Tens and Ones - Puzzles and A FREEBIE!

• CCSS.Math.Content.K.NBT.A.1 Compose and decompose numbers from 11 to 19 into ten ones and some further ones, e.g., by using objects or drawings, and record each composition or decomposition by a drawing or equation (such as 18 = 10 + 8); understand that these numbers are composed of ten ones and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, or nine ones.

These standards are soooo wordy.  Sheesh.  Anyway, kindergarteners at my school are all working on ^ that standard.  All about tens and ones.  They need PRACTICE, PRACTICE, AND MORE PRACTICE on this standard.  Since we have done a lot of activities about tens and ones, I wanted something that was a bit of an overview for this standard.  I decided to create some number puzzles.

This is a set of puzzles for the numbers 10 through 20. Each puzzle consists of five pieces. The middle piece is the number. Then around the middle piece are four different pieces, each representing the number in a different way: ten frames, ten sticks and ones, 10 + whatever number, and then tally marks.  I am really excited to use this with my kids at school!  I think they are going to love them.  If you're interested in the pack yourself, it is only $1.50 at my TpT store.  Click the picture above to check them out.

Like I said, we have done A LOT OF tens and ones activities:  we have done manipulatives, we have done cut and paste, and I just wanted a plain, old worksheet that would help me assess and see who really understands this concept. So, I created this and decided to offer it as a FREEBIE as well.  :)  

Click on the picture to grab your freebie!  If you download it, please leave me some feedback.  I really appreciate your thoughts and opinions on my stuff.  

Happy Friday!  Have a great weekend!

Valentine's Day Giveaway!

Remember the Valentine's Day Giveaway I was telling you about before?  IT IS NOW LIVE!  It's my very first giveaway, and Kelsea over at Teacher Gems did a FANTASTIC JOB of putting all of it together.  There is something for all elementary teachers and even some middle school teachers - EVERY GRADE K TO 8!   There are 3 Valentine's themed prize packs in this giveaway. The first prize pack includes products for grades K-2 (21 prizes valued at $75). The second prize pack includes 21 products for grades 3-5 (valued at about $60). The third prize pack includes 22 products for grades 6-8 along with some clip art and a $10 winner's choice item (over $65 in prizes).  

Head over to Kelsea's page to enter any or all of the giveaways!  Good luck!  (Although, I am actually planning on entering myself.....hey, I can't help it, there's a lot of really good stuff in there.)  

Oh, and the winners will be announced on February 5th!  Can't wait.  :)


What are you doing still reading this?!  Go enter!

Sequential Writing

The common core standards for writing in kindergarten everything are pretty in tense.  First of all, they are super wordy, so it always takes me at least two reads to understand the standard.  You'd think if  they expect us to keep all of these standards in our heads as we teach every day, they would want them to be simpler and a little more to the point.  But, I guess they want to be absolutely sure everyone understands the standard the same way....I get it.  It is just annoying a little bit frustrating.

Anyway, I am trying to make sure I hit all of the writing common core standards right now, and I feel like my students are lacking in W.K.3.  And I know you all probably have it memorized, but just in case you forgot a few words, here it is:

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.K.3 Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to narrate a single event or several loosely linked events, tell about the events in the order in which they occurred, and provide a reaction to what happened.

Basically, it's sequential writing (and, yes, adding detail to each event).  I looked around for some organizers that I liked for kindergarten and couldn't really find much, so I made some of my own.  I think they turned out pretty good and I am excited to use them with my kinders in the next couple of weeks.  Want to see????  Well, I am not smart enough to paste pictures of the organizers themselves, so you are going to have to venture over to my TpT store to check out the actual pages...I can only post the picture of the cover.  I know, convenient, right?

Click the picture to head over to my store to check out the organizers.  I hope you find them helpful.  I'll let you know how they go. 

Our 10,000th Day Without Outside Recess...

Okay, okay, so it hasn't been 10,000 days since we've had recess (especially since yesterday was the 100th day of school...), but it SURE FEELS LIKE IT.  My kids are way out of whack, and I think they are going a little stir crazy.  I am thinking that tomorrow we will get to go back outside - HOORAY!!! It will be cold, but it will be totally worth it!

