Using Alphabet Books and a Freebie

I have planned on posting all week long but it just hasn't happened. My sweet girl has had a difficult week. She has decided that she no longer wants to sleep longer than 2-3 hours at a time at night. She had been sleeping for at least 5-6 hours at a time for a while so this has been a difficult adjustment. She also has decided that she wants to get up early. Usually I get up by 7 so I can have my quiet time, start chores and do whatever else before she gets up at 8:30 or 9. This makes posting and updating things difficult. I'm working on updating some old units that I have on TPT. I'm kind of embarrassed by some it. Right now I'm working on my Cupcake Math Unit and giving it a complete overhaul. This was my first unit I ever created and I did it on publisher. I don't have publisher anymore so I'm having to start from scratch on ppt. But I'm really pleased with what I've been working on. I can't wait to use it this fall when school starts back. Here's a sneak peak:

I love this clipart from Creative Clips. I plan on overhauling a lot of my activities with new clipart, fonts and activities. But first I need to organize my clipart. Currently is by artist but I have a hard time knowing what I have so I need to work on a different way.
I'm linking up again with Reading Toward the Stars for her weekly Book talk party.

Last week I wrote about what I've been reading. I've finished a book or two since then but I wanted to blog about alphabet books. I try to read a book or two to Sweet girl everyday and every night her daddy reads to us before bedtime. We've been reading The Chronicles of Narnia during this time and are on the 5th one I think. I know it's advanced for a 5 month old but I love this time as a family and we've enjoyed it. 

I had a Hawaiian themed baby shower at my school because that was the theme we were going with Sweet girl's nursery so she got several Hawaiian themed gifts. One was an awesome alphabet book. 

Animals Sing Aloha

I love this book because it is like the traditional alphabet book that has a letter and then something that starts with a letter but it also has the sound as part of the song and letters kids can trace with lines for how you would write the letter. Obviously my 5 month old is not doing that but we are talking about the letters and their sounds in a fun way.
We also got the Dr. Seuss ABC book.

It is another fun read with alliteration and silly animals. This one is just a fun one to read and gives another opportunity to talk about letters.
The last one I discovered accidentally. It wasn't a gift at a shower but a book I already had and hadn't read. I love Sandra Boyton's books. They are perfect for little ones. Her A to Z book is no different.

This book has an animal that starts with the letter and then an action word. The animal is doing the action. I could see a lot of potential for this book in the classroom. There is another book that is similar that is animals and adjectives.

What I love about these alphabet books is that it gives us the opportunity to talk about letters in a fun way.  A friend of mine is working on her phd in reading and she read that reading alphabet books at home is one of the best ways for kids to learn letters. Because at home they have the opportunity to talk about and interact with the letters. So that is now her go to gift for new babies and kids.
I have a freebie to share with you that is a couple of activities to do after reading some alphabet books. They aren't earth shattering but they could make a neat class book.  Click here to get the file.

What are your favorite alphabet books and what do you do with them? If you download this file, I would love to hear about it.

Thanksgiving Books Linky

I know Thanksgiving is a little over a month away but I love Thanksgiving books and when I saw this linky I knew I had to participate. Plus I'm already thinking about thanksgiving. I'm having surgery on my knee the Friday before Thanksgiving so I'll be out of school the week of Thanksgiving and most of the week afterwards. I'm looking for good units and activities that will be easy for a sub to do while I'm out. I'm a little bummed that I'll be missing this holiday with my students. I missed it last year because of a stomach virus. I think that might be worse to have a stomach virus on Thanksgiving rather than just being on crutches. Anyway, here are a few of my favorite Thanksgiving books.

This one is my all time favorite. I think because I grew up with my aunt reading this story to my sister and I every Thanksgiving. I would like to continue the tradition and read this story to my niece, Sophie. She's two this year so I think we'll be reading it come Thanksgiving day. Although I think she's going to be disappointed that I won't be able to run with her like I usually do.

Here's another good one. There is one Night Before Thanksgiving where the farmer ends up shooting the turkey. This is not that book. My kids always seem to enjoy this book.

This is another good one. I love all these books and the kids always enjoy reading them. They are great books for text to text connections. I'm hoping this year to find a good first grade unit for this book and this be what my kids do with the substitute.

This last one is another favorite. My aunt bought it for me when I was teaching 3rd grade ELL. My mostly Spanish speaking students loved this book. It's a great story about family which is what I think Thanksgiving is all about.
As I was on Amazon looking for pictures of the books, I saw so many great Thanksgiving books. It makes me wish I was going to be there to teach it this year. I had to stop myself from buying some new books. Of course I always have to stop myself from buying new books when I'm Amazon. I'm currenly trying to stock my kindle so I have plenty to read while I'm having my surgery. Leave me a comment with a good adult book to read while I'm out recovering. I'll do the random number generator and pick a winner on Thursday and that person can have an item of their choice from my TPT store.
Be sure to check out First Grade Found Me to see what other people's favorite Thanksgiving books are.

