TPT Seller Challenge Week 1: Makeover Madness!

I've joined up with a large group of teachers and TPT sellers to work on challenging ourselves and improving our craft during the summer months. 

Week One challenge is to make over a product already in my store.  I was THRILLED about this challenge, because I have had this very thing on my to-do list for months (maybe since last summer???) and have never taken the time to sit down and do it.  

I especially wanted to update my Winter Write the Room set.  It's been my biggest seller, and it has needed a fresh look for too long.  It was one of the first products I made, and it was in desperate need of some love!

I updated the fonts and clip art and started from scratch with a new cover.  I have learned so much since originally making this way back when, and it felt so good to change it up for the better!

Click the AFTER graphic or CLICK HERE to head over to check it out in my TPT store.  I know that winter is a long way off (thank goodness for that!), but I'll have it on sale through the end of the week in case you want to plan ahead for next school year.  Or, if you already have it, go back and download the revised version!

Head on over to Third in Hollywood to check out the other sellers in the linky!

Penguin Addition {FREEBIE!}

We are knee-deep in a penguin study in my classroom.  We've studied arctic animals in the winter before, but never penguins.  This year, I wanted to try something new, and.....I mean, penguins.

They are so cute.  So sweet.  So lovable!

My students are officially in love and obsessed.  My heart pitter-patters when I hear them use the words rookery, predator, or even regurgitate (that one's a favorite!) in conversation with their friends.

They talk about the different types of penguins like they are family!  Emperor, Adelie, Macaroni, Crested, Rockhopper, Little Blue.... so cute and so fun!

I wanted an addition practice page for my students, and I knew that if I included penguins they would be suddenly motivated.  And goldfish crackers?  Done deal.

Students rolled two dice and used goldfish crackers to build the groups.  Then, they recorded their addition sentences on the recording sheet.  Simple, but fun!  My class loved it today!

 These cutie pie penguins came from Deanna Jump's Penguin pack.  I laminated them with my new at-home laminator of course because I am in.love.with.it.

 If you'd like to use this page with your students, CLICK HERE to grab it from Google Drive!

Happy weekend, friends!!

Cyber Monday Sale!!

Hi there, friends!

Have you started your Christmas shopping yet???  I have done lots of my shopping online over the past few days and now I'm just waiting for those boxes to get dropped by my front door!  I'm ready to get gifts wrapped and under the tree!

TPT is throwing their BIG Cyber Monday sale tomorrow and they are extending it through Tuesday!  All items in my store will be 20% off and TPT will add another 10% off with the code CYBER!!  Go fill your carts with awesome resources for your classroom!

Here are some fun Christmas and Winter items from my shop.  Click each image to check it out on TPT!

This week's math stations

 Weeeelllll, so I wasn't back tomorrow (Thursday), like I had hoped.  It was a busy week, and I was SO ready for the weekend.  Feeling a little jealous of all those teachers who started Spring Break yesterday!  We still have two and a half weeks before our break begins.  Hopefully all of the snow will melt by then and we'll be able to enjoy some mild, Spring-like temps.  My son was born during Spring Break 6 years ago, and it was a complete blizzard.  I'm very ready for the snow and COLD to be done!

Anywho...my math stations run on the same schedule as my lit stations, so they will continue through next week.

"Bean Flip"

I grabbed this page from Sara over at Kindergarten is a Hoot a long time ago and pull it out from time to time.  It's a fun little addition page.  My students love "rolling" the beans.  Then, they color the beans on their page and write the addition sentence.  Great practice for those math facts!

Remember when I posted about "Counting Snowballs"?  Remember how I was going to use it for math stations back in January?  Remember how I had planned to use white pom-poms for the snowballs?  Oh boy.  I am JUST NOW getting around to this activity.....and I didn't have the patience to dig through my bag of pom-poms for the white ones, so they are counting colorful snowballs in March!  Ha!

(And I even heard one little guy this past week say, "This is the best math station!"...and his friend agreed!  LOVE sweet Kindergarteners!  They are so forgiving and would count snowballs in May if I asked them to.)

"Race to 100"

This activity is a favorite for sure!  My kiddos LOVE this partner game.  The concept is super simple.  They each choose their own color.  They take turns rolling the dice and coloring in that many spaces.  The partner who lands on 100 wins!  It's included in my 100th Day of School pack.

"What's in my Bowl?" graphing game

I filled cheap Take 'n' Toss bowls with a variety of items (each is different).  The students grab a bowl and graph what is inside.  There are a few questions at the bottom of the page for analyzing their data.

Feel free to grab this page for yourself if you think you'd be able to use it!

Happy weekend!!!

Five for Friday link-up! {February 8th}

I'm linking up with Kacey over at Doodle Bugs Teaching for another Five for Friday link-up!

