I was a little disappointed in my shopping trip yesterday but I did find a few things to use in the classroom! Check them out................

 summer scrapbook paper

 small paper lanterns, I got pink and green but
they had yellow and blue too!

 Cute Mary Engelbert Tins for spring,
can't wait to put my card games in them!!

 And these jumbo clothes pins came from Michaels dollar bins! I have been wanting to get these but wasn't going to pay 5 dollars for one, I'm going to use them to hold center signs or posters we are working on in our guided reading centers.

***WARNING THE REST OF THIS POST HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH TEACHING****

Today was another fun filled adventure trying to find my precious daughter a dress to wear on Easter!!

First of all my son drove, I defiantly thought it would be easier to ride with him....it was stressful to say the least!! The worst part he loves to argue and every time I tried to give him a suggestion he said "that's not how I learned it" which got me going because you haven't learned anything yet, you've only drove twice!!

Please someone tell me it will get easier and everyone has a hard time at first, because the other parents at the driving class just kept saying everything was going great - no problems, and I was like "really"?????

Anyway I will be trying my best to be a calm, relaxed teacher in the future, we both left the car in tears :(

And let me tell you about my daughter!!! She is a tomboy if ever there was one!! She loves horses and we actually had an argument over the fact that she "likes her room to smell like horses, even the smell of manure is good"!! Seriously she said that to me!!!

She would be perfectly happy in her old ripped up jeans, t-shirt, and boots 24-7, she does not EVER want to wear a dress. Unfortunately there are times when she does need to dress it up a bit, like the day she was inducted into the National Honor Society, the note said "you must DRESS UP" she thought the black jeans, black T-shirt were dressy enough!!

Me I wanted to curl her hair, or at least put it up all cute, I offered to buy her new clothes, she could get anything she wanted, I'd take her to get her hair done, nails done, anything????? Nope nothing worked, she did end up wearing a pair of my dress pants and a dress shirt, but they were off within minutes afterwards.

So I've been working on her lately, just wear a dress to church on Easter for me pleeeeaaasssee, would you pleeeaassseee just give your momma one day - one morning of dressing up because I think you would actually like it if you tried it! I remember how cute you were when I could still pick out  your clothes, see look at those pictures, you loved it when I dolled you up like that.

Grumpy 13 year old her - finally said ok, I think she just wanted me to shut up really, but I didn't care, I was ecstatic!!  Once I was over the drive with her brother we headed into the mall and began the search! I knew it wasn't going to be something totally ruffly, no flowers, no sparkles, but it started to get a little ridiculous!

Three stores in she finally tells me she wants a skirt and shirt, ok I can live with that! How about this one??? Ok how about this??? No is must be long, like touch the floor long! Found a couple, which one does she want of course, BLACK!! OK, OK, we'll go with the black one! She actually tried it on, it's cute, let's find a shirt!

Again, no I don't like this, not that, not that either!! Guess what she wants, a BLACK t-shrit!!! UGGG, we finally settled on a black shirt with sparkly purple stripes, it's not what I was thinking but it's better than jeans and a plain old t-shirt!!


Lesson learned!! I know I've gotta let them be who they are and love them through it all, but it is hard letting them go - I know it's just beginning and this momma's got a long way to go!! Lord help me make it through these teenage years please!!

Hope your all enjoying your weekend!! Have I mentioned how glad I am that it's Spring Break???!!!!!
 

Read more »

Unknown

Well on my first day off I spent a lot of time in my Pjs blogstalking, and also got a chance to finish up some literacy activities I've been working on, I plan on adding math activities but wanted to get this out here to ya on Freebie Friday!
Wild West Unit

As always I appreciate a comment it you use this, your feedback is important to me! I hope you find it useful and look forward to creating more soon :) Now I'm off to Target, my son is driving me for the first time, he got his permit today!! Makes me feel really old!! and afraid just a little :) Hopefully tomorrow I'll have a fab finds post for you! Enjoy your Friday!!

