Happy New Year 2015!

Happy New Year 2015! I know I have been MIA during December. I was busy with both school and home life! I know all the other teacher moms out there understand what I'm talking about. 

This was our first week back at school and on Monday we talked about the new year and new year's resolutions. I read my students the book Squirrel's New Year's Resolution. I love this book because it explains what a resolution is and how to make one which is perfect with the lower elementary kids like kindergarten and first grade. After we talked about what resolutions are, my students wrote their new resolutions on this writing paper. I know it is too late for you to use it this year, but you are welcome to save it for next year.

New Year's Resolution writing paper

Here are some of my kinders' resolutions:

make up my bed.

be a friend.

not cry.
(This is my child who cries EVERY morning so I hope this one actually happens!)

read better.
(This is my child who has a learning disability but has made such great gains this year...I am so proud!!)

be a good student.
(This child has come so far this year. She came in and didn't know any letters or sounds, but look at the progress she has made!! YAH!!)

Hope you are all having a great new year and I look forward to hearing from you soon. Please let me know if you download the writing paper and please leave me feedback. Thanks!!

Classroom Communication

I don't know about you but in my classroom we use many different ways to communicate with each other. Of course my kinders think they have to use their voices to communicate everything at the beginning of the school year, but they quickly learn in my classroom that there are other ways to communicate with me and my assistant. 

For example, we use the sign of crossed index and middle finger raised in the air to let us know when they need to use the restroom. Then one of us will nod and they know they have permission to get up and go. All of this happens without saying a word. It helps tremendously to cut down on the excess noise in the classroom especially during quiet times like Daily 5. 

In my classroom I have two students who speak Spanish as their first language. They are enjoying teaching our other non-Spanish speakers tidbits of the language. It is a great compliment to my lessons and helps me tremendously because I do not speak Spanish myself.

For my parents who do not speak English as their primary language, I have found this translation website to be very useful: Smartling. This website translates other websites easily and quickly. It is definitely one to check out if you don't know about it already!

Now here's the question for you...Do you have any non-verbal language cues that you use in your classroom or do you teach your students another language?

TpT Cyber Monday & Tuesday Sale

Just wanted to let you know that I am participating in the TpT Cyber Monday & Tuesday Sale. All my products are on sale for 20% off plus you get an extra 10% off with the code below! Happy shopping everyone! 

Thanks to Literacy Without Worksheets for the adorable graphic!

My TpT Store

Operation S-Elf-less - Week #1

So Krista Wallden who makes the fabulous Creative Clips clipart has created Operation ELF and the S-ELF-less Challenge. I have decided to join in the fun too! This challenges us to do random acts of kindness for others and this is the perfect time of year to do this. Here is her list for this week:

Here are my RAK for this week!

#3 - A Fun Freebie:

Here is a fun freebie for you using the free clipart from Krista this week. I know this isn't classroom related but it is something fun for Christmas. I used her gift tag clipart to create these tags for your Christmas presents. You can print them out on cardstock or regular paper using a color printer and just cut them out. Merry Christmas to you!

Christmas Tags

#4 - Postive Post-Its:

I left these Post-Its for my teacher assistant and 2 of my fellow teachers! I hope they brightened their day as much I had fun writing them!

#5 - Free Choice:

For my free choice, I decided to fill a shoe box for an adult working at the children's home our church supports in Mexico. This will be mailed to the missionaries down there and given to the kids and adults for Christmas. I forgot to snap a picture of the box before I took it to be mailed...

Five for Friday!

Well there is no way I could share with you all the things we have done in our classroom over the last month while I have been away from blogging. I decided the easiest way to share with you this week's events was by joining DoodleBug's Five for Friday linky party. So here's a peek at my week in five pictures!

1 - My kinders made precious turkey hats to wear to lunch this week. I snapped this quick picture as we were heading out to the buses yesterday!

2 - My kinders wrote their favorite things to eat on Thanksgiving. This little one has come so far this year with his fine motor skills!

3 - One of the kindergarten assistants made adorable Pilgrim hat cookies for all of us this week. They were a great treat! 

4 - My kinders made this fall display last week with the scarecrows they made and their fall writing. They are absolutely adorable!

 

5 - Our class made a chart of facts we learned about turkeys this week and then the kids got to write down three facts of their own. 

Well there's a peek at my week. Hope yours has been great as well. I am looking forward to a two day week next week and Thanksgiving break! Have a great weekend!

Long Time...No Post!

I know it has been a while since I have made a blog post but there has been so much going on in my personal life. My daughter, M fell about 3 weeks ago and was badly injured. She required major surgery and I wasn't able to think about anything but her. We are very blessed and she is making a great recovery thanks to a great deal of prayers and some wonderful doctors! Needless to say our family has so much to be thankful for this year.
I am just so grateful that Miss M is still with us for this Thanksgiving. She is definitely an amazing little girl!

New Sight Words Units on TpT!

Well I have been busy teaching sight words to my class of kinders and as I told in an earlier post I have been working to create activities to go along with our reading series list of sight words. We use the HM Journeys 2011 edition. I have created activities for units 2, 3, and 4. I am also offering a bundle that will include all of the units at a discounted price.

