TPT Teacher Appreciation Sale

 

 

Don't forget the sale that starts tomorrow!  My entire store is 20% and by using the discount code TAD13 when you checkout you can save up to 28%.  Just click the pic above to head to my store.  I hope you get some great things at some great deals!  Happy shopping friends! 

 

 

 

Mrs. Wishy-Washy and Giveaway

One of the first books I ever "taught" a lesson with was Mrs. Wishy-Washy while doing a practicum in college.  I loved the book and the students did too.  Since then Mrs. Wishy-Washy has been dear to my heart and is always read each year with my kinder sweeties.  When Hameray Publishing contacted me about doing a review of a Mrs. Wishy-Washy book, I jumped at the chance. 

We began by reading Wishy-Washy Clothes.  Then it was time for a little acting to help us retell the story.  I made these little necklaces for the "actors" to wear to show their character from the story. 

After everyone got into character, we did a quick reread of the story to remind them of their parts and we got to acting.  They had a ball and it was amazing how quickly they were all able to retell the story after a couple of act it out sessions.

Wishy-Washy Clothes was also a great book for us to talk about onomatopoeia and practice it during the act it out sessions with "Moo!", "Oink!" and "Quack!".  We were also able to locate a few past tense verbs that went along great with our grammar lesson we've been working on.

The other book we read was Mrs. Wishy-Washy and the Big Wash.

We used this book to practice our summarizing skills by telling who the story was about, what happened, when it happened and where the story took place.  Here's our summarization chart for the book.  **Excuse the error in Washy on the chart please and the blurriness of the photo.  I didn't even notice that I had written Mrs. Wishy-Wishy instead of Wishy-Washy until I got home and uploaded the pic so I tried to "fix" it but it's not looking too great.  Sorry about that! 

Then we use the chart to write a one sentence summary. 
Our sentence was:  Mrs. Wishy-Washy, the cow, the pig, and the duck left the farm and went to find water during the day at the bookstore, music store, bakery and car wash.

You can also win a Mrs. Wishy-Washy big book by following my blog and leaving a comment.  Make sure you include your email address.  I will use random.org to choose a winner tomorrow, April 23rd. 

To find out more about Hameray Publishing, Mrs. Wishy-Washy, and other fun activities check out the following links:

http://pinterest.com/Hameray/

http://www.hameraypublishing.com/

https://www.facebook.com/Hameray

You can also enter the Joy Cowley Classroom Giveaway by clicking the picture below.

Hameray Publishing is also offering a 20% discount for anything on their website if you use the code ZJCC13.

Disclaimer:  I received complimentary products for this review;however, all opinions are my own and this is not a compensated post.

Change is a Good Thing!

Hey friends!  I've not been around as much because I've been super BUSY and TIRED.  BUSY and TIRED growing a sweet little baby (or Raspberry as we've started calling him/her).  Considering our oldest will turn 13 this year and our youngest will turn 8, change is definitely coming to our house this November.  We are starting over and boy am I feeling old this go around but we are so.so.so excited!  We got to see our little Raspberry a couple of weeks ago at our first ultrasound and oh.my.goodness ya'll, you could see those little arms just a moving! Melted my heart! 

Other change.... This is something that's been weighing on me for awhile now and I truly hope I don't step on any toes by saying what I'm about to say.  Blogging and making items to sell on TPT has changed me so much for the better as a teacher. It has caused me to reflect and caused me to make changes with my own teaching practices so that I better meet the needs of all my little sweeties.  Way back when... even in my college days, I "made" many of the things that I used for my lessons.  This has continued throughout my years of teaching.  Of course they weren't nearly as cute or packaged so nicely before TPT came into my life.  When I first heard about TPT, I thought I already make so many things and enjoy making them that I could do that so I bought some much cuter clipart than my things had in them and got busy.  TPT has been a huge blessing to me and my family.  I didn't embark on TPT with the hopes of getting rich and never even dreamed that I would've made what I have made in the year that I've been doing it.  I wanted to help other teachers.  With that being said, I've struggled a bit with pricing on TPT.  I felt like I needed to charge the "going" rate for things for them to be considered high quality so that's what I did and things sold and I was happy of course but I've had this little voice that keeps popping up when I'm printing, laminating, and cutting out things saying this is still alot of work after the item has been bought.  I started thinking that by the time someone pays $5.00 for an item of mine, prints it in color and on cardstock, laminates and cuts it out that they've invested alot more than that $5.00.  And I know many people don't mind doing so but since everything I make is something I would've made for my sweeties to use in my own classroom, I have decided to cut my prices.  As long as I recoup the cost I pay for the clipart I'm fine and my hubby will let me feed my clipart compulsion :) so I've decided to price everything in my store $1.00. You can check out all my items here.  Happy $1.00 shopping friends!

