My 2nd Product Swap

Happy Saturday Everyone!

I am very excited to have had the opportunity to join Jessica Stanford's 2nd Product Swap.  I love seeing other bloggers products.

This time I have been paired with Deborah at The Paper Maid.  She has wonderful items for the primary level (not just kindergarten) and many freebies.  Make sure you take time to visit her blog.




The product that I am reviewing is her Beginning Sounds and Writing Book.  It has cute illustrations that are black line so that the students can color them in (that is always important to me because my students don't like to color in pictures that have gray parts of them because they were actually in color to begin with).  I found that there were many uses for it in the classroom.
First of all, I have a group of students who need extra practice with identifying beginning sounds.  So I made copies of some of the pages in the book to work on with this small group together.  The students enjoyed looking at the pictures and they were very easy for them to identify.  Since there are only 3 letters for them to pick from that the picture might begin with, it made it easier for my students who are struggling with this skill to be successful.

There is also a space for the students to write the letter.  This gave them extra printing practice, which is always a good thing.

I also printed off the pages, glued them to construction paper and laminated them.  These pages I placed at a center for the students to write on with a dry erase marker.  This provided extra practice with beginning sounds for all of my students.  The students loved using the dry erase markers.  You could also place the pages in page protectors and let the students write on them with the dry erase markers.

Thank you Deborah for being my partner in the Product Swap and for letting me review an item that was so useful in my classroom.

Don't forget to stop by Jessica's blog to see the other wonderful items in the product swap.

Click here to go to Jessica's blog.

Thank you for taking the time to visit today.

A Manic Monday Freebie

Happy Monday!

I have just begun my 4th week of school today.  I have to say I have one of the best classes ever.  I was sitting at a table today, just watching them.  It was so wonderful.  Everyone was on task doing what I had asked them to do.  There was a hum in the air of little ones hard at work.  I was very impressed.

Because of my good fortune of having such a terrific class this year, I have decided to share the graph I made with my class last week as a freebie.  The students graphed their favorite color.

Here is a picture of it:

Click here to download my freebie to make this graph.

Check out the other freebies at Manic Monday.

Thank you for visiting my blog.  I hope to see you again soon.

A Reason to Write - Parent Journals

Well, I have survived my first week of school.  It was only 4 days but, that is long enough for my little kinders.  I love my class.  They are doing a wonderful job of learning all of the rules and  procedures.  Most of them are catching on very quickly.  We are going to have a great year!

My school is focusing on teaching writing this year.  I know that when my students have a reason to write they are more likely to want to write.  So after much careful thought and a little luck while looking for a file on one of my jump drives, I found an idea I had used several years ago.  I had my students write in Parent Journals.  A Parent Journal is a spiral notebook where the students write (or draw) a note to their parents/grandparents/their family.  Then whoever the note was written to writes a note back to the student and returns the Parent Journal the next day. I had my students write in the journal on Friday and take it home.  Hopefully, each of my students brings the journal back on Monday.  The the students can share their journals and responses with each other.

Here is a link to the note I attached to the front of the spiral notebooks.  It is in Word, so that you can change it to suit your needs.  

Parent Journal Letter

I have linked this freebie with Manic Monday at Classroom freebies.

If you are unable to open the letter, please email me or reply to this post and I will email it to you.  Thank you for visiting my blog today.

My Bulletin Boards

Woohoo, I woke up this morning and checked my blog to find out that I have 100 followers.  YAY!  I'm so excited that 100 people have chosen to follow my blog.  Thank you so much for your support.

I promised earlier this week to share my bulletin boards that are in my classroom with you.  So here goes....

I made this bulletin board based on one that I found on Pinterest.  It is on Mrs. Saylor's log.  One of the teachers across the hall let me borrow her Dr. Seuss bulletin board stuff and I printed out the words and attached them to Dr. Seuss scrapbook paper that I found at JoAnn Fabrics.

Here is another one....

