Just popping in to say that I'm jumping on the sale bandwagon! Hop over to my store to grab some great deals!!!

Click here to go to my Teachers Pay Teachers store. Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!

 

Super Sub Tub

I got my computer back and I am so thankful! I have to say that it was kind of nice to check out during spring break. Here is a look at my little Pinterest project that I made for my daughter. It was so fun to do! Please excuse the iPhone pics.

 

I just finished up my Super Sub Tub unit. It is up on TpT and will be on sale through the week. Hope you check it out!

 

If you haven't already checked out the HUGE giveaway over at Keepin' It Kool In Kindergarten you should! Khrys has put together one of the most jam packed giveaways I've seen. I'm crossing my fingers big time for this one!



Spring Cleaning Sale!

Happy Spring Break! My break started with a computer virus. I was devastated! I had a TON of computer stuff to do over the break! My major one was to finish up my spring unit as well as 2 others that were all in the final stages. Sigh. I think that everything on my trusty laptop is going to be fine, but I just need our district tech people to give it a check up. All that is way above my head!

The computer drama turned out to be a bit of a blessing in disguise. I have spent precious time with my little girl. We hit up the zoo, enjoyed the beautiful weather playing outside, took some snuggle naps, and just hung out with no distractions. It has been wonderful.

I did start a little Pinterest project where I am repurposing an old entertainment center into a play kitchen. It is going to be the cutest thing ever! My brother in law is pitching in to lend a hand...and his power tools. I'll post pics when it's done. Hoping that's only a few more days. I'm dying to play with H in her new kitchen.

My little TpT store is having a sale this weekend only. I wish there were 3 new units finished and ready to post, but I'll be adding those as soon as I can get my poor old computer back from the tech doctor. Please check out my store this weekend for 20% off! I'm linking up with Krista at The Creative Chalkboard for this sale. Her clip art is my absolute favorite and her freebies are amazing! Visit Krista's blog to see all the other awesome stores having sales his weekend. Wishing you a wonderful Easter and a happy spring!!!

Great Giveaway and a FREEBIE!

Hi friends! I am happy to be a part of Christy's awesome giveaway over at Teaching Tales Along the Yellow Brick Road. She is celebrating 100 followers and has put together a ton of great prizes. Head on over to get entered!

 

I've been hard at work the past few weeks creating a couple different units . My husband keeps asking what on earth I'm working on each evening. I think he's just afraid that I'm collecting more pins to my "husband projects" board on Pinterest. I about did him in a few weeks ago while we were home for our snow days. Ha!

 

Here is a little sneak peak freebie from my new spring unit. I hope to be wrapping it up in a few days. Anyone else suffering from the pattern of feeling way more creative and full of ideas when you don't have time to work on your units and a bit uninspired when you actually do have the time? Click the picture below to download. Hope you enjoy it!

 

Educents

Imagine my excitement as I was doing a little teacher blog stalking/lesson planning for the week (ok it was mostly blog stalking) and I stumbled across what promises to be the Very Jane, Simple Addiction, or GroopDealz of the teaching world?!? Oh. My. Word. This is exciting! The site isn't scheduled to launch until April 2, but you can head over to educents.com to preregister your email and you'll receive a $15.00 gift card code. I can't wait to see what kind of cool things they have to offer in just a few short weeks!

Catch up time!

Yea Friday! Here's another Five for Friday:

 

We had a crazy busy week in kindergarten getting last minute assessing done before the end of the 3rd quarter. Our report cards go home next week and conferences are also starting next week. That's enough to make me stressed! A million questions started rolling through my head. What skills did I forget to check the kids on? What do I want to tell moms and dads when I meet with them? Why on earth did I not work more on solid shapes before this week?!? What cute project can we do to display in the hallway before conferences? You know how it is.

 

The great news is that today is a teacher workday! Today I am thankful for a quiet classroom as I sit here organizing my school life, entering grades, and just plain getting my act together. Did I mention that it's quiet?

