Quick post

I feel like a terrible blogger....I'm so tired, exhausted, worn out...what other words are there?? Hmm...anyway---kiddos are dropping like flies at school with various forms of the crud, flu, etc. Grad school is wearing me out and so are assessments....

Does anyone feel like that's all you do? Assess?? Geez...how many times do I have to have them count to me in one day? a week? I know they can count.....I shouldn't have to write it 5 different ways.

So I sure haven't blogged lately...I haven't offered up freebies....new products.....ugh...

Oh well....I will blog about an awesome giveaway that my friend Khrys is having over at Keepin' It Kool in Kinderland.

It's for this great St. Patrick's Day book called The Naughty Leprechaun. Ever heard of it?? I haven't until now so I'm excited! 

Check it out here on her post and make sure you enter!!

 

Maybe I'll have a couple of freebies up here for you by the weekend!!

As Irene said over at Learning With Mrs. Leeby......is it only Wednesday??? 

Freebie Friday!! and a Giveaway!

This is my first time linking up with Teaching Blog Addict's Freebie Friday. 
 

So I hope you enjoy your freebie. It is my Editable Monster Calendar Numbers. It also includes the year 2013 and 2014. It is a power point file so make sure you download it for the editable blank cards to add your own special days.

Let me know if you like it!!!  Click on the picture to take you to Google Docs (again download once there for the editable sections!)

 My bloggy buddy Irene over at Learning With Mrs. Leeby is teaming up with Kimberly Ann over Live, Laugh, I Love Kindergarten for a huge giveaway with giftcards!!!

 

Be sure to head over and enter!!
 

Hall Pass Linky

I feel like it's been a bit since I blogged. Just   no    time.....or wait there is time but I'm usually doing grad school work, falling asleep, or creating something.....need spring break....badly.

 I did see that Reagan over at Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits is having a Hall Pass linky party. So of course I had to link up. It's been fun reading others posts about what they enjoy and some activities in their room.




Product--One of my favorite products is my new Monster Classroom Theme Pack. 

 It includes alphabet wall cards, numbers 0-20 cards with ten frames and number word, months of the year, days of the week, and more. I just think this is a fun pack because it's different. And cute if I can be bias! :)
  
Area---I think one of my most favorite areas in the classroom is my Mimio. We don't have Smart Boards in every classroom so those that do not have Mimio's. A mimio turns your existing white board into an interactive board. It's pretty cool. You can see in the left of the picture on my white board the white thingy attached to the board. That's the mimio and then it has the pen attached to it to use as a stylus.
You hook a USB hub into your computer and walla---it's interactive! My projector and the laptop sit on a roll cart that I use. I've created a couple of Mimio lessons that I've uploaded to Mimio Connect. Unfortunately I haven't had time to do more...but I do enjoy it.

Signal--As far as signals go....sometimes I randomly burst out into song. A song I made up. A song that makes little to no sense. A song that usually has no tune. Mainly because I can't sing. But the kiddos enjoy it and it seems to be calming in a way. 

I also do that clap clap clap or whatever where I do a pattern and they follow it. That works BEAUTIFULLY. Always...they stop talking.

And sometimes I might play a song or sing a nursery rhyme and when that's finished, they are to be either back in their spot on the carpet or wherever I asked them to go or do when that song is done.

And these signals can change daily. Sometimes if they are wilder more energetic a song might make it worse....it just varies.

Sanity---Oh wow....huge word with lots of meaning. 
God/church/my church family
The hubs
Books---love them....love to read...need more time to do more reading
Walks with the pup---I mean how can you not love this???? (This obviously was after said walk)

The beach---we only live about an hour and half away..so in the summer---it's on....love every single thing about it.

There you have it. My Hall Pass. Go check out everyone else's.

Lata! 

 

A little late---Manic Monday

Better late than never right??? Here is my Manic Monday freebie. Enjoy!!! 

(Oh, did you have a day off?? I did---and obviously I was not that productive seeing as I'm posting this at 9:20!!!)

Students will match the number, number word and tally marks! Then there are two practice sheets included. One for recording numbers 1-20 and the other for reading the number word and writing the number and drawing the tally marks to match.

Grab it up! Click on the picture to take you to Google Docs!

A MishMash of Learning for the Week

Mishmash? Is that a real word?? Apparently because it's not underlining it in that red line that says you've done something wrong! 

Whew what a busy week...I'm so glad that a 3 day weekend is ahead. And today has been a let's do all the laundry/pajama/movie(s) kinda day. My  hubs is off this weekend so we've both been ahem...lazy. And it's been rather nice if I must say. They are calling for snow here...rain/snow, who knows...yesterday was 65 degrees...we shall see.

Here are a few things we've been learning about this week. One of the purchases I made on Superbowl Sunday was Mrs. Miner's Directed President's Drawing packet. The kiddos did such an awesome job on the free MLK, Jr. drawings (see that post here) that I knew I had to buy this packet. 
This is just George...we drew Abe as well but apparently I didn't get those pics :/.  I'll take some this week because we have a display up in the hallway. I'm sooo impressed! They did such a wonderful job!

