Upper and Lower Case Matching

We have been working really hard on letter matching this year!  We have plenty of letter puzzles and alphabet videos and songs, but since so many of my kinders were having issues matching their letters, I made a quick little set of matching cards.

My kinders LOVE them!  The pictures are cute and colorful, but they don't take away from the letters.  This is a great, simple activity to help little learners discover which letters go together.  I have put this activity on my TpT store for free.  You can grab it here!  Thanks for visiting!

Pie Tasting Activity for Thanksgiving

I love Thanksgiving!  We have so many great Thanksgiving Centers and projects!  It really is a fun month.  One of my favorite Thanksgiving activities is the Pie Tasting.  Every year some of the kinder classes get together and we sample lots of different pies.  (Taking allergies into consideration first of course!).  We move all the tables in one of the classrooms over to the sides, leaving one table out to lay all the pies on.  Each student gets to sample 2 pies at first, if there is enough pie, the students may have seconds when they finish.  A great addition to this activity is friendship mix!  Simply have the students bring in different snacks like M&Ms, pretzels, cheese balls, raisins, etc.  Mix them all together.  It represents the mixing of the Pilgrims and Indians and how they became friends.  Also - you can totally graph the favorite pies of the students as a math activity, or use the Friendship Mix as a sorting math activity!

Need some help getting through Thanksgiving?  Check out these products in my TpT store!

Turkey Turkey Science Math and Literacy

FREE Thanksgiving Pilgrim Hats and ABC Ordering

Finally November!!

It's November!!  This year has started out awesome!  I have a great group of kids, a new TA,  new administration (which was a bit scary at first), a new house, and a super busy few months!  The year has started out very smooth.  I've decided that it's either because I'm becoming a better teacher as the years go by or I just have a smaller class this year....  maybe a bit of both?  I could also credit it to this AMAZING guided reading book that I purchased over the summer.  It has been my teacher bible!  It is called Guided Reading by Jan Richardson.

This book is SOOOO detailed!  It includes step by step directions on how to get your centers started.  My kinders have been working in centers since the second week of school!!  And they are really doing awesome!  This book not only explains how to start up centers for young age groups, but it gives you tons of different activities you can do with them, and it breaks down how to conduct leveled reading groups.  I LOVE the examples and I LOVE the detail!!  I wish I had a book like this my first couple of years teaching!  If you want to have a better look at the book, you can find it here on Amazon for about $18.  Great price too, right?  Have fun!

Spending Summer Thinking About School!

As I sit in my living room researching different techniques that I might be able to use in my kinder class next year, it occurs to me that my own children are growing up TOO fast!  My oldest is going in to 4th grade and my youngest is going into 1st grade.  Every year I watch kinders come into my classroom and leave and the end of the year.  Now my children are very much into that group of kids working their way through elementary school.  But that's not my ONLY concern.  Both children attend the school where I teach.  This both excites me and scares the living daylights out of me!  I am not delusional about my children.  I love them more than life itself, but they are such a handful!  And as a teacher I feel as if my children should should be focused and well behaved as my direct influence on them.  HA!!  As if!  Here's to hoping that my daughter stays on track and continues to improve academically WITHOUT crying in class AND here's to hoping my son DOESN'T end up in the office for being mouthy!  It's going to be a good year, right....???

Enjoy the rest of summer break!!

Tanya

I LOVE TpT!!

I LOVE TpT!! I have been a Teachers Pay Teachers seller for a year and a half now. I have been purchasing from TpT for SOOOOO much longer. During my first year of teaching, I found amazing resources for just about anything I wanted to do in class. I don't know how well I would have succeeded that first year without this fantastic site. But I'm not the only one that appreciates all that TpT has to offer. I came across this blog post today from Learning to Read by Jen Strange and I wanted to share it with everyone. Check out her blog here. This is a great post for those that are familiar with TpT and for those who are not. Have a great read!

 5 Reasons Why I love Teachers Pay Teachers 5 reasons I love Teachers Pay Teachers:

1. The teachers at Teachers Pay Teachers are GENEROUS: There are literally THOUSANDS of free educational resources at TpT.

2. The teachers at Teachers Pay Teachers are KNOWLEDGEABLE: The depth of knowledge about education and about students at TpT is unbelievable. Whatever you need help with, there's a resource available.

3. The teachers at Teachers Pay Teachers are EXPERIENCED: Read some seller bios. Teachers at TpT have crazy amounts of education, training, awards, and/or years in the classroom.

4. The teachers at Teachers Pay Teachers GIVE BACK. Many sellers use their stores to raise money for disaster relief, cancer research, and people in need.

5. The teachers at Teachers Pay Teachers are RESPONSIVE. Through feedback or the seller's Q&A page, you can communicate with the person who made that product you love. Where else can you talk directly with the creator of an educational resource that you're using?

If you are interested in becoming a TpT seller, click here through my referral link to open an account. You WILL become addicted!!! :)

Catching that Sneaky Leprechaun!

St. Patrick's Day is one of my favorite holidays! I can not wait for all the fun things we will be doing in class next week. While going through lesson plans and activities, I came across pictures of some of our leprechaun traps from last year. They are SUPER cute! My kinders have such GREAT imaginations. The traps had to be smallish (to keep within bus regulations), they had to have at least one moving part, and since leprechauns are so sneaky, the traps had to be clever enough to trick that mischievous leprechaun into getting caught! Check out some of their great contraptions!

And don't forget... we LOVE to eat green food!! Especially pistachio pudding! YUM!!

Of course, it's not all fun and games. We still need to meet those Common Core Standards! In my classroom, we will be learning about the country of Ireland and the similarities and differences to where we live. We will also learn about potatoes and all the different food you can make with them. Plus, our math and literacy lessons will have an awesome Irish twist! If you need a little help getting that Leprechaun theme in your math and literacy, check out my Ireland and St. Patrick's Day Math, Literacy and Social Studies Unit at my TpT store.

Just click here! Hopefully, that Irish Luck will rub on us all and we will have a great week!

Bring on the Spring!

This winter has been SO crazy!! I can't even imagine how the people in the North are dealing with all of these winter and snow storms. Yesterday, we had another late delay at school due to the cold. Seriously?? It's March and I live in the South!! I have decided that from this point on, I will be wearing my sunglasses EVERY day to entice Spring to hurry up. If I wear them, it will come.... I'm pretty sure it's going to work... Maybe the Kinders can do a writing about Spring! It can be like a rain dance - except to bring the sunny weather, not so much the rainy weather. Maybe we will even write it in the shape of a pair of sunglasses. This makes me happy. I think I am off to create a new writing assignment!! Bring on the Spring!