Friday Fun and a FREEBIE!

I have to say that coming off of last week I wasn't sure how this week would go.  We had to change our schedule with our fifth grade because they were taking state testing.  As you can imagine, Kindergartener's do NOT adapt quickly to change in routine!   Well to my surprise, it turned out to be a fairly decent week.  Today was by far the best.  We celebrated our first Friday Fun-Day!  Read all about it here.

Anywho, I've been feeling bad about not posting a freebie lately.  And let's be honest.....can any blog post that begins with a freebie actually be a bad post?  I think not!  So here it is.....it's nothing fancy but a cute activity for your Math Center.

Provide students with one or two dice and a marker/counter (jellybeans would be cute.)  Students roll the die/dice and hop that many spaces.  Just click on the picture to download your freebie!

I've been busy prepping my center activities for next week and wanted to share some of them with you.

In my Math Center I have the following activities for next week:

My students have just started working on Base Ten blocks.  We are working mainly on the teen numbers but some of my smarties need a bigger challenge.  Students have to match the base ten blocks to the corresponding number. 

This one is my favorites!  These cards are for addition practice and they are tiered for differentiating.  I have students on all three levels right now so I really like that everyone will feel a sense of accomplishment.  I put these cards in the center with expo markers, magic erasers (for cleaning) and various counters including an abacus.  The kids love these activities!
These two activities are in my Spring Math Activities product which you can access by clicking HERE.

In my ABC Center, I am finally leaping into the new millenium (13 years later!) I made a game I like to refer to as a common game I can't say because of copyright violations / Word Board for the kids.

I love and hate this product!  I love it because I personally am a wordie!  I love word games, building words, putting words together, scrambling words....well, you get the point.  I unintentionally very purposefully intrigued my students by putting the board out this week.  We aren't going to start using it until Monday but they are dying to know what it's for.   The hate part comes in because I hate the way I placed the letters on top.  I really should have placed the letters closer together instead of trying to be fancy!  Oh well, live and learn.  I have all the letters printed, laminated and ready to go!  And yep, you guessed it......I'm giving it to you!  Click here to download the PDF.  Hope you enjoy!

This next activity is one of my personal favorites as well. My kiddies this year REALLY struggle with vowel sounds.  I just finished up our DIBELS testing and thought they would do really well since we've practiced soooooo much...../u/, /u/, up!  Well they didn't.  I don't think they even remembered any of it.  I was frustrated.  I needed something to help them practice.  I created this self-checking vowel set and I absolutely LOVE it.  My kiddies are finally picking up on that important medial vowel sound.  Can I get an Alleluia!



This is everything you will need for this center.  I have EXPO markers in the center with Magic Erasers from the Dollar Store.  They really are magic when erasing marker from lamination!

I made them self-checking by writing the word on the back of the card.

This is my Vowel Practice Cards set.  There are 30 cards in this set (color and black and white.)  To download this product click here or click the pictures.  

 Well thanks for hanging out for this looooooong post.  I've been trying to photograph as much as possible in my classroom so I can share it with you!

What are some things you have in your centers this week?

Classroom Management GEM!

Well I had this whole big post about the lack of communication present in Education today, not to mention the amount of B.S.  We're talking 3 paragrahs of seething anger!  Fortunately (for you) my aunt called and I vented to her.  She probably thinks I'm ready to have a complete breakdown, haha!

So her misfortune for calling at the wrong time is to your benefit :)  Okay, now on to the good stuff!

I wanted to post a new behavior management system I started in my classroom after reading a FABULOUS blog post from The Teeny Tiny Teacher.  You can read the post here.  Well I only read the post a week ago but I fell completely in love with and had to make it right away!   The general idea of this management technique is simple.....positively reinforce the students when they are doing something good.  You do this in the form of "Gold Tickets" which are really pieces of yellow construction paper.  I still find it funny that kids buy into this stuff!  Anyway, you reinforce them constantly (I have over 200 gold tickets!) 
   "Oh Jennifer, I love how you are sitting."  BAM, gold ticket.        
   "Michael, you are working so nicely."  BAM, gold ticket.  
 The first hour of the day when I implemented this I had kids getting gold tickets probably every other minute.  If they smiled or told me I was the BEST teacher, they got a gold ticket.  Not really but you get the idea!

I jazzed mine up a little from the Teeny Tiny Teacher's but I'm just a little

OCD that way :)  Sorry, I can't get the pic to rotate!

