Where have I been?

Good question. Working. Far too much it seems. The good news is I will retire at the end of this school year which will hopefully give me more time to share everything I've created over the past few years. I have a bounty of bulletin boards, displays, lesson ideas and printables to share. Unfortunately I haven't the time now to do so. Please be patient, there will be much more to come.

Bulletin Board Update

Last November we had our Scholastic Book Fair and while I always promote the book fair on the reading bulletin board, I upped my game a bit and added a small contest to it. Students who took the time to find to submit their answers received a $.50 off book coupon to use at the fair. I found the cute monsters via Pinterest and made similar shapes using the colored butcher paper I had available. I then searched for every monster related book to pull eight questions that could be answered by looking at the book covers.

I found another Pinterest inspiration for my I Spy bulletin board. Although the inspiration was a window with lots of 3D elements to look at, I adapted mine to be flat using some Carson Dellosa clipart I had on hand along with some purchased snowflakes.

Hopefully it won't take me as long to post our next bulletin board which is currently being created by our Library Club members.

Turkeys!!!!

With the emphasis on Common Core, learning non-fiction text features is beginning earlier and earlier. This year my school has also incorporated a Stephanie Harvey program which also leans heavily on non-fiction text. Last year I developed a Kindergarten lesson with my team that taught the students about many of the features and then they practiced by creating their own non-fiction texts. To help all our students succeed, we created a tiered system with increasing difficulty. Beginning with students who needed the most support, we offered them a word bank with pictures and the beginning letter for each label. Our second tiered students were successful with only the word bank and beginning letters. Our highest tier was able to sound out the items needing to be labeled and word with only the word bank. To get a jump start on this year, I created a new labeling activity for the upcoming holiday season.

Each level is laid out the same, with the exception of the beginning letter sounds and pictures within the word bank. The activity is available for FREE from my TPT Store. I hope you find this activity useful with your students. If you do download it, please take a minute and leave me some feedback. I'd love to know what you think of the tiered system and how it worked with your students. Enjoy.

Autumn Activities

Fall is such a fun time of year, especially with our little learners. I took longer than I wanted putting this activity pack together because I kept adding new ideas. I finally had to tell myself to simply stop. Plus I didn't want to put out the English version without the Spanish one, which of course takes me longer. I had lots of help from my kindergarten teacher, both in ideas of what she'd like in activities and help with proper Spanish translation. She is fueling the fire....

Here are a few of the samples. The activities are the same in both packs, except there is a bonus page in the Spanish version that Mrs. Wildenhain really wanted, and I wasn't about to say no. LOL

Both packets are available for purchase from my TPT Store. I hope you find them as useful as my teachers have been. 

Library Shelf Dividers

This was actually the project that originally had me thinking about starting a TPT store, but I never took the time. Well, I guess a year has changed that. I took the time today to update the clipart, add a few more dividers for some of my popular non-fiction sections (something I've been wanting to do for a bit now), and then put them up as an item for sale.

This is what they look like on my shelf.

Here is a pic of several together.

They print two to a page, simple laminate, cut and tape to a cardboard magazine holder.

I've used these dividers in many different lessons, both for library skills and for literacy/phonics. They are available for purchase from my TPT Store. I hope you enjoy them too. 

A teacher's request

Apparently "Y" is more important in the Spanish alphabet than I thought it was. Which just demonstrates that all those classes I took.....I'm not even going to finish the sentence. LOL

Therefore, I updated the Spanish Alphabet Coloring Pages to include yo-yo. If you already downloaded the original set, please re-download the updated version. Or, if you'd like, send me an email and I can send you a pdf of only the "Y".

se habla español

Well not really. I've have plenty of Spanish classes in college, but I am simply not comfortable speaking it. My students love it when I try, but I think its because they get to giggle at my efforts. What learning another has taught me is empathy for those trying to learn English. Most of my students are second language learners so I do my best to scaffold my lesson with lots of pictures, graphic organizers, sentence frames, etc. I also work with my bilingual teachers to provide the support they need to help my youngest students in their native language. We are currently working on our letter recognition in my phonics class, so after I developed the alphabet coloring pages, I thought I should do the same for my bilingual classes. If hope you have a use for them, or if not, pass them along to a colleague who does.

This will be a FREE download through the end of the year. Grab it from my TPT store while you can.

Alphabet Coloring pages

My kindergarten literacy class will be working on their alphabet in the next couple of days. I have several different activities planned; a matching game, a scavenger hunt, a what's missing activity, and developing their fine motor skills with some simple coloring pages. Unfortunately, I didn't have any I really liked, so of course I cam home and made a set this evening. Isn't that what everyone does? I decided to make this another FREE download, through the end of the year. Enjoy.

 

By the way, my Big Fat Hen lesson has been a big success. The students have really enjoyed the stories, re-reading the rhyme, and getting up and moving with the partner matching activity. I'd love to hear how the activity went in your classroom or library.

Big Fat Hen

Guess what I'm reading to Kindergarten tomorrow? Yes, the title of this blog post gave it away. Actually I'm reading two books, Hungry Hen by Richard Waring and The Big Fat Hen by Keith Baker. There yearly favorites. The unexpected ended of the first and all those chickens in the second! However, I really wanted an extension that was more substantial than a coloring page. Thus I came home and whipped up a sequencing activity, along with some rhyming and matching cards. I tossed in a worksheet, just in case there's a need. But otherwise, I wanted these to be as paperless as possible. Here's a sample of what the individual sequence cards look like. The pocket chart cards are just larger versions.