I thought today might be an appropriate day to share some of my favorite brain break stuff that helps get all of the wiggles and ants in the pants out...at least temporarily.  I use my projector almost every day for at least one brain break, and I rely on YouTube a lot.  Here is a list of my FAVORITE BRAIN BREAKS!

Numbers in the Teens is a catchy song that my kids love to sing along with and wiggle with.  Plus, it's a sneaky way to get kids to remember to put the 1 FIRST when they write their teen numbers.  It really does help!

Harry Kindergarten's I Can Count to 100 is a great sing along that I let the kids stand up to sing/dance to as they count.  Even though most of my kids have no problem counting to 100, this is still a great brain break song and it allows those kids who cannot yet count to 100 practice without being singled out.

MY KIDS LOOOOOOOOVVVVVVEEEEEE THIS SONG!  Honestly, they love all of the just dance videos, but for some reason this is like their all-time favorite.  It is so catchy....it does tend to get stuck in my head, but it doesn't bother me...I kinda like it, but let's just keep that on the DL. ;)

The Hamster Song is another goodie that they always love. It is cute and fun - half of my kids are convinced the song is in another language though...

I also really like silent follow the leader (mostly because it gives me a few moments where literally NO ONE IS TALKING - I mean, how often does that happen?).  This is when the kids spread out and do what I do.  The only rule?  NO TALKING.  I like to do all kinds of different things.  Raise my hands, spin around, jumping jacks, act like I'm riding a roller coaster, turning myself (and everyone else) into teapots, and patting my head while rubbing my belly and then SWITCHING!  :)  My kids are getting really good at that....too bad that's not something we test...  I would show major growth.  

Well, I hope wherever you are it is warming up to and you will have OUTDOOR RECESS tomorrow!  If not, maybe you can use some of my favorite brain breaks to give you your kids a mental break!  Happy hump day! 

100th Day and Preparing for Valentine's Day

Hip, hip, hooray!  We made it to 100th day!  Wow, I cannot believe it has already been 100 days.   And to be honest, we've had so many two hour delays lately....it seems funny to call it the 100th day.  Anyway, today was a BLAST!  My kids had so much fun showing off their 100 collections, making a 100th day snack, and creating a 100th day crown.  My 100th day ideas are not MY ideas...they are a collection of favorite activities I have found from others throughout the past couple of years.  I will do my best to show you my favorite activities and give credit where credit is due!

The 100th day crown came from Fran Kramer at Kindergarten Crayons.  She has great ideas for the 100th day of school, but I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE making this crown with my kids.  This is my second year to use it, and they just turn out so darn cute.  I wish I would have taken some pictures of my kids today but my room was total choas  a little crazy at the end of the day...  Anyway, here are Fran's crowns.

Aren't they ADORABLE?!!!  They truly are.  :)  Click the picture above to head over to her blog and get your own copy.

The 100th day snack came from Little Miss Kindergarten.  She has an adorable, free printable that is perfect for letting students mix their own 100th day snack.  I personally have the kids fill it out first, and we count to 100 by tens.  I then give each of my students has their own Ziploc bag.  The students rotate (teacher directed) to each table where there are two bowls of different snacks and count out ten of each snack.  (Oh, yeah, and this is after A LOT of rules and procedures...and a lot of reminders not to lick your fingers...) After the students are done, they EAT their 100 items!  :)  The kids LOVE getting to make their own snack.  So fun!

Click the picture above to go to Little Miss Kindergarten's TpT page and grab a copy for yourself!

I also used a few printables from Mrs. Jones' Creation Station's 100th Day of School Pack.  We would have done more, but that two hour delay really got in the way.  Anyway, you should check out her pack - it's great!

Click the picture above to check out her pack.  I promise, you won't be disappointed!  :)

Okay, with all of these two hour delays and STILL HAVING TO BE AT WORK AT THE SAME TIME, I have been planning pretty far ahead.  I am getting my stuff ready for Valentine's Day.  One of the standards we are working on right now is CCSS.Math.Content.K.NBT.A.1....you know, the one's about tens and ones?  

If you don't know, this is what it actually says:

 Compose and decompose numbers from 11 to 19 into ten ones and some further ones, e.g., by using objects or drawings, and record each composition or decomposition by a drawing or equation (such as 18 = 10 + 8); understand that these numbers are composed of ten ones and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, or nine ones.

