Missing Person Found!! Monday Made-It (And some FREEBIES)

So I am here to tell you that I am not a missing person. Although, not blogging for 6 MONTHS would almost make me one. I'm so sorry for my long absence. I had a special friend in my class this year, and it was really all I could do to actually make it in the door each morning, much less think about this little blog. But I'm back, and I'm definitely going to be better about blogging more often :)

I've been teaching summer school, and taking the opportunity to get some stuff ready for next year! I FINALLY get to teach the same grade level two years in a row. Kindergarten again next year and I couldn't be more excited! These are some of the things I've been getting ready for next year! (Don't worry, I only stay for an extra 30 minutes each day!! I'm not wasting my precious summer!)

I purchased DeeDee Wills' Poetry Station and Shared Reading Complete Set for next year! 

Being new to kindergarten this year, I bought her poetry pack for August/September with every intention of continuing on throughout the year as my students LOVED it! I just couldn't get it together to have them all set and ready. So, I'm doing it this summer!!

This is just some of my progress. I've managed to cut out/laminate all of the little pieces, and am working on the actual poems on sentence strips right now. I'm about 1/3 the way done! That's pretty good right?

I also convinced my K team that we had to have DeeDee Wills and Deanna Jump's math and writing complete sets! I mean come on, these ladies are amazing! And if you get just one unit, you know you're going to love and it and will be mad at yourself for wasting your money on one when you want the whole pack :) 

I didn't want to overwhelm myself, but had a little time for pool reading, so I've completely read through Units 1-5 on DW and DJ's Guided Kinder's: Math Units.

These units are AMAZING. I'm not kidding, I cannot wait to see how much more and how much faster my kiddos grow in their mathematical abilities because of this amazing resource. Not only does it give you detailed lesson plans, but it also organizes and builds on itself in a way that is easy for kids to understand, easy to differentiate, and easy for teachers to prepare. I LOVE IT!

I think I have all of the materials ready for the first 4 units, which should hopefully last me until December(ish). I am just beyond excited to start this in August!

We also purchased DJ and DW's Writer's Workshop: Writing Through the Year pack too! I am also super excited to use this wonderful resource. 



So far, I have managed to get through the first three units. Once again, I am just amazed at how wonderful these ladies are at making fluid lessons that push students, in addition to building off of the unit before. Writing was my biggest struggle as a kindergarten teacher because I felt as if I was modeling too much of what my students were not ready for. These lessons are very developmentally appropriate!



So, now onto my Monday Made-It! I'm linking up with 4th Grade Frolics to show you some projects I've been working on!



This project is something that I've wanted to make for a LONG time. A new prize box! I'd been waiting and waiting for the wooden treasure chests at Hobby Lobby or Michaels to go on sale, but the more I thought about my little kinder babies, I think if that got dropped it would shatter. So, on to plan B!

Michael's was having a sale on their containers, so I got this guy! It is perfect for a prize box because it is big enough to hold everything, and has a snap lid. My only concern was that it was clear. With a little sparkly scrapbook paper, problem solved! 

This was honestly one of the easiest projects I've done. I just attached the scrapbook paper with scotch tape! My kiddos are not going to be in this that often, and when they are, they won't be ripping at the sides (hopefully haha!). And since the box will be full and you won't see it anyway, I put the tape on the inside. 

This is what the box looks like with a few new prizes in it! Since the box is not totally square, the paper did not go all the way to the edges, but I think it still looks good!

Then I just needed to finish the lid! I put some extra sparkle paper on it and made a little prize box label. You can download it for free here (thanks Creative Clips for the border and Kevin and Amanda for the font!)! 

I feel like it turned out really nice! I'm happy and I'm sure my kiddos will be too with all the lovely prizes they'll earn :) Total cost of this project: $15. ($10 for the box, $5 for the scrapbook paper)



After having students the last few years that struggled with emotional regulation, I knew that for next year, I wanted more resources available in my room to help my students calm themselves down. I had seen this idea of a calming jar on Pinterest before, and had failed at making it! 



