She is the winner of my Scotch Thermal Laminator Giveaway in honor of surpassing 200 followers. Congratulations, Mrs. Coe! I hope this will be very useful in your classroom. {Please contact me with your mailing address within 24 hours.}

Thanks so much to everyone who commented! I wish that I could give everyone such a great gift! I appreciate all your sweet comments and your kindness. I hope that each of you has a wonderful start to the school year! 

You have to check out the *FREE* word attack strategy posters that Jessica at Under the Alphabet Tree is sharing with everyone. Thanks for sharing, Jessica!

Word Attack Posters

When you’re a blog reader who follows other professional blogs to spark your passion for educating children (even on your days off)!

(I promise if you make it through all of my rambling, there’s a great giveaway at the end. But….please, please read the whole thing!)

I noticed that I have surpassed 200 followers, which isn’t a drop in the bucket to pretty much all of the blogs I read, but I am thrilled! Why, because what other profession would so many people be searching for ways to better themselves for their jobs without getting paid?

I appreciate that each of you likely spend countless hours  preparing for your job. Our jobs don’t define who we are, but reflect what we love.

I recently read the following quote and I thought the timing was perfect to share with you.

“We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.” –Sir Winston Churchill

I encourage each of you to make your lives about giving. Giving of yourselves to your family, your friends, your students, your community and your faith.

So, in the spirit of giving and to thank you for your loyalty, I would love for one of you to win a Scotch Thermal Laminator by 3M.  (I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of mine!)

To enter, just comment below and make sure I have a way to contact you if you win. It’s that simple. I don’t care if you follow me, love me on Facebook or blog about this giveaway. You are here because you obviously searched for or are looking for something to help you be the best teacher you can be to your children or your students. Just enjoy the sheer giddiness of doing something fun for you! You deserve it!

Was that easy enough?

This giveaway will end on Sunday, July 31 at 6 PM CST.

After spending time playing with cardstock, punches and ribbon to make the pencil pails in the previous post, I remembered why I use to scrapbook. There are so many fun accessories!!! We had lots of left over paper, so I decided to put it to use.  I can’t miss any opportunity to use my scallop punch, too! I’m in love with all things scallop’y’! I have created a couple of printables and a template for you to use, too!


Here’s what I used:

• Stampin’ Up scallop punch
• Stampin’ Up! 1 3/8” circle punch
• 2 different colors of cardstock
• alphabet printables

I created the following sets for you to print. Just click on one of the following links to take you to the printables.

1. Alphabet Capital and Lowercase Match
2. Numbers 1-20
3. Blank template for you to create your own printables

 

I think these circles would be fun for all kinds of things! I am going to make some with colors, shapes and patterns, too. These scallop punches would be super easy to store in Altoids tins, pencil boxes, baggies, envelopes, baggies, etc.

What would you create with these circles? If you create something, please come back to this post and enter your link in the form below.

I bought some cute white metal buckets at the dollar spot at Target to use for my sharpened and unsharpened pencils. My old containers were getting pretty icky. I'm excited to use these! I loved Ladybug's Teacher Files round labels, so I went with the same idea. Here are my new pencil pails.


I made one page with round labels and the other with rectangles. I used 'Ready to Write' instead of unsharpened or dull because it fits with our PBIS 'Ready to' language and I like consistency. :)

I made this printable to go along with the Disney book Numbers from the Target Dollar Spot. The book has rhyming text with numbers and counting. The book includes puppy characters from 101 Dalmations. However, the printable can be used alone.


I intend to use How Many Spots? along with Do-A-Dot markers or bingo daubers. Students will use the markers/daubers to complete the puppy's missing spots on each page.  I hope you find it useful!

Thank you so much to everyone for your comments and emails about using the Google Form to begin a comprehensive list of Kindergarten teacher blogs. I am so excited that I've already found blogs I didn't know existed!!! I wish I had time to back and read every blog from the beginning.

www.ScrappinDoodles.com

Since I first added the form, I wanted to let you know that I have updated it to include an area for teachers other than Kindergarten. For example, homeschoolers, preschool, etc.

