20 Dollar Store Deals FREE File

What teacher doesn’t love the Target Dollar Spot and The Dollar Tree? Can’t really say the same thing for my husband.  He actually drops me off at the door at Target…not because he is trying to be kind (which he is), but because he wants me to finish that Dollar Spot hunt before he gets in the store!
So here are some of my latest finds….be sure and read to the bottom.  There are a few freebee recording pages to go along with some of the items!

Here are some of the items in Target:
1. Love the clipboards! Can never have enough of those for write the room, center work, teacher assessment holder….
2. The abc dry erase boards will work great in our making words center.
3. Love playing cards…Here’s a tip…If you want children to pay attention to the “set” not the numeral, simply cut the numerals off of the playing cards. This forces the kids to pay attention to the configuration of hearts, spades, etc on the card---subitizing! They will be able to tell you how many on the cards very quickly…without counting!
4. Love those microphones. We have several! The kids love to use them for share time, show and tell, read to friend, etc…. “The brain learns by pattern but seeks novelty.” Give ‘em a mic and let ‘em talk!
5. The spinner games—perfect “can do” centers for literacy and math!
6. Not sure yet what we are going to make with the mailboxes. But, I wanted to get some before they were all gone! Any ideas?
7. ABC puzzle---perfect “can do” center! Now that’s what I call No Prep!
And here are a few things from the Dollar Tree:
1. Love the divided plastic plates. They are perfect for number bonds!
2. Dice for addition, counting, on…. Also found dice with sight words. Can’t wait to come up with a game for those!
3. Okay, so I’m going out on a limb on the “science boxes”. Not sure if they will actually work or not. But, they had them for making instant snow. So I bought 3 to use in my small groups. These are going to be great for a How To Writing experience as well as the scientific process! Check back next week at the Peek at my Week plans to see how it worked!
4. Love the light up bear. I give these to my kids in our small groups. Then, when I ask a question they can hit their light if they know the answer! They really love it!
5. Had to get those robots because they were just too cute to pass up!
6. The abc page is a sheet of magnetic letters and pictures that start with each letter. We are going to add these to our magnetic letter center.
7. Saving the grow frogs for the spring!

Also saw these at the Dollar Tree:
1. The monster box was back in the gift wrapping area. The mouth had clear plastic, and I just cut it out. Now we are ready to feed the monster! Put sight words, abcs, numerals, addition sentences, etc on cheap valentine cards. Now, have the children feed them to the monster as they read the card.
2. Are those tiny red solo cups just not the cutest? Okay, another “I’m not sure what I’m going to do with this but I just have to have it” item! Would love to hear if you are using them!
3. The speech bubbles came 3 to a pack. They are magnetic! Here’s what I’m thinking! We could have 3 kids write something on each of the three bubbles. Now, put the speech bubbles on the magentic board. Then, other children have to decide which kid wrote which bubble. Once they do that, the child goes and stands under his speech bubble! Can’t wait to give it a try!

More from the Dollar Tree:
1. That magnetic spinner is smart! I have seen them at teacher stores for nearly $10! So here’s what you do….draw a large circle on the magnetic board. Around the edge of the circle write numerals, sight words, etc. Place the spinner in the middle of the circle. Now, give it a spin. Whatever the spinner lands on….the kids read!
2. Close up pic of the instant snow.
3. Frog and lily pad toy (see below).

Here’s a fun addition/number combination game to go with the frog game we picked up at the Dollar Tree!
1. Decide which number combination you want them to work on.
2. Invite the child to count out that many frogs.
3. Now, the child tries to jump the frogs into the pond by pressing down on the frog.
4. So now on the recording page, the child writes the number combination of how many landed in the pond and how many landed outside of the pond.
5. The recording page is available at the bottom of this post as a free download.

Winter Plans and Picking Nonfiction Topics for Writing

Picking a nonfiction topic is often a challenge for kids.  After a quick peek at our week, I shared how we teach our kids to use their fingers to pick nonfiction topics. We have included video clips that show the kids in action picking their topics!



Happy New Year! I can’t believe that we are in 2015! I love going back to school after the Christmas Break. It just seems to all fall into place! The kids are ready, I’m ready…..
So….in Reader’s Workshop we are in our second week of Unit 5. This week we are going to hit those reading strategies that remind the children to pay close attention to the letters in the words:

• Look at the beginning letter.
• Switch it Up.
• Look all the way through the word.
• Stretch it out.

We have already worked on really paying attention to the beginning sound, so now it is time to really call attention to the rest of the letters in the word.

