The Alarm Clock vs. The Bucket (Freebie)

     My least favorite moment of each week is when my alarm clock goes off Monday morning at 4:45 a.m. and I have to wake up. I am not a morning person AT ALL and since my weekend sleep schedule is all over the place, it is ridiculously hard to get up and start the week.  During this past school year, my alarm clock and I went head to head on 38 separate Mondays, and the alarm clock won on all of them. All 38. But not today . . .

     Today was the first Monday morning of my summer vacation and the alarm clock is now living somewhere under the bed. (For the next 7 Mondays too - woohoo!) Now that the alarm clock has been put in its place and I have some free time, I can get on with some summer plans. I've made myself a summer bucket list to try to get through.

1. I want to get back to more regular blogging. I've been a little neglectful lately, and I miss connecting with everyone and sharing ideas. So, my summer goal is to pop in at least once a week.

2. Work in my classroom to tackle a few tasks such as organizing my classroom library and guided reading books.

3. Clean and organize my garage. I've been putting it off for way too long. Hopefully I'll be motivated by #4 . . .

4. Shop for a new car. I commute about 400 miles a week so I've pretty much driven my Jeep into the ground. We've had a good run so I think I'm going to stick with another Jeep.

5. Paint and upgrade my kitchen. Not a total overhaul, but I'm ready for a change.

I'm sure I'll come up with some more, but since I have some travel plans, I think this is a realistic start. To share my joy of having conquered the alarm clock and having time to work on the Bucket List, here's a little freebie. There are three versions - beginning sounds, ending sounds, and middle vowel sounds and you can use them as a quick assessment to see where the kids are with their letter sounds.
Just click on the pic to grab a copy.

I hope your alarm clock is under your bed as well!

Celebrating Mom

As another Sunday night comes to an end, I'm sitting here trying to finish my plans for the week . I'm trying to squeeze in some Mother's Day goodies for the kids to make and bring home but I've found so many cute ideas (I blame Pinterest - wonderful, horrible, addictive Pinterest) that I'm trying to narrow them down. One thing that I know for sure will make the cut are the cute cards I made last year. They were such a hit with the moms and the kids loved making them - they definitely earned a repeat performance! If you're looking for a cute, easy project, take a look at the step by step directions down below. I found everything in the craft and baking aisles at Walmart and the materials for the whole class only cost about $8.00.  Happy Mother's Day!

Spring Freebie

Spring has finally sprung here in Connecticut. Although there was a little snow last week while we were on Spring Break, the little purple flowers in my front yard are popping up. I was in Target yesterday and I found the cutest little Springtime snacks. The teacher in me was immediately creating math activities using the cute little spring themed fruit snacks. I made two different activities so I could differentiate a little, and I thought I would share. Just click on one of the pics to grab a copy.

Happy Spring!

Lucky Charms Meets the Common Core (Freebie)

With the new common core standards in math, I decided that the classic Lucky Charms graph that I've been using for years needed a bit of a makeover. So, I incorporated ten frames and addition to touch upon both Counting & Cardinality and Operations & Algebraic Thinking.  I think the kids will have a blast with it while unknowingly stretching their brains a little.

If you're up for a wee bit o' fun, just grab a copy below, stop at the store for a box of Lucky Charms and have a great St. Patrick's Day!

P is for Love??? (Freebie)

    This post is a bit of a personal story, but if you read through to the end, I promise there's a really cute freebie for you!

    Some women become friends when they meet at the gym, or when they discover a shared passion for coffee, or when they find a like mind at a book club meeting. My friend Susan and I however, bonded over something a little less cultured - we bonded over a couple of weenies (figuratively, not literally). After college, we were dating two creeps young men who were friends and the four of us often did things together. When those silly boys showed their true colors as complete weenies, we left them behind and have been BFFs ever since. Over the years, we’ve been through a lot together. We’ve celebrated things like new houses, new jobs, happy biopsy results and milestone birthdays. (Although our 30th birthday extravaganza in Scotland is still a little fuzzy because we met our goal of 30 pubs in the week we were there!)  We’ve also cried together through things like broken engagements, health scares, and the loss of loved ones. Susan (whom I annoyingly call QZ) is like a sister to me, and my parents even consider her their fourth daughter.  I know that she unwaveringly has my back, and likewise, there is nothing I wouldn’t do for her.
     QZ has five dogs. Five big dogs. Five really, really big dogs. Great Danes and Mastiffs and mutts, oh my!  (Some people say that she is one dog away from being The Crazy Dog Lady, I tend to think she's already there.) Their names all start with the letter P (Pumpkin, Petunia, Phoebe, Peroguey and Phawn), and they are her joy. They are her heart. She loves them with the fierceness that you would expect of any mother. She’s happy when they’re happy, she dances when they dance (and they do dance), and she hurts when they hurt.  She would give anything she has to keep her “P”s happy and healthy.

The 5 Ps and their pile o' love.