I made up a location to house the little nuggets of pure teacher bliss (aka: gold tickets.) This probably  took the most time up front and even that didn't take too long.  Here is the pic of that:

In the picture they look like McDonald's french fries but I promise you they don't in person! 

Now you may be wonder why the kids are magically morphing into angelic little children.  Is it simply for a yellow piece of paper you ask?  Why of course not!  This, my friends, is why these little gold gems are working wonders in my classroom:

TA-DA!  Yep, Friday Fun-day Activities is what has transformed my group of gabbers!   No, it is not made of pure gold.  No it is not worth millions of dollars.  In fact, it was made from Dollar Store posterboard!  That's right my friends, everything you see here to implement this system in your own classroom cost less than $3.00.  The Friday Fun-day activity board works like this:  On Friday, you count up the gold tickets for each student from the whole week and write it down.  The student with the most gold tickets gets to pick their activity first.  Obviously, this is a coveted position to be in.  The student with the next highest amount gets to pick 2nd and so on and so on.  The activities include Free Choice, Computer time, Painting, Play-Doh, iPads and many more AMAZING activities to choose from.  But the catch is that only "X" number of students are allowed at each activity so you want to be as high up that totem pole as possible come Friday afternoon!

That's it.  That's the miracle!  Let me tell you, I started this on Monday and I no longer have the class of chatty-Cathy's I had since September.  My students are no longer tattling.  They aren't fighting over the table eraser (but I had it first!)  Those children have been magically replaced by children seated nicely in their seats with hand's folded, smiling at me, secretly saying, "Oh puleeezzzeee, give me a gold ticket!"

I decided to run with this the first week without introducing any guidelines.  I wanted them to taste the victory before setting up any real structure.  So today, we decided what behaviors will get you a gold ticket.  Believe it or not, the kids made up harder rules than I was planning to suggest.  They are brutal little things!  The list for losing tickets was so much longer than the list for getting tickets!  Gotta luv'em!

So there you have it.  Thank you to the Teeny Tiny Teacher for the wonderful mid-year inspiration!  Now I want to hear from you.  Do you want to / plan to implement this in your classroom?  Do you think this will work for your little kiddies?  Do you have a better system that works wonders?  Tell me about it!

Tuesday Tips!

Howdy All!  I have to say I am feeling MUCH better than I was at the end of last week.  I took a much needed personal day today to get my life in order.  My to-do list was never ending.  Although I didn't get through everything, I feel like I got a lot done.  The telethon was yesterday.    The preliminary numbers are that we raised over $4,000 which will go directly to the teachers in our district!  I am really glad it turned out so well but I am SO glad that it's over!

I'm super excited to share this week's tips with you.  I've been doing a lot of blog hopping in my "free-time" (I crack myself up!)  Let me tell you there are some incredibly talented people out there.  I found a few that really inspired me for the week ahead.  I hope you enjoy!

Rainbow Template:
I always allow my kids to paint a rainbow during this week.  We talk a lot about the colors of the rainbow (Roy G. Biv) and read a few non-fiction books on the topic.  It's always a HUGE hassel to draw out 25 rainbows for my little ones to paint.  Well thanks to Maria over at Kinder-Craze my time will be better spent!

To create the rainbow template you need an old folder and scissors.  With the folder folded, I drew the arches starting from the lower left-hand corner.  I tried using a compass but mine is pretty cheapy so it didn't work well.  Then I found a protractor which worked well, except I couldn't go all the way to the bottom....I had to free-hand that part.  After the arches are drawn, cut the folder following the arches you traced.  I went an extra step and made the cut a little wider so it was easier to fit my pencil in between to trace it.



Definitely check out her blog (Kinder-Craze.)  She has some fabulous ideas and she is celebrating her one-year blogiversary!  Give her some bloggy love and follow her!


Font Addiction!
Seriously, how can you be a blogger and a TpT Seller and NOT be addicted to fonts?  If you figure it out let me know!  Fonts make me happy.  Cute fonts make me even happier!  Here's the problem (I know, how can there possibly be a problem?)  I have SOOOO many fonts that it can take for-e-ver to find just the right one.  Highlight, select, repeat, highlight, select, repeat.  Well Jennifer over at First Grade Blue Skies came up with the perfect solution.  She created small cards with each font listed so she could easily grab the cards and figure out what she needs. The funny thing is that I already had a Word document with each font name written in the font itself.  DUH, it never occurred to me to print them out on easy to access cards.  Here is a pic of the cards I made after reading her blog.