Butterflies in the Sky....

Or in math centers?  Whatever it takes to motivate and inspire learning!  Right?  Our butterfly larva will be arriving this Monday and it never fails to excite my kinder sweeties so I always try to tie in some of our centers to the theme that we are studying.  Here are our math centers for next week.

Counting Quantities on Double Ten Frame

Sums to 10

Patterning

Measuring Items from The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Building Addition Fluency to 5

You can pick these activities up here or by clicking the pic below.  Have a great weekend friends!

The Easter Bunny's Assistant Activities

I can't wait to use this next week when we read The Easter Bunny's Assistant by Jan Thomas.  I know the activities and book will be a big hit with my sweeties!  You can check it out here. 

"Egg"Citing Fun and A Sale

Today has been one of those days friends.  I took my oldest daughter to the CVS Minute Clinic this morning for a sore throat (thinking I'd only be an hour late to school) and ended up being sent to have her foot x-rayed.  A foot she hurt over a week ago at gymnastics that she told NO ONE about! A hurt foot she's been practicing on everyday for 3 hours or longer!  And yes I got the LOOK! You know the one where they're not sure whether to call DSS because they think you're lying and that there's no way any decent parent would not know their child's foot was swollen and black and blue. After a 2 1/2 hour wait for the doctor to read the x-rays and then the radiologist to read the x-rays we finally found out that it's just a bad sprain which is good news considering her state meet is this Sunday. Needless to say I never made it to school today which stinks because I LOVE me some Fridays with my sweeties.  It's like the day I halfway feel like I'm able to catch my breath and just let them have fun being kiddos.  I know they still had fun with my assistant.  I'm just the one who missed out on it:(  Is that enough of the pity party or should I keep going?  

Here's a cheap little math activity you can put together easily.  I picked up the little bunny basket and egg tray at Dollar Tree for $1 each.  The tray holds 15 eggs.  This activity is really for a few of my 4K students that are still working on identifying numbers and counting out the quantity to correspond to the numeral.  I show them an egg card.  They have to read the number and count out that many eggs onto the tray. 

 

You can print the egg number cards here or by clicking the pic below.

 I went back and have added several things to my Hippity, Hoppity, Easter's On Its Way Unit.  This little chick craft is one thing that has been added.  The wing is too low in this one and it's looking a little duckish.  My OCD is telling me that's going to have to be fixed.  My tired brain is saying, "Not tonight."  Wonder which will win out??

  

You can get the unit by clicking the link above or the picture below.  The price did go up but it's on sale through Sunday if you want to grab it for $3.80.  Actually my entire store is 20% off right now PLUS whenever you buy 1 item you get one that's equal or less for FREE.  All you have to do is email me the item you purchased, the date (must be between now and Sunday thru 11:59 pm.), your username on TPT (so I can verify you purchased an item) and the FREE item you'd like. Those of you that already purchased can redownload to get all the newbies that have been added.  

Hippity, Hoppity, Easter's On Its Way

I love Easter and I had so much fun creating this unit and we're having so much fun using it in class right now.  Here's some of the things we're working on right now. 

 Counting By 10s

(Students velcro the bunnies in order.  They can also make their own strip using a black and white copy.)

 Sight Words

(Students read a word card, find the word and color it the same color as the bunny's clothes on the card.)

 Counting Arrays

(Students count the eggs and match the egg cards to the correct baskets.  They color in the eggs on the recording sheet to show how many are in each basket.)

 More/Less

(Students turn over 2 cards and count out eggs in cartons to compare the quantities and determine which is more.)

 Ordering Numbers

(Students order each set of chicks in numerical order.)

Right now this unit is only $3.00 but I've been adding to it all afternoon, and as soon as I finish and get it reuploaded to TPT, the price will go up.  If you get it now, you'll have access to any new things that are added to it at no additional cost. One super cute thing that I'm adding is how Roxy Rabbit has made her presence known in our classroom and how you can have her visit yours too.  LOTS of fun for me and my sweeties!  They're loving some Roxy.

Click here or the pic below.