We actually enjoyed a full, five-day week at school this week!  It was wonderful!!!

We were BUSY....lots and lots of learning, and some play time too!

1. We began a non-fiction unit on arctic animals.  My teaching partner and I kept seeing blog after blog with the MOST adorable penguin activities, so we decided to go for it too!  This is something that I NEVER would have time to fit in before (we switched from half-day to full-day K this year), and I am loving it!  We began this week with polar bears, then we'll move to walruses, and we'll finish with penguins.  We're using Deanna Jump's Arctic Animals pack for polar bears and walruses.

I am NOT an artist at all, but this polar bear turned out pretty cute anyway! The kids love it!

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2. We got a letter from our pen pals this week!  So exciting!  We'll write them back early next week.

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3. We are getting close to our 100th day.  February 19th!

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4. We celebrated two birthdays this week in our class.  One of the girls brought the MOST delicious frosted sugar cookies, and the other brought these sweet skittle butterflies.  I had to get a picture with it because she decorated all of the clothespin bodies.  She knows that giraffes are my favorite animal, so she decorated mine like a giraffe.  Precious!  I LOVE kindie kids!  They are so thoughtful and sweet!

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5. We have finally had some snowfall that has stuck around, so we ended our week with a Young Fives/Kindergarten sledding party!  We have a great sledding hill on our playground, but each grade takes turns using it, so our students only got to use it once last week.  We invited parents to join us and spent the last 45 minutes of the day sledding!  The weather was PERFECT, and the kids had a blast!!  It was the BEST way to end our week together!

Saturday trip to school and a SALE!

 I headed into school for a few hours today.  With all these snow days, my list of things to get done is a mile long!  I had some prep work to do for our upcoming 100th Day (still a couple of weeks away) and Valentine's Day.

I wanted to make a sample of the glyph from my 100th day pack...I'm excited to have 24 of these hanging in my classroom soon!

I also had to get a few things copied and cut out, ready to be colored in this week.  The numbered balloons are for a 100th Day scavenger hunt and the other balloon cards will be used for addition practice during our next round of math stations.

Oh, and I changed out the bulletin board in our reading corner.  We'll become digraph detectives and add lots of words to this board in the coming weeks!

As much as I love a lazy Saturday, it always feels soooooo good to cross some things off the to-do list at school.  Now I can relax and enjoy the rest of my weekend!

I'm sure you've heard about the awesome sale that TPT is throwing tomorrow (Sunday)!  Everything in my shop will be 20% off both tomorrow AND Monday!  If you use the promo code SUPER tomorrow, you'll get an extra 10% off!  I know that every teacher LOVES a sale!

(Adorable button design by Ashley Hughes)

Here are a few things from my shop that you might be interested in checking out...

Click here to head to TPT.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

And happy shopping ! :)

Indoor Snowball Fight!

Oh. my! 

The indoor snowball fight was such a huge success!  We didn't get around to it yesterday (the kids had been out of school for 5 days and we ALL needed some time to ease back into things!), but I made sure to make time for it this morning because I knew that my littles would love it!  It turned out to be a great day for it because it was rainy (yes, warm enough for rain....crazy weather!) and the kids were inside all day.  This was a super fun way to get some energy out and some awesome math review in!

I pretty much only had to say the words "snowball fight" and every boy in my class 1)was completely engaged and 2)thought I was the coolest teacher ever.  

I modeled how we'd be using the unifix cubes to build our addition sentences once our snowball fight was complete, then set the ground rules for throwing snowballs.  No throwing at faces, no running, no screaming (please, pleeeeease no screaming!). Basically, be as responsible and respectful as 5 or 6 year olds can be while you hurl wads of paper at each other!

No doubt I was the most enticing target during the snowball fight.  One student got me, and then they all ganged up on me!  It was actually super, super fun!

After the snowball fight, each student grabbed a snowball and brought it back to their seat.  We opened them and began building our cube towers at the same time!  I have never seen the entire class so excited about addition!  It was awesome!

We grabbed clipboards and headed to the carpet to fill out our recording sheet.  Every student had a chance to share their addition sentence and the cube tower they built.  We worked as a group to figure out the answers for those few who didn't quite get it.  It was an awesome formative assessment!

 I posted this page as a freebie a couple of days ago.  Head over here to grab it.

Bless this sweet little guy.  His pages are filled in upside down 99% of the time.  BUT...his addition sentences look perfect!

And, oh.....isn't there always that one sweet child that you think is keeping up and then you finish and realize that his page looks like this???  

Keeps us humble as teachers!!!  Ha!

A successful snowball fight  (only indoor snowball fights allowed at school, kindies!!!) to keep our day exciting and learning fun!

You totally should try it!