Long Time No See

So I finally finished up jury duty on Friday at about 5:30 pm. I've never been so glad to see a weekend come in my life. I knew I was going to be out on Wednesday and I guess in the back of my head I knew there was a possibility I'd be out on Thursday. But I didn't really believe it. I didn't think I would get picked for this jury for a variety of reasons. One being I just didn't think it would happen. The other reasons having to do with the fact that the incident that the case was about happened in my small town in the county and I personally know one of the police officers that was a witness in the case. Like he's our resource officer at school and I've worked with him for going on 6 years now. I told all these things to the lawyers. I even told the defense attorney I trusted the police officer to take care of me and my students and was still placed on this jury. So I missed Thursday too. This case was so slow. I don't know if all cases are like this because my only experience with legal proceedings is all the crime shows I watch on tv and they are all wrapped up in an hour. So by Thursday afternoon it looked like I was going to miss Friday too. I was so upset. We were going on a hayride on our first field trip of the year and I really didn't want to miss it. But too bad for me, I had to miss it. I've heard through my assistant and other teachers that my kids were really good the three days I was out but they missed me a lot. Well Friday afternoon, I got an email from one of my sweet girls' dad asking if I was ok because she missed me so much. I informed them I missed her too and would be back at school on Monday. I had the possibility of being out 3 more days this coming week with jury duty but the clerk said she would excuse me since I had already served on a jury and my kiddos were getting behind.
Now I'm really behind on school work, blogging and creating. I am sitting at our local library now blogging and trying to figure out what I need to do today. My husband is still working on getting us internet at the house at least he better be. Later today we're suppose to have an avengers movie marathon with some friends. We're watching Captain America, Thor and the Avengers. I think they watched Ironman 1 and 2 last night, but we have date night on Fridays. I plan to take my work with me. I think it might embarrass my husband a little that I'm taking my laptop to work on things and he had to ask our friend if he had wireless. But oh well. He's getting use to it.
Anyway, on to something of some kind of usefulness. I've been wanting to link up with the Halloween Picture book party all week. So today is the day.

I love fall. I'm so excited that the leaves are starting to change and that there is a little chill in the air in the mornings and evenings. I've always loved Halloween as well. Up until last year, my school always had a big celebration for Halloween. The kids would wear their costumes and we'd parade through part of downtown Gatlinburg. I'm not exactly sure what changed as to why we don't do this anymore but we don't. It's pretty sad and a lot of the people who work in our downtown are sad about it too. But we still have some Halloween fun at school. Here are some of my favorite books to read:

This is my all time favorite book to read at Halloween. The kids love it and it teaches a great lesson on being different.

This book has great photographs. My kids love seeing the life cycle of a pumpkin through the real pictures. We're huge fans of nonfiction in my room this year. I think this is going to be a class favorite.

We read this one last year and wrote "reports" on bats. It's good one when you can't really celebrate Halloween but want to get in the spirit.
The last book I want to share I can't find a picture of. It is one of my books from when I was a kid so I guess Amazon doesn't have a picture of it. It's Halloween by Jack Prelutsky has great poems that are funny and spooky. It's one of my favorites.
Be sure to check out what other people are reading for Halloween by going to First Grade Found Me and joining the party.


There's a chance I'm going to post again later today about the First Grade Common Core workbook. I can't really decide yet. But I know I'll be back on Monday with a big giveaway to celebrate 500 followers. I've gotten some great things from some fantastic bloggers.

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.

Back from vacation

I'm really not sure what to blog about. It's Monday so I should be blogging about Math for Math Monday. And I have notes on chapter 3 of Math Workstations and I have things left to share from the math workshop I went to a couple of weeks ago. But I'm still recovering from our long flight back. We left Hawaii at 9:15 on Saturday night and didn't get home Sunday at almost 10. Yesterday was my birthday and it didn't even feel like it. We were in 3 different airports. So when we got back into Gatlinburg we went to eat some pizza to celebrate. So last night was our first night in our home together. I'm still working on getting things cleaned up and organized and Chris is bringing a load of his stuff home today. So life is still a little crazy. So now that I've given you all my excuses as to why there is no Math monday today. It might have to be Math Tuesday. Plus there are 3 book studies for me to blog about and I'd like blog about my vacation to Hawaii. It was the most beautiful place I've ever been. I reached over 350 followers while I was gone. I hope to get a giveaway together this week to celebrate. I bought a couple of Hawaiian themed post it note pads to go with the giveaway.
So now that I've rambled on and on about not much of anything but I think I'll share some vacation pictures with you.