Whisper Phones
These have been on my to-do list allllll year!  I have several Tubaloo's in my classroom and the kids just go crazy to use them!  Well Miss Martin (one of my favorite bloggers) motivated me to make them....well, soon.  It's still on my to-do list but hey, at least I'm motivated now.  C'mon look at how stinkin cute they turned out.  I can't wait to make mine!  Can anyone say PURPLE?!?!?



Check out Miss Martin's Classroom blog!  She provides an entire tutorial for making these cuties. It is sooooo worth the visit, trust me!

Well I hope you've gotten inspired by one of these great ideas as well!  Do you have any AWESOME ideas you'd like featured on Tuesday Tips?  If so, please let me know by leaving a comment or e-mailing me at thekindergartenpod@yahoo.com.  Feel free to post any time-saving tips, classroom management tricks or any great ideas below as well.  Thanks for stopping by :)

Saturday Frustration!

Hi All,

Please forgive this post in advance.  It's not uplifting. It's not inspiring.  It's real!

I wanted forced myself tried  to create an uplifting, useful post for today.  I wanted to write about all the great things that happened last week but the more I tried the worse the post sounded.  Truth is, I had a horrible week!  I couldn't wait for it to be over.  Each day this week seemed to get worse than the day before.  This was definitely one of those weeks that I question why on earth I choose to do this!

There wasn't one catastrophe that led to my horrible week.  Instead, it was a multitude of minor things.  At many points, I was waiting for Ashton Kusher to jump out to tell me I was being Punked! I had my fair share of pukers this week (we still haven't found my trash can.)  I dealt with changing plans on the fly because lots of kiddies were out sick.  One of my darlings peed on my carpet.  I have a little one who apparently enjoys fingerpainting in the bathroom (use your imagination.)  I mean seriously, who enjoys doing that?  I'm sure my attitude this week was not helping any either.  I am completely exhausted! 

I somehow  managed (still not sure how) to get myself elected to run this big telethon for my school.  Each school in the district participates and apparently my, "let me know if I can help" comment translated to "I would LOVE to run it for our school!"  This has been more than daunting!  In fact, my principal even told me this alone is a full-time job.  It has involved coordinating with many grade levels, teachers, film crews, writing scripts, yadda, yadda, yadda.  Well the telethon is tomorrow and I CANNOT wait until it is over!

I am currently enrolled in my Master's program so I have assignments for class to deal with.  Seriously, do they think one more 10 page paper is going to make me a better educator?  I  am also coming home at night to work on all the things I didn't finish at school, plus work on products for my TpT Store.  My oldest child is graduating H.S. in June.  That alone is exhausting!  Prom gowns, limos, Senior Week rentals, graduation parties, placement tests, senior portraits.......UGH!  Most nights are spent on the computer until 11 - 12 o'clock, watching my fiance in the other room wishing I had some time for him too :(   And on top of all that, my future sister-in-law talked me into taking a Pilates class.  So I have to do all of the above without the ability to take a deep breath because my ribs hurt so bad.  Squatting down, bending, yawning, sneezing, coughing and general movement is out of the picture too!

Oh, and how could I forget.  This is actually the BEST part.  My co-workers hold a competetition at this time of year called, "The Biggest Loser."  Well I got suckered, guilted encouraged to join under the guise "it will be FUN!"  They compete against each other to lose the most weight.  Well, I can tell you with 100% certainty, my body found this extremely funny!  In fact, I've never lost a FULL pound at one time.  My body apparently has a sense of humor and likes to take weight off one-tenth at a time!  When my body was feeling particularly funny on a "weigh-in" morning, I weighed in and gained one-tenth.  I realized I hadn't peed released my coffee from the morning so I decided to run to the bathroom and weigh-in again.  YEP, you guessed it......I actually GAINED another tenth!  How is that humanly possible?!?!?  I have since decided I am going to donate my body to science.  They could learn a lot from me!

And finally, the most devestating blow.  I found out that the "great medical news" I talked about in an earlier post was actually wrong.  Since I previously had clean check-ups for a full year my doc told me we could now go every 6 months for check-ups.  I was excited and relieved that all has gone well.  Then the test results came back.  It's back.  I am seriously MAD!  I feel like I have to start all over again.  I have to make arrangements for all kinds of tests again and I really don't have any more time to squeeze out of my day.  I'm frustrated and angry!  I was ready to move on with my life, get married and live happily ever after.  Again, my body said, NOT!

