Five For Friday

Well I set a goal for myself to blog three times a week and this week I just haven't done well with that goal. I'm not even sure what I've been doing this week. Oh yeah! Getting ready for VBS.
I can always count on the Five for Friday linky party at Doodle Bugs Teaching to get a blog post in.

So here's what I've been up to this week.

1. My sister has been working part time since she had my youngest niece, so this summer I've been taking advantage of that and spending Tuesday with my sis and my girls. These two are a mess. Soph is pretty interested in my belly and what is growing in it. She is convinced it is a girl and wants to name her Flower or Rose. Ck has been growing so much this summer. She's five months old and is trying so hard to crawl but instead looks like she's swimming.

2. Vacation Bible School starts on Sunday at my church. We don't do things like other churches and buy a kit for VBS. My pastor and hubby work together to come up with a theme and then Chris writes skits for each night. This year it is all about Sci-Fi with a Doctor Who flair. Monday and Tuesday we worked on decorating our Sunday School room to do some taping for the skits. This is my handiwork, covering the robot in aluminum foil. Chris is trying the costume on. VBS should be a lot of fun. I'm working with crafts so I've been busy with the other group members to get all our crafts together. All I can say is thank goodness for Pinterest. 

3. Our reading outreach program with our public library is going really well this summer. We started with 10 kids the first week and this past week which was our fourth week, we had 20 kids. It has been amazing. I'm am so proud that our local library lets us take books out in the community and allows kids to check them out. I'm also so proud of how the teachers I work with are willing to give up time in their summer to read with the kids.  This little girl is 3 or 4 years old and she has been so interesting to watch. 

 4. I finally finished a Teachers Pay Teacher project for the summer.  If you've been following my blog for a while, you know that I loop. Last year I was in kindergarten and we adopted the Journeys reading series. I created materials to use with it for homework and word work. So this summer the plan was to create what I needed for First grade. So far, I've been slow going. But I did get this big project done. It has activities for each lesson and every sight word in the series. You can check it out on TPT here. 

5. I finally finished a project I brought home over Thanksgiving break. Organizing my Kindergarten Journeys materials and my letter work into notebooks. But it didn't happen. I just kept adding to the crate until it was a crazy mess. I finally started the project this past week. I organized all the papers and then this week I put all my Journeys Kindergarten stuff in a notebook. It is organized by lessons with homework and sight word work. I don't have a cute cover for it or anything but I need to!

So that's what I've been up to this week. I've got to get my rear in gear and get some things done today. Like starting on my homework pack for next year and finishing up the bookshelves I was organizing in the soon to be nursery. Be sure to head over to Doodle Bugs Teaching and check out the rest of the party.

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!

Reading Plans for the week and my new love.

So I'm so excited. I am blogging from my brand new computer. Yesterday Chris took me to the Apple Store and we brought home a 27 inch iMac. I'm in love with it already. We traded our mouse in for a track pad and I love all the things I can do with it. Although I don't always remember how to do what I want to do with it. As soon as we got home, Chris got it set up for me. I've been playing on it ever since. Well, other than that pesky thing called work. There was part of me that really wanted to just stay home and play on the computer today. I figured out how to load my fonts, installed my clipart and have been playing around with iPhoto. If I can figure out how to get all my photo stream photos I'll be good to go. I was using a tiny dell netbook for the past 7 years or so. This is what I was using (or basically)

This is what I have now.

It is pretty amazing. I pulled up pinterest yesterday and I was a little overwhelmed by how many pictures were there. I will probably use my iPad for pinterest. It is a little more manageable. 

So here I am finally on my computer ready to do something. Hopefully this will inspire me to get creating some new things and to get to blogging more often. 

I tried out Keynote using my Visual Plans powerpoint file. It took a little work to figure out somethings like hyperlinking and then exporting to an image. But I think I'm going to like Keynote as well as powerpoint. Or at least well enough so I don't have to buy Microsoft Office right now. So here's what we are up do in reading this week. 