Man, that's soooo wordy.  Anyway, I wanted to create a Valentine's themed center for my kids to work on tens and ones....so in my extra two hours of prep this morning, that's what I did!

Here it is....there are 22 pages and it's only $1.00.  If you're interested, hop over to my TpT store and check it out.  If you download it, please leave me some feedback.  I really value your opinions - they help me get better!  Thanks!

Click on the picture to check it out.  While you're there, you might want to checkout my freebies page...I have spent TONS of time updating them.  Have a great evening!

My FIRST Giveaway

Holy moly, I am participating in my first giveaway!  I am so nervous excited about it!  Luckily, someone else is having the giveaway (I have NO idea how to even go about having a giveaway yet).  :)  Kelsea over at Teacher Gems is heading up the giveaway, and, man, does she have some GREAT products to give away.   It is a Valentine's Day giveaway, and there is something for every grade from K to 8!  There one pack for 6-8, one pack for 3-5, and one pack for us younger grades, K-2.  And each pack is ENORMOUS.  They are each filled with wonderful, festive materials that are perfect for this time of year.  Want to see what's in the pack?  Click here to check out all three packs!

I am giving away my Conversation Hearts Word Family Sort, which I will be using the next couple of weeks as a center in my own classroom.  Please check it out on TpT.  :)  

The giveaway will be held from January 31st until February 4th.   The winner will be announced on February 5th.  I hope you all enjoy the giveaway, and GOOD LUCK!  :) 

Brrr!

We have already had two, two hour delays for this week...and we are going to have another one tomorrow!  All because of the cold weather.  The wind chill was nearly -20 degrees today!  Holy cow, it was cold.  It was the kind of cold where you go outside and it takes your breath away.  I felt so bad for my little kinders waiting for the buses, even if it was a couple of hours later.  The wind chill was still way below freezing.  All these two hour delays are adding up though...I'm afraid we are going to start forgetting things!  And next week is supposed to be just as cold....ANDDDDDDDD it's still January.  I think this winter is going to be a rough one.  

Actually, my kinders are doing really well.  I am surprised with how they are sounding out words, learning their sight words, really writing sentences and sort-of stories, and starting to do addition.  Bottom line:  I'm impressed with my class this year.  :)  They are just so smart. :D

I am doing a lot of spiraling in my centers this year, and it is really paying off.  So although we hit patterns pretty hard at the beginning of the year, I am planning on going back and having them do some independent practice as a center (they will only do it once - my centers are set up so that they only do one center per day for a total of five math centers throughout the week).  We do large group instruction and independent practice as well, as part of our curriculum.  

Anyway, I decided to spruce up my pattern cut and paste activities and reload them on TpT.  If you purchased my old set, please go download the new one.  You will get a few more cut and paste activities.  I am planning on just doing the review one since we are all pretty good at patterns, but there are six pages to choose from.  :) 

Click here to check them out.  

If you download, please leave some feedback to help me out!  Thanks so much!  Enjoy!

It's been a few days...

It has been a few days since I have blogged... but, I have been working hard on updating some of my teacherspayteachers.com stuff!  It was long overdue.  I kind of started a TpT account and uploaded some of the things in my classroom, and then, honestly, kind of forgot about it.  I did okay.  My products were average - things I REALLY did use in my classroom and think were valuable, but they weren't anything fancy or very cute.  Now that I am learning more about how to design and make products, I am updating some of the files.  They are much better.  :)

In class, we have been talking about and studying penguins.  We did some writing today, and the kids already have learned so much about penguins.  It was wonderful to see what all they wanted to include in their writing.

Tomorrow we are going to have "Penguin Pies" for our afternoon snack.  They aren't actually pies, and they aren't shaped like penguins.  However, they are COLD and BLACK AND WHITE - JUST LIKE PENGUINS!  They are actually ice cream bars covered in chocolate!

I found this idea on another blog that I love, What the Teacher Wants.  Head over to her blog about Penguin Pies and grab her freebie!

