If You Give a Teacher...

The iTeach First blog along with the other iTeach blogs are having a great giveaway to kick off Teacher Appreciation!  You can win a variety of gift cards...if you win here are some ideas on how to spend them!  These are some of my favorite teaching supplies.

 Astrobrights paper is also a must have!  When there is no time to color but you still want your interactive notebooks to "pop" just use some of this paper!  Love it!

Scotch Laminator & Pouches- Nothing is more liberating than being able to pull out your own laminator and have something laminated at the last second... everyone knows when you need something laminated fast that someone has let the roll run out!

I love these Liquid Flair pens from PaperMate.  I just happened to come across them in the clearance section of Office Max.  I need all the colors!

This card stock is a steal.  I order it off of Amazon.  A package of it has 200 sheets... the latest price was just under $7.  It's great to stock up for next year and get ready for some great new stations and centers! 

Head on over to the iTeach First Blog to enter to win all of these giftcards!  What a treat for some lucky teachers!  Just click the image below!

Stephany

Rhyme to Read App Quick Giveaway!

I am excited to be able to share with you some more free downloads for the awesome app "Rhyme to Read".  If you haven't heard about this app, it was developed by teachers who have experience teaching kids to read.



 My students love gradually increasing their reading level.  As they move up in the book levels, they see the same characters and some of the same words which gives them confidence and a boost while they read!

To win a free copy of this app, all you have to do is enter the rafflecopter below!  This will be a quick giveaway and 5 winners will be chosen on Friday!   

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Five for Friday (Frog Week)

 

It is hard to believe that it is Friday again.  My kinders studied frogs this week.  Here are five things from this week (frog style).

1.) These are the books that we read this week for frog week. 

2.)  My kinders wrote some amazing sentences on their crafty lillypads.

3.) These are a few pictures of station activities that my kiddos worked on this week.

  

4.) This character chart is one that was included in Deedee Wills Frog and Toad Activity pack on TpT.

  
5.) My favorite frog story is Frog and Toad are Friends by Arnold Lobel.  The kiddos really enjoyed drawing the characters and setting for the story.

Endless Possibilities,

Stephanie

Makeover Monday (April 13)

Makeover Monday is a weekly linky for teachers to update some of our favorite, free, or just fantastic products.  The product I chose to link up this week is one of the first products I made for my kinders. 

The following fluency cards should be printed and set at a station with a timer.  Students should read or track the letters with his or her finger and record the time on the recording sheet provided in the (new and improved) mini-unit.

 

I have included both lowercase and uppercase letter fluency cards.  There are also three fluency cards with both uppercase and lowercase letters.

There are eight nonsense word cards that your students can practice.

There are eight phoneme segmentation words that your kiddos can "chop".  I have my students use their arm to chop the sounds of each word.

 

I am so excited that I finally updated this packet.  Not only will my students be happy to see something new and fresh in their intervention tubs, but you can also enjoy this packet FREE.

 

This updated freebie is available on TpT.  Just click here to download your free Peas in a Pod Pack.

Do you have a product that you have recently updated?  Do you have a product that you are thinking needs a fresh look?  If so, link up your post and/or product below.

Endless Possibilities,

Stephanie

An InLinkz Link-up

Carrots

Carrots are so much fun to teach during my plant unit.  I love the story The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss.  The pictures are simple.  It is always a favorite of my kinders (and me).

The Scholastic Book Fair was at our school this week.  If your school is like mine, the Book Fair makes a lot of profit from the teachers in the building.  I think I visited the Book Fair daily.  I ended by buying Creepy Carrots by Aaron Reynolds.

So I went searching... of course on TpT.  I found a unit called Creepy Carrots Literacy Activities and Stations by Sherri Caballero.  I was so excited!!  Not only that the price was unbeatable, but also because she is an incredible woman and teacher who lives just a few miles down the road from me!!

Here are some pictures and activities from this week's lesson on carrots...

Of course we had to have a craftivity!!  I cut rectangles out of construction paper and directed students how to make cuts until they ended up with this creation!!