I'm not uploading this file to google docs right now because I plan on adding our centers to the week but I haven't gotten them all together. I'm on a weird rotation of centers. We have 12 centers so it takes about 12 days to get through them. We've had a couple of weird weeks thrown in there so we'll be changing out centers in the next day or two.
You can find the story maps and sequencing maps we're going to use in my Monster Mapping Unit on TPT.
This has taken me way longer to write than I thought it would. It could be because Chris got home and started playing with the computer while I finished up dinner. Then we ate dinner and then I had to figure out downloading pictures and inserting hyperlinks. So that's a taste of what we plan on doing this week. Hopefully, I'll remember to take a few pictures and I'll be back later this week with our centers.
If you use a mac and you have any great tips to share, they would be much appreciated.

Journeys reading Series - A linky Party

This coming school year, my school system is adopting a new reading series. It is time although I liked the older series. Probably just because I was familiar with it. But it's time for something new. Something that meets the common core standards and is a little more vigorous. Our system looked at three different series. Wonders, Journeys and Reading Street. I was lucky enough to get to review all three series as part of a group at my school. One of my fellow first grade teachers was on the county committee. I really liked Reading Street the best out these series. But the county decided on Journeys.

It was my second choice so I'm ok with it. Luckily my principal is of the opinion that our instruction isn't driven by the textbook but by the standards and the students. So I have some freedom to deviate if needed. But I like using the reading series for sight words and phonics skills. My first year in kindergarten (6 years ago) we adopted the reading series Treasures. After using it for a year, I realized I needed a better way to organize what we were doing. I created a document that helped me with planning. It was like an overview of all the units. It made planning easier and it made sharing with our special area and ELL teachers a lot easier. So the last day of school, I found myself on the online portal of Journeys creating this document and recording all the sight words for the series. This helped me to start thinking about what I needed for the upcoming school year.
I knew this series was much more vigorous than what I was used to but it shocked me to see the amount of sight words the kids are expected to learn this year. For the first 2 units it is one word a week, much like what I was use to. The third unit it goes up to 2 words a week. But the 4-6 units, the kids are expected to know 6 words a week. To me that seems like a lot but I'll be jumping in with 2 feet. I have a freebie for you to help you wrap your mind around all the sight words.

Click here for this freebie. 

Along with this freebie, I've created a couple of items for Teachers Pay teachers that use the words and letter order from Journeys. I would love for you to check them out. 

Click Here for the link and a freebie. 

This is 15 weeks worth of homework using the sight words and letter order, I am so excited about this unit. I have been using fluency homework for the past 2 years. I usually throw it together the week before. So I'm excited to have it done for the first semester. If you check it out on TPT, download the preview. It has a freebie of the first week. The first week is all about their name. 

The second product I have that uses Journeys is a word work packet. 

Click Here for the Link on TPT. 

I'm excited about this unit too. It has activities for the whole year. So I have word work stations done for the year. That's exciting to me!

I also thought I would share a few of my friends products too. There are a lot of great resources on TPT for Journeys. 

• The first is from Lori at Teaching with Love and Laughter. This is what you need to get started with Journeys. (She has a fantastic scope and sequence. I wish I had seen it earlier.) Journeys Through the Year Kindergarten Edition.  Click on the title to go to the unit. It is awesome. Lori also has a sight word sentence unit. Kindergarten Journeys Sentence Puzzles. Check it out. 
• The next on is from Erica at Sprinkles to Kindergarten. It is an alphabet bump game. My kids love love love bump. Check it out by clicking here. 
• The last one is from Sarah from Kindergarten Korner. It's Reading Words Around the Rainbow. It's a great way to have the kids practicing all the words they need to know. Check it out by clicking on the title. 

So those are the resources I've found so far. I would love to see what you've found or what you're working on. Please link up with your post all about Journeys.