     A few weeks ago, QZ found out that Peroguey has cancer and needs chemotherapy. Peroguey has recently started her treatment and is being a real trooper. She's getting a lot of love from the other Ps and my fingers are crossed that she'll come through it all with her tail wagging.

Named Rogue when she was adopted, she became Peroguey so she could be a "P.".

     Imagining the worry and stress that this is causing QZ, along with some family issues she's dealing with right now, not to mention the insane expense of it all had me wondering what I could do to help QZ and the sweet, sweet Ps.  Well, I came up with a plan. It's not much, but I hope that it helps a little.

     First, because I've been thinking of her a lot, I  made a set of Peroguey-inspired pattern block cards. My class has been obsessed with pattern blocks lately, so I think they'll love them. (You can grab a free set by clicking on the picture down below.)  The next part of the plan is to donate all of the proceeds from my pattern block sets to Peroguey's treatments. They've been pretty popular on TPT so I'm hoping to help make a little dent in the ridiculous vet bill. If you grab the dog set and like it, I'm hoping you'll check out some of the other ones, too.

P is for puppy. P is for Peroguey. P is for love . . .

Other sets that you might like:

          

          

Have a great week!

Research in Kindergarten?

You betcha!

     I love when someone who doesn't spend a lot of time in kindergarten walks into my room and when they see what the kids are doing, their jaw drops open and they say something like, "I can't believe that kindergartners are subtracting/writing poetry/doing research." We do so much more in kindergarten than we did even a few years ago, and visitors are often surprised at how much we challenge our little guys. It sure ain't your Grandma's kindergarten anymore!

     This happened to me a couple of weeks ago when we were in the middle of our nonfiction unit. One of the upper grade teachers in my school popped in and was amazed to see that the kids were doing independent research projects. I told her we were tackling the process in a "kindergarten friendly" way, which involves a few steps that I've tweaked over the past few years so that all of the kids can be successful. I thought I would share in case anyone is looking for a way to get started. This is what we did . . .

Step 1: Prep
           I decided that we would just focus on animals, so I came up with three facts that I thought would be both interesting and easy to research. The kids were responsible for finding out what their animal looks like, what it eats and where it lives. I gathered a whole bunch of nonfiction animal books for the kids to choose from. (This took a little bit of time because I wanted to make sure that the books I picked had clear illustrations because many had text that was just not accessible to most of my beginning readers.) Then, I got the materials ready for the first day of research. I put three small stickies with icons for each fact on a sentence strip for each student. We were ready to go! 

Step 2: Research
     For each of the first three days, I focused my Readers' Workshop mini-lesson on looking for one of the chosen facts. Modeling with a big book, I showed the class how to find the information I was looking for and how to mark it with the matching sticky note. When I sent them off to get to work, they were so excited to find what they were looking for - we were official researchers!

Step 3: Note Taking
     On each of the days that we did our research in Step 2, we carried over our project into our Writers' Workshop time. I gave the kids a tri-fold graphic organizer to write down the information they had collected that day. (I enlarged onto 12x18 construction paper so they had a big space to write in.) We discussed making illustrations true to life and the kids were encouraged to add details.

 I love how this little researcher spelled "koalas" and "trees."

Step 4: Publishing
     Once all of the research was done, we took all of the facts we'd learned and wrote nonfiction books about our animals. I simply provided a cover sheet and blank pages and the kids went to town. They did such a great job! Even my reluctant writers were excited to share their new knowledge. The kids were so proud of their finished books that we visited our 5th Grade Reading Buddies to show them off.

Our first Reading and Writing nonfiction units of study were a big success and the kids really have a firm grasp on how to read and write nonfiction books. If you'd like to give it a try, you can download the materials I used by clicking on the picture below.  Happy Researching!

 

 

My Favorite Things Freebie

     We had a full afternoon of Parent Teacher conferences today and boy, am I tired of hearing myself talk!  On the ride home I decided that I was going to get home, relax and not say another word all night. That was before I realized that the remake of The Sound of Music was on. Now I'm sitting here, an old nostalgic fool, singing along with Maria and the children at the top of my lungs. (I'm not taking it personally that my dog is next to me howling . . .) My poor voice will no doubt pay the price tomorrow, but I consider that a small price to pay for bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens! The Sound of Music just makes me happy. (And I have to say, Carrie Underwood had some big shoes to fill and I think she's doing a great job!)
     As Maria belted out, "A Few of My Favorite Things," it made me think of a book I just used with my class during our Early Print Strategies unit.  One of the strategies we worked on was "Getting you mouth ready to say the word." To reinforce and strengthen this skill, I made an emergent reader that really requires the kids to attend to the first letter of the word, because after looking at the picture for clues, the unfamiliar word is not always the obvious choice. Is that a dog or a puppy? A computer or a laptop? A coat or a jacket? There are a couple of different versions of the book, so you can keep the kids on their toes!  You can grab a copy by clicking on the picture if you'd like to try it with your kids.
Have a great night and try to sing out loud at least once tomorrow!