Summer Reading Fun!

I just uploaded a little sheet on TPT that I made to keep my students reading this summer.  For each activity they complete, they will color the book picture next to that activity.  Once all activities are complete (all books are colored), they will have a parent sign the sheet and when school starts back in the fall, they will bring it to me for a prize!  The prize could be as simple as stickers, a pencil, treasure box, etc.   Many of my students come from low income families that do not have a lot of resources.  For that reason I tried to keep the activities on this sheet easy with minimal materials. 

Click on the picture of the Summer Reading Fun sheet below to go to TPT!

This is only $1.00.  Hope it's something you can use with your students too!!!!

End of Year Teacher Gifts

The countdown is on!  7 days left for us!!!  I went to the mall yesterday looking for teacher gifts and found a few fun things.  I looked around without much success, because I didn't have anything in mind, so I headed to the old standby....Bath & Body Works.  Here are a few things I put together (more info below):

I needed some small gifts for helpers that have come into my room this year to work with some of the kids and found these cute clip-on air fresheners:

They had the birds in blue too.  I got several of each color and packed them up with a card that said:  Thank you for being so "tweet"! 

 Click here if you want to download the cards I made to go with these.

I also saw these and thought they would be cute with a card saying "Your one in a "mellon".

Or this... with a card saying "I couldn't have picked a better teacher (or friend, or co-worker, etc...)

Or this one, with something like "Have a great summer!".

After that I got apple antibacterial soap for my daughter's teachers.  Her school is very heavy in Fine Arts and for electives she takes drama, chorale, dance, art, Life Skills, Structures (building structures), French, Kinder Coach (they work with the Kindergarten classes), Library and honestly, I am probably forgetting something.  This is in addition to her regular courses!  Anyway, the point being, she has a LOT of teachers and I do not have a lot of money so this worked out for all of those "extra" teacher gifts.  I had a coupon for $10 off and got 10 bottles of apple soap for $25.00.  Bath & Body Works had cello bags that they gave me to put the soap in and I went to Michaels to get ribbon to tie the bags up.  I printed some clear labels that said "Thanks for being a great teacher!" with an apple on them and stuck those to the bottom of the bag.  (You can see one of the finished bags in the photo at the beginning of this post.) 

I also stopped at Michaels and got some stationery sets for some of her other teachers.  They had matching notebooks, notepads, pens and sticky note sets plus bags that matched:

I am still thinking of gifts for the girls on my team....any ideas????

Pete the Cat & Children's Book Week

Last week was Children's Book Week.  I LOVE Children's Book Week - our Media Specialist is AWESOME and she makes it FUN!  I was THRILLED to find out that my class won the door decorating contast held on Friday and we got a $50 gift certificate to the Book Fair - Yay!!!!!! We had to decorate our door to reflect our favorite book. It was a no-brainer! I took these photos a few days after the contest. I also had a table out by my door with a laptop, Pete the Cat book, Pete the Cat doll and a "take one" bucket with hearts my class made (see below). On the laptop, we had a music video playing that my class made to "Rocking In My School Shoes". Here's the video:

Here are the photos of our door:

I was very lucky to be asked to be a guest reader on Monday for Children's Book Week and I asked if I could bring a few friends along to help with the story :) The video is a little very grainy, but here it is:

Hot off the press: Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons! 

This week we had a special visitor at our school:  JACK HARTMANN!!!!

One of my little angels hugged him and immediately said "I'll never wash this hand again!" TOO funny :)

Sight Words PowerPoint Freebie

Today I found a GREAT idea!  I love it when that happens!!  I was visiting the Extra Special Teaching blog and saw Angelia's idea for assessing sight words in Kindergarten.  She uses a PowerPoint that aligns to her assessment sheet.  Check out her blog to see a video she made showing how she does this.  I loved this and decided to make one to use for First Grade.  We use the first 220 Dolch words for our assessments so I am uploading the PowerPoint I made if you would like to use it too.  I added a few slides within this PowerPoint to break it up to match the colored lists we use at our school, but you can easily delete or change these slides if you would like.

