures! I hope you can use this in your classroom. If you do, I would love some feedback!

1 comment Tags: freebie, pumpkins, teachers pay teachers

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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!

2 comments Tags: class lists, freebie, teachers pay teachers

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Did It Dots

Do you know what these are?

Smiley stickers you say? Nope. No they aren't. They are "DID IT DOTS". What? Yep. DID IT DOTS

Let me explain. Last year I posted about my "GIVE ME 5" rule. They have to do the following when writing sentences.

Here is where I have it posted in my classroom:

At times (not all of the time), I tell students they can earn "DID IT DOTS". They know that I am specifically looking for those 5 things. If they do all 5, they can earn a DID IT DOT for that sentence because...well...they did it! At times I will reward students who have the most did it dots for the day. Look at this example:

You can see the last sentence is the only one that earned a did it dot. Here is how I would correct it:

The only spelling errors I correct are words that are on the word wall. I do not correctly any best guess spelling until much later in the year and that is ONLY if we have learned a rule to help us spell it. (ch, silent e, etc). I used to have to pay $4.99 for these "DID IT DOTS" at the teacher store but now you can find them in the dollar spot at Target and Wal-mart all the time. So hurry, go get yours!

6 comments Tags: freebie, handwriting, rewards

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STAR STUDENT

Do you do a student of the week? I have done "Star Student of the Week" since I began teaching. I posted about this last year here, but I am posting again and adding some FREEBIES! choose one student a week randomly using my stick system. (Craft sticks with everyone's name on them in a cup.) I do this on Friday. All students who have not been star student yet stand up. I draw a name and hide it. The class has to ask Yes or No questions to eliminate students until we are done to the 1 student I drew. I love this because it really got them use to Yes/No questions such as "Is it a girl?" "Do they have blond hair?"  "Are they wearing tennis shoes?"

Once the student is announced I send home the Star Student poster with them to complete over the weekend. There are TONS out there. I just use this one from Oriental Trading.

The student returns the poster on Monday and it is hung in the hall, along with any other pictures they send in. Now here is the fun part. On Monday, the Star Student gets to take home "Froggy". I have used a frog theme for my star student bag for the past 8 years. I used to do a monkey theme, but I had some trouble finding a monkey every year so I switched to Froggy. In the Star Student bag I send the following:

Froggy

(I found my frog this year at Kohls that went with this book.)

Froggy Books

A journal for the students to complete telling about their week with Froggy. I ask that they journal what they did with Froggy, their favorite Froggy book, and to include a picture of them and Froggy. I just use a spiral bound journal (in green of course).

And a Class Scrapbook. At the beginning of the year I send home the following note attached to an 8.5 X 11 piece of construction paper. (Click on the note to grab your freebie.)

I ask that the parents create a scrapbook page of their child. I then place these in a 3 ring binder with this cover (click to grab):

The student LOVE LOVE LOVE looking at their classmates and their family. This whole bag is returned on Friday, when the students then get to share their poster in the hall. The students DIE to get to be Star Student. Some of the other fun things the Star Student gets to do that week is:
-Be line leader
-Be calendar helper
-Group switcher (original name, huh?)

Now, I know you may be concerned about the Froggy going "home" with students and lice. Well.....it is a risk I take. I teach in a pretty rural area. I encourage all parents to wash Froggy as soon as he gets home. The students LITERALLY sleep with Froggy so I  HOPE the parents wash him. We did try these little plush frogs from Oriental Trading one year. They were really small and students got to keep their frog at home. It just wasn't the same. They didn't "love" Froggy like the other classes did, so I went back to good old Froggy. I really haven't had a problem with lice and Froggy (knock on wood). I do get a new Froggy every year (sometimes 2). What do you do to celebrate your student of the week?

8 comments Tags: back to school, freebie, star student

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Teacher Blog Swap and Hop

Mark your calendars for Saturday, June 30th for the Teacher Blog Swap and Hop.

There are some awesome teachers that will be guest posting on another blog and I'm sure there will be some FREEBIES out there. I am so excited about my 1st guest post. Check back on Saturday to see where I will be and who will be here! Here is who is participating:


Also, don't forget about my giveaway that ends Sunday night!

3 comments Tags: freebie, linky party

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Pace Calendar (Freebie)

So we had our first PD day (which was actually pretty good) and had a big talk about pacing. Our district adopted Math In Focus 2 years ago and we are still working through it and trying to figure out how to pace ourselves so that we get all of the content taught before the end of the school year. I shared my sequence and pace calendar that I have been doing for 8 years now. I complete this during the summer to "map" out my year and help keep me on task. Each week contains the reading/math/social studies/science/theme and sight words taught that week. Here is an example of what one week may look like:

Feel free to click below to grab your copy.

If you want me to email you a copy so that you can type in it, just leave a comment with your email and I will be happy to!

44 comments Tags: freebie, planning

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