This is my Family Tree bulletin board.  My aide cut out the apples on our die cut machine and she made leaves for the tops of the apples and wrote each students' name on an apple.  I took pictures of my students and their families at our Meet the Teacher/Ice Cream Social night.  I am going to print them out and put them on the tree so my students can see the pictures on the first day of school.  I'm hoping it will help some of my kinders not miss their families so much.

This is my job board.  I have the students' names on hands attached to popsicle sticks.  Then I put the popsicle stick in one of the job's pocket to show the students who is doing which job each week.  I purchased the banner at the top at The Dollar Tree.

This is my Parent Information board.  My classroom theme is children's literature so I found The Very Hungry Caterpillar fabric on Ebay to use for the top and bottom border.  The banner at the top I purchased at The Dollar Tree for a $1 of course.

Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog today.  I hope to see you again soon.

Pictures of My Classroom

I am so embarrassed.  I was doing so well with posting on my blog at least once or twice a week this summer.  Then I am back in the classroom for just a couple of weeks, getting my room ready (not even teaching) and I can't manage to get one blog post in.  I'm so sorry and I will try to do better as the school year begins.

Onto my classroom, I have many pictures to share with you.  Last night was our Meet the Teacher/Ice Cream Social.  I met almost all of my students.  It is going to be one of my best years ever.  (I have 20 students and a full time aide.  I am a very lucky girl.)

The sign my daughter made to welcome my students.

My whole group area with the Phonics Dance cards on the wall.

My cubbies with new cubby clips.  An idea I found on the Organized Classroom blog.

I used name tags I found at JoAnne Fabrics, instead of printing ones (I already used a bunch of color ink in my printer and this seemed like a better idea for me).

This is my lunch board.  The students put up a magnet with their name on it to show if they are buying lunch or packed a lunch.  On the shelf, is everything I need to put together my G.O. (get organized) binders.  There is always something else to do, isn't there?

My library center.

The "smart cookies" that each student received after finishing his/her Lake Ontario Scavenger Hunt.  I found the idea on the Dilly Dabbles Doodles blog and adapted it to my classroom.

Thank you for sticking with my blog and coming back to visit me.  I will post pictures of my bulletin boards later this week.  (I promise.....)

My 3rd Monday Made It

Three weeks from tonight, I will be getting ready for my first day of school.  I went to school to really begin getting ready.  I had my daughter take pictures after we had begun moving stuff around.  (I am "picture-taking" challenged, so I have learned to have her take pictures.  And I forgot to take pictures when were first got there.)

Here are a few of the pictures:

This will be my calendar wall and my whole group carpet.

My library center is the white shelf in the corner.

This is my mess that still needs to be cleaned up.

But at least my furniture is where it needs to be (besides the tables).

Hopefully, I will be able to post pictures of my room looking done (or almost done) at the end of the week.  I need to get my room pretty much ready by next week, because I have the kindergartners comes in for beginning of year assessments next week.  I don't want to scare them with a crazy classroom.

I have also linked up with Monday Made It.

I know there are many Teacher Toolboxes all over Pinterest.  But I would like to add mine.  The teacher across the hall and I worked on them last Wednesday afternoon.  I think they came out looking very good.  The "toolboxes" we used had been used before and had sticky stuff on the front of the drawers.  So we laminated the signs on the front of the drawers and used velcro to attach them to the front of the drawers.

My Toolbox

Check out all the other wonderful things on Monday Made It.

Monday Made It

Thank you for looking at my classroom today.

My 1st Sale

I love to buy things on sale.  That might be why Kohl's is one of of my favorite stores.  I bought a cardigan, a pair of pants and a blouse for under $40 yesterday.  I save $109 according to my receipt (and the salesperson).  It really is like "getting paid to shop".  (Not that my husband ever looks like he really believes me when I tell him that.)

So since I love a sale, I have decided to join TpT sale that is taking place today and tomorrow.  I have 20% off all items in my store plus with the sale that TpT is having, that makes everything 28% off.

Click here to go to my sale.

I am going into my classroom tomorrow and trying to get furniture moved around and put where it belongs (with the help of my 2 teenagers).  So hopefully, I will be able to share some before and after pictures of my classroom with you next week.

Enjoy the sale!