In Writer’s Workshop we are starting our unit on Non-Fiction Writing. This week we will really work hard in helping children to determine if they are an expert on a topic. Here’s how we do that: We show children how they can use their hand.

• First, point to your thumb and name your topic.
• Then, point to the second, third, and fourth fingers and tell something you know about that topic.
• Last, point to your pinky and name your topic again.

I really love doing it this way because if helps children in later years know how to plan out an essay! Yep, that’s right…in kindergarten! Booyah!
Here is a video clip of one of our kiddos determining if he is an expert on a topic.

Here is another video that shows what it sounded like during active engagement while all children were practicing.

 In Guided Reading this week we are going to review How To Writing and the purpose of the “You Need” list. We are also going to revisit a Table of Contents and how reader’s use them.

Another reason I love this time of year…they can use so many of the things we have learned…to learn.  Does that make sense? In other words, we have learned about tree maps, bold text, diagrams, cut a ways. So now….we can use those things to help us learn content! During our science and social studies time we are doing just that!

This week we are finishing up Unit 4 for our math small group. We got a little behind during the holidays, but no problem. We are not going to rush it! Developing number sense is tooooooo important to rush or skip. Plus, maybe it is kinda a good thing….We will review combinations for 1-5 before heading onto combinations for 6-10 next week. If children understand the “math behind” number combinations 1-5, 6-10 are easy peasy! It is just a matter of developing automaticity!

Here is the link to download the lesson plans! https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7ubnOnZF__xWjVvYkR3MmYtRTA/view?usp=sharing

Happy New Year Activities

Each year on our first day back to school, we have a day long Happy New Year’s Celebration! Here are a few of the things we do—Hooray for New Year’s Day!
I purchased these party horns at the Dollar Tree for each of the kids. Then, after we rang in the “New Year”, I cut off the blower part and we glued the rest of the horn to our New Year’s Day party face. In the speech bubble the kids wrote something they might say to ring in the New Year.

Another thing we did on our first day back after the holiday was to cook black eyed peas and cornbread (that’s how we do it in the south!). Then, the kids created this face. In the mouth, they drew what they wanted to eat: only peas, only cornbread, or both! Then, we used the faces to create this double bubble map.

We also created our own “ball” to drop! This is a great review of a sphere! On the circle map, we wrote words that we had learned that are associated with New Year’s Day/Eve. These ideas are from the resource: Hooray for New Year’s Day.
Here is another post with more pictures of our Happy New Year celebration. http://kindergals.blogspot.com/search?q=happy+new+year

Tips and Ideas From Kim's Seminar

I’m sure as the New Year approaches we are all thinking of New Year’s Resolutions. I have made my share of resolutions---lose weight and exercise more seem to always top the list. As I think about resolutions for 2015, I wanted to think about resolutions that would save time! Yep, that precious thing that we never seem to have enough of--TIME.  How can I spend less time on work and more time on my family and friends, but still be the kind of teacher that I know I want to be? It isn’t in me to “settle” for anything but my best, so doing less has never really been an option.
That is what I love about this seminar…How can we “do it all”—have meaningful, engaging activities, develop higher order thinkers, provide authentic, research based lessons, and still be able to sleep!?!?!?

So what will we do on these two days? I can’t wait to share how using the workshop model of teaching puts the kids back in charge of their own learning! How you can provide quality lessons that target your standards while each child is able to “plug in” right at their own level!

Like…what do you do when some of your kids are writing text and others are still using drawings or scribbles? Or how do I move them from drawers to writers? This chart, along with others that I share, is one way I help my kids make that transition.

Ever try to get kids to really work together? I mean, not just work in the same area or on the same activity, but to be truly engage in meaningful conversations? If I want these conversations to occur, what do I need to do to make that happen? That is another of the many things we will talk about!
We will also visit the Eight Step Process. Ever heard of it? This is a great way to ensure that your teaching is reaching the kids it needs to reach. It makes sure that your fabulous lessons are targeted to the right group of kids and on the standards you need to cover!


Another thing that we can do to save tons of time is to really re-evaluate our center time. How much time are you spending creating centers that have a one shot answer, that take less than 10 minutes for the kids to do but hours for you to prep? Or, how do we move from simply going the “no prep” route and reproducing pages to keep them occupied to a more authentic form of teaching where children are engaged and developing understanding beyond what we thought possible???

How can we use centers as a way to revisit standards that we have already taught but want to maintain? How can we use centers as a way to keep kids busy while we pull small groups of children based on formative assessments to ensure that EVERY child is moving forward?

