Sunday Smorgasbord plus a Journeys Freebie!

So I was going to link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching but I just didn't get my act together. I went to see Chris and the boy scouts on the fourth and then got back kind of late in the afternoon yesterday. So I thought I would like up with Fabulous in First for her Sunday Smorgasbord party.

So I really didn't get all the things I wanted to get done this past week done at all. I haven't even started on the nursery yet. But I did have a good week with my family and friends. So this week it is on. I have to get busy on the guest room or I won't get it done before school starts. And we all know once school starts it is going to be hard to do the clean out I want to do. My sister in law was talking about having a yard sale next weekend so I'm hoping that's the motivation I need. This is what I'm working with:

I need all this stuff cleaned out and whatever can go somewhere else or I can get rid of I need to do it. (I kind of can't believe I'm sharing this on my blog. So embarrassing how bad it is) Be sure to ask me how it is going. Maybe that will keep me motivated and accountable.

I did finally sit down and work on a couple of things for school. Nothing earth shattering but what I needed to get done before I could move on to my homework. I took all the teacher's editions of the first grade Journeys series and put together an outline for me and my team to help us with planning. I don't have that to share because there are similar things my blogging friends have come up with to sell. But I do have the sight word list for you. Last summer I made some sight word sheets for Journeys Kindergarten to help you with planning and assessment. I finished the one for first grade. I put this sheet in my students' notebooks at the beginning of the year and then parents had the sight words for the whole year. For kindergarten, I was able to fit all the words on one sheet. First grade, it takes two. These sight word list are for the Common Core aligned version of Journeys that was adopted in our county last school year. I think it is the 2014 version. So that is why it might seem like there are a lot more words in kindergarten. I promise I didn't add any words to the list!

Click here to get the first grade file on Google Docs. 

Click here to get the Kindergarten file on Google Docs.

It isn't much accomplished on my to do list but it's a start and it makes me feel better. This week I've got to tackle the homework pack. I want to have that ready before school starts too. Last summer, I did the first half of the year in the summer and the the second half when I needed it. This summer I really need to get them both done. Since I'll be on maternity leave the spring semester. So I might just have to hole myself up with the computer rather than having so much fun everyday. 

There is one thing I have to make time for and that's the reading program I'm part of with our local public library. We have partnered up with a local church and we bring the books to the church and the church runs a van to pick up kids. The kids are part of our ELL population in the county. We had 14 kids this past week and 6 volunteers. The volunteers read with the kids or listen to the kids read. Then those kids who have brought back the form, can check out books. We haven't had a ton of success with getting the forms back but we do have 3 kids checking out books. It is pretty exciting stuff. My partner in crime, Cassie and I are on the local library board so we're really representing the library but using our connections as teachers to make the program happen. All of our volunteers were either teachers or parents we know through our school. Our librarian suggested this week we submit this to a conference in the Fall which is kind of exciting. Here are the kids listening to a read aloud. We were trying to engage all the kids in it. 

It is so much fun to be a part of this program and to get to read with kids one on one. I love it!

So that's my randomness for the week! I have plans to be back tomorrow with a Monday Made it! I would love to hear about how your summer projects are going! I hope they are going better than mine! 

Be sure to head over to Fabulous in First and check out the rest of the party!

Five for Saturday

 Maybe one day I'll blog throughout the week. But right now Five for Friday is a good way to recap my week. We did some fun things with sight words and place value this week.  I am writing this post as my niece takes her nap. Chris and I are keeping Soph today. We've already been to the store, a lacrosse game and the playground. So now it is nap time for her and blog time for me.

1. I've worked though our math book on all the topics that are common core related. But there are some major gaps and topics we need further work in. We use plan book edu for our lesson plans and I could look at all the standards and how many times I have taught that. The place value and numbers 11-20 is one standard that needed a lot of work. So this week we got out the base ten blocks and explored with those. The first day we used some ten frame cards with a St. Patrick,s theme and just practiced writing the numbers. The next day was all about exploring and talking about what they represent. Day 3 I made numbers on the Elmo and they helped me count them. Then they practiced making numbers with the blocks.  I would write a number on the board and they would make it. I introduced the idea if teen numbers being written as 10 + the ones.Thursday I made a number on the Elmo and they wrote the number on their white boards. Friday they made numbers and a partner wrote the number. Then they completed a sheet for assessment on matching base 10 blocks to the number. It came from Teacher Laura. Ladybug Place Value

2. I have been off of social media for about 2 weeks. I really thought I was going to have a hard time with no Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest but it has been doable. I am going back to Pinterest tomorrow. But since I haven't been attached to my iPad or phone the past few weeks I've been working on a new blanket. I love the colors.

