Winners! And 3 FREEBIES :)

Congrats to the three winners of my Oh What Fun! K.CC.1 pack!

Terry, Amanda, and Barbie Ann, you will be receiving e-mails from me soon! If you did not win, never fear! You can purchase it in my TPT store here.

So as I said on my post last week, I rarely advertise my TPT products, and if I do, I always give away freebies as well!

So since I had 3 winners, I have 3 freebies for you!

FREEBIE #1: ABC Puzzles
This freebie is just a simple puzzle in which students are matching the uppercase letter to the lowercase letter. This black and white file is perfect for a literacy center, whole group matching activity or early finisher work. Click on the link above to get your copy from GoogleDrive!

FREEBIE #2: No Voice Hand Signal Signs
I have never used these in my classroom before, but have seen the magic they have made in other classrooms! So I created signs to show students what signals to use when they need certain things. I am going to be teaching in an ESOL heavy classroom, so picture cues are my new best friends! I just found the pictures on Google Images. You can get your copy on GoogleDrive link above :)

FREEBIE #3: iPad Rules
This last freebie are the rules that I am going to have posted for use of my new iPad!!! Obviously my kiddos will have a lot of practice of how to treat an iPad correctly and it will be a big reward to get to use it! Hopefully these rules work for you too! I know some people have different kinds of covers. I have an OtterBox and it is so sturdy and strong! Kindergarten worthy :) Get your freebie above!

 (P.S. The first picture is crossed out because he is only holding the iPad with one hand!)

 

 

Enjoy your freebies! I hope everyone is enjoying the end of their summer and not stressing over their classroom like I am :)

 

Sarah

Back to School, iPad, Common Core Math, and a GIVEAWAY!

I am floating on air right now! I just got an IPAD! Woo :) I mean the elation is diminished a tad by the fact that I spent $500 but...it's so awesome! I cannot wait to use it with my kiddos this year!

I have been looking around the app store have found some apps that I really like! I'm not opposed to paying for good apps, but it's so hard to tell what it is like from the lite version sometimes!! I haven't found many yet, but these are my favorites so far!

Some of the apps I got that I really liked are:

 

Letter School is the most fun way I have ever seen to learn handwriting! So interactive :) It's $2.99 and teaches students how to write uppercase and lowercase letters and numbers 1-10.

 

 

Circus Math is a really fun $1.99 math app that teaches all kinds of common core skills: counting, writing numbers, addition, subtraction, etc. It also includes patterning games! 

 

 

 

Three Ring is an awesome app that syncs with your computer to store student assessment data. It is basically a visual portfolio that you and parents can access! How cool!

 

So I haven't had the time to fully investigate everything my iPad has to offer, but I'll keep letting you know as I find new things!

 

So this year I am making the change to KINDERGARTEN! Nothing like teaching a new grade level every year :) Luckily, I will be in the same school, just in a new classroom. I LOVED my old classroom. So bright and pretty. My new one is just as big, but has no windows. GULP. Here is the chaos of me trying to organize and unpack.

 

 

Craziness! How do I brighten this room up to compensate for no windows? Any ideas?

 

As I dive into my new kindergarten curriculum, I realized that I needed to make some new supplemental activities for my math curriculum to meet the CCSS. So I created a math packet specifically for K.CC.1: Counting to 100 by ones and tens. I feel like this is a BIG one and I wanted lots of materials to help teach.

 

Sidebar:

I have been really disappointed with some of my favorite teaching blogs lately because I feel like blogs have turned into advertisements for TPT products and not the fun teaching ideas I used to go to them for. Don't get me wrong, if I was making $100,000 on TPT, I would promote the best I could too...but the reason their teaching materials got so popular is because of their loyal blog followers.  Sorry! That's just my way of saying that I don't want my followers to think of my blog as an advertisement so I try hard to only promote products occasionally :) And I always include freebies to balance it out!

 

Oh What Fun! K.CC.1 is a 215 page packet with TONS of activities to help your students work towards mastery of this standard. And it's only $5.00!

 

 

Here are some of what is in the packet :)

 

 

100 Charts and 120 Charts (for differentiation) in blank, colored for counting, and highlighted for counting by tens.

 

Five Frame Fun is a game where students practice counting and subitizing in regular and irregular form for numbers up to 5.

 

Ten Frame Fun is a game where students practice counting and subitizing in regular and irregular form for numbers 0-20.

 

What's the Missing Number? is a game that gives a child a card with a missing number, and they can either write in the missing number or use the number cards included. This game is available for numbers 0-10, 11-20, 20-120, and counting by 10's.

 

These number puzzles are perfect for early finishers or extra practice. They are awesome because they are self-correcting :)

These setting cards are an idea from Debbie Diller's Math Work Stations book. She talks about how important it is for students to practice using mathematical language. So in using these setting cards, students may have conversations like:

 

"How many aliens are on the rocket?"

"There are 5 aliens on the rocket."

or

"There are 5 aliens in space."

"2 and 3 is the same amount as 5."

 

There are endless possibilities!

 

 Tricky Tens is a fun board game to practice counting forwards and backwards by tens. Both students start on the start square of this endless game board. They can move in any direction they please with a roll of a die. If they land on +10, they get to add their first star. Then if the same student lands on +30 the net turn, their star cards would be up to 40. Keep going until students get to 100 or 120.

 

 

I Have, Who Has is a game everyone knows! This game has cards up to 120!

 

 Snap Cubes Counting by 10's is a great activity for students to practice counting by ones and tens. They use the snap cube cards to count by tens and can build the actual towers to go with them.