 

This week I have also been working on putting student work in to their memory books. This is an ongoing project throughout the year for me, but I think the finish product is so special. My students choose work from throughout the year that they want to save for their memory book and at the end of the year they get to take it home. It's a really fun way to see the growth made in kindergarten and parents love it! I'm working on adding my kindergarten memory book to my TpT store, but my guess is that will be a summer project. Ha!

 

I am obsessed with how cute these sweet handprint rainbows turned out. I saw this idea on Pinterest (surprise, surprise) and just had to try. They are colorful, cheery, and were super easy!

 

My kids are loving Scentos markers and "happy chappy" dots this week. My teaching pal next door gave me these Scentos markers several weeks ago and it's all my students want me to star their papers with. They smell delicious! She found them at Hobby Lobby, but I think Wal-Mart carries them too. The "happy chappy" idea comes from Dr. Jean. I just put a little dot of scented chapstick on the student's little hand or right on their paper for an added reward or when I notice them doing the right thing. Cheap, easy, and fun!

 

Well, back to entering grades. This picture says it all. Have a great weekend!

Dolly Parton's Imagination Library and a SALE!

 

My little TpT store is having a sale! I'm celebrating the fact that after months of coulda, woulda, shoulda I finally have uploaded products onto my store. There are many more to come so I invite you to check it out and follow me on TpT so you can receive updates.

Have you heard of Dolly Parton's Imagination Library? It is such a cool program that provides children (birth to age five) with a new age appropriate book each month. The books are mailed right to your door or post office box. I signed my daughter up last fall and let me tell you the teacher in me gets SO excited when a new book comes each month. The books are fantastic! They send popular stories from well known authors. Harper’s books have been mostly board books so far which I love! If you have little ones at your house go check out Dolly Parton's Imagination Library webpage to see if the program is offered to your area and sign up!

Snow days!

Well, I'm a little behind. Again! This post was supposed to happen last week. Oh well, better late than never. I'm linking up for another Five for Friday (on Sunday) post.

This is my favorite kind of linky party because it's a little random...that is right up my alley. It's been a crazy couple of weeks in the land of oz. We were smack dab in the middle of that winter storm that blew through the Midwest and as a result our school got to enjoy 4 (yes that's right 4) snow days. School was let out several hours early on Wednesday and we did not go back until the following Wednesday!

 

 

There were actually 2 separate waves of storms that came through. The first dropped around 14-16 inches of snow in our area and the second around 6-8. It was such a wonderful gift of moisture and family time.

 

I was in heaven snuggling my little one and getting projects done around the house! Here's a picture of one of the several Pinterest projects I was able to knock off my to do list. Just a clearance canvas picture from Hob Lob, paint, 2 inch foam brush, and a glass of wine required. I love that it didn't cost a lot or take much time to make so that if I get sick of it there will be no guilt when I switch it out for something else.

 

I also found time to finish up a few TpT projects I had been working on. Visit my little store to check them out!

Coin Value Chant Pack

We celebrated our baby girl's first birthday this weekend. It was such a special day. The theme was You Are My Sunshine and she was all smiles. I don't know what we ever did without her.



 

That was my week in pictures. I promise I have a more "schoolish" week planned for this next one. Lots to do before parent/teacher conferences!

You Melt My Heart

Happy Valentine’s Day! What a busy day. My kinders were SO excited to celebrate today with our class party and V-day activities. I saw so many cute valentine ideas on Pinterest this year. It was hard to decided what to do for my class. I decided on the melted crayon hearts. I’m sure you’ve seen this on Pinterest and if you haven’t tried it you should! It was not hard and it didn’t even take long at all.

I found these heart silicone molds at Michael's. The set of 12 was under 7.00 with their weekly coupon.

I soaked the crayons in warm water for about 10 or 15 min and the Crayola papers came right off. The Rose Art paper wrappers did not. They ended up in the trash because I didn't want to mess with pealing papers off. Who has time for that?!?

They dried in no time! Next, it was time to break them up and place them in the silicone molds. They baked at 215 degrees for about 20 min or until they were melted. I pulled them out and let them cool over night. They popped right out of the molds with no trouble. Next time I think I'll be more selective with the colors I choose, but the kids loved them and I'll definitely try it again.