Here is how it will work in my classroom:

Every child will have their own ice cream bar waiting for them when we return from specials.  The kids will sit on their hands while they first observe the ice cream bar with their eyes.  After that, the students will pick it up, touch it, smell it, listen to it, etc... Then they will all put it back down, and we will go through the first five questions on Penguin Pie sheet (from What the Teacher Wants) together.  The students will do their best to record their answers on the lines provided.  We will do this quickly so our snack doesn't melt!  Next, we will get to taste one bite and answer number six.  Finally we will get to count the number of bites it will take us to eat them...(I am not sure how well this will work, but we'll do our best!).

I am so excited to do this activity with my kids tomorrow.  Thanks so much to the ladies over at What the Teacher Wants for the idea and free printable!!

Click here to get to the printable!

It's My Birthday!

Today is my birthday!  I just got home and am waiting for my husband to get ready to go to dinner.  :)  In the mean time, I thought I would celebrate by having a sale on my TpT store.  All of my items will be on sale for 10% off until tomorrow, but here are a few of my favorites:

Click here for Bingo Dauber Sight Words

Click here for my Kindergarten Winter Packet

Click here for my Math Dotters Centers

and my current favorite....you probably guessed it....

Click here for the Valentine's Day Pack - FREEBIE IN THE PREVIEW

Alright, I better go get ready or my husband is going to be ready before me for once....and I'll never hear the end of it!  

Be quick; the sale ends tomorrow!

Guess what I got?!

Today was a wonderful day.  My kids were good - that always makes it a good day.  But something else made it truly great.... My Donor's Choose materials arrived!  When I was walking my students out to the bus, one of our janitors was pushing a giant box and a few smaller boxes towards my room.  He told me they were for me, and I knew exactly what they were!  My kids were all asking what it could be, but I told them they would have to come back tomorrow morning to find out.  They are all now super pumped to come back to school tomorrow.  :D

Anyway, I will tell you what was in the boxes:  DRAMATIC PLAY MATERIALS!  Yes!  I do not currently have anything in my room that encourages imaginative play.  In fact, none of the kindergarten teachers do.  A few years ago, the principal at the time made every teacher get rid of any play materials.  This year, I had been doing a lot of reading and research about the importance of dramatic play to young, developing minds and how easily it can be linked to writing.  I took my facts and ideas to our new principal, and he was on board!  I created a project on Donor's Choose, and it got funded right around the holidays by some very generous and kind people.  I am so appreciative to them.  Many of my kids (I teach at a very high poverty school) haven't been able to have the same play experiences as many other children have had growing up.  I truly think that this will help them to develop better critical thinking, imaginative skills, problem solving, and social skills - areas that are all usually lacking in high poverty schools.  I am really excited to get started with this.

Now comes the hard part.  (Okay, rearranging my room was a hard part, too.) Now I have to figure out how to integrate this play center into my already jam packed school day.  I do my 90 minute reading block in the morning.  It is mandatory to use Daily 5 during that time in my district, so I do and that will not change.  After lunch, we have TIGER time.  This is our RtI time.  During this time I have centers.  Each group goes to one center a day (there are 5 centers, so they rotate to a different one each day).  I think that my writing center will now become integrated with my dramatic play station.  I found a great pack of writing materials for dramatic play  that I purchased and downloaded on TpT.  Kelly Findsen is the creator, and the pack is wonderful.  Here is the cover of the pack:

Click here to check it out!

Tomorrow I will figure out a few more logistics as to how I will exactly implement my new center.
I do know that  I am going to use it during indoor recess!! I am going to let the kids use it during indoor recess!! Perfect timing for that with all of the cold and snow.  :)  I am not going to get everything out at once though.  I will start with the kitchen/grocery store materials first, and then rotate as time goes on.  Once I figure things out a little bit and see how it all goes, I will update you all on my dramatic play center.

I seriously cannot wait for the kids to play with the materials.

I did it! I took the TpT plunge...

I did it.  I have decided I am going to work harder to become a better TpT seller.  I am going to create more and better products on my account.  For the past three days I have been working so hard on a new kindergarten pack...and it's Valentine's themed!  :)  I have spent so much time on the computer creating this packet (pretty much every hour I have been awake and not at school) that I really want to go sit on my couch and not think about kindergarten....BUT I am really proud of this packet.  It is the first packet that I have felt like, "Wow.  This is really good."  Not to toot my own horn...  I have had PLENTY of things that did not turn out like that.