 

Number Neighbors is a great activity for students to understand numbers that come before and after +1, -1, +10, and -10.

 

If you read all of this BRAVO! You can get your copy on TPT here! Because you read all of this and didn't leave me, I'm going to giveaway 3 copies of this pack on Sunday! Enter below :)


a Rafflecopter giveaway  

I will announce the winners on Monday! Enjoy your last few weeks of summer :)

Sarah 

Monday Made-It!

I was supposed to be apartment hunting all day but that got postponed till tomorrow, so today I was busy crafting on....

So my Monday Made-It consisted of finishing one of my projects from last week and starting a new one!

Monday Made-It #1: Finish All About Me teacher big book

I'M FINALLY DONE!!! (Except for laminating, but I'll do that tomorrow!) And I have to tell you, it was TOTALLY worth all the effort. This is not only going to be a perfect way to introduce myself to my students, but can be a wonderful way for their parents to learn about me as well!

Here are a few pictures of the almost finished product :)

 

 

Monday Made-It #2: Colored Pasta for my Sensory Table!

I've seen it all over Pinterest and all over different blogs and I knew I wanted to make this for my kiddos for the fall! I started by going to Aldi and buying about 20 lbs. of pasta. It sounds like a lot because it is haha! It has to fill my sensory table people :) Then I went to Target to get gallon baggies, food coloring, and rubbing alcohol. All in all, I spent about $30 on all the materials.

I figured this would be a good poolside activity :)

After buying everything, I was thinking that maybe I could have found it cheaper just buying already made....definitely not. I looked it up when I got home and WOW! That stuff is expensive. But if your school will buy it for you, here is the equivalent to what I made on a couple of different websites:

Rakuten Shopping: $6.49/lb. ($140=20 lbs.)
Discount School Supply: $5.99/lb. ($120=20 lbs.)
S&S Worldwide: $8.79/lb. ($176=20 lbs.)


I opened the biggest box first, and then used it as a mixer for the rest to keep the food coloring off my hands.

First, you add 1/4(ish) cup of rubbing alcohol.

Next, you add 5-10 drops of food coloring (or more) depending on how vibrant you want your colors. I added closer to 10!

Then I just closed the bag, picked up the box and shook until it was mixed. I then doubled bagged it and laid it out to dry.  Mine stayed in the closed bag for about 2 hours before I laid them out on newspaper. The sun dried them FAST!

My colors may be a tad less vibrant than these premade ones, but I think it's safe to say I came out ahead :)

 

 

 

 

 I'm very happy with the results! Go over to 4th Grade Frolics and check out all the other awesome Monday Made-Its!

Enjoy the week!
Sarah

Monday Made-It!

I am such a Pinterest fanatic and I make stuff that I see all the time, but for some reason, I have never linked up! So today, I am linking up with Tara at 4th Grade Frolics for...

So what did I make? Quite a few things :) It's too cold to lay out by the pool today. Boo!

Monday Made-It #1
I was inspired by this pin that I found from Rockabye Butterfly.

I bought myself Debbie Diller's Math Work Stations book and have been stalking the blogs that reviewed her book and I love her! One of the biggest things she stresses in her books are allowing the students the opportunity to practice using math language in a correct and meaningful way. After seeing this pin, I knew that I had to make something like this for my baby kindergartners next year! AHH! I still can't believe I left last year with 3rd graders and am going to be starting with preschoolers!

So I decided to make something like this for my kinders to use at a math station to practice counting and one to one correspondence. And of course, I will give it to you for free :) However, I differentiated it further because as we all know, no 2 children are ever ready to learn the same thing at the same time!

The first set of cards has a lot of scaffolds. The child is given a colored word as well as the correct amount of dots. This is great for self-correction.

The second set only includes the scaffold of the colored words.

The last set has no scaffolds and will allow you to see if your students are able to read the prompt, understand the color word and correctly count.

You can get your counting bear activity cards on GoogleDrive here!

Monday Made-It #2
This was a BIG one! I found this pin from Sarah at YeeHaw Teaching in Texas and absolutely FELL IN LOVE with this idea!



This teacher made a big book about herself and it is adorable! She has pages for everything that a child would want to know about you :) I knew that I wanted to make this put I also knew that it was going to take FOREVER.

It kind of made me laugh to read Sarah's post about how she's OCD and had to buy pre-cut half poster board. It must be a "Sarah" thing because I am the same way! I knew this was going to be a big undertaking for me because it had to be perfect!

So I started by going through about 20 of my mother's photo albums to find good pictures of me! Besides the pictures, you need:

• Half sheets of poster board (Wal-Mart) ($3)
• Colored cardstock (Michael's) ($5)
• Cut-out letters (Dollar Tree) ($1)
• Lots of printer ink! (?$$$)
• Pictures

Oh wow! I knew this was going to take forever but I had no idea! There is no way I'm going to finish this tonight but....this is some of the progress so far :)

This is me getting started:

 

 

 I found pictures, awards, writing samples, art projects, etc. to put into my book!

These are the pages that are done so far!

 

 Since I am teaching kindergarten this year, I am fairly certain that my name will be shortened to Miss M!

 

I also made the table of contents. I decided to include on of my art projects that I did in 3rd grade!

 

 

This is my childhood page. I included pictures of me and my family!

 

This page is my favorite so far...my favorite books page! I will be reading every one of these stories to my students this year.

 

So I guess I 1 and 1/2 made it today :) I'll post about the finished product when I actually finish it!

 Enjoy your Monday!

 

Sarah