2015 is almost here!

What are your plans for New Year's Eve? My husband and I are going to a masquerade ball!  A friend is celebrating her 10 year anniversary by hosting a masquerade ball. We have sparkly masks,  and I'm wearing my wedding gown!  The crinoline is a wrinkled mess (it was rolled up and stuck in the back of a closet), but I have faith in my ironing skills that I'll get the wrinkles out!

To ring in the new year a little early, I am linking up with other Indiana teachers for a 20% off Teachers Pay Teachers sale. Thank you to

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Thanksgiving Stone Soup

For the past week and a half, we read a variety of versions of Stone Soup. Fitting along with the comprehension skills and strategies introduced and practiced with our reading series, we talked about the characters, sequence of events, and visualized each book. 

We created a chart to compare the four versions.

Books we read:

Stone Soup by Jess Stockham

Stone Soup by Ann McGovern

Stone Soup by Jon J. Muth

Stone Soup video from Speakaboos.com

We voted for our favorite version and counted the votes. 

The winner was Stone Soup by Jess Stockham. The kiddos loved that the characters were animals and that the book had lift the flaps on each page.

We made our own stone soup the day before Thanksgiving. Everyone LOVED the soup! Even the kids who didn't want to try it. 

I used five cans of mixed vegetables from Aldi and four cans of Aldi tomato soup. I added tiny purple potatoes as the stones. Everyone asked for seconds! Stone Soup fits well into studying healthy foods and the food groups. 

Unrelated to Stone Soup, but very cute and appropriate for Thanksgiving is our turkey collection!  The kids in my class and the other kindergarten class worked with their families to decorate plain turkeys printed on cardstock. I am very impressed with the creativity!

Visit my Teachers Pay Teachers store December 1 and 2 to take advantage of the Cyber Monday Sale!

FestiveFriday

Happy (almost) Friday!  I am excited to be a part of the FestiveFriday $1.00 on TPT. Simply type FestiveFriday (no spaces and both F's are capital) into the search on Teachers Pay Teachers to find great resources for only $1. This is going on every Friday in November!

I love everything about November and December. I am a fanatic when it comes to the holidays! While my house is not decorated for Christmas yet, we are listening to Christmas music!  My kinders are enjoying listening to Mannheim Steamroller's Christmas albums on Spotify while they work. It's amazing- they are so quiet in order to hear the Christmas music!

Despite the Christmas music, my classroom is getting ready for Thanksgiving. My Festive Friday Dollar Deal for the week is a turkey-themed short vowel word family sort.  Click on the image below for this activity.

Scare and Share Blog Hop

Thank you to Stephany Dillon for organizing this fun blog hop!

Click here to get a freebie version of my newest product, Spooky Stations: Five Halloween-Themed Literacy Stations. 

If you're interested in the full product, or any of my fall and Halloween products, be sure to visit my TPT store to take advantage of the $1.00 sale. The rest of my store is on sale for 20% off.

Now visit Anita Goodwin at I Live 2 Learn I Love 2 Grow to pick up your next freebie!

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Halloween Literacy Stations

Halloween is in full force at my house! We decorated the house with pumpkins, Nightmare Before Christmas, and lights on the porch. I need to get my classroom ready for Halloween! While the decorations may not be out at school, my literacy stations for the rest of the month are ready to go! I just added my Spooky Stations: Five Halloween-Themed Literacy Stations to my TPT store. 

It's actually more like ten stations in one- there are five sets of cards, or activities, and one of the stations includes four differentiated activities!  Another station can be used three different ways! I'm set for the rest of the month! :-)

Visit my blog again on Friday for a Halloween freebie and blog hop!

Reward Binder and Back to School Sale

It's been a long time since I've visited my blog. I have to be honest, it has been nice to focus on my family and summer vacation instead of being consumed with TPT and planning!  Now that it is August, I need to get my mind thinking kindergarten!


In the past, I used a treasure chest in my classroom to reward good behavior. I found that the little trinkets and prizes were not interesting my kids and choosing from the treasure chest took forever in the most chaotic ten minutes of the day: dismissal.


This year, I'm going to try using a reward binder. Students will earn punches or stamps on a punch card for good behavior. Once their punch card is completed, they will get to pick from the reward binder. The reward binder includes only FREE rewards. No more trips to the Dollar Spot for me!  The kids will get a coupon for a fun day of their choice. The coupon gives their families all the details they need to know about the reward. How easy is that?  The "fine print" even states if the reward turns into a distraction or good choices are not made, the reward has to be put away. 