This is how I enjoy beach vacations. An umbrella and my kindle.

Chris rented a convertible Camero. Book em Danno was heard quite a bit.

We stayed 2 nights in Waikiki. This is diamond head and our view from the beach.

We went to Pearl Harbor. It was such a cool experience. We rode the boat over to the Arizona memorial.

We moved up to the North Shore for the rest of the week. This was our view from our hotel room. It was so gorgeous.

We spent a day at the Polynesian cultural center. It was so cool. I am feeling very inspired and there is a good possibility I have a unit coming up on Hawaii.

Chris took a surfing lesson. He also went swimming with the sharks the day before. I was afraid to take pictures with my phone on the boat because we were being tossed about so much. I didn't swim in the cage but you could see a ton of sharks from the boat. It was so cool.

We visited the Dole Pineapple Plantation. There was the most amazing pineapple ice cream.

This is one of my favorite pictures I took and then instagramed. While at the pineapple plantation, this lady told us about a spot on the beach where the sea turtles come up on the shore. It was so cool. When the wave would break, you could see half a dozen turtles swimming. Definitely one of the highlights of our trip.

This is us in the Seattle airport at about 7 in the morning.After flying all night from Hawaii.

In true teacher fashion, I came home with 5 books to use with my students. I got a cool book on Pearl Harbor and another book on airplanes. Then 2 books from the Polynesian cultural center and one on the pineapple plantation. These are a few of the books that I found. So expect some activities about Hawaii and Pearl Harbor. I am definitely enamored with Hawaii. I have some other ideas to incorporate some Hawaiian traditions. But for now, Maholo (Thank you) for reading my non school related post about my trip.

Brain Overload

It is only the first week of Summer. How did my brain get so full already? It could be I have a lot going on. Yesterday I went and picked up Chris from his backpacking trip. He took me to get my hair done and then we did a few wedding things. We're in the home stretch with wedding plans. We need to get all the little details set. Like music. I have no idea what I want to walk into and what I want us to walk out to. Any suggestions? I don't really want to do the traditional here comes the bride. But I do think I want some kind of instrumental music.
Then Wednesday I went to a workshop so I didn't give myself much of a break before I started thinking about next year. I am wanting to do some long range planning. I want to look at which math standards I want to teach during the different months. I also am planning some author/book studies for each month. Once I get some of this settled, I think I can start making some units to go along with them.
So far these are the authors I'm thinking of:

• Laura Numeroff to start the school year off
•  Bill Peet - My fiance loved his books when he was a kids so I'm working on a collection of those.
• Kevin Henkes
• Eric Carle
• Mo Willems 
• Splat the Cat books
• SkippyJon Jones

That's as far as I've gotten. Do you have any suggestions for author/book studies we could do?
So my brain is on overload trying to process all this information. I'm hoping if I start dumping it out and organizing some things it will get better. I got a ton of ideas from this workshop I went to earlier in the week. I'm thinking of doing a workshop Wednesday post each week and share an idea or two that I learn. I'm going to another workshop on Tuesday that I think is about differentiated instruction. Or I might just stick to my subject areas I was posting before the end of school got crazy.
I love blogging for so many reasons. One of the reasons I love it is it keeps me excited about my job. It gives me access to people who are excited about their job. It makes me feel a lot less dorky that I'm already thinking about what I want to do next year and the summer has barely started. Sometimes, I feel like the only person who is still excited about school. I feel like I'm surrounded by negativity. I thought maybe I was just needing a break from some people that I work with but then at this workshop I was at last week, I was sitting with people from another school and it was the same thing. It is so refreshing to read blogs and make friends with people who are not afraid to try something new or work a little harder so their kids succeed. Anyway, this post is all over the place. I would love to hear what you're thinking. What do you do when your brain is on overload? I'm working on dumping mine out slowly and hopefully will have some freebies when I get finished. I'm working on a table now to help organize some long range planning.
Last but not least, I haven't heard from anyone about a bloggy get together during July in the Gatlinburg area. I would love to meet some new friends or maybe see some old friends. Leave me some love if you are interested.

What a seusstastic week!