I know all of this stress has affected me in the classroom.  I'm writing about this because I think it is important to "admit" that teachers DO have rough times.  It's almost unspoken in teacher circles because no one wants to appear like "the bad teacher."  Well I'm throwing it out there......I was a BAD teacher this week.  I wasn't mean to anyone.  I didn't yell at my kiddies.  But I wasn't ME.  I wasn't full of energy.  I wasn't singing with my usual tone.  I wasn't bouncing around and laughing with my kiddies.  I was a deflating balloon.  I was going through the motions.  I was surviving the week.

PLEASE tell me you've gone through this!  Tell me I'm not "losing it."  Tell me you've hit those moments.  Tell me!


EDITED:  Since I posted such a downer-post I've been feeling guilty.  That translates into a little FREEBIE for you!  It's exclusive to my followers and I am not advertising it anywhere else :)  Thank you!!!!!

It's a little add-on to any Money Unit you may have.  I hope you can use it!  Just click on the picture for a FREE download.

Tuesday Tips!

Hi all!  Sorry I didn't post last week.  I've been just frantically trying to keep my head above water lately.  I really hate this time of year as a teacher!  I spend my time endlessly assessing, implementing interventions and getting all of my ducks in a row for possible retentions.  The paperwork is never-ending.  On top of that I think I am keeping every local doctor in business because I just keep running from one to another.  Most nights I don't get home until after 7 then I spend the rest of the night working in my office.....ugh!  Okay, rant is over. You will now return to your normally scheduled program!

Tuesday Tips:

I came across a really cool website this past week.  It is a collaboration of people posting their organizational ideas.  The site is called Classroom Collective (link below.) I plan on implementing many of these ideas!!!  Hope you like them too!

Website: http://classroomcollective.tumblr.com/tagged/Classroom%20Organization

Lesson in a Bag:
                           
                          

The idea behind this picture is to organize all the materials you need for a lesson into a ziploc bag.  Cover one of the long sides of the bag with duct tape so you can hole-punch it.  Once you do, put it in a binder and voila....you are all ready to go.  Now, I can't see doing this for lessons I use throughout the year but I could totally see doing this on a weekly basis.  I plan on getting a 3" Binder and having tabs for Monday through Friday.  That is much more manageable for me but what a great idea!


Absent Work:



Now, I don't think this would work for me at the Kindergarten level but I could definitely see this working for 2nd through 6th and up.  What a great way to keep students up to date!  And once the month is up just file everything away and you're done! 


Storage and More!

       

I don't know about you but this picture just makes me happy!  I wish I HAD two filing cabinets (or one for that matter) to put together but how stinkin cute is this?  I would definitely put my number pocket chart on these!  I'm totally jealous!


Decorative Letter Organization:



I love to use the cut-out letters but haven't found a good way to organize them.  I can NEVER find one of the letters I need - don't cha just hate that!  This way, you could organize them alphabetically or even if you use them for the same thing each year, keep them stored that way :)  I soooo want to meet this person!


Class Lists:



No more recording sheets!!!!  I love tihs one so much I think I am going to make it tonight!  How simple!  Just print out your class list and put it in a frame or a clear sheet protector.  When items come in just cross off their name.  This is definitely one of those "DUH, why didn't I think of that?" moments! 


Cool Idea:



While this is a SUPER cool idea, I don't think I'll ever be this organized.  Not even when I grow up!
I posted it for those of you who are :)  Hopefully no more kids get left in the bathroom!


Teacher's Toolbox:




 While this is not a new idea, it's certainly a fun one.  It's on my Summer to-do list which grows by the minute!


Well trust me, I could post all night.  This website is a MUST check out!  What is your favorite organizer / classroom management trick?  Spill the beans below :)

St. Patrick's Day Linky

Helloooo there!  Just wanted to let you all know about a great linky going on over at Sharing Kindergarten.  There are great St. Patrick's Day products and FREEBIES....and c'mon, who doesn't love a FREEBIE?!?!?!  I've posted a few things over there too so click on the picture below to head on over!

 

 

Hope you find some great products!

 

 



 

Welcome Freebielicious Fans!

Welcome!  Don't ya just LOVE Freebielicious!  I'm so glad you decided to swing on over here my lil ole blog.  I hope you enjoy it :)

Here is the link for my St. Patrick's Day mish-mosh of activities.  There is a little bit of everything in here.  If you like what you see, please follow my blog for more freebies and great products! 

Thanks and enjoy :)



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