Product Swap and a Sale!

Happy Saturday! This has been a week people! Two of my kids came down with fevers, coughs, headaches! My youngest was at the dr on Monday and got a course of steroids for his deep cough, then we had to take him to the  ER last night for an ear infection! I am really hoping these kids get well before Spring Break!

Happily, I participated in a product swap with Erica from Sprinkles to Kindergarten (super cute blog, you should go visit right away!). This meant we had something new to try out in my room, and when I had to take the day off on Friday for sick kids, I knew I was leaving my sub with something fun and worthwhile to do!

I started off the week by introducing her Little Detectives Making Words pack - this set has 10 lessons, so I started off with doing one whole group, under my Elmo. My kids got the hang of it very quickly and were soon begging to do another one.

This time, I let them work on it individually, and challenged them to come up with more words than their friends. I loved how engrossed they were with this, every single one of my darlings tried very hard to come up with words - and it was great because while my sweet n lows were working out word families and onset/rime to come up with 3 and 4 letter words, by high flyers were really stretching themselves to find longer words. One of my smarties even grabbed a dictionary to help her spell words!

 
The other product we tested was Erica's Mini Words pack which focuses on basic sight words and short vowel cvc words. I used this with my lowest group, as a review.They loved getting to use the magnifying glasses, and I loved that each sheet has enough words that I could put them in pairs!

Both of these products provide several hours of activity, so they are a bargain! Actually they're even more of a bargain now, because we are joining up with several other Kinderland bloggers for a SALE!

The sale starts Sunday, March 10th and goes until Tuesday March 12th!

Here's the link to my TPT store:

 And here is Erica's

Happy Shopping!

Some Random Tidbits

I took the day off today to go in for my 3 hour glucose test to see if I have gestational diabetes again. Please cross your fingers for me that the results are negative! I've had it with 2 out of my 4 pregnancies and am really hoping to skip it this time around!

Since I had some free time, I got to work grading and diaggregating the data for our 3rd quarter Title I math benchmark. Overall I was pretty pleased with the results, but I was really tickled by some of the little things I noticed while grading:

 This little sweetie was being tested on such basic addition as "6+4=10" and yet look what she wrote (and then tried to erase!) in the margins:

I had to giggle when I saw this one!

(And please, pay no attention to the fact that the piece of toast is not square and a soccer ball is actually a sphere. Apparently the people who make these tests in our district failed basic 2d shapes! I had to explain to my students to pick the one that "looks most like" each shape lol!)


One of our resource teachers showed me this measurement idea she learned at a workshop:

 You take the one inch plastic squares that we all seem to have floating around our cupboards for some reason (really, where do these random thingys come from?! What was their original purpose?!) and arrange them in a row and press masking tape on the back. They are then stiff enough to be used as a ruler and sturdy enough to last several uses without having to exchange the tape! I thought this was a neat idea for kiddos who aren't quite ready for real ruler - and since you can tape as many together as you want you could make short ones and have them combine rulers, or make one very long one etc! Of course you don't need to make them patterned - my little guy just happens to love patterns so he made his that way :)

Final thought for today: we are turning into Sight Word Superstars! Part of it is that my students love to partner up to work on the words. This is a bonus for me, because they can't work on words unless they are finished their regular work and have "free time". Then, they either read a book, or get to help a friend with their sight words! Talk about motivation for getting down to business! The various pointers have been getting a workout and even my lowest friends are starting to catch on since their friends are so encouraging! My little ELL guy has mastered 60 sight words now - which is amazing considering he couldn't say his letter sounds when I got him in October!

Have a great night! I will be back later this week with some St. Patrick's Day fun since we are starting our big green unit tomorrow!

St. Patrick's Day Fun!

Hello! I am so excited that its March! Finally! This is my favorite month to teach - my kiddos are at that point where everyone is growing by leaps and bounds both academically as well as socially and physically. Lots of high-water pants at this time of year lol! Those light bulbs are turning on daily, and its so heartwarming to hear one of my little ones say "Hey, I get it!"

Of course, it doesn't hurt that we have Spring Break in the middle of the month - let's face it, February may be the shortest month, but it feels like the longest month when you're a teacher, simply because there are no breaks! Since all the blizzards have decided to skip by us (literally, we missed the last one by 6 miles) we haven't had a break since MLK's birthday. That's a long time, especially since we've had a lot of inside recesses due to rain and low temperatures! I am ready for Spring Break!

But, first, I get to teach my favorite unit - St. Patrick's Day! I am about 1/4 Irish, and there might be a few kiddos who have a teeny tiny bit of Irish in them, but for most of my kiddos St. Patrick's Day is a nonevent in their households. This makes it so much fun to teach in the classroom! I keep it non-secular of course, but what child isn't intrigued by the idea of little men and pots of gold?

If you check out my book list on the right sidebar you'll see some of my favorite St. Paddy's Day books to read aloud. You can also get some ideas on how to host a leprechaun in your classroom from my free "How to Plan a Leprechaun Visit" pack on TPT.

Here's a peek at my St. Patrick's Day tub:

This contains everything for my St. Patrick's Day unit except for my books which I store in different tubs. In it is everything from tablecloths for the little table at our reading center, to decorations, pencils, stickers and my files. I grabbed the little pot of gold coins and green necklaces at the after-St. Patrick's Day-sales last year, so I would have it ready for this year and not have to pay full price! I also have my leprechaun trap ready to go (read more about the traps here). I also have some BragTags from imagestuff.com to give to those who complete a leprecaun trap as a homework project:

I've made some new products for St. Patrick's Day this year, which I am super excited to use in the classroom:

Here's my St. Patrick's Day ten frames from my February/March Ten Frames pack. I just love having ten frames to display on my Math wall, as well as the smaller ones to go in our math tubs. I also made a new Lucky Measuring Fun pack for more measurement practice for my kiddos - it covers measuring height and width, as well as time to the hour and 1/2 hour, graduated order and data analysis.

 Here's my  Leprechaun Sight Words Game which can be played 3 ways. My students especially love the Hide-N-Seek version! This time I will hide the little pots of gold behind different cards and the students will have to read the word on the card in order to see if the pot of gold is hidden behind it. The words I used are from the Dolch Word Lists and each card has a number on it, telling you which list it is off of. This way, when my kids play in small groups, I can choose the right list for each group, making differentiation easy!

I'm just finished printing out and laminating my "I have...Who has?" game for ai/ay words for this week since it goes perfectly with the story we are on in our Scott Foresman readers. We'll also use my "I have...Who has..?" game with CVCE words just for some review.

Whew! That's a lot isn't it?! Of course we also have my St. Patrick's Roll & Cover addition/subtraction games, as well as a St. Patrick's Day Roll & Graph to make sure we get that St. Paddy's Day theme into every part of our day lol!

Oh! and I found the cutest Jungle Animal cookies from Mother's that are white and green. I plan on buying a bag of the regular pink & white Circus Animal cookies and having that tricky leprechaun switch them out with the green ones lol! Make sure to look for a package next time you are grocery shopping!

Hope that gives you some ideas for St. Patrick's Day. Head over to Sharing Kindergarten for even more St. Patrick's Day goodness!