Here are some examples of activities included in the units.

If you would like to purchase any of these units please click on the links below! Thanks!

Journeys (2011 edition) Unit 2 Sight Words Unit

Journeys (2011 edition) Unit 3 Sight Words Unit

Journeys (2011 edition) Unit 4 Sight Words Unit

Journeys (2011 edition) Sight Words Unit Bundle

Apples, Apples!

Ok I have been a busy and very bad blogger lately but this week I remembered to take pictures so I could post this LONG blog post!

Fall is officially here! I love this time of year - the leaves changing colors, the pumpkins, the apples, the cooler mornings, etc.! This week I am teaching our apples unit. This is always a fun one and one I look forward to. Of course here near the coast of SC we don't have apple orchards but my kinders still love learning all about them.

This week we have been doing all sorts of fun things with apples. Here are some sneak peeks into what has been going on in my classroom.

To begin our unit we wrote an a rebus about apples. The word/picture cards are from kidssoup.com. I had these from a subscription a few years ago. This activity really helps my kinders learn some vocabulary and they love that they can read this rebus over and over again!

We have been working on labeling our pictures so I created this label the apple kid sheet. I helped my kids to stretch out the words as a class and they wrote the sounds they heard. I was very pleased with the amount of sounds they were able to hear and write.

 

 

Here is a link to the label the apple kid sheet if you would like to download it!

Label the Apple Kid sheet

We also practiced labeling the parts of an apple. They practiced sounding out the words and writing them before I gave them the printed labels to put on their papers.

I have started creating different colored boxes for the labels to help my kinders find the right box to write in. This seems to really help them with labeling.

We also wrote about the lifecycle of the apple from seeds to tree to blossom to apple. They love that they were able to find the words to write in the rebus we created earlier in the week.

 

 

We taste tested all 3 colors of apples - Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, and Granny Smith. After we graphed which was our favorite we made tissue paper apples of each child's favorite color apple.

I'm sure you can see how much fun we had with our apples unit. I hope you are having a great start to your fall too!

Learning Sight Words

As is every kindergarten teacher in America, I am working hard to teach sight words to my kinders. Our school district uses the 2011 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Journeys reading series so that is where our 40 sight words come from. I have not found all the activities that I wanted for these sight words so I have started making my own. On the push of a fellow teacher, I am going to start putting them into unit packs for purchase on Teachers Pay Teachers. I am starting with Unit 2 because that is the unit we are getting ready to begin next week. I will try to go back at some point this year and create the same kinds of sheets for Unit 1, but I am planning to make the other units as we go along.

This unit contains:

• Search, find, & color pages
• Fill in the blank sentence pages
• Trace, write, color, cut & glue pages
• Review pages (all unit 2 words)

Please click on the link below to purchase at TpT!

Kindergarten Journeys Sight Words Unit 2 (2011 edition) 

 

What I'm Loving Wednesday

I am having a fabulous week! I hope you are too! Here is what I'm loving this week:



1 - My weekend visit to Ripley's Aquarium in Myrtle Beach with Miss M and my mom!
This weekend was Teacher Appreciation weekend at our local Ripley's Aquarium so I was able to get in for free and take up to 3 guests at a discounted price. We took M last year when she was 4 months old and she loved it but now she is 15 months old and she was loving seeing everything. She loved seeing the fish and the sharks. She even got to see the big sea turtle in the tank and the octopus. She was pointing and talking the whole time.

Pointing at the fish

The three of us after visiting the aquarium

2 - My kinders' writing!
They are doing such an excellent job drawing detailed pictures and labeling their drawings. I am so proud of them!

What I'm Loving Wednesday

I just wanted to pop on with this quick post. I am loving so much this week and I wanted to share with all of you.

1 - The summer weather
The weather has been beautiful here in SC and we have been making the most of it.

2 - My new kinders
This is such a sweet group of kiddos and I am loving teaching them. They are such a mixture of personalities and keep me smiling.

3 - My sweet Macy
Her smile lights up the room. She gets so excited to see me when I get home to pick her from my mom's. It just thrills my heart!

What's In a Name?

Last week, we began working on our names unit. I love this unit because it really helps familiarize the children with their own names and the letters that make up their names. I always have students who come in and cannot identify any letter in their names, but by the end of this unit most can identify at least their first letter. This is a fun unit for the kinders too because it is all about them and they are proud of their names.

This summer I purchased Deanna Jump's unit Literacy and Math Fun with Names. This is a great unit with some super fun activities. We did the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom trees she created. I made the rectangles for my students to practice cutting since many of them need to work on this skill. I thought they were so cute when they were finished.

I also made headbands for each child with their names. They loved making these and wearing them all day to show them off!

Lastly, we did this cute activity from Maggie's KinderCorner. The kinders had to write what letter their name started with, cut apart their letters and make their name, and then count how many letters were in their name.

This was definitely a well-loved unit in my classroom and I can't wait to do it again next year. Hope you are having a great start to your week!