My packet has 90 pages of Valentine's Day math and literacy activities. Every activity common core aligned for kindergarten.  There are 27 print and go math and literacy pages. Then I added 63 pages for math and literacy centers.

What's included:

Short Vowel Word Sorts • Beginning, Middle, and End Sounds • Real or Nonsense Words • Syllables • Writing Pages • CVC Words • Sight Word Sentences • Greater Than or Less Than • Ten Frames • Missing Numbers • One More and One Less • Tens and Ones • Addition with Manipulatives 

Please go check it out and be sure to download the preview. There might be a FREEBIE included!

Kindergarten Valentine Math and Literacy Pack

Updated

Today I updated some of my TpT products.  I will leave the links here to some of the updated products.

Click here

Click here

Click here

Click here

Sorry this post is a little short and not too exciting, but I want to spend the last hour or so before bedtime on a Sunday night with my husband.  

Work, Workout, Repeat

Happy Saturday!  I have spent most of the morning working on things for school.  About 10:00 a.m.  I decided it would be a good idea to go to the gym.  Now, I go to the rec center, and it is always FULL of people watching kids play basketball games.  The center hosts a lot of tournaments and such.  So, I knew that it would be busy.  However, there were NO parking spaces.  I circled the huge lot 3 times and couldn't find a spot.  I got frustrated and just went  home.  I decided I would just do an at home workout instead.

So I thought I'd post about my workout today.

First I created a lower body workout.  It's pretty simple.  I repeated each move 20 times, then repeated the whole thing two more times (a total of three rounds).

1. Squat with 20 lbs weight
2. Lung Kick (R)
3.  Lung Kick (L)
4. Lung Jumps (1 rep equals one on both legs)
5. Side Plank Twist (R)
6. Side Plank Twist (L)
7. Low Jacks
8. Plank Jacks
9.  Side Lung with Knee Twist with 8 lbs weight (lunge to the R)
10. Side Lung with Knee Twist with 8 lbs weight (lunge to the L)

It got my heart rate up and tired out my legs.  I felt like it was a pretty decent workout.  You could do 10 or 15 reps of each move if you feel like it is too much.  I also did the side plank twists on my elbow instead of my hand....I kept hearing some weird popping noise in my shoulder.  Bottom line:  Listen to YOUR body and do what is best for you.  Injury is not fun and is definitely not going to help you on your fitness journey.

I followed this with Melissa Bender's 5 Minute Arm Workout.   I also did some bicep curls and dumbbell weights (8 lbs weights) for good measure.

Now I am back to working on my computer....and I left the weights out in case I feel like doing a little more arms this afternoon...maybe.  We'll see. ;)

Enjoy your Saturday!

First Day Back

Wow!  Today has been crazy busy.  It was a two hour delay, but teachers in our district still have to be there at the same time...  So, I was there by 8:00 a.m.  Today was also my first day for my student teacher!  I had not met her before today, but good news, I think she'll be great!  :)  This is the first time I have ever had a student teacher, so I'm equal parts nervous and excited.  Anyway, the majority of the time this morning I spent showing her around my room and the school, filling her in about my classroom (the way it runs, my lesson plans, my kids, etc...), and also trying to keep myself reigned in enough not to overwhelm her....I don't know how well I did on that.  I already sent her home with a couple of professional books to read.  I am not sure what books are the best for students teachers.   I just sent her home with a couple of ones that I personally believe are valuable.  Do any of you have suggestions of good books for student teachers?  If so, please leave a comment.  I am definitely open to suggestions.

Anyway, today I also decided to revamp ALL of my homework.  I got back from school today about 5:00, and I have been working on this packet ever since.  I am going to have my students work on mastering word lists.  I would really like to explain them right now, but I think I am just going to have to leave a link to my TpT store for you to check it out on your own....my eyes won't quit watering.  I think that means I have been staring at the screen far too long.  I am going to spend what is left of the evening curled up next to my husband on the couch.  :)

Click HERE to check it out!  :) 

Conversation Hearts and a Freebie!