I also added an optional entry for you to add your Facebook fan page. I know not everyone has one though. I did try to add the pages I could find. Feel free to check the list. If your fan page isn't listed here, let me know and I will add it for you. 

I decided to go ahead and add a spot for you to link to your TpT and/or Teacher's Notebook stores. Why not! If we're going to have a comprehensive list, we might as well promote your stores, too! Let me know if you need me to add yours.

Lastly, I know my original post will get lost in the shuffle. So, I added a 'Blogs I Love' tab at the top of my blog. You can access it anytime. There is a link for you to visit the spreadsheet with all the information everyone has entered.

If at anytime you have any questions or need anything updated, changed, etc. please don't hesitate to let me know.


Please spread the word so your blog can help generate links from other bloggers I may not know about. :)

As if I weren't already following enough blogs, I feel like everyday I come across one to two more that I never knew existed which makes me feel like I've missed out. :) All you have to do is add your name, blog/site name and the web address of your blog/site.


View what others have submitted here.

Please post regardless of whether you think I know of your blog or not. I'd love to have comprehensive list. *Check below the form for instructions on how to embed this form on your blog, too.

This is a Google Doc Form submission. I have set the form to 'Share' so your entry will go to a spreadsheet that others can view.



If you would like to embed this form on your blog as a way of helping me get the word out, feel free to copy the HTML code from here. The password is kindergarten. Once the code is copied, go back to your blog post. Then, click the Edit HTML tab above your blog post. Paste the code where you want it and it should embed the form on your blog.

I thought the sea animals at Dollar Tree were so cute I knew I could use them for something, so I created a few printables to go along with them. If you don’t purchase the sea animals, but still want to use the free printables, I created a page of printable manipulatives that you can use.

How else would you use these?







My package also came with one dolphin, but I didn’t use it because the paint was all messed up.

Yesterday I headed to town to take advantage of a few sales. This is what I came home with for school.

Dollar Tree – $16

• 4 green plastic bins
• colors border
• alphabet border
• sports cello bags (our PBIS theme)
• desk nameplates
• Disney Princesses numbers and counting cards (These are great! They have numbers, quantity and number words.)
• dice – 3 packs of 10
• Mickey Mouse numbers and counting cards
• 2 packs of sea life animals (I am working on a printable for these.)

Target – $13

• tabletop pocket chart easel
• 3 pocket charts
• 2 metal pails
• Sharpie markers ($1 off coupon here)
• child’s umbrella (on clearance for $4.98)

Staples – $9

• 4 packs of 5 tab dividers (50 cents each)
• shapes and colors bulletin board set

I can’t wait to see all of this in my room!

Check out this video tutorial from Impress Your Kids on how to cut a star from paper with one cut. This would be fun to teach parents at Space Night. The kids would love it, too! Actually, I am pretty impressed myself. How do people come up with these things?

I bought one of these tonight!!!! In my defense, I only paid $19.24 because I had $10 in Amazon gift cards from SwagBucks and it was shipped for free. Yay! Thanks to everyone who has signed up and been earning SwagBucks. I owe you for helping me out! :)

Source: www.Amazon.com

So, which do you think it was peer pressure from other fabulous bloggy teachers, love of a fun product that saves me steps to the laminator in the workroom located in the trailer outside our building or just plain good old-fashioned lack of self-control?

***Update: I'm beginning to think that you guys can't live without your Scotch Thermal Laminators! :) Now, I'm even more anxious to try it out!

Jessica at Under the Alphabet Tree asked us to share the songs we use to transition and get our students lined up quickly and quietly. Be sure to head over to her blog to share your songs. 

I made this song up to go with our PBIS expectations. I know it's silly, but it works. :)

www.ScrappinDoodles.com

Are you ready for the hall?
(Tune: Do Your Ears Hang Low)

Are your eyes facing forward?
Are your hands behind your back?
Are you standing in a line?
Are you leaving any gaps?
Are you ready for the hall?
Does your behavior show it all?
Let's do the right thing.

You will love this freebie printable created by Donna at Peace, Love and Learning! When I saw her version, I immediately knew it would be useful for our Kdg. Parent Night before Open House. The graphics are fun and I think it will make the content seem less overwhelming for families.

