My Top Ten List



Really? Are you serious? Oh my word - I can hardly believe it – my little old blog got selected as a Top Ten and I am just in shock! I would have never expected this! Thank you so much to Jennifer at First Grade Blue Skies for nominating this little blog as one of her Top Ten visited blogs. It is definitely a work in progress and it has been a wonderful learning experience for me. I still have a long way to go!
When I think about what my favorite blogs are, it’s really hard to narrow it down to just ten. I follow more than 40 blogs and I have learned something from each of them. The fantastic things you share help me keep my teaching fresh and I cannot thank you enough! So, here are just a few of my faves – these are my go-to girls that I regularly stalk read for the best ideas:

Dr. Jean & Friends

And, one of my newest faves, Frolicking Through First….(sorry – I was having trouble finding a blog button for this one), excellent new blog! Hope you all have a relaxing Labor Day Holiday. We are having a lazy, rainy, stay at home kind of day!

Kelie

So many things to be thankful for!

Well, teacher friends, our first 2 weeks of school are behind us and I have so many things to be thankful for. I have a wonderful class of 25 (yes, 25) students and awesome parents to work with this year! I have an A-M-A-zing teaching partner and a fabulous new administration that is super supportive! Here a few final pics of the room arrangement to share…

Book Center

   

Our Listening Center this year will only accommodate 2 students – for very good reasons!

 

Birthday Board & Polka Dot Cabinet

The polka dots were made with pre-cut circles from the Dollar Tree. There was enough in 1 package to do the whole cabinet.

Word Wall Fun

The letters were made using an awesome font from Lettering Delights called Funky Chicken – absolutely LOVE this font!

  

Totally Pinterest inspired.. Just a little daily reminder for myself, especially when things get tough. :-)

Rug Area, with books behind it.

Oh yeah, almost forgot.. won this last week from The Schoolbox

And, finally my biggest reason to be thankful…

Kelie

Randomness at it’s Best

So, I know this is a super random post, but, I went to school today and am FINALLY close enough to take some time off. I can hardly believe we go back to school a week from today. Here’s a few picks from what’s been done so far…

The first item on my agenda today was to get my boards together.. Still waiting to see if our custodians are going to grant my white board wish, so 1 is unfinished, but most are pretty much done. This is the helper chart – still needs a label at the top!

This rainbow pocket chart makes a wonderful chart for center rotations. My groups are color groups (red, yellow, green, blue, purple). This year I added a tape strip down the center to differentiate for literacy centers and math centers. When I get the kids grouped, I will add a colored piece of paper for each group that lists the kids in the group. It has worked really well in the past; if a child has a lost look on their face during center time, I simply tell them to check the chart (or one of their precious friends will help them with this!).

Here’s a wider view of the focus wall. As I move into 1st this year, I’m still trying to get a feel for what I will need on the math and literacy wall. Any helpful hints or tips?

The writing center still needs a little work, but it is a start. I found this super cute table and two chairs at a yard sale for $15 total – with polka dots already painted on!

I have to share this A-DoR-a-bLe door hanging that was waiting on me when I got to school last week! One of my absolute favorite teachers painted this little goody to hang on my classroom door, so you know it was hanging up THAT DAY! (Thank you, Mrs. Frye – I LOVE it!)

To spread a little random your way, if you are still needing school supplies you MUST check out Walgreen’s this week! They have absolutely amazing deals on 3M hooks (2pk for $3), pencils, folders, highlighters, dry erase markers & cleaner, and my favorite – sheet protectors (which I use for nearly everything!). Hopefully this is something you might be able to use!

Hugs coming your way as you sweet teachers prep your classrooms this week!

Take care,

Kelie

…and the winner is…

True Random Number Generator Min: 1 Max: 73 Result:45 Powered by RANDOM.ORG

Today is the big day!  A big congratulations to Kelly B – from -

 http://busyinkindergarten.blogspot.com

I will email you shortly to get your address.

Thanks again, for all of the sweet comments – I really appreciate all of you that participated in this event.  Thanks you for your kind words and for sharing such wonderful ideas!

Kelie

Last chance to participate in our giveaway!

Alright, gals, I’m so excited to see who will win this back to school goody basket! Just 2 more hours to enter the giveaway. Just a few reminders…
-If you are a “follower”, leave me a comment letting me know you are – 1 entry
-If you become a “follower”, leave a comment letting me know you are new to the club – 1 entry
-Add my blog button to your site, leave 2 comments – 2 entries
-Blog about this little giveaway, leave 2 comments – 2 entries
Easy peasy, lemon squeezy? Yes! It is! I will announce the winner sometime tomorrow morning. Good luck friends!!

(ps - can we make it to 100??)
Kelie

Finally 50 Giveaway

Finally at 50 giveaway!!