3. Sight words have been a huge focus for me this year. With journeys my kids have 6 words a week for the second half of the school year. That has been a lot for them to learn. So I am always trying to think of something fun for us to do. We usually play tic tac toe once a week.

4. Another way we practiced our words this week was by making a paper chain. I use to love making those as a kid. Before Christmas we made one with our fourth grade buddies to practice sight words. We did the same thing using rainbow colors this week. The fourth grader picked a word off the word wall and wrote on the white board. If the kindergartner could read the word they wrote it on the construction paper. 

This student is using some of the first grade words. He already knows all the kindergarten words. 

5. This picture is from centers. I made roll and graph games for each week in the journey's series. You can find it in my Wild About Words  pack on Teachers Pay Teachers. I love this as a staple center. I change out the words and they always know what to do.

 

Wild About Words Wild About Words

So that's my five for the week. I hope you got some ideas. We're continuing with place value this week. Be sure to head over to Doodlebugs Teaching and check the party out. 

Chapter 3 of The Next Step of Guided Reading

It's time for this week's look at the Freeblicious book study,The Next Step in Guided Reading: Focused Assessments and Targeted Lessons for Helping Every Student Become a Better Reader . I'm loving this book. If you haven't checked it out yet, you should. It is a great resource for guided reading.

I read this chapter while I was on the beach a couple of weeks ago and I was ready to go teach some guided reading right then. I felt like I finally knew what to do with guided reading. I have read several posts about this chapter all ready from the hosts of the chapter and I'm not sure I have anything earth shattering to add. Marsha from A differentiated Kindergarten wrote an incredibly thorough post about the nuts and bolts of the chapter. Jeannie from Kindergarten Lifestyle wrote a great post about tracing letters.
There are two groups of students that Richardson addresses in this chapter. The first is the Pre-A group which is the group that still needs to work on letter knowledge and names. There are four parts for this group that need to be done every time:
1. working with letters and names
2. working with sounds
3. working with books
4. interactive writing
You should work on each of these components each time and work with the group between 15 and 20 minutes. What I really liked about Richardson's outline was that she gave a time frame for each activity.

It breaks down like this:

One of the other points that Richardson makes in this chapter that really stuck with me is the idea that you ask questions about the book that the kids have to answer in complete sentences. This is especially good for the ELL students. I have had a third or more of my class be ELL students the past few years so I'm always looking at ways to help these students. I've also noticed that kids don't seem to have conversation skills anymore. They watch a lot of tv and some of the kids that I work with don't seem to talk a lot to their parents.
The format for the emergent readers is pretty similar but instead of working with letters and names they are working with sight words. Richardson recommends not moving on to a new word until the previous words have been mastered. I typically use the sight words that are in our reading series. In our old series, we had one word a week in kindergarten and then eventually 2 words. In the new series, we start with 1 for the first 10 weeks, then move to 2 words for 5 weeks, then it's 6 for the last 15 weeks. This is a lot more words than I'm use to teaching in one week for kindergarten. I will be using a lot of Richardson's strategies for these learning words. She encourages a lot of writing of the sight words. This is something that I have always found important. I expect my kids to be able to write as well as read the sight words. Here are a couple of her strategies for sight words:

There is tons more information in the book, including some great planning sheets. I know for me the biggest thing is timing. I hope that having this breakdown of time will help me to stay on track with my groups and get what I need to get done. I also love that I have a format to follow. I can plan my groups easier and plan groups for my assistant. I have a half day assistant in kindergarten and a full day assistant in first grade. I'm terrible at planning things for them to do like that. It's hard for me to verbalize what I want done. So I'm hoping using a format like this will help that issue.
Be sure to head over to Marsha's blog and link up with your guided reading thoughts:

Back to School Picture books, new products and a flash freebie!

I'm participating in First Grade Found Me's back to school picture book linky party. I saw the party earlier this week and have been meaning to link up all week. Since I've been having a hard time coming up with good meaty posts about school related things. Well, I know what I want to post about, they just take a little more brain power and time than I've felt like.
So here are some of my favorite back to school books.

 I usually read this with the kids and then they each pick a color of crayon. In their table groups, they draw a picture as a group using only the color they chose. We talk about how we work together in the classroom and we're all important.