Read more »

Unknown

I think the entire town can hear me celebrating, I'm so excited, because today at 3:00 Spring Break begins!! We have had a terrible schedule this year with long nights of conferences, and months without even a half day off, our compensation is one day added to our spring break - which happens to be tomorrow, so I am totally excited that for the next 10 days the alarm clock will not be waking me up, my family and I are going to enjoy some time together and hopefully I'll get my house in order before hubby goes in for back surgery on April 11th! So much is going on and I can't wait to just relax!!!

Anyway here's what we did on our final day before break....

 Counting eggs activity, I got the egg tray and little wooden basket from the local Salvation Army Thrift store

 I used a permanent marker to make the dots on the egg tray and got small egg beads from Oriental Trading

 Students counted out the eggs one to one correspondence to the dots in the tray!

 Count and clip cards, you can find these as a part of my free Easter unit if you look under Easter at the sidebar!

 I saw these cute little flower hair clips at Walmart, light-bulb!!! these would work for clip games!

So they count the eggs, then put the clip on the bunny with the correct number on his belly!

Their favorite activity of the day was this chick counting game!!

 I got the birds nests and little chicks from Oriental Trading, I made the number cards with an alphabet from Lettering Delights (its' a flower one I plan on using with flower pots I was going to make a better one for this game but they worked for now)

 I put the cards in the nest then they counted that many chicks into the nest

They loved it, and asked to play again several times!!

I hope your all having a wonderful Thursday and if your spring break is this week you enjoy it completely, I know I will!! I hope to be back soon with some freebies and a big giveaway while I'm relaxing so stay tuned! I need this week can rejuvenate me for those last 45 days of school!!

Read more »

Unknown

Tomorrow is our last day before spring break and I'm trying to get everything in order before the week off so I can enjoy it!! Sorry for the delay in announcing the winner of my giveaway...

Congratulations Angela R. I sent you an email, as soon as I get your mailing address I'll have your Easi-Speak sent to you, your going to love it!!

Since we won't be in session next week it's our last few days to get in Easter activities so here's what we've been up to

 Love these books, they always get the kids attention!!

 The sequence cards and activity came from a great unit by Live Love Laugh Kindergarten

 I got these alphabet eggs at Walmart a couple of years ago, they came with foam letters, I put letters in each egg to make one word, the kids open them and make a word with the letters, then record the words they made.

 It's Wednesday, one more day...can't wait!!

Read more »

Unknown

Four more days until Spring Break!! Monday is moving fast, today we played an egg matching game for Alphabet recognition, I saw the idea on TOADally Tot's Blog , I thought it was amazing and had to have one for my kiddos, so I used the letter stickers I found at Target and some eggs I had left over from last year to create this...

the chick has a letter on his belly that matches the letters on the egg

I also used the scrapbook paper and stickers from Target and Dollar tree to create a festive memory game, I cut the paper in circles with my circle cutter, put stickers on the back and laminated them! The kids loves the fun realistic stickers (from the dollar tree)!

Don't forget I still have a giveaway going on for the Easi-Speak USB recorder, it's fabulous you should enter if you haven't already!! Hope your all having a wonderful Monday!

Read more »

Unknown

I was so excited this past week when I received this Easi-Speak USB Recorder from Learning Resources!!

(click on the picture to go to Learning Resources' Website)

It took me a couple of minutes to read through the directions and figure out how to use the recorder, it's really simple! I couldn't wait to take it into the classroom and capture my students language skills!

As a special education teacher many of my students have speech impairments and I've been looking for a way to capture them talking in casual conversation so the speech pathologist could hear them. This is absolutely perfect!

I took it in the very next morning and demonstrated for my students how to use it (kindergarteners with learning and speech disabilities). It took them a few times experimenting to get down how all the buttons work, but they got it!!

They started babbling away, and at the end of our session I couldn't believe all the samples I had to listen to!! I loved that it saved in tracks and you can skip through them even on the microphone it's self which has a play back option, and the option for using headphones!