Three days in a row....I'm off to a great start.  Having three snow days probably has something to do with it.  Thanks to the polar vortex, today was the first day I have left my house in the past four days.  Where did I go?  The gym.  It opened for the first time since Sunday at 9:00, and I was there when they unlocked those doors!  I think it was more due to cabin fever than an urgency to get to the treadmill in there.  Anyway, the roads were still pretty rough, but I think they are getting better as it warms up.  Hopefully we'll be back to school tomorrow!  I am getting anxious to see my little kids....and I'm hoping they retained most of what we learned last semester.

Jeanie at The Kindergarten Lifestyle posted this ecard on her Facebook profile (click here) and I thought it was just too fitting not to include here.

While I was home over the past four days, I have been doing a lot of at home workouts.  Most of them come from Melissa Bender's website.  Have you heard of her?  She's fantastic!  I consider myself pretty fit, and her workouts are great.  She has so many FREE workout videos (all organized by workout type) that are perfect for all fitness levels.  She usually does the advanced version, but offers versions for beginners and intermediate on her blog.  I am truly in love with her website!  Her HIIT workouts are my favorite.  If you haven't checked them out yet, do so now!  I promise, you won't be disappointed.  

As far as the workout I did today, I did an interval run on the treadmill.  It darn near killed me today.  I have been eating fewer carbs and I wasn't feeling on top of my game today, so I'm going to blame those two things.  I kept the incline at zero, but the pace alternates for pretty much the entire 32 minutes it takes me to complete the four miles.  Here is a breakdown of my workout:

Time                                 Speed

0:00 - 2:55                       6.5 mph 

3:00 - 4:00                       10.0 mph

4:00 - 5:10                       6.0 mph 

5:15 - 6:15                       10.0 mph

6:15 - 7:25                       6.0 mph 

7:30 - 8:30                      10.0 mph

8:30 - 9:40                       6.0 mph 

9:45 - 10:45                    10.0 mph

10:45 - 11:55                   6.0 mph 

12:00 - 13:00                  10.0 mph

13:00 - 14:10                   6.0 mph 

14:15 - 15:15                  10.0 mph

15:15 - 16:25                   6.0 mph

16:30 - 17:30                  10.0 mph

17:30 - 18:40                   6.0 mph 

18:45 - 19:45                  10.0 mph

19:45 - 20:55                   6.0 mph 

21:00 - 22:00                 10.0 mph

22:00 - 23:10                   6.0 mph

23:15 - 24:15                  10.0 mph

24:15 - 25:25                  6.0 mph

25:30 - 26:30                  10.0 mph

26:30 - 27:40                   6.0 mph

27:45 - 28:45                  10.0 mph

28:45 - 29:55                  6.0 mph

30:00 - 31:00                  10.0 mph

31:00 - 32:00                  6.0 mph

Usually, I don't walk during any of the jogging intervals.  However, today I did...probably three or four times.  I still finished 4 miles in the 32 minutes, but it wasn't pretty.  

This interval workout keeps me from getting bored, but it is a KILLER.  It is the single workout that I dread above anything else.  When I was training for my half marathon, I dreaded this more than ANY of my long runs...including 13.1 miles.  I think it is pretty brutal.  However, you feel awesome when you are done.  You are completely out of energy and know that you just left it all on that treadmill!  :)  No regrets.  

If you are new to running or new to intervals, you can easily adjust the speeds to fit your needs.  I just really like the intervals of one minute all out sprint, and one minute fifteen seconds recovery.  Intervals are, according to the recent research that is coming out, far more effective than a steady speed.  As long as you are moving and getting some exercise, then do whichever you enjoy more because in the long run, the one you enjoy is the one you will keep doing.

After the gym, I came back to work on my newest packet.  It is a Conversation Hearts CVC Short Vowel word game (okay, there are some CCVC and CVCC wrods...and maybe a CCCVC word or two).  However, you can pick and choose the words that you want to use.  This packet is a whopping 58 pages!  That's the longest of any of my packets...ever.  

This packet even includes blank cards for you to use your own words for word sorts.  I am really happy with how this packet turned out, and I hope you like it, too.  Click here to check it out in my TpT store.  :)

Whew!  That was a SUPER long post.  Just for hanging in there through it all, I will throw in a freebie.  

