Hurricane Florence & A Friday Freebie!

Hurricane Florence made landfall this morning near Wrightsville Beach, NC and is heading down into South Carolina now. We are starting to get some of the outer rain/wind bands, but the meteorologists are expecting us to get more tonight and into tomorrow. 

Well since we are cooped up due to Hurricane Florence bearing down on the Carolinas, I am hard at work creating some new materials for my classroom. I would like to share some of my work with you as well. I have been creating some new math center activities focusing on the counting and cardinality standards as those are the ones we are currently focusing on in my classroom. I plan to make an entire pack of these activities, but this is my 1st set. Since you are followers of my blog, I am posting this set for the weekend as a Friday Freebie. It will only be free this weekend and will be a paid product on Monday. 

**Please if you download this set, leave me some feedback. These comments help motivate me to create new freebies for you as well!

Hurricane Florence & A Sale

So it seems that my little hometown near the coast of South Carolina is once again on a course with a natural disaster. Hurricane Florence seems to have us in her sights. Our little town has been through our share of tragedies in the past 5 years. Just to give you a little background, here is a timeline of the natural disasters we have had in the past few years.

• Jan. 2014 - Ice storm (Downed power lines = No electricity!)
• Feb. 2014 - Ice storm (Downed power lines = No electricity!)
• Oct. 2015 - 1000 year flood (Many of our students and teachers lost their homes!) 
• Oct. 2016 - Hurricane Matthew (Downed power lines = No electricity! We were without power for 7 days.)
• Jan. 2018 - Snowstorm (A week of snow and ice on the ground but thankfully we didn't lose power so we weren't cold!)
• Sept. 2018 - Hurricane Florence? (We are certainly praying she weakens and doesn't harm anyone in North or South Carolina!)

Since my sweet hubby works for our state power company, he is on storm watch and will be stuck at the power plant working through this storm. I am so blessed that my parents live only 3 miles from us and will be taking Miss M and me in through the storm. I know I would be just as safe at home, but I would rather be with my family. 

As worried as I am with all the forecasters' predictions, I have decided to instead turn my attention to the things I can control. I am working on creating some new things to use in my classroom and I decided to throw a sale on TpT. Everything in my store will be 10% off starting today through Sunday. Click on the link below to go directly to my store:

I hope you are all safe wherever you are!

Back to School 2018 - Late Again!

Well I am late in posting again, but the 2018-19 school year is in full swing. This year has been very different from my other 13 years of teaching as this is the first year that I have take Miss M to school with me. She is in kindergarten this year and her classroom is right next door to mine. I just can't believe that she is already old enough for school. I just had her yesterday...right?! These are a few of her back to school pictures that we had made (She looks too grown!).

So far this year, I have 22 kindergarteners in my class. They are a busy group with only 9 girls and 13 boys (definitely a big BOY year). I am excited to see their growth this year. 

I hope you are all off to a great start for the school year. I hope to share some new goodies I have been working on with you soon!

Happy Easter Surprise Day!

Hope all of you are having a wonderful school year. Mine has been super busy! This is our week before we get out for Spring Break! YAH!!!! I am so excited about some down time with my family during Spring Break.


To thank you all for being faithful followers of my not so active blog, I am putting my Easter unit as a flash freebie for today only. I will add the price back to it tomorrow morning. If you would like to download it, please click the link below and leave some feedback! Thanks so much!

Eggcellent Easter Unit

Donors Choose Match Day!

Just in case anyone doesn't know Donors Choose is having a double your impact match day today only for all live projects. I am so excited because I currently have 3 live projects on the site right now that I would love to see fully funded. If you would like to view my classroom projects, please click on the link below:
https://www.donorschoose.org/joni.alford

A Peek at My Week - Dec. 8, 2017

Happy Friday everyone! I hope you have all had a great Thanksgiving! I loved spending the time with my family. We have so much to be thankful for! I am sharing a little peek at my last 2 weeks with you. 

This week has been a fun week around our school. We have been participating in a Secret Santa gift exchange. We each filled out a questionnaire about our favorite things. We drew names from a basket and got the questionnaire of the person we drew. Each day (Monday-Thursday), we were to give a $1-2 gift to our person. Then this afternoon we will do a reveal in our library to give our final and larger gift ($10-15) to that person. It is so much fun and always nice to find a surprise daily!

The gift I received for day 1:

The gift I received for day 2 (apparently my Secret Santa thinks I need a daily snack!):

This past week, we took Miss M to see Disney's Frozen on Ice. This was an early Christmas present for her and so worth it! It was so magical to her and she was so excited. They acted out almost the entire story with lots of music and dancing. It was beautiful!

Our family's elf, Sparkle made her return last week. We had one very excited little girl. She loves Sparkle and gets up every morning to see where she has landed when she came back from the North Pole. I haven't gotten pictures of her locations every day, but on Saturday she came back and landed on our oven handle, which meant NO COOKING for this mommy! YAH!!

Now I am off to enjoy my weekend with my family. Happy Friday everyone!

Black Friday Shopping In Your PJs!