But I finally found an easy way to make this calming jar that I didn't mess up, from Juggling with Kids. It was so easy! All you need is food coloring, some kind of jar/bottle, glitter glue, and warm water! 

I ended up using Gatorade bottles. (Glass in a K classroom? I think not!) For each bottle I added 3 cups of warm water (it needs to be warm/hot to melt the glue), half the bottle of glitter glue (I used Elmer's), and 3-4 drops of food coloring. Just shake/stir to mix. Then I added just a tad more water at the end, but don't make it totally full or the kids can't shake and mix the glitter!

I think they turned out great! These pictures were taken about 1 minute after shaking, and it takes about 5 minutes for the glitter to settle completely. Total cost for this project: $7. ($3 for the glitter glue and $4 for the food coloring)

So I have been reading The Next Step in Guided Reading: Focused Assessments and Targeted Lessons for Helping Every Student Become a Better Reader. I bought it last summer and briefly read through it, but I really wanted to delve more into it! 


After reading the chapter about emergent readers, and learning that the fastest way for students to pick up letters and letter sounds is for them to: a) trace the letter everyday and b) see the same pictures for sounds on everything (wall letters, ABC charts, tracing books, etc.). Since I couldn't find one on TPT that I liked, I made my own!

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Now-I-Know-My-ABCs-ABC-Posters-Tracing-Books-and-Charts-1311217

Now I Know My ABC's is a little 83 page pack I made that includes large ABC posters to hang on your wall, ABC tracing books in color and black and white, and an ABC chart for student reference! 
It is on sale on TPT for 1/2 off today and tomorrow only! And the ABC chart is included as a freebie in the preview file :)

Have a great Monday! I'm so jealous of those of  you in VEGAS!

Five for Friday (for once!) and Freebies!

I always take the pictures and tell myself I am going to participate in Doodle Bug's Five for Friday, but I always come home dead to the world on Friday nights!

So I'm super excited to be participating this week :)

 
Every morning (except Fridays), we do one of DeeDee Wills' Read, Trace, Glue, and Draw activities as our morning work. It is amazing! No more, Miss M, how do I do this? EVERYONE knows what to do. I can't wait until they can actually read it :)

Our kindergarten assessments this year were re-made to reflect the CCSS better, and that means they are harder! My kinder babies are expected to know a lot, including word problems (boo!). So, we used this farm scene from my Oh What Fun! K.CC.A.1 math pack to help us practice our mathematical language.

I would dictate a scene to the students, like "There are 5 horses in the barn" or "There are 3 chickens on the roof" and they had to show me on their farm scene. Next week, they are going to practice making up stories for each other. This will naturally lead into addition and subtraction word problem practice!

After our whole group practice, we did math tubs. I am trying REALLY hard to implement the ideas/techniques I got from Debbie Diller's math work stations book. So my kiddos and I work together to make charts of what they must/can do at each math tub. (Side note: Making the charts is a lot more work than I thought...but when I tried to skip them, it was chaos. I need to stick with it!) Here is the chart we made for our Roll and Color game. And another of the kiddos playing :) You can get the game for free here!

For reading, my class does a reader's workshop routine, which we call "me" time and "we" time. We have actually gotten really strong at "me" time (our independent reading) but the kiddos worked really hard to be "we" time (partner reading/table reading) experts this week! Look at these intense readers!

Even though most of my kiddos do not have the letter sound or sight work knowledge to actually be reading their books yet, they are very focused on reading the pictures! Even so, I wanted to give them something to build their confidence in reading the words. So the song book was born! This thing has been a favorite since day 1! They LOVE it!

I put the lyrics to any song that we sing in class in their songbook that they may read during our reader's workshop. We have especially been loving the color songs from Frog Street Press. I have made a freebie lyric page for all of the color songs that you can use here :) These songbooks are amazing for practice with one to one correspondence.