I popped the cap off the end of the microphone and plugged it into my computer, saved the "tracks" over to my computer and emailed them off to the speech pathologist. Simple, and soooo helpful for both of us!! She was just as excited as I was to hear their voices in authentic conversation with each other!

There are so many possibilities for using the Easi-Speak in the classroom. First off I've got a huge collection of books that I could record myself reading, no more expensive CD's to buy and store! I also want to have my readers record themselves reading so they can hear themselves, and I can go back ans listen after timed reading tests. My high school students were just as excited as my little ones to use this, they are going to do voice overs on their power point projects next week, and they were trying to come up with more projects that this could be used for!!

Overall it's a great tool for use in the classroom, I would recommend it for all age levels! It retails for $69.99 but it's really worth it with the tons of possibilities for it's use. It's super simple to use, all of my students were able to use it independently. Transferring files to the computer was easy as well, they can be saved in two formats and it's compatible with both Mac and PC.

Learning Resources has generously offered to give one of my lucky readers and Easi-speak for their classroom! I'm trying out Rafflecopter for this giveaway, use the form below to enter there are 4 chances to win! Good luck everyone!

Read more »

Unknown

Today we used these cute Easter erasers I picked up at Target to review sorting, counting, and pattering

Jersey Boys = Awesome, Finleys for dinner, and just some great relaxing time with my Mom and Sister - just what I needed! I hope your all having an awesome Wednesday!! After Girls on the Run in this heat and a late night last night, I am beat!! I think it's time for a little nap :)

I also noticed that I've climbed over the 500 mark!!! I've been wracking my brain with what to do in celebration of the big event, as soon as I have it all figured out I'll share it with you!! I know there will be freebies and prizes involved!! Thanks to all of you for following and supporting me, you really don't know how much it has meant to me this year :)

Read more »

Unknown

Today we practiced our letter recognition skills with this cute 

Easter egg activity.....

 I modge podged these stickers onto cute little eggs

 Students took turns choosing and egg

 read the letter and said it's sound

 Then hung it on the tree!

 Isn't it so cute!!!

Now I'm off for Dinner and "Jersey Boys" with my mom and sister, it's my sister's birthday, she's kinda down about being in her 30's so I got her tickets to the show to cheer her up (ok so it might benefit me too) and I can't wait, I hope it's good, I've never been to anything like this before! 

Stay tuned for more fun tomorrow as we continue to celebrate Easter in our last 7 days before spring break ;)

Read more »

Unknown

I've been working on my Easter, chicks, bunnies, and egg stuff  to use for the next two weeks before spring break, headed out to Dollar Tree this morning and found these adorable eggs shaped like bunnies and chicks

Here's how I'm using them...........

 (got the carrots at Dollar Tree a while back, the kids will count the carrots into the bunnies and chicks)

I also got some "chipboard" stickers that I used on my clothes pins to make them all cutesie for my count and clip games

And in other news......there are lots of giveaways going on around blog-land, here are a few big ones

First, Holly at Crisscross Applesauce in First Grade is Celebrating 400 followers with an awesome giveaway (I'm not gonna lie, I really want to win that guest post from Kristin at Teeny Tiny Teacher)!!

  

She also has an awesome new look(that owl=adorable)so click on the pic above to head on over!

Ms. Patterson at Pocketful of Kinders is having a huge giveaway (also celebrating 400 followers) that I've contributed to, she was so sweet to ask me, I'm giving a $10 TPT card!

 

Click on this picture to head over to her blog, see what you could win, and enter the giveaway!

and Let's Teach Something is having an amazing giveaway as well...ton's of prizes, she just reached 100 followers, you gotta go check her out and see how lucky you can be!

 

AWESOME weather, I'm headed to my moms for a family barbeque (in March, in Michigan!?!?!?) Hope you all have a fabulous evening, best of luck on this St. Patty's day!

Read more »

Unknown