8 days away!

We have been in kindergarten for 92 days. That means 8 more days until 100th Day! My class is very excited to make it to this major milestone! We will dress like we're 100 years old and do lots of fun 100th Day activities.

In the past, a favorite activity was making cupcakes with 100 sprinkles. Click here for the freebie.

 

To keep the day moving and organized, I make 100th Day booklets with lots of fun activities.  Check it out in my TPT store! 

Five for Friday and Facebook Free for All and another Freebie!

We had two 2-hour delays this week due to extreme cold! The kids arrive to school and less than an hour later they're at lunch. So much for getting anything done! Not to mention how wild they are from the routine being all crazy. Unfortunately, next week doesn't look much warmer....

I have had so many requests for a template for my 100 Day Cupcakes. It is available in my 100 Days Smarter packet on TPT. But, for this weekend only, it's free (just the cupcake template) if you click here.
                                               
I'm linking up with Primary Gal for her Friday Free for All. 
                                                      

 My house smells delicious! I am baking these flourless brownies. I'm not telling my husband about the secret ingredient of black beans!  He will most likely enjoy them until he finds out they contain beans!
                                     

 

I am pretty excited to be a part of a Facebook  Free for All. Like my Facebook page to snag a free copy of my Wacky Hat Word Family sort with short vowels. I plan to use it during literacy stations to celebrate Dr. Seuss's birthday. 

                                    

 

Speaking of freebies, visit Primary Gal's facebook page to get lots of freebies for every grade level during the weekend-long Facebook Free-for-Al1!

                              

                                   

                                         

Visit DoodleBugs Teaching for the Five for Friday Linky! 

Sunday Edition of Five for Friday

After a busy weekend, I'm a little late to share my post for Doodle Bugs Teaching's Five For Friday Linky Party.

1. Olivia celebrated her first birthday on Saturday. The poor little girl was feeling a little under the weather, though. She's had a fever on and off since Friday. I took her to urgent care and the doctor said it's either a cold and/or teething.  We see the pediatrician tomorrow. Hopefully she'll get Olivia on the mend!

2. Isabella took her first riding lesson. She was on cloud nine! Bitsy is an amazing lesson horse. She's 28 but still had spunk while being very gentle.

3. Last week we read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and made these cute coconut trees with the letters from their names racing to the top. I spent an hour last weekend on the Cricut machine cutting letters and sorting them into envelopes by tables. The kids had to find the letters in their names and spell their name before gluing the letters on to their coconut tree.

 4. My class LOVED playing the "Bird Game. I made a little bird that I hid behind the letter cards. The kids took turns guessing where the bird was hidden. They had to ask what letter it was behind. To differentiate the game, some kids had to name the letter and tell the sound it makes.  Get your bird cards here from Kinder Doodles.

5. The literacy stations from last week.

 

My aide and I spent time with the small groups. The kids have done an amazing job building stamina and working hard!  I liked working with the kids doing the cupcake match.  We talked about the  way the capital and lowercase letters look alike and look different (we use D'Nealian) as well as the sounds that they make. 

Monday Made It and a Winner!

First I want to congratulate Sue Cahalane on winning my giveaway! :) She gets my chevron lesson plan book and 2014 calendar agenda.

Click here to purchase the lesson plan book.

Click here to purchase the 2014 agenda. 

I am really excited about my Monday Made It project this week!  

 I used a large mat (11 by 14 opening) from Michael's and my mom's Cricut to make this cute picture frame that the kiddos will hold for me to take their first day of school pictures. I seriously need to get my own Cricut! (Hint, hint, John, my husband!) This frame will be put to use in two weeks from tomorrow!

I


Thank you to 4th Grade Frolics for hosting this fun linky!

Indiana Goes Back To School Blog Hop

I'm really excited to participate in my first blog hop! I'm teaming up with other Indiana bloggers for this great back to school blog hop with a raffle to win a $75 gift card at the end!

Ever since WalMart and Target put out their back to school displays, I have been thinking about my incoming class of kinders.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE summer vacation, but I also love teaching and planning!  I am looking forward to using my Cupcake Ten Frame Match in my classroom as a station during math.  It will help me assess my students' math abilities- counting and matching a number to a group of objects.

I can also use this activity for my first quarter assessment-- our report card tests the kids on counting to tell the number of objects to ten for the first quarter. Click on the image above for your FREE copy!