 Click here to visit my TPT store and get your copy.

If your TPT shopping cart is filling up like mine, take advantage of the Teachers Pay Teachers Back to School sale August 4-5. Don't forget to use the promo code! Visit my store by clicking here.

Indiana Bloggers Dollar Sale

I have linked up with other Indiana bloggers to host a $1 sale this holiday weekend. Stock up for the end of the year or to kick off next year! Happy Memorial Day!

The products below are on sale for $1 in my TPT store.

 

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Five for Friday

It's been awhile, but I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for the Five for Friday Linky.

My class said good bye to our butterflies yesterday. It was a fun experience to watch them transform from caterpillars to chrysalises and finally butterflies! The kids were so cute. They cheered as each butterfly took flight. They told them to come back to visit them on the playground.

My husband and I went to a local event where restaurants in the area had booths in which we visited and sampled delicious food. I'm a vegetarian, so I didn't each many of the entrees, but I ate my fair share of miniature French macaroons and chocolate covered strawberries!

We're taking the kindergarten classes to the Curious Kids Museum in Michigan on Friday. It's our big field trip of the year, fully sponsored by the PTO. I'm looking forward to it! So far, it looks like we will have good weather!

The kids are excited for the museum, but seem even more excited to visit the carousel on the beach.

It is antique and beautiful! We will have so much fun!

Visit my TPT store tomorrow and Monday for lots of $1 deals. I'm linking up with Indiana bloggers for a big $1 sale.

An InLinkz Link-up

Teacher Appreciation Sale

I'm linking up with Primary Possibilities for the Teacher Appreciation Sale Link Up. Visit my TPT store  on May 6-7 for the sale. Be sure to use the promo code to receive a total of 28% off! Please visit and follow my store! 

April Trade and Grade

This is the second month I have participated in Primary Gal's Trade and Grade blog hop. I had the opportunity to swap literacy products with Linda of Kinder Doodles this month.

Click on the image above to visit Kinder Doodle's Teachers Pay Teachers store to buy the full version of this product!  Keep reading to grab a short freebie version!

I am thoroughly impressed with the variety of activities included in this product! They are the exact types of literacy activities my class needs to practice at this point of the year.

  Students enjoyed the cute chick-themed cards to practice writing CVC words.

This great mat can be used with magnets, dry erase markers, letter tiles, etc. to practice spelling the CVC word on the picture card.

The CVC picture cards can be used in a variety of ways. This group of girls is using the same cards that were pictured above with the magnetic letters, but they are playing memory with the picture and the written CVC word.

Yet another way to practice CVC words- this great cut and paste page has students reading and matching CVC words to their pictures.

My class loves doing Crack the Code pages! This student wrote a secret word by writing the first letter of the pictures. He drew a picture to represent the secret word. Anything with secrets and codes is so exciting for them! :)

There are lots of sight word activities included in this product. My kids love write the room!  It is a fun way for them to move around, read, and write the sight words. The sight word cards are very appropriate for this time of year. They match the fourth quarter sight words for my school district, which was great luck!  (Side note- today was role model day for spirit week. This little girl had her hair curled like mine and wore a dress and cardigan. She told me she was dressed like me today! That made my day!)

She had fun rainbow coloring her sight words. Linda has included several pages of rainbow writing which is nice for differentiation!

Another sight word activity is this read, trace, write, and paste activity. I love that the students get to practice the same sight word four different ways in this activity!

Scrambled sentences are a great way to not only practice sight words, but also to practice writing conventions. This student is working on a scrambled sentence page. He has to paste, write, and draw the sentence. There are several pages of this activity.

I almost always have a scrambled sentence activity in my literacy stations. This student and I worked together to get his sentence to make sense. He had the right idea with automatically knowing that the capital goes at the beginning of the sentence and the card with the period has to be at the end.

This product is a must-have for the final months and weeks of kindergarten! Although it is aligned with kindergarten common core standards, it would be appropriate for RTI or Title 1 teachers to use with higher grade levels. I love the bright, cheery graphics and the developmentally appropriate activities!

Click here to download your sample of Kinder Doodles' Spring Has Sprung Literacy Activities!




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