 

I am so excited to have reached 50 followers! Thank you all for coming on this learning experience with me! I am learning so much in the process from all of you awesome teachers out there! I get inspiration from you daily. So, I wanted to give a little something back.

Included is:

two handmade pointers

• an apple notepad
• 2 boxes of dominoes
• 1 magnetic black & white polka dot pocket
• 4 pack of programmable spinners
• (1) 3 pack of black & white file folders
• handmade teacher clipboard
  

 

Sound like anything you'd like? Here's how to enter the giveaway:

-"Follow" my blog and leave a comment – 1 entry

-Add my blog button to your site and leave a comment – 2 entries

-Blog about this giveaway on your site and leave a comment – 2 entries

This giveaway will end on TUESDAY, JULY 19 at midnight. I will announce a winner on Wednesday, July 20, 2011. Good luck and thanks again for being such an inspiration to me!

Kelie

Back to School Class Books - FREEBIE

Just wanted to share with you all a few little class books that I like to make in the beginning of the year with Kindergarteners.
They are probably applicable for 1^st graders too!


There are three different books included in this file: We Like to Eat (students add pictures of something they like to eat and write the word on the line), Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (add students pictures and they can write their name), Our Hands (students will either trace or stamp their handprint and write their name on the line). These make great books to use in the book center for early readers. Let me know what you think!

Directions: Print (1) copy of the cover page for each book and enough copies of the second page of each book for each child in your class to complete. You might also want to complete a page yourself to add to the class book - I always do!

Class Books

Kelie

Can you spot a giveaway?

Hello friends! I am getting close to 50 followers now, and I'm ready to host my first giveaway! Be on the lookout for something red, yellow, black and white!

Kelie

Back to School Freebie!

One of my favorite Kindergarten and First Grade centers is Write the Room. Each of my students gets a clipboard and reads all the print they can in the classroom and writes words that are fun or interesting to them. The kids absolutely love to walk around the room with clipboard in hand looking for their favorite friends' names or something from a recent anchor chart. However, last year around Christmas, I noticed that my students needed a little more structure and guidance to help them stay on task (i.e. – they were just having a grand old time walking around writing a whole lot of nothing!). So, I created some themed Write the Room activities for them to complete. In the beginning, I asked students to find just 1 word for each letter on the list, but as time went on, they were better able to locate those needed words. After a month or two, I asked them to start finding 3 words for each letter listed. Any student who finished early could write a sentence using one of the words they found. Oh my good gravy did this help them to stay focused! They were so excited to find their words and the few that wrote a sentence were really proud of themselves! 

As we quickly approach August, my teacher brain just WILL NOT shut off! So, here's a little freebie I'd like to share with you – a Back to School Write the Room Activity. At the beginning of Kindergarten, I would probably expect 1 word or name, but at the beginning of
first grade, I would start out with 3 words for each letter. I hope it's something that you can use!

 

Pinkalicious Giveaway at First Grade Honey Bunch

Alright, gals…. There are lots of giveaways out there right now, but this might be one of my favorites! My closest friends will tell you, I am a true sucker for polka dots! Well, Jan from First Grade Honey Bunch is sponsoring this wonderful giveaway that includes:

-a pink polka dot tote

-fabulous polka dot clipboard

-fantastic flower and polka dot composition book

-two purse size notepads

-pink ribbon pencil holder

 

Sounds like something we need, doesn't it? If you love pink and you have a passion for polka dots (two of my favorite

things!) then head over to Jan's site and check it out! Don't

forget to take a look at all the other wonderful things on her blog!

Kelie

Everything’s Sweeter With a Great font - Favorite Font Linky Party

Don't cute fonts just make everything sweeter? Well, if you agree, Jenn over at Finally in First is having a Favorite Font Linky Party for her friends to share their favorite teacher fonts. Since I've been blog stalking hopping lately, I've found so many awesome font sources out there! Some of my favorites are Lettering Delights, Kevin & Amanda Fonts for Peas, and dafont. I have recently fallen in love with these fonts:

Love Ya Like A Sister

Janda Scrapgirl Dots

Lima Bean

Janda Curlygirl Serif

Monster Paparazzi

Impervious

Pea Stacey

Pea Stacey Fancy

Kelie

 

I heart Target!

I love school supplies. No, really, I LOVE school supplies. I love thinking about what I can do with unusual items. I love the challenge and excitement of finding a good sale and feeling like I've saved money. I am a thrift store junkie and a Dollar Tree Diva! But, after hearing about all the wonderful goodies that teachers have been finding in the Dollar Spot at Target lately, I had to go and check them out myself. And oh my good gravy, did I find some goodies!