 

This is another FREE download, so if you teach the little ones, pop over and snap it up. As always, if you do download, please leave me feedback. Enjoy!

Clouds...and writing

Because I'm on a roll. One of my teachers is reading the book It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles Green Shaw this coming week. I lent her cloud cards and offered her a copy of a writing activity I had done in the past. We made wonderful class books with the children drawing pictures of what they too thought they saw in the clouds. Unfortunately I couldn't find my paper copies, and my electronic copy had apparently become corrupted.

I always think creating these new worksheets will take less time than they do, especially when working with Microsoft Paint. My drawings always take longer because I get so fussy. I'm not terribly thrilled with the outcome, but I'm trying to learn to "let it go" and not be such a perfectionist.

In the end, I created six pages suitable for a class book or for individual worksheets. Five of the pages have cloud shape the student can identify, the sixth page is blank for their own creative drawing opportunity. Each of the five pages has two formats, complete the sentence and a blank line for their own interpretative writing. I also added in vocabulary pocket chart words to help with spelling.

This is a free TPT download, so pop over and grab the download. I'll include my standard plea for feedback. Enjoy!

Autumn Activity Pack

While I should have been doing school work, I added another freebie to my TPT store this evening instead. Oh well. I like sharing. Let me know what you think, and if you do download this, or any, activity pack please remember to leave feedback. Your comments will help me improve what I share.

This is one of the pages from the activity pack.

The pack also includes a leaf graphing activity, a pattern activity and an apple race game. The leaf activity is a good extension to Lois Ehlert's Leaf Man, while the apple race game ties nicely with Ten Red Apples by Pat Hutchins. Of course, these are only two of the books in my library that I read, you may have other favorites. The Autumn Roll and Color and the patterning activity were added into the pack, simply because.

To grab the Fall Activity Pack- Freebie visit my TPT Store. Enjoy!

Teachers Pay Teachers

This past summer I had finger surgery which did not allow me to enjoy my usual summer pastimes, consequently, I spent quite a bit of time creating new materials for my library program. After sharing these I received lots of encouragement and coaxing from my colleagues and I've opened a Teachers Pay Teachers store and placed a few items on my site. Hopefully the extra time I've invested will be worth it and others will find the materials useful which will encourage me to create even more.

If you have a few minutes and are so inclined, take a look, I'd love to hear your feedback. What do you love, what do you wish I would have included, what could you live without. Thanks

Interactive Bulletin Boards

As I've mentioned, the reading board happens to be directly across from a much used rest stop. I often see the students reading the various book covers posted, but I want something more. I'd like them to be a bit more engaged, have some real conversations about what they are reading. Call be crazy!

With that, I decided I'd have a new theme to this year's bulletin boards. Each board must be interactive in some way. My "welcome back" board tied into our summer reading Superhero theme and asks students to find their superhero name. While not leading to deep rigorous discussion, I'm certain it will be fun.

The inspiration for the board came from a few different Pinterest finds. The Cityscape idea from this backdrop idea, Skippyjon Jones and the slogan from this Pin (I found additional characters to fill the board), and the idea for the Superhero name came from this Pin. When I decided to add it to the board, I didn't like the flavor aspect of the last name. I did some searching for "What's your superhero name" and found a few more examples. I wanted a list was elementary school friendly so I did some blending to create my custom list.

Attention grabbing and EASY Book Fair Decorations

We all love book fairs. Regardless of the vendor, the provide our libraries with monies to be spent on books, author visits and other programming to help our students. Many book fairs have a theme. Personally, I have had good luck with the Scholastic program. Most of the time I use the theme they suggest, occasionally I go rogue and use something different. I have found that in my school, decorating the tables and such do not make the kids any more excited about the books. However, I have found that using large posters flanking the library doors does have an impact. It keeps the kids excited and it keeps sales brisk.

These are a few of my past book fair decorations.

There were two of these awesome reading tikis, one for each side. Painted by my awesome art teacher.

Both the cat and dog were also painted by my art teacher.

My art teacher was busy, so I got creative and did a bit of overhead tracing magic.

More overhead magic along with some die-cuts and construction paper embellishments.

Library windows 2014-2015

As with the bulletin boards, I was not as productive with windows this year. I'll blame it on being overly busy teaching. I recycle a lot of my props from one theme to another, using them differently. I love the dollar store, garage sales, the sale aisle of big box stores, and everyone else's cast offs. Creativity is key and the free is good.

No time to decorate? I adapted this idea and asked staff to pick their favorite books and pop in a speech bubble with a short quote. I found my bubbles at my local teacher store and laminated them for repeat use.

I went simple this year adapting this idea and did some paper cutouts that I laminated. 

The house windows are tissue paper.

 

I loved this window idea. I used a plastic tablecloth, printed & laminated letters, plastic spiders 

and super cool eyes that I found at the dollar store. I just need a better way to adhere 

the spiders to the window so you don't see the tape. 

 

The dollar store again, with another tablecloth, fruit, party favors, knight shields (in the other window), 

jewels, a gold plate and crowns

This is actually a pirates chest from the party store. It gets used quite a bit.

Again, just lots of stuff I've collected over the years. Mix and match to use them differently. The kids enjoy looking at them as they line up in the hall going to or from other places. It is a great way to keep them interested in books and reading.