We read this one and do a lot of name activities. We count the letters in our name and graph them. I've found some new ideas for this book from some other fellow bloggers.

This is another good one to read. I'm excited about reading I know an Old Lady who Swallowed some Books. I just got it last week and for some reason I can't find a picture of it on Amazon. I have about a week and a half before the kids come but I haven't finalized my first day plans yet. I'm still trying to sort through all my resources I've downloaded this summer.
On a side note, I've posted two new items to Teacher's Notebook and TPT. (TPT hasn't been cooperating with me at home.)
The first is only on Teacher's Notebook right now. It's the second packet of my sight word units. The words are taken from the Treasures reading series. This one is for the words in unit 2. You can check it out here.http://www.teachersnotebook.com/product/kheinrich9/words-that-pop-up-packet-2 Check out unit 1 while your there.

Each of the sight word packets contains cards for all the sight words that you can do a variety of things with. I included a game. I also have printed them out in a color and have them ready for my word wall. The last thing I want to do with them is make sight word rings for my students to practice with. Does anyone else use those? I don't think I'm going to laminate them because I don't really want to cut them out. I would love a little input on that.

The next packet that I posted is my Red, White, and Blue Classroom Theme. You can find that in either one of my stores.(http://www.teachersnotebook.com/product/kheinrich9/red-white-and-blue-classroom-theme or http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Red-White-and-Blue-Classroom-Theme-Set)

This is what I'm using in my classroom this year. Well, this and the superhero stuff I've made. You can check out some pictures of this pack in action on last week's Monday Made it. The colors are a little off on mine because of my ink cartridge being all messed up.
Last but not least on this increasingly long and random post, I have a flash freebie up on my TPT store. You can get my Sweet Treats Math unit for free for most of the day. So be sure to check it out and leave me some feedback.(Hope you grabbed your freebie. It was free from Aug. 4 at 11:44 until Aug. 8 at 8:31)
I will hopefully be back tomorrow with some more information on Reading workshop and some freebies. Meanwhile, check out the flash freebie and the other back to school books on First Grade Found Me.

One more random thing, I'm guest blogging for Hadar at Miss Kindergarten. (Yes, the Miss Kindergarten). Be sure to check it out, I have a freebie for you.

What is Not Wrong!

So I'm a little late linking up on this one but better late than never. It's been kind of a wild week and I've had a few rough days so I thought I needed to stop and look at what is not wrong.

So here are 5 things that are not wrong:
1. It's not wrong that we're going on  a field trip today to the aquarium. This is one of my favorites. Here are a couple of pictures of what we saw.

2. It's not wrong that I only have one more teacher evaluation left this year and I've now gotten the one I was dreading out of the way.
3. It's not wrong that my wedding is basically planned.
4. It's not wrong that my kids love my new game that I created. The Hammer game. Here's a couple of pictures of them playing this game.

I found these hammers in the dollar section at Target because I knew I could come up with a game. So I made some cards with nails on them and different popcorn words and word family words. My kids are loving it. I started tutoring yesterday with a few kids and we played in the afternoon. I call out a word and who ever hits it first with the hammer gets to keep it. You can purchase this in my Teacher's Notebook store. It's the Tools for Word Work packet. You can get it for $2.50.
5. It's not wrong that some of my kids are reading and writing up a storm. One of my kids outside today wrote about 13 different superhero and villain names. He did a decent job spelling them all too.
Anyway, link up with Carried Away in Kindergarten to celebrate what is not wrong.

Sight words, crafts, and new blog design excitement!

More randomness brought to you by Ms. Kerri. I have completely forgotten to share the fact that I won last weeks Holly Bloggy Giveaway of a new blog design. I can't make up my mind on which blog design I want yet. But I'm super excited to be getting a new design. I've been wanting one for a while but I'm too cheap to buy one. So be on the look for a whole new look and button.
I have a couple of favorite holiday crafts. The first is a reindeer made out of the kids hands and feet. You trace one foot with brown paper and then their hands with either red or green. The kids cut them out and then add googly eyes and a pom pom for the nose. It makes a cute craft. I don't have any pictures because it's been a while since I've done this one. But I plan on the kids doing it next week in the art center.
The second favorite is a present for the parents. You need glass ornaments. I usually buy mine  after Christmas at 75% off for the next year. You paint their hands white and they hold the ornament. It makes five little snowmen. Once the ornament dries, they can use sharpies to decorate them. (They think that's really cool.) I usually add their name and the year on it.

