Happy Birthday

I love walking through the clearance aisles trying to find something I can use in the classroom.  I was at Kohl's and found this photo holder, which was on sale for $1.99.  I had been planning to buy a little sparkly party decoration to sit at a child's spot when it was their birthday, but this turned out even better!  I created some little pictures to go on the side of the cube, modge podged those and some little confetti stars on the base, and then bought a premade bow and tied it around the top.  It still has the picture holder stems, which is where I plan to put a homework pass (created with Vistaprint) for the birthday student on their special day!

 

Kindergarten Freebies

Here are a few little freebies from Kindergarten that I put up on my TpT store.  One is a Roll a Sight Word game, which makes a great word work center.  The other is my 100th Day Celebration Tickets, including instructions for how I used them, pictures of some of the activities, and printables, when applicable.  Enjoy!

      

Welcome to Third Grade

Every teacher at my school hangs a flag outside their classroom door with their name and grade level on it.  Making a new flag seemed like a good starting point in getting ready for the move to Third Grade, so here it is!  Should go nicely with the aqua/green/owl theme I'm aiming for in the classroom!  So now it's official... Welcome to Third Grade!

Nut Free Sign - Take 2!

My friend who teaches Second Grade has an ocean themed room, and it didn't make much sense for her to have a nut-free owl sign hanging outside of her room.  So, since she has been putting up with all of my stress over the move to Third Grade, the least I could do was to make her a nut-free sign with an ocean theme!  I'm sure I owe her much more than a little sign, but it's a start! The sign is available for download on my TpT store.

Activity Bags

Even though I've turned this into a 3rd grade blog, I have a bunch of Kindergarten resources that I want to put up on my TpT site.  Over the last 5 years or so, I've been using Activity Bags in my Kindergarten classroom, and they have been well-liked by both students and parents.  There are 20 themed bags, which include instructions, books, hands-on materials, and resources from the classroom.  Children would take each bag home for up to a week, the most popular bags being the stuffed animal bags (Mirabelle's Bag and the Fuzzy Bear Bag).  The parents seemed to most appreciate the Fine Motor Skills Bag, especially if their child could not yet tie their shoes!  I store the bags on hooks behind my closets.

 Here is an example of the contents of one of the bags.  This is bag #4 - Rhyming and Word Families, which includes a wipe off word family house, Rhyming Radishes folder game, wooden letters and word family cards, word family postcards (Vistaprint), a word family journal (Michaels was always great for picking up the $1.00 journals, though the prices have gone up lately),  a pencil box with pencils and a pencil sharpener, 3 rhyming books for kids to read, feedback cards (so families can tell you what they liked/didn't like and if any pieces are broken or missing - also from Vistaprint), and the instruction sheet which goes into each bag.  Note that every item has a number label on it so that when random items come in days (or weeks, or even months) later, you can easily put it back in the right spot.

I have put together a resource with all of my activity bag instruction pages, instructions for creating the bags, parent letters, printables, bag tags, check off sheets for signing bags out to students, and some samples of Vistaprint creations that I used for the bags.  It is all editable since other people will likely not have the same books and resources that I used, but it will serve as a great starting point.  The following themed bags were used:

#1 - Counting Bag
#2 - Sorting and Graphing Bag
#3 - All About Me Bag
#4 - Rhyming and Word Families Bag
#5 - Measuring Bag
#6 - Time and Money Bag
#7 - Mystery Bag
#8 - Scientist of the Week Bag
#9 - Estimation Bag
#10 - Letter Sounds Bag
#11 - Alphabet Bag
#12 - Shapes and Colors Bag
#13 - Mirabelle's Bag
#14 - Nursery Rhymes Bag
#15 - Fine Motor Skills Bag
#16 - Sight Words Bag
#17 - Name Game Bag
#18 - Making Words Bag
#19 - Fuzzy Bear Bag
#20 - Numbers Bag

 

 

 To download the Activity Bags file, visit my Teachers pay Teachers store.

Teachers Pay Teachers Store

Well, I finally got my TpT store up and running with a few items!  So far the following items are posted:

Two versions of a peanut free/nut free sign for the classroom.

A set of 190 brainteasers and riddles.  I plan to use these daily by posting them in the morning and giving the answers at the end of the day.  Maybe I'll give out clues throughout the day, or give the kids a place to record their guesses.  I think these will be a fun challenge for some students, and will serve as an extra way to introduce different vocabulary for the ESL student I will have.  And, I just enjoy riddles and brainteasers!  One of the perks of moving up to third grade, right?

Brain Breaks!  Whenever the kids need a little break, I tend to go back to the same old activities, over and over and over... I get bored and the kids get bored!  Hopefully this will help to keep things fresh.  It will also keep me from using things like "Sick turtle" which my Kindergartners LOVED... but I'm not sure 3rd graders would be thrilled to lay on their backs on the hard floor, flailing their arms and legs around in the air, until I said "Attention on deck!"

You can click on any of the images above, or just visit my store... I'll hopefully be adding more soon!

Movin' On Up

So, my plan was to create a Kindergarten blog where I could share my ideas with other teachers.  But it turns out that after just 11 years, I finally learned the Kindergarten curriculum and I graduated... all the way up to 3rd grade!  I'm a little nervous about the switch, but as I was hunting for 3rd grade blogs, it turns out there aren't nearly as many as there are for Kindergarten.  So, I've decided to change the Kindergarten blog into a 3rd grade blog!  Even though it will be my first year teaching 3rd grade, hopefully I will have a few things to share with others.