Oh my gosh. We had so much fun this week with Dr. Seuss. It was a busy week though and I didn't have time to post all week when I had tons to share. I've got to start scheduling some posts on the weekend. Here's what we did this week: Monday we read The Cat in the Hat and made our own Things. I was inspired by a pin I had pinned and could never find the original source. I like to do art projects with writing usually but this one was just an art project. I know there is a lot of debate about doing art for the sake of art. But I think it ties into listening and following directions. I gave my students the colors of construction paper they needed and then they had to follow my directions to cut it correctly. They all turned out differently. I forgot to take a picture of all of them completed, but here's a picture of my example. 
Tuesday we read Green Eggs and Ham. We played a fun rhyming game that I got from Preschool Printables. We also completed the freebie that Jennifer from Blue Skies in First Grade posted from her labeling packet.
Wednesday we read Horton Hears a Who and completed text to self connections about how we were good friends. We started the book If I Ran the Zoo on Wednesday and then finished it on Thursday. It was not a book I planned to read but we needed a time filler. On Thursday we finished the book and then they drew their own animals for the zoo. They did a good job with being creative and coming up with different animals than your usual zoo animals.
Friday was The Lorax day. We read the Lorax and then made our own mustaches. I have pictures but my computer is not cooperating with me and let me upload the pictures from my camera. I loved the mustaches that I had seen on Pinterest and other blogs. I had them write a sentence about what they could do to help the environment. They loved the mustaches. Then they made Lorax backgrounds and added truffula trees with straws and Easter grass. They turned out really cute. I had planned on making those blue jello with the red gummy fish I had seen on pinterest for the kids as a snack. But I couldn't find any gummy fish. So I made strawberry jello and bought some cool whip. We had cat in the hat parfaits. They were yummy but I didn't get a picture of them.

One of the other teacher's mom came dressed as the Cat in the Hat and read to the kids. And then the afternoon got crazy. We were sent back to our classrooms to practice tornado drills and were not allowed to leave the room. Luckily the storms blew over us without a lot happening. Other than some terrified kindergartners because they kept hearing the word tornado over and over. They were so hyped up on thinking something bad was going to happen that one of my students when it was time to go home asked me "Is there really a missile coming to the school?" I had no idea what he was talking about. He then said she said that on the intercom. Turns out he heard the assistant principal say the word mission and thought she said missile. It was a little crazy.
I have received two awards this week and I hope to post about them tomorrow. Meanwhile, I have a few freebies for you. I love doing literacy bags with my kids. The next few weeks we're going to be doing a Dr. Seuss literacy bag. Here's the information I'm sending with the bag. Even if you don't use the bag idea, you can use the sheet to have your students write about their favorite Dr. Seuss book. The graphics are from the 3 AM teacher. I'm also giving you my homework from last week as a freebie. The graphics are from 3 AM teacher and scrappin doodles. I used part of One Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, Two Fish as their reading homework.   If you download these let me know and leave me a comment on how you spent your week. I think we're going to continue a few more Dr. Seuss activities next week in  centers and our homework.
Dr. Seuss Literacy Bag
One Fish, Red Fish Homework

cupcakes, christmas, and sight words, Oh My!

I have so many things to post about that I couldn't think of a clever title. My cupcake unit is finally posted to Teacher's notebook. So if you enjoyed the I have, who has cupcake edition, check out my unit. You can get there by clicking here. It's only $5.00. I haven't sold anything so I would be ecstatic if I did. Anyway, enough of my shameless self promotion. I have been using the activities in my own class this week and I've learned a few things. So if you do purchase my unit let me know. I have some pointers.
I'm so excited about Christmas. My boyfriend and I put my tree up yesterday and it is beautiful. I've always had an artificial tree but this year we got a real one. I've never been able to handle a real one on my own. I think I'm going to bring my old one into my class and set up. I saw this idea on pinterest about wrapping up books for everyday in December. I loved it and decided to adapt to meet my class needs. I took all my Christmas books home yesterday and plan to wrap one for each child. We have 16 days in December that we're in school but I have 18 kids. So a couple of days, we'll do two books. I might have to cheat a bit and pick out the one I wan them to unwrap on certain days. So to join in the Linky party on TBA (only a day late), here are some of my favorite Christmas books.

My favorites since childhood are The Polar Express, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and The Sweet Smell of Christmas. I can remember my aunt reading these stories to me as a kid. When teaching Christmas Around the world, I love the Tomie DePaola books. We usually read the legend of the Poinsetta and then make our own to go with it. Olive the Other Reindeer is a new classic. I stumbled on in a Scholastic book order one year. Olive looks a lot like my parent's dog, Ellie Mae. So it has become a new family favorite.
I'm linking up with TBA. Check others favorite Christmas books. 

The sight word part of this post is going to have to wait until tomorrow. I created a rainbow writing sight word sheet with a little Christmas clipart. Check back tomorrow to get your freebie.