Happy Thanksgiving a day early everyone! In honor of this weekend being Thanksgiving followed by Black Friday, I am putting my entire TpT store on sale for 20% off. This sale will last from tomorrow, Nov. 23 to Nov. 25. If you have been looking for some deals on some things in your wishlist, now is the time to stock up. I love being able to shop online in my pajamas so hopefully you will too! Click on my logo below to head to my store:

Long Time, No Blog Post!

I am so sorry for neglecting my little blog lately dear followers! I have been going through a lot in my personal life and have been unable to do more than the essentials, so please bear with me!


To get you up to date, I moved back down to kindergarten this year after 2 years in 2nd grade! YAH! I am so excited to be back where my heart has always been! This has been a great move for me, but also very busy as I am trying to get my brain wrapped back around kindergarten standards. Since I have been out of kindergarten for 2 years, we have changed from Common Core here in South Carolina to the new South Carolina standards which are very similar, but still different too.


I have also been going through some health issues with some of my family. This has made me find what is truly important in my life and do those things more than the less important things, so thank you to those of you who have stuck with me through this SUPER LONG post about nothing educational! As a "prize" to you sweet followers, I have this Christmas counting sheet, you can use next month. This is a simple print and do sheet for your kiddos to review counting up to 20 objects. It can also be an informal assessment if you choose. Happy Friday followers!

Christmas Counting to 20 Sheet

It Is A SALE!

I haven't been as active in posting lately and I am so very sorry for being a bad blogger, but I have been trying to be a good mommy, wife, teacher, and daughter. Let's just say I have had to overcome some obstacles in my personal and professional life this school year so I have done a lot of soul-searching to find some valuable answers. Please bear with me as I try to continue on with my blog.


As a token of my appreciation for those faithful followers on my blog, I am putting my entire TpT store on sale this weekend (Friday through Sunday) for 15% off. If you are like me with a golfer hubby, you will not be able to watch TV since the Masters is on. I am sure I will be spending some money on TpT instead! I hope you can find something you can use within your classroom.

I am currently working to make some supplemental materials to go along with our reading series: Houghton-Mifflin Journeys (2011 edition) for 2nd grade so expect to see more of those popping up in my store if you are a 2nd grade teacher. Thanks for being the great teachers you are!

I Love a Good Sale...Don't You?!

Well Teachers Pay Teachers is running a great sale right now where you have the opportunity to get 28% off most of your purchases. I have my entire store on sale for 20% off and then TpT is throwing in the other 10%. It is a great time to plan ahead and get some things you may need to finish out the winter and spring. I know I have my cart filled with some resources I have been wanting to purchase for a while for my own classroom. Don't forget to put in the code at check out for the extra 10% off!

Palmetto State Primary Store

Five for Friday - Friday the 13th Style!

Happy Friday the 13th everyone! So far this week, we have had a full moon, gone from highs in the low 30's Sunday to the middle 70's today, and have Friday the 13th today....can you say Teacher Tired?!

But I wanted to share with you a few things that have been happening this week so I'm joining up with Doodle Bugs Teaching Five For Friday.

1 - We have been learning about homophones so my class and I created this simple anchor chart to help them remember what homophones are. Nothing fancy just a quick reminder for them I hope!

2 - I found out yesterday that my Donors Choose proposal for the Rooted in Reading books has been fully funded! Now I'm patiently (well maybe NOT so patiently) waiting for them to arrive! This proposal was funded so quickly! :)


3 - This week I've been working hard to level all my students on their current reading levels. We have to complete and turn these leveling sheets into our curriculum coach. Thankfully I finally finished the last kiddo's yesterday! YAH!

4 - Last Saturday, we had a chance of snow here in South Carolina and Miss M has never seen snow so we were hoping for some. We actually got a couple of 2-4 minute flurries, but nothing stuck. It was definitely a #SnowDayBust, but M still enjoyed it even though it was COLD! We are definitely not used to winter weather like some of you have!

5 - And finally this week was the College Football National Championship. We are a house divided by the South Carolina football teams - I am a die-hard Carolina Gamecocks fan while my hubby is a die-hard Clemson Tigers fan. Of course this week Clemson played in and WON the National Championship. My hubby was super excited and he even got to dress Miss M in her Clemson cheerleader outfit. I'm sorry but I just couldn't wear that gawdy shade of orange! LOL! Seriously though, I am proud that a SC team winning the National Championship!

Hope everyone enjoys your long weekend! I know I am planning to enjoy mine!

Happy New Year 2017! Now It's Back To School From Winter Break!

Happy new year 2017! Yes I have been back at school for 2 weeks but boy have they been busy?! And this week having a full moon and Friday the 13th all rolled into one...can you say EXHAUSTED?!!


I hope you all had a wonderfully relaxing winter break. I know mine went by WAY too fast! I did enjoy every minute of being home with my wonderful family! I know I am super late, but I wanted to share a few pictures with you of Christmas 2016 at our house! So here's a sneak peek into my home life:

We had to bake cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve (and she had to wear her chef's hat!). Thank goodness for Pillsbury refrigerated cookie dough! Of course she had to taste the dough, but don't tell!



Christmas morning! Oh the excitement in my horse-loving girl's eyes! She got a big, toy Appaloosa horse, a small Appaloosa horse, and My Little Pony PJs!