We will also talk about lots of fun math activities, many of which you can go back and do the very next day! BUT, how can we get the most from each activity—Questions!
The slides in this post are just a few of the many ideas you will see during the two day training!
I hope I will see lots of ya’ll this year while I am on the road in 2015! Each month I try to post where I am going to be, but you can always check the SDE website!
One thing I love about going to seminars myself is that not only do I learn new ideas, but I also realize that many other teachers are struggling with the same issues that I am! It is like a shot in the arm---new ideas, reminder of ideas I have done before but stopped doing, networking with other teachers, and spending a day laughing, learning and loving being a teacher!
Here are a few events from January you might want to check out! Just click on the picture and you can register for any of these events.

Happy Teaching! Living, Laughing, and Loving Teaching

Peek at My Week-Reindeer and Trains

This is going to be an incredibly short post! Shopping, decorating, wrapping, and parties are taking all my time…and I wouldn’t have it any other way! But, I wanted to give you a quick peek into what we are doing in Megan’s room this week! How exciting to be starting Unit 5 of Reader’s Workshop! This is when things get serious! We are really hitting those reading strategies and habits of good readers! How exciting that all of our kids are now in reading groups! In writing, we are finishing up our mini unit on making lists and writing patterns. Next week we will move on to opinion writing. We are using our train non fiction book as we are going to do the Polar Express this week! Yeah! And….we are also learning all about reindeer!

Here’s what we are doing in our literacy block and during science and social studies!

And…finally here are our math plans….Remember you can download these plans and save them for later! (here)

Like I said…short and sweet! Be sure and hop over to Deedee’s blog to see what others are doing!

Peek at My (our) Week-Christmas (trees), Freebees and More Travel

This post is just what you need to get ready for the Christmas Season! It has a week worth of lesson plans, 2 freebees, an interactive writing lesson, and the cutest gifts you will ever give your kids! Get ready....the fun, and craziness, of December is here!

Let the count down and craziness begin! Yep, 15 days of pure, no holding back, gotta love it….craziness!  I love working with teachers, but, this is the time of the year that I miss the classroom the most! No other profession allows you to spend an entire month watching the excitement build. To be quite honest, until Matthew was born last year, Christmas morning just hadn’t been the same since I left the classroom. The build up,the excitement that only children can bring…pure sweetness.
So, what is Megan doing in her room this week? It’s hard to believe that we are finishing up Unit 4 for Reader’s Workshop. We are now meeting with all the children for guided reading during the work time! Our kids are loving the nonfiction books that we made. My friend Bert put it best…my struggling readers feel so empowered! They have the same book as their “smartie” friends—the same pictures, the same features, only the level of text is different!
We are also finishing up our mini unit on list making and pattern writing. I love the pattern writing. Each child feel like a writer! It is a high success unit! Here is a sample of what pattern writing looks like.

We are mostly using ideas about Christmas Trees this week. See below for links to the freebees! We are going to talk about using our senses to figure out what is in a Christmas gift on Monday and Tuesday during Science. What does it feel like? and What does it sound like?

We started a new Math Attack Unit this week for the December/January theme.
You can download a copy of the lesson plans here to save for future reference!

Here is a picture from last year where we made the gingerbread houses. I bought 3 kits. Each child was able to decorate one part of the gingerbread house. Then, a parent volunteer helped to “glue” them together!

Scroll to the bottom of this post to snag this free file. There are more activities for this song in our Trees Unit.

Here is an interactive writing activity we did a few years back. You can read more about how to do it (here).
You might have started thinking about gifts for your kids. These are by far the best gifts we ever gave.
Here’s how:

• We used a shower board from Home Depot and cut it into lap board sizes.
• Then, we hot glued ribbon along the edges.
• We used a paint pen and wrote their names.
• Finally, we attached a dry erase marker with a velcro dot!

I remade the Christmas Math Game Pack this week. If you already own it, be sure and go to your “my purchases” section on tpt to get the updates.

I also remade the Christmas Literacy Game Pack.

Do Your Kids Like Each Other?

Do the kids in your class like each other? Last year, I had a group that really needed some positive motivation to get along. I created these "good friend" badges to help highlight students who were being good friends! At the end of the academic segment, I would highlight that student and explain to the other boys and girls what the student did to earn the award. They got to wear the badge all day! At the end of the day, I would take off the badge and put the sticker on them. This made sure their parents knew that we were supporting positive friendships in our classroom.







I hope this helps you establish good friendships in your classroom!