 
Debbie Clement always says that students should not have a cookie cutter design.  I think she would enjoy our creations that are in the hallway this week!

I was most impressed with student writing.  Students worked hard and were engaged in their writing.  We used the beginning, middle, and end retelling sheet to retell the story.

I also like how the standards are included on each page. 

Endless Possibilities,

Stephanie

Five for Friday (April 10)

I can't believe it's Friday again!  This week went by speedy quick!  We are linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday.

Here are five quick random things from this week in my kindergarten classroom.

 

1.) I am so excited about my new classroom rug!!  Thank you Donor's Choose.  I read where they are currently funding half for Professional Development through the Bill and Melinda Gates Fund. 

2.)  I sent home letter naming fluency sheets with each of my students.  They are free in my TpT store.

  3.)  We studied plants this week.  My kinder kids planted beans in a Ziploc baggie, labeled a plant, and read many books.

4.) However, their favorite part was learning about carrots.  I used Sherri Caballero's Creepy Carrot Unit.

5.) For Word Work, students used newspapers to highlight sight words.

Stephany has a Newspaper Unit in her TpT store that would be great to use with kindergarten students.

Endless Possibilities,
Stephanie

Dinosaur Eggs!

We have had fun for the past couple of weeks learning about dinosaurs.  I have a student who is totally obsessed with everything dinosaur so I promised we would do a dinosaur unit!  This will be one post out of two to cover all of our dinosaur adventures!

Always up for a huge, fun sloppy mess I decided to let the students paper mache their own eggs.  Before I blew up the balloons I placed a little dinosaur inside.  I got these at the Dollar Tree.  They are squishy and fit right in the balloon.  They come in three different dinosaurs (Triceratops, Stegosaurus, T-Rex).

We used the flour & water recipe to make the paste.  It didn't take too long for them to cover the balloons.  I suggest keeping them on the smaller side, the larger balloons weren't as sturdy once they dried, plus you want to make sure that there aren't any little holes in the eggs where the dinosaur can fall out.  After they were dried, I let them paint their egg.  

Once the eggs were dried, I popped the balloon.  The balloon will shrivel up inside of the paper mache which is actually great because it makes it harder for the dinosaur to fall out of any holes that may be in the eggs from the students not covering them all of the way.

We have been researching different kinds of dinosaurs.  We used these QR code cards in our listening center... they are connected to Safe Share YouTube videos that are fun and informative.  We also used the information sheets to learn about each dinosaur.

Students wrote three facts about the dinosaur in their egg, practiced reading their facts and then read them aloud while being recorded.  I took the videos and made QR codes, attached them to the eggs and made a listening center recording sheet.  Now students can scan an egg, listen to the recording and guess the dinosaur in their classmates' egg.   So many speaking and listening standards covered, as well as fluency practice. 

I plan on having a reveal to see how many students correctly guessed the dinosaurs in their classmates' eggs.  I'll let the kids take their eggs home and hatch them with their parents!

This was such a fun activity!  It's good to get a little messy every once in a while!  You can grab up the the QR codes, information sheets and much more in my All About Dinosaurs unit!

Stephany

Interactive Math Notebooks for Time {Half Hour and Hour}

Learning time to the hour and half hour is one of the first grade standards that students seem to pick up super fast or struggle with. Interactive notebooks are always a great way to practice! 

Students sort clocks into the correct pockets. They can pull them out at anytime and practice sorting them again and again!

Students write the time under each of the flaps.  They can continue to practice the skill by guessing the time and checking the answer by looking under the flap.

Students match the digital, analog and how we "say" the time.

Students match the clocks to the digital time.

Students write the digital time under the clocks.

Students write the time under the clock flap.

All of these activities include an hour, half hour, and hour/half hour mixed version.  We teach hour first and then move on to half hour so you can mix and match these activities to whatever suits your curriculum!  How do you teach time in your classroom?

You can grab these activities up in my store by clicking below...

Or you can grab up the bundle by clicking on the image below!

Stephany