 We also had some fun during our literacy stations. Normally I'm working with my small math groups during this time (I do small groups for literacy and math at the same time----more on that in another post) that I never get to take pictures but this week....with Valentine's Day, assemblies, and other stuff I didn't get to groups unfortunately. 

Here are a few pics from a couple of station activities. 

 

This is my magnet/making words area. This time the students had to build their number words. This changes quite frequently. 

 In this area, students use frogs to hop to their sight words. If they can read the word, then they keep it. The frogs came from the Dollar Tree years ago.

 

 We were recently allowed to pick some items from the local teacher stores for our classroom. One of the activities I picked was Hot Dots. This student is working on the number Hot Dots activities. On some of the cards, they count the objects and click the number. Other cards it could be: matching, number words, number recognition, etc.

I also picked an Alphabet Hot Dots for my little guy in the room who still struggles, but it'll also be great for beginning of the year activities when they are just beginning to learn the alphabet. 

 This activity I downloaded years ago but please forgive me I have no idea where I got it from. It's a real word/nonsense word sort but called Silly Love Monster Words or Love Monster Words. I worked with two of the kiddos on this who are a little higher but still need that extra help. They really enjoyed this activity.

And of course, we worked on our Mimio and practiced finding sight words. My little friend here is popping the red balls to match two sight words. They really enjoyed this activity.

This activity also included fixing mixed-up sentences and putting words in ABC order. I got this off of the Mimio website last year. 

That's all of the pictures I took---just a little peek in what we do. Hope to have more for you next week when we finish President's Day and work on our 5 senses.

We also did quite a bit with Dental Health this week but of course I didn't get those pictures. But I will leave you with this video that I found on YouTube. Fair warning----the song WILL get stuck in your head. I think we have watched it no less than 8 times......

I found some great President Day videos as well. I'll post about that tomorrow!! 

Any tips???

Ok quick question----how do you organize all of your clip art? I have a little tons of clip art but I get so aggravated b/c sometimes I can't remember what I have.

Right now I have it organized by the designer to ensure that I give proper credit where credit is due. But now that I seem to be gathering more and more (ahem--My name is Nicki and I have a clip art problem) I can't seem to find what I need.

How do you organize your stuff? I thought about organizing all of the borders in one folder, all of the frames in another, etc. But then again---how do you keep it organized to know who to credit in your creation!!?? Aggh....this is been on my mind all weekend and now I'm creating something and here I go again---where is that darn clip art I need? I know I just saw it!!! But which folder!!??

And I don't want to keep making folders for folders....does that make sense??

Help!??!!  I need organization!
 

Winner Winner!!!!

Congratulations to Yvonnee!! She is the lucky winner from my 100 follower giveaway!!! Check your email Yvonnee! And to my bloggy friends who are allowing her to pick an item---check your email as well!!

Congrats and thanks to all those who entered!!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Groundhogs, 100th day and a Giveaway

What a busy past few days---February has started off with a bang. And there's sooo much more to do but I'm not sure I'm going to get it all done. Between graduate school, staff meetings, professional development, church, lesson plans, and sleep, I'm a busy gal, tired too.

Here are a few activities that we've been doing the past couple of days. First of all--Groundhogs. We had a blast learning about these little guys. (Especially since when I asked the kiddos what a groundhog was---one of them said "it's that animal that runs at you when it sees red!"...um no not quite)

So we had to dispel some myths obviously. We watched quite a few videos and read some Weekly Readers that I've had for years. But they are great for pictures, especially the big teacher size. I kept them all and laminated them. Anyway---we also went on national geographic---found nothing, went on Gllobio--found nothing (but Globio is awesome btw for many many other animals, countries, technology, etc!!), so finally just Google'd 
groundhogs and was able to find a few little things. The best one was where we could listen to a groundhog. Pretty neat to hear them whistle.

We also created out bubble maps and our tree maps. And made Groundhog headbands..but I forgot that picture. 


We celebrated the 100th day on Monday. I saw Mrs. Miner's idea on her blog Mrs. Miner's Monkey Business about her students making capes for the 100th day. So I used her freebie she posted for the parents and had my students make capes. Wow---it was interesting. LOL

Here are a few pictures. 

The one on the right was made out of Smarties candy. They colored 100 of them black. Pretty cool. 

But this one beats all....

They added pockets onto the cape and made up 100 various questions to put on the cape. They really thought this out....and put a lot of work into it.

One of my favorite capes had 100 stars on it...but for some reason I didn't get a picture of it. 

:(

We've also began working on President's Day activities. We are using Mrs. Miner's Directed Drawings for President's Day. I'll post some of those pictures soon.

Don't forget about my 100 follower giveaway!

It ends on Sunday!! Be sure to enter and win lots of great packs from some awesome bloggers!!!

100 Follower Giveaway!!!

Whoo hoo!! I can not believe that I have reached over 100 followers. This is so exciting because I really thought that when I began this blog that it wouldn't go so well and I'd be disappointed and all. But it's been great!! I have "met" so many wonderful blogger friends who have helped me along the way as well as picked up some wonderful ideas to use in my classroom.