I love cupcakes!  My classroom currently has a cupcakes and chevron theme going on. I am really excited to get my chevron alphabet cards up on my walls! Visit my TPT store for D'Nealian and print alphabet cards!  Click on the images below!

Your next stop on this blog hop is with Jenny at Ignite Learning with Conscious Discipline.

Don't forget to enter to win the giftcard giveaway at the end of this blog hop!  Thanks for visiting!

Color Sight Word Cupcakes Freebie

Thank goodness for a sleeping baby and play date with Mimi. Olivia had a rough night last night = I had a sleepless night last night! She has been napping for 2 hours! It started in the car and she made the transfer to her bed. That NEVER happens! Isabella is at a play date with Mimi (my mom.) The house should be getting clean, but instead I'm eating a delicious pink champagne cupcake and making cupcake themed centers.

I created this Cupcake Color Sight Word Match to use as a literacy center. The kinders will read the color word and match it to the cupcake with that color frosting.  I plan to print it on cardstock and laminate. Then I will cut each cupcake apart between the frosting and the wrapper.  I usually have three to four sets of an activity in a center. (Have I mentioned I usually have 28 kids in my class? I like to have 10 centers a week- students visit 2 per day- and need enough materials for 3 to 4 students at each center.) I color code the materials by using a Sharpie to draw a shape or dot on the back and put that color on the baggie that stores the materials. The kids can easily determine which pieces are theirs in the event that pieces get mixed up.

Click on the picture above to grab your freebie at my TPT store!

Five for Friday

 

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching  for a Five for Friday Linky Party. I love finding new blogs to follow through linkies!

 

 1. Have I mentioned I LOVE summer!? It was a beautiful day today... sunny skies, warm (upper 70's) and a light breeze. Perfect for a day outside!

 2. I took my daughters to a local park today. Tower Park is perfect for my three year old!  She can do most everything by herself this summer. There are swings, too!  My girlies like to swing side by side for hours!

3. We found this itty bitty toad today. Isabella, my three year old, was scared of it and didn't like Mimi (my mom and fellow kindergarten teacher) holding it! It was adorable and I had to snap a picture of it!

 4. We saw a magic show today while visiting my grandma. She lives in the memory care wing of assisted living home. It was heartwarming to see how the residents were so focused and animated with the magic tricks.

5. One week away from school and I'm already planning for the upcoming year!  My students will use this literacy station to match capital and lowercase letters. My school system teaches D'Nealian manuscript, so I start from the first day of school introducing D'Nealian writing. 

Cupcake Alphabet Match

One week into summer vacation and I'm already planning for back to school! As a child, I always loved getting ready to go back to school. I remember my mom telling us we weren't allowed to even buy new school supplies until after the fair was over! (What can I say? I'm a planner! I love organization and planning!)

I am excited to introduce new literacy stations in my classroom in August. I recently was awarded a grant to have a Listen to Reading station. I am so excited to be the proud owner of an iPod touch, KIDZ GEAR headphones, a Rockstar splitter to have up to 5 students listen to the iPod, and lots of books and CDs from Scholastic.

I want to get my new class excited about literacy, so I made this Cupcake Alphabet Match literacy center to match my cupcake-themed classroom.  The students will match capital and lowercase letters to make a cupcake. It's available in my TPT store!

Literacy Stations

Although I have already set out the new stations for the upcoming week, I wanted to share the literacy stations we did last week.  The first half of the ninety minute literacy block is spent doing literacy stations.  We do two rotations of literacy stations each day.  During this time, two to three students work in a station. My instructional aide works with leveled reading groups while the rest of the class is working on netbooks to do differentiated Reading Eggs activities or at one of the eight literacy stations. Here are a few of my favorite:

Write the room. This week the students had to find words with one, two, and three syllables to record on their clipboards. 

Build a Word Family: They used the alphabet cubes to build words in the -at, -ad, and -it word families.  Producing rhyming words will be on the third quarter report cards, so we have been doing lots of word families to help the kinders practice coming up with rhyming words.

Writing Station: This week in the writing station, the kids made birthday cards for Alicia, the main character in the book for the week, Alicia's Happy Day.

Cupcake Words Families: I love the cupcake theme of these word family cards by Mrs. Phillips of Kinder Doodles. The students had to choose a word family and find the words that fit in that word family.