Those are my favorite crafts to make with the kids.
Now on to the sight word sheet I promised yesterday. My students got to use markers yesterday to practice writing their sight words. They thought they were pretty lucky. We of course had to discuss the rules of using markers and how you have to close them and hear the click. It was good practice and it kept them engaged. It is getting harder and harder to keep them focused with December and Christmas right around the corner. So click here to get the freebie. If you have some other words you would like, just leave me a comment and I'll try to make some more. It was pretty easy.

I'm considering one of these Elf on the Shelf activities to get me through the next few weeks. Not sure I can get it together in such short notice but tomorrow being December 1st we'll be starting our Christmas book unwrapping activity. I'm feeling a little crazy about it but I'm thinking of putting our tree up on Friday. Not sure if I can handle it or not. We will see. When do you usually put your tree up?

Last lazy day of summer

Today is my last real day of summer. Teacher workdays are Monday and Tuesday and School starts on Wednesday. I've been in and out of my classroom for the past few weeks but today I'm enjoying being lazy. Of course, the school is closed and I can't go in but it's good to have a day to be lazy. I've enjoyed my summer but am really excited to start a new year.
Yesterday we had a training about our promethean boards at school. There was a lot of information given and a lot of I had figured out on my own just playing around.  But I did learn a couple of really neat things. One being how to allow 2 kids to use the board at the same time. I'm super excited that my board has that built in already and can't wait to let the kids try it out. That information would've been great to know last year when my kids were all clamoring to us the board during free time. I also learned about creating profiles so kids don't have access to all the editing tools when using a flipchart. I'm pretty excited to try this trick out too. I am thinking about making some cheat sheets to help with these things if you're interested in seeing them, leave me a comment and I'll email them to you.

I was also working on some of my beginning of the year letters that I send home with the kids, including my  behavior letter. Because I'm changing my system this year, I had to rewrite my letter. I'm using the clip chart that is all over the blogging world. I realized that I still had some kinks to work out in the system. I'm not sure if kids can move back up the chart once they've moved down to the negative side of the chart. What are some of you that are using this same chart doing? I originally thought they could move from a negative behavior to more positive but I feel like that would be difficult for me to keep track of. Some other opinions would be very helpful.
I'll leave you with the beautiful popcorn poster my sister made for me.

We call our sight words, popcorn words. I plan to put this poster up on a board in front of the meeting area and writing center. I'm using Mrs. Miner's popcorn word set she has in her tpt store to get my template for popcorn kernels with the words on them.Go to her website to find it. I was excited to find someone who uses the same reading series and calls the sight words popcorn words too. Well I'm off to enjoy my last lazy day of summer!

Treasures from the Dollar Tree

After reading so many of the wonderful teaching blogs out there, I went to the Dollar Tree today inspired. I found lots of great treasures that I can't wait to put into action.
These are my finds:

 I'm most excited about the coconut cup I found. I have found tons of awesome activities for Chicka Chicka Boom Boom on various blogs (I can't quite remember where I found them all. But they didn't come from my head.) I plan on reading this book the first week of school. The first things we're going to do with the coconut is count the letters that I'm going to put in there. We're going to pass the coconut around and when the music stops, that child has to count the letters in it. (Saw this spill cup idea on someone else's blog) We're also going to use some coconut matching cards I found over at  Peace Love and learning  and the coconut will be perfect for storing that game. I'm pretty excited about reading this book to my kids and all the activities to go with it.


I plan on using the popcorn containers for our sight words. We call them popcorn words. I'm thinking of having my talented sister draw me a big popcorn box for a bulletin board to post the popcorn words on. But we can use the container to pull out the words and probably make some kind of sight word game out of it. I might find a cool idea when I purchase Fran's at Kindergarten Crayon's sight word pack when she's done. (She has the best stuff!)


I also picked up some random things that I haven't quite found a purpose for yet but I'm sure I will. There were neat speech bubble die cuts, star die cuts, and cupcake die cuts. I found a stuffed caterpillar that goes with my theme of Busy Kindergartners. Some containers for dice and foam shapes that might become stamps after reading the fabulous ideas at

I was on the lookout today for materials to make a monkey necklace out of. Another teacher friend suggested making character necklaces to go with my Five Little Monkeys unit. If you have any suggestions for how I can do this I would appreciate it.