Take a look at these management tools – couldn't pass these up! I have somewhat of a pointer addiction. I only bought one this time, but was really tempted to buy more. Besides this pencil pointer, they also had star pointers in blue and red.

As I prepare to move from Kindergarten to 1^st grade, I am trying to beef up my collection of addition and subtraction materials. I found these fabulous cards that can be used for games or quick transition activities. There was an addition, subtraction, telling time and "quick addition" set. I thought the quick addition set would be great to begin the addition talk with and later for those that still need additional support.

Also, in the math area, I found this Math Bingo game. I was hesitant to buy it, because it said it was addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. And, I know my firsties will only be using addition and subtraction. When I got home and opened it up, I was very excited to see that the cards made the game easily adaptable to any of those skills! They provided 1 set of calling cards for addition, 1 set for subtraction, 1 set for multiplication and 1 set for division! Also, if you really wanted to open it up further, you could make your own set of calling cards using tens & ones! Talk about differentiation. Amazing!

In the literacy area, I found some wonderful things as well. They had dry erase sentence strips – 4 to a pack, leveled readers and these fantastic Dr. Seuss buttons – not sure if you can read them in the picture, but they say Thing 1 and Thing 2 and One Fish, Two Fish. I bought the books in sets of twos and thought they would be great for buddy reading with the "buddies" wearing the Thing 1 and Thing 2 buttons! The sentence strips have endless possibilities, but I will probably use mine in guided reading.

These are cards for beginning blends and diagraphs as well as a pack with traffic signs! How fun is that for environmental print! They also had these cute little books called "Fun Facts". I chose the book about dogs, but they had them about Dinosaurs, Insects and Ocean Animals. These would be great in your science center!

Our district just conducted a Writer's Workshop professional development and I learned so much! I have always had some apprehension about teaching Writer's Workshop, because I felt like I just didn't know enough about the process or the schedule. Now that I have some strategies under my belt, I feel much more excited about it and I am ready to implement it in August! In the meantime, here are some goodies to think about…

They had "Animal Sounds" cards that show a picture of an animal and give the sounds that it makes! How fun would this be when you are teaching about using words that make sound? Also, in this area, I found cards called "Busy People" – there are 36 two sided cards that give a picture, name and description of a job that people do. These little cards have so much potential! I can see kids picking out a job to write about or to be able to write about what they'd like to do someday. Last is a cute little purple stamp pad that would be great in the writing center for students to stamp out sight words or word families, etc.

So, if you are in the market for some new supplies, check out the Target Dollar Spot and see what goodies you can find. If you haven't already done so, head over to Ladybugs Teacher Files to check out her Teacher Shopping Linky Party. There are some great ideas there as well!

Enjoy –

Kelie

Giveaway and a NEW BLOG Linky Party!

Alright, friends, I have just fallen in love with this whole blogging thing. I have spent hours and hours looking at some wonderful teacher blogs out there and have seen some fabulous ideas being shared by teachers. The one thing I'm noticing, as I travel through blog land, is that there are LOTS of new bloggers out there, like me! If you can relate, and you've found some wonderful new bloggers of note, head on over to Gonna Set This Circus Down and add them to the linky party.



The best part -- Leea is giving away a $25 gift card to Amazon for those who participate!

Hurry up and add your favorite new blogs to the list and see if you are a winner!

Kelie

A Word Making Freebie

I really love reading teacher blogs and seeing all the wonderful ideas out there! A couple of days ago, I ran across a wonderful blog written by Anna Brantley, called Crazy for First Grade. She has some truly awesome ideas - one of my favorites is her Making Words unit. I love it!!  I wanted to create something similiar, so I gave it a shot..

One of my favorite characters is the Gingerbread Man, so I thought that would be a good jumping off point. I hope this is something you can use!

Enjoy! -
Kelie

Tables and Desks Organization

In the past, I have always taught Kindergarten. I have been a faithful table user UNTIL this year! I am looping to 1^st with my Kinders, and, get this..staying in the same room! Yippee for me! But, my goal is for them to feel a true difference when they walk in. I want them to know they are now in First Grade, not Kindergarten, anymore. So, I found a wonderful teacher friend in the building who wanted tables and our custodian switched them out for us. I now have desks! But, I thought I would share with you the way the tables used to be organized.

These are our table numbers.. I use a stand up plastic document holder to number the tables and to post examples of the center work. Each table is numbered (1-5) and our literacy centers are in baskets labeled 1-5. So, it makes passing out the center baskets VERY easy. Great job for a student!

These are our Dollar Tree baskets, literacy baskets are white and math baskets are black.

Now, the dilemma is changing over to desks... Any ideas on how to organize this with desks? I'm thinking about pods with book cases at the end of each. I would love to know how your organize this for first graders.

Kelie