Since our stamina is not quite built up to a full fledged reading workshop, we are also starting to learn literacy station games to build up to actually having literacy stations. And to do that, we have been playing name games. I know I'm not doing anything new and different that you haven't seen before, but these games are working for my kiddos!

 

(Sorry for the shiny lamination picture)! This game gives the students practice writing their friend's names. On the large name, it also has a picture to help the kiddos build their letter/sound correspondence too!

This game has a card with each child's name on the front and their picture on the back. Then, they use the letter cubes to build the name of their friend.

This game has envelopes with each child's name and picture on the front. Inside, their name is cut up into pieces and the student has to put them back together.

After playing our games, we came back together whole group and made an ABC order list of our names.

In writing, we are working on adding details to our pictures (Lucy Caulkins). Obviously, my kinders have no idea what "details" means, so I did a little activity to show them! We made "1," "2," and "3" pictures.

A "1" picture is a picture with no color. It was rushed and does not look nice. There are scribbles.

A "2" picture is a picture that has a few colors. The illustrator spent a little more time on it, but it is still not their best work.

A "3" picture is your best work. It has tons of colors, all pictures colored in, background, and more. It is what all of our pictures should look like.

We went into a lot of discussion about how the pictures need to be detailed to help the reader understand our story. We hung them up on the wall and I reference them all the time!

Right now, we are learning about seasons in science. We have just finished up our unit on summer. We ended with making our own summer person. We talked about the types of things we wear in the summer and what we look like.

This little guy cracks me up. The bottom of his face is red because it is "burnt" and he has blue spots all over his body because he is "wet." So cute!

So this is a few more than 5 pictures...oops! Enjoy your weekend and I'll have my visual plans posted tomorrow :)

Back so soon! New Year Happenings!

Today was my first day back with the kiddos! Break seems like it just started yesterday :) As much as we needed the time apart from each other, I was so happy to see their smiling faces today!

After we spend the morning sharing all of our special news from winter break, we talked about New Year's resolutions. My kiddos are all about making goals, so this idea really resonated with them!

I am using Anna Brantley's New Year's Resolution template, and an idea from A Cupcake for the Teacher, to make this! I really liked the writing part of this page because it not only asked the kiddos to make their resolutions, but to explain why and how they are going to accomplish it. I think kids miss out on the "accomplishing" part a lot, especially since it is something only they are responsible for.

We also wrote goals for our behavior for the month of January. We have been reading the book The 7 Habits of Happy Kids by Sean Covey and if you have not read it to your kids yet, DO IT! It is a phenomenal way to give your kids a vocabulary on goal setting and being in charge of themselves.

So many of my kiddos wrote their goals for January saying they would "Be Proactive" (Meaning be in charge of themselves) and "Begin with the End in Mind" (Meaning make a plan for themselves). I almost started jumping for joy!

Here are the goal setting sheets I use for each month. I included all 12 months so you could use them anytime. They are just little half sheets so the kids can keep them in their folders and access them quickly.

Luckily, this first week back isn't too bad because we can ease into it with 2 days. Next week is gonna be tough!

Happy (almost) Friday!
Sarah

Happy Holidays Giveaway Day 2!

Today is Day 2 of my Happy Holidays Giveaway!! If you missed yesterday's giveaway, please visit Day 1's post :)

Today, I am giving away a pack of winter writing prompts! There are 21 prompts included that you can use all winter long! They include writing about the cold, snow, snowmen, winter sports, holidays, winter animals and more! You can get them on TPT here! You can get them on Googledocs here!

 

Yesterday's winner is Suzy Q (3). Congrats! I will be e-mailing you to see what product you would like!

And for the second day, I will be giving away one item from my TPT store of your choice! You can comment and earn an entry for:

1. Following my blog

2. Following my TPT store

3. Posting about my giveaway on your blog!

So you can comment up to 3 times up until 2:00 AM central time! Please leave your email on your comments and I will email you to see what product you would like!!

YAY! 3 more days until break!!

Happy Tuesday!

Sarah