Hope you had a wonderful Valentine's Day!

Literacy Center Response Sheets for Young Learners

One of my favorite centers in my classroom is the listening center. I have a wonderful variety of books and CDs ordered from Scholastic and my students LOVE listening to them. I like that my listening center is always ready to go with very little planning. Just change out the story and the response sheet and the kids are set. This fall I discovered a problem. Somehow I lost my entire file of listening center response sheets! This was super frustrating and prompted a serious multi-weekend classroom organization project. Every cabinet, cupboard, drawer, and even file cabinet was cleaned out. Still no missing file of response sheets! Sigh. What's a girl to do? I did what any TpT/teacher blogger would do... created a set of simple literacy center response sheets that are easy enough for kindergarteners (even beginning of the year kinders). Click here to visit my TpT store and check them out for yourselves. Happy center time! Click here to preview and download.

First Freebie!!!

I've started around 15 units and activities that I have intended to post to TpT and haven't gotten any completed yet. It's a little scary to create something and throw it out into the world like that. What if I missed something when I edit it? What if no one finds it as useful as I did? I'm feeling brave today and posting my first FREEBIE. It's not colorful or full of clipart, but it has been useful in my classroom. I implemented behavior punch cards in the fall and it has really helped to motivate my students to do their best. The kids get an extra punch for each level (green or above) that they end the day on. I can really see them working hard to clip up so that they can get more punches. Enjoy!

I'm not 100% sure which blog I snaged my behavior clip chart from. How bad is that??? I think it was from Mrs. Freshwater's Class blog. Head over and grab one for your classroom.

Click on this picture below to download!

Five for Friday...on Saturday!

I spotted this linky and thought it would be the perfect way to get my rear back into blogging. I finally found my stride this week after struggling to get back into the groove. Coming back from Christmas break and being sick both took it out of me. I was finally productive with my planning time (I can often be found visiting with colleagues to avoid my massive To Do list). Not this week! I organized and labeled cabinets, rearranged center spots in my classroom, and even cleaned out files. The most amazing thing of all was that I got to school 30 minutes earlier than usual most days this week so that I could get it all done. My 10 month old decided to wake up at 5:30 each morning this week to get me rolling. :) Can't resist her smiling face so up we got! Here's what has been happening in my classroom this week... We celebrated Kansas Day! Kansas turned another year older and we celebrated with lots of Kansas activities throughout the day. The kids made sunflowers (our state flower) with 100 sunflower seeds glued to the center. They counted out 10 piles of 10. We are experts at this after celebrating the 100th day of school last week. We also enjoyed a little chocolate "Kansas" treat. A mini Hershey choloclate bar with the corner bitten off. The mini M&M represents where we live. They loved it! The fun idea came from my teaching buddy next door. Love teamwork!

We also started our first week of yoga. We usually have 20 minutes of rest time each day. The kids would get out their rest towels and I would put on soft music for a little quite time every afternoon. This time was really nice at the beginning of the year. Many of the kids would drift off to sleep and the ones who didn't would get some much needed quite time. Well...this time stopped being peaceful in the fall and had since turned into one of my most dreaded times of the day. The kids would do just about any sneaky thing they could come up with and there was very little resting happening. Enter kid yoga! I found some wonderful DVDs on Amazon and the kids are LOVING that they get to turn their rest towels into yoga mats. It is seriously the cutest thing ever to watch them go from pose to pose. It's a great brain break for them and one of the DVD's is actually called Silly to Calm. Perfect for what I need right before learning center time. Anyone doing yoga in their classroom? Do you have a favorite DVD or resource to share? I would love to hear feedback.

Lastly, here is a pic of one of my cabinets in my classroom. I've been trying to reach this level of organization since I moved rooms in July. It only took half a year. Ha! I did tell my other kindergarten teacher friends that they might need to hide my label maker from me because I am getting a little out of control. I brought it home for the weekend. Let's just see how crazy I can drive my husband labeling things around our house.

Check out other Five for Friday posts!