Head over to Peace, Love and Learning and check out Donna's blog. Thanks so much for sharing, Donna!!!

***Update: Donna has also added first and second grade CCSS printables for anyone who needs them. Amazing!

I am trying to organize my lesson plan notebook for next year and I would really like to have a list of Common Core State Standards for Kindergarten that doesn't have all the other grade levels or all the background information. I just want the standards themselves.

Has anyone typed anything like this yet or know of a good source? I don't need anything to post for my students, I just want something for my own notebook for quick reference.

I didn't or actually, I had never even thought about it. This is an interesting read. Take a look and tell me what you think?

Is Your Giveaway Legal?

***Oops! The link wasn't working. Thanks for the heads-up Debbie! It should be working now. :)

I have a love for vintage things and I like to decorate with flea market finds. So it's probably no surprise that one of my absolute favorite shows ever is Little House on the Prairie. :) This cute desk reminds me of the one room schoolhouse/church on the show. When I saw this desk at a flea market recently, I had to have it! My husband was able to talk the owner down on the price a little and he purchased it for me no questions asked. I love that man!

Isn't it the cutest? It is big enough for two people and has a desk area and cubbies for two people behind the seat. If I can't fit it in my house, I'm going to take it to school. I just can't decide on whether or not I should refinish it.What would you do?

(Please ignore the little stove on the porch. It is too heavy for me to move, so I have to leave it up to my hubby to move it and I couldn't wait to take a picture. :)

I created a few printables for math work stations to go with the cute heart beads in the Dollar Spot at Target. I like having real items that students can use as manipulatives.

I hope you find these useful. If you have any questions about how I intend to use something, don't hesitate to ask.

Ha! I feel like I'm doing my part to stimulate the economy by not only hitting the Target dollar spot as much as possible lately but by also trying to squeeze in 80 fun activities with my family before I have to go back to school. Seriously, where does the time go?

Have I mentioned that  I live in the country? That means the nearest Target is an hour away! Talk about torture with all you fabulous bloggy friends posting all your wonderful deals! When I go to town for any reason, I try to go to every store I might possibly need to in order to make the trip worthwhile and to save on gas.

So, I tried getting in on some of the inexpensive Staples deals for the week, but that didn't work out so well. They were all out of the 5 packs of Sharpies for $1. I LOVE Sharpie markers!  I am very brand loyal on this item. Is anyone else like that?

Here’s what I ended up with.

Staples – $1

• 4 sets of page flags @ 25 cents

Target – $24

• flash cards: 4 sets
• card sorts – 2 sets
• heart beads: for patterns, counting and sorting – 2 sets (I’m going to make some printables for these.)
• magnetic mini erasers – 3 packs of 2

• pocket charts (3)
• addition spin and write
• alphabet spin and write
• calendar set of 2 (I’m not using these for my calendar. I’ll show a picture of what I have in mind in another post.
• class scheduler
• lesson planning book (This is just for making notes for planning. It is not what I will use for my actual lesson plans and daily schedule.)

• alphabet matching puzzles
• counting matching puzzles
• desk nameplates
• 2 sets of 4 dry erase strip boards

It’s not like this is my first year teaching. I am beginning to think that I became a teacher for all the cool supplies!

I know we all like to save time, so I thought I'd share one of my favorite blogging time savers. For the majority of my blog posts, I use Windows Live Writer. It is free to download and it makes blogging so much faster and easier for me. I don't typically get to sit down all at once and write a blog post, so it's great to go back and forth between life as a wife and mommy and life as a teacher & blogger. :)  I highly recommend it!

Some of my favorite features are the ability to watermark photos, change photo colors, crop, add borders/frames and rotate pictures after upload. :)  You can also have multiple blog accounts added. This works nicely for me because I have four blogs that I try to keep up with.

I know there are quite a few of you that have just started blogging, so I thought this might be something that is beneficial for you. There are step by step tutorials for you to get started, too. If you try it, let me know how you like it!

In an effort to reduce spam generated from posting my email address on my blog, I have included a Contact Me form via the Contact Me tab at the top of this blog. What do you think? Feel free to use it to send me comments, questions, suggestions, etc. Unlike comments, this gives readers a little more privacy, too.