So of course why wouldn't I have a giveaway to celebrate this accomplishment????? And those awesome blogger friends have donated some great items to this giveaway!!

I will be giving away any two items from my TPT store and I might even throw something extra in *wink wink*. 
But look at what else you can grab up!!! Hurry up and enter!! The contest ends February 10th at midnight!! 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I have so much more to post about (Groundhog's Day, 100th day, etc.) but that'll be later. I'm beat...Rafflecopter wore me out! LOL

Currently and Giveaways!

I'm a couple of days late but I'm still linking up for Farley's currently. 

I have SuperNanny on tv---I think more for the background noise than anything! 

Raylan (the dog) is chillin' beside me---so I do believe I may take a nap with him pretty soon.

The hubs had to take a road trip with his dad today and I'm ready for him to come on home so we can watch the Super Bowl tonight.

Ok---yes tapping (pencils, fingers, etc) drives me nuts---my kiddos at school learn this very quickly. I give you the look---it means stop! LOL

And whining---ugh...no explanations necessary.

I've working with my 100 follower giveaway---be prepared to see it go up this week!!! I'm so excited!!

And don't forget about Keepin' It Kool In Kinderland's 100 follower giveaway. It ends this week!!

Also don't forget about the HUGE TPT sale happening...I mean who could forget...I sure added some stuff to my cart!!! 
Use the code SUPER for your discount!!!


Here are two of my new packets that I uploaded this weekend...hope you can check them out!

This monster set includes:

ABC wall cards (1/2 sheet size)

Numbers 1-20 (with number words and ten frames)

Shape Posters

Months of the Year

Days of the Week

This Valentine set includes:

Even and Odd sort

Write the Room activity with recording sheet (one version is number words/another with tally marks)

Cut and Paste Pattern sheet

Writing numbers to 100 (3 different recording sheets)

Addition Dominoes (with recording sheets)

Draw Your Math sheet (for dominoes)

Spin and Graph 

Matching numbers, ten frames, and number words (with recording sheets)

Oh and if you are still looking a couple of cute Valentine emergent readers don't forget to check out my Five Little Hearts packet.

It includes the book Five Little Hearts, Valentine Poem and a Colorful Hearts Emergent Reader!

Keep checking back this week for my 100 follower giveaway!!!

Giveaways galore, a Sale, and Shout outs!!!

Whew...it's been a lonnngggg week. Anyone else agree?? I have crashed each night on the couch when I've gotten home...exhausted....ugh. 

But I'm so excited!!! I've reached 100 followers!!! So not only am I involved in Keepin' It Kool In Kindergarten's 100 follower giveaway--now I need to begin planning my giveaway! :)

So first of all---click on the link to enter this most amazing giveaway by Khrys for her 100 follower celebration. I'm so lucky that I am able to be involved in her giveaway. I sooo wish I could enter it! :)



I am also beginning to plan my giveaway for reaching 100. I have a couple of amazing bloggers who are offering up a few things for my giveaway. If you would like to offer up something---shoot me an email!!!!

I saw that Lisa over at Growing Firsties and Katie from Teacher to the Core are having a Shout Out Linky party. I thought I'd link up because who doesn't deserve a shout out!




My first shout out goes to an amazing blogger who has a few more followers than I do. She has wonderful posts and a lot of her posts go right along with how I seem to be feeling that day. 
It's Heather from Heather's Heart. 

I love how she posted about how sometimes it's just hard to blog. There are so many blogging "rules" and it can be a little confusing/overwhelming. And she also discussed how sometimes it feels as if it's a competition, but she put up this picture and I loved it because well...it's true. I also need to quit worrying about if I post too much, or not enough, or what if what I have to say isn't good enough, or what if I don't take as many pictures as I would like, yadda yadda yadda.

I, too, just need to stop, be grateful that I can do this, that I am in this position, and move on from there. I enjoy it and who cares if someone doesn't read what I posted about. I care and that's that. Thanks Heather for all your great words of advice and posting about what, I'm sure, many of us are thinking. 

She also has some wonderful Groundhog activities. We actually watched some of the same videos in our classroom this week that she watched. She has an awesome freebie for math for Groundhogs. So grab it up on her post---even if it is for next year!



My next shout out goes to someone who has less followers than I do and I sure hope you hop over to her blog and leave a little shout out!!! And become a follower.
It's Jessica over at Fun in PreK-1!

She has the cutest ideas and activities. One of my favorites is one that she actually posted about today. It's her Outer Space Adventure activities. Her littles did some really cute activities such as painting the moon and making squishy suns!
Check out her pictures. 


She is also giving out a freebie emergent reader. What a great activity to add to your space unit!!!



Her kiddos also created If I Were An Astronaut book!! I hope you head over to her blog and see some other things that her littles did!



Also---if you haven't heard by now--Teachers Pay Teachers is having HUGE one day sale on Superbowl Sunday!! Everything in my store will be on sale and then TPT is giving an extra 10% off your purchase! Make sure you head over to all of your favorite stores on Sunday and rack up on some great items! I know I already have a few things in mind!!!