It is a sight word color by word.  It is a very simple and self explanatory sheet, but my kids loved working on it for morning work.  Click here to get your copy at my TpT store.  Thanks for stopping by!

Sight Words

Two days in a row here!  Don't get used to this... We've had two snow/cold days here in Indiana (and I know much of the rest of the U.S. has had two as well).  Anyway, as I prepare to go back to school tomorrow, I have been thinking about how many of my kids REALLY need to work on their sight words.  They have really gotten pretty good at sounding out CVC word, and even CCVC anc CVCC words!  :D However, I really feel like they are lacking in the sight word department.  For whatever reason, this class's strong suit is NOT sight words.  Don't get me wrong, they have a lot of strengths and are really smart students, but most of them just need more work on sight words.  Bottom line:  I need to do more sight word activities.  

My kids LOVE write the room, count the room, or ANYTHING that lets them get up and move around as they learn.  I decided to create a cute write the room activity.  It has a detective theme.  :)  I just think the clip art images are so darn cute!  (All graphics come from mycutegraphics.com - I LOVE this site.)  Anyway, I also love write the room activities because they require very little prep and very little explanation.  :))))  That's a huge plus in my book.  All you do is print off the activity, cut out the cards, hand them in the room, print the recording sheet, make enough copies, and boom, you're set.   I use it as a rotating center, so it lasts me all week.  Love it.  

Here is my activity below.  Click here to get to my TpT shop to get it!  Enjoy!

Wow. It's been a while.

Holy moly!  It has been over a year since I last blogged.  Needless to say, I am NOT a good blogger.  However, I am going to give it a shot again.

The reason I didn't blog last year, is because I was overwhelmed by my move from fourth grade to kindergarten.  You see, what happened was the kindergarten teacher quit after two days (YES, TWO DAYS) with the kindergarten class.  I can't say I really blame her though.  She was a new teacher and the class had 28 kinders with a LOT of behavior problems.  They weren't going to move me at first, but then the corporation moved a different teacher to our building to fill the hole, and she didn't have a kindergarten license.  So, they came to me and told me I was being moved to kindergarten.  I had done kindergarten one year before, but the thought of moving all of my stuff over one weekend and getting a grasp on the kindergarten curriculum at a new school was daunting.  Not to mention the fact that the classroom was full (remember, 28 kids?) with no help (NONE) and several kids with some intense issues.  I spent the first semester barely keeping my head above the water.  It really had me questioning my career as a teacher.  It was HARD.  It was, hands-down, the HARDEST thing I have ever done in my life.  I spent many mornings before work talking myself into going....yeah, it was that bad.  However, the second semester got a lot better,and I felt more in control.  It was still hard, but by the end of the year I felt that I had made a really big difference in the lives of these kids, and THAT is a good feeling.  THAT is what teaching is really about.

Oh, also I planned a wedding, got married this summer, and have been adjusting to married life.  Oh, and i ran my first half marathon!  It went really well...other than the HORRIBLE weather (rainy and cold).  I think it was worse for my mom, cousin, and husband that came to watch and cheer me on.  At least the running kept me warm!  Perhaps in a later post, I will include my training schedule for the half marathon if anyone is interested.  :)

This year, my class has 22 kids and I only have a couple children that give me a run for my money.  It's MUCH, MUCH, MUCH better.  I just hadn't really thought about my own blog. I am an AVID blog follower/stalker, but the task of keeping my own blog up-to-date seems kind of intimidating.  With this post, I am going to try to do a better job of it.  Wish me luck!

Okay, now getting on to some more interesting things.  I am working on becoming a better TpT teacher.  I am EXCELLENT at downloading things, but I mean, I want to be a better creator.  Yesterday we were snowed in, so I had plenty of time to work on a new item.  I don't know about your kids, but mine LOVE to use hole punches!!!  I created a phonemic awareness pack where my students can use hole punches to choose the correct answer.  Included are beginning sounds, ending sounds, medial sounds, and syllables.  It should also lend itself to differentiation.  You can get to it by clicking here.  I really like the way it turned out, and I am excited to use it as soon as our extended (thanks to the snow) winter break is over.  Hope you all stay warm!