Bing is currently offering $3 DonorsChoose Giving Cards for projects submitted by teachers. I am desperate for donations! I have 4 projects submitted right now and I REALLY need an easel. This only takes about 2 minutes total if you are willing to help. Getting $3 at a time really adds up. I am currently $189 away from having my project funded.

In the last year and a half I have had 11 projects funded with over $4,500 in donations. DonorsChoose is amazing!



1. Click here to start. (Bing's Education site)
2. Click the yellow 'Choose Bing and Donate' button.
3. If you are willing to temporarily change your home page to a Bing search page, a box will likely pop-up. You can go back and change your home page right back to what you were using before if you don't like it.
4. Enter your email address twice and click the yellow button to get your donation code.
5. Check your email and copy the code.
6. Go to my project http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=522080&challengeid=36263. 
7. Give $3 and check-out.
8. At check-out, either sign-up or sign in.
9. In the payment section there is a box that says I have a gift code: ________________ Redeem Code. 
10. Enter the code you received in your email and click "Place your donation".

I would really appreciate any and all help. It is $3 FREE money that will help support my classroom and we desperately need an easel. My kids cannot reach mine right now and they have to stand on a chair to write from the top to the middle.   

My favorite fonts by far are by DJ Inkers from the Fontastic CDs. I think DJ Framed has been my go to font for the year. :)

Thanks to Kathy from the Yahoo! group KindergartenD5 for sharing the link to this valuable font. It is called ABC Print Arrow.

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The following link has dotted lines for practice, too.

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Several people have asked me about the use of the tap lights in the picture above. This idea was not mine. Unforunately, I don't remember who I learned it from, but I remember it was a Kdg. conference in St. Louis earlier this year and it was put on be the Bureau of Education and Research (BER) in case anyone else remembers.


The idea is to have 2-4 tap lights out. I have picture cards that I keep with them. I have just been using black and white pictures copied and laminated from the book Letter of the Week. It has great picture cards for each letter of the alphabet. The child takes a card and then taps a light on for each segment they hear in a word. Then, they have to tap the lights off to begin the next word. For example, rock would be be 3 taps (1 tap per light /r/ /o/ /k/).

The lights were 4 for $3.96 at Wal-Mart. I think they take AA batteries, but I can't remember how many.

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Kohl's Cares program is currently offering Eric Carle plush toys and hardcover books like The Grouchy Ladybug, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Mixed-Up Chameleon and The Foolish Tortoise for only $5 each.

Welcome to my blog! I'm currently changing a few things around, so please pardon my mess!  This is what happens when you're on snow day 4 for the week!

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One of the top three searches that lead people to my blog is Kindergarten Nursery Rhyme Printables. Since I'm getting ready to create several Nursery Rhyme notebooks for my students to use to read to themselves and others, I thought I'd pass on some links that might be useful to other teachers, as well. I decided not to limit it to printables, but include several links to things that might be beneficial to you.

First off, you have to have Jack Hartmann's Rhyming To Read CD. My students and I love his songs and this is a great CD. You can listen to audio clips on his site, too.
 

Source: wwwhop2itmusic.com

Printables

• My favorite printables for a notebook. - http://prekinders.com/nursery-rhymes/   and http://www.pre-kpages.com/nursery-rhyme-notebooks/
• Cute graphics on these printables - http://www.reading-with-kids.com/nursery-rhymes.html 
• Cute printables for a notebook - http://www.thevirtualvine.com/nurseryrhymes.html
• Nellie Edge printables - http://www.nellieedge.com/articles_resources/MotherGooseToC.htm
• Dr. Jean - http://www.drjean.org/html/monthly_act/act_2008/03_Mar/pg00.html
• Mini Books - http://www.state.lib.la.us/literacy-and-reading/early-literacy/nursery-rhyme-printable-mini-books
• This site has lots of ideas for teaching specific objectives using nursery rhymes - http://www.apples4theteacher.com/mother-goose-nursery-rhymes/
• Rebus Stories - http://www.enchantedlearning.com/rhymes.html
• Lots of coloring pages and printables - http://www.dltk-teach.com/rhymes/color-index.htm 

Online Games

• Celebrities reading nursery rhymes (text on video) - https://speakaboos.com/theme/nursery-rhymes

SMART Board Lessons

• http://exchange.smarttech.com/search.html?q=nursery%20rhymes

Nursery Rhyme Products

• Lakeshore 
• Really Good Stuff

As our Kindergarten classrooms begin implementing features of The Daily 5, yesterday my co-workers and I brainstormed a list of things our students could do while we are working with our Guided Reading groups.  For myself, the hardest part of getting started with Guided Reading is the whole, “What do I do with the other kids while I’m working with a small group?” problem. I’m sure I’m not alone in this.
  
For my students, I felt visuals were necessary so each child would know his options a little better when it came time to choose what to do independently. Here are a few things from our list. We have already added more since we made our list at lunch yesterday. I will try to update as I can.  I accidentally left my paper at school and we are snowed in today and will likely be for the rest of the week.

I have only taken pictures for about half of the things we’ve come up with because not everything has been created or we didn’t have kids in the room at the time to take pictures with them. At one point, I was in the hallway pulling other teacher’s kiddos so I could get more pictures taken.

Check out http://www.sanjuan.edu/webpages/gguthrie/balanced_literacy.cfm?subpage=127464 for lots of great ideas, pictures, printables, etc. 

Read to Self

Book Boxes

Whisper Phone

Charts

Word Family Flip Books

Reading Binders (Charts include: alphabet, color words, numbers, and poem of the week.)

Big Books



Read to Someone

Read the Room (Can also be done independently for Read to Self)



Word Family Sliders (Can also be done independently for Read to Self)

Read to a Friend

Read to a Stuffed Animal/Reading Buddy


Listen to Reading

Books on CD


We also included Tag Readers and Computer Games that read to students. I would love to get portable DVD players for our HeidiSongs DVD’s. I think I’ll have to write a DonorsChoose project for that one.

Work on Writing

Build-A-Story

Write with a Word Family Slider

Write the Room – This is one of my kids absolute favorites! They are so good and I am always amazed at how my otherwise reluctant writers can fill pages with words in no time.
(There are some great Write the Room pages at http://kinder-pond.blogspot.com/2011/01/write-room.html.)

Rainbow Writing


Word Work

Letter/Word Tiles

Squeeze a Segment (Students use the tweezers to place one rock per segment in a suction cup circle.) We are using manipulatives (like the bear below) instead of words right now.

My Word Book (Could also be used for Write the Room)

Tweet-Tweet Letter Treats (This is from the book Shoe Box Learning Centers: Alphabet.)
 
Choose a Letter (Students choose 3 letter tiles and write words beginning with the letters they’ve chosen. For our struggling readers/writers, we have alphabet soup cans and other charts for them to look at to find words beginning with the letters they’ve chosen.)

Sign a Name – These came from a resource book, but you can find something similar here.

Stamp the Alphabet

Tap Light Segmenting

Word Puzzles


Wikki Stix

Trace a Letter – You can find the tracer pages here.

Envelope Games