Click on the box below to download the PowerPoint.  Visit Angelia's blog if you'd like the Kindergarten version with 70 sight words.

Click on the photo below for the Sight Word Teacher Recording Sheets to go with the PowerPoint: 

Happy Assessing!

Mother's Day Freebie

Mother's Day is right around the corner!  I have a little coupon book that I made last year and plan to use it again this year.  I explained the idea of a coupon book for Mother's Day and had the class brainstorm ideas for the coupons.  They came up with chores, hugs and fun things they could do for thier moms.  It was a fun lesson!  I wrote all of their ideas on the board and had them each pick five different things they would like to write on their coupons.  I passed out the coupons and they got busy filling them out.  After they were done, I stapled the cover on the left side of the booklet. 

I'll try to remember to take a picture of the finished product this year!

Click on the photo below if you'd like a copy :)

Dropbox - A teacher's best friend! Free plus BONUS storage!!!

I am seriously in love with Dropbox!  I received an e-mail offer today and thought I should share it because Dropbox has totally saved me many times and if you don't know about it, you are missing out! 

First of all, Dropbox is free.  It is a free download and you download it on any computers where you would like to share files.  For example, I have it on my home computer and my school computer ( I also have it on my iPad).  I have all of my school files on it so when I am at home, I can access my school files.  My computer does not have to be on at school, I just have to have things saved onto my Dropbox drive.  When I make documents, worksheets, PowerPoints, etc... at home, I save them to my Dropbox and when I get to school, they are right there - in Dropbox.  Like I said, Dropbox is free and will always be free unless you want to buy more storage space.  I've had it for about a year and once when I got close to my limit, I just deleted a few things I didn't really need out of my Dropbox to make more room.  That doesn't delete it from your computer, just Dropbox.

To make much more sense, here is how it works and how you can sign up and give it a try (it is soooo easy!!!!!):   Click here:  Dropbox

Now, to the offer I received today, if you try it, you will get 500 MB bonus storage (above the 2 GB they already give you for free) if you go through me (and I'll get 500 MB too).  Here is the link:  http://db.tt/KVFn9oMJ    You can sign up on your own, but you won't get the bonus storage.  I know I sound like a total commercial, and the free 500 MB is not that big of a deal to me, it just that I love Dropbox and use it sooooo much between home and school and really just want to share it if you haven't used it.  It is so nice to be able to pull something up at home from my school files, no matter how random it is because everything is right there!  It has saved me on quite a few occasions when I have forgotten things at home, but did remember to save it in my dropbox or when I needed to work on something at home and didn't have a hard copy or thought about it out of the blue/last minute or needed data that was "at school".  Give it a try - I promise you will LOVE it!

Pete the Cat Pack Freebie

We just finished literacy week and each class had to participate in a poster contest for their favorite author. My class is so in love with Pete the Cat so Eric Litwin was an obvious choice! As part of the poster, we made a class book that was attached to the poster. We decided to make a book about adjectives to describe the different colors of shoes. I've posted this as a free download on Teachers Pay Teachers. You can use this download to make the poster or the class book.

and MORE!

This free download contains:

1. Pete the Cat's Awesome Adjectives book cover.

2. A list of adjectives/colors. This list was the result of a class activity so you may want to develop your own. We discussed color words and looked for adjectives as a class. I then made this list and cut them out so each child could pick one out of a bucket. They used this slip of paper to fill out the next page. (The list does NOT go in the book.)

3. Student page - each child fills in the adjective and color word and colors the shoes at the bottom of the page to match. Print one page per student.

4. Last page/inside of back cover.

5. This is the picture of Eric Litwin I used on my author poster.

6 & 7. Shoes - Students colored the smaller shoes to use around the border of the poster. The larger shoes are extra.

8. Contents and directions.

9. A photo of our author poster.

Click here to go to TPT and get the free download!

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