So, what are your thoughts? I'd love someone to try it out for me!

Want your own? Visit www.emailmeform.com and sign up for your own free account. It is super easy and did I mention FREE? :) By the way, you can customize it add cute backgrounds, colors, etc. but I change my blog background so frequently that I wanted something simple.

***Update: Thanks so much to everyone who commented and who tried out the form. I have since removed Disqus from commenting. In the process, that deleted all your comments. However, I tried to respond to everyone before the comments were gone. Thank you! 

***Feel free to download this freebie if you want. It is about position words. I have an emergent reader to go with it, too. I will be offering it as a free set soon.

Right now I'm just playing around with iframes to figure out which way is easiest to add embedded Google Docs. :)

Thanks to everyone who voted in my poll today. There were 62 votes and it looks like the majority of you prefer Google Docs. So, that is how I will add my downloadable freebies for upcoming printables.

Here were the results:

Please vote in the poll at the top of my blog to let me know your favorite way to download free printables. I want to do what is easiest for the majority of you. I have lots of fun things to share soon!

I was visiting the Lakeshore Learning Facebook page and saw a post by someone about helping Joplin teachers rebuild their classrooms after the devastating tornado that ripped through Joplin on May 22, 2011. She posted a link to the DonorsChoose page that is specific to Joplin schools. You can see a tiny glimpse below.



I only live about 100 miles from Joplin, so when all of this happened, it literally hit close to home. Our school held a Jeans for Joplin fundraiser the last week of school and we were able to make a donation to help our fellow teachers.

If you are able, please consider making a donation to help a teacher in Joplin rebuild and regain some normalcy for next year.

Check out Ladybug's Teacher Files for a super cute and easy tutorial for adding a little picture in your comments, as well as, a working link to your blog or web site. Be sure to leave a comment here to show me that you tried it. It's fun!

Today, I had to go back into town to get brush killer and a pump to try to kill the insane amount of poison ivy we have climbing several of the barbed wire fences around our yard. I am highly allergic and have had it three times this spring/summer already. I’m so tired of scratching that I was ready to spend whatever it took to have it all gone!
So, I took advantage of the trip to run by a different Dollar Tree this afternoon. I'm most excited about the ice cream bowls! :) My thought was to make these into another math work station. I would add number cards and have students spoon ice cream (pom poms) into their ice cream bowls. I would also include some recording sheets with ten frames and paint markers. I will try to make that later as a freebie in case any of you get these, too.
Dollar Tree: $9

• 2 sets of ice cream bowls (3/set—1 each of pink, green and blue)
• 2 sets of pom poms (80 pcs/set)
• 1 Cars foam number puzzle
• 1 Disney Princesses foam number puzzle
• 2 sets of divided plastic dishes (2/pack)
• 1 pkg. of flamingo drink stirrers (10/pack)

I bought the divided plates for addition and subtraction. The drink stirrers go with the palm trees I got last night for use as individual pointers during Guided Reading, The Daily 5—Read to Self/Someone, etc. The foam number puzzles will be for putting numbers in order and then I’m already working on a recording sheet for 10-20.

Now, where do I put all of this until school starts?

Scrappin' Doodles is one of my absolute favorite graphics store and I know a lot of other teachers buy from them as well. Throughout July, use the code JULY2011 at checkout for 15% off orders $5 or more.

I was inspired to go shopping by Fran at Kindergarten Crayons. I saw the lovely alphabet and number stamps she bought at Target and decided I needed to make a trip to town. Unfortunately, they were all out of the stamps.
I still hope to find some of the stamps she found, but since we live an hour from the nearest Target, I can’t spend $25 in gas to keep looking for dollar stamps. If anyone finds any extra at your store and you’re willing to buy them for me, I will pay you for them and pay for shipping. I would love to have at least two sets of each, but I will take whatever you can get. Pretty please!
Target: FREE (Two of the items I purchased from a transaction before gave me a $5 gift card, so I got all of these for free.) Otherwise, they would have all been $1 each.

• sports name tags for our 1st day of school nametag lanyards (Our PBIS Schoolwide Theme is Sports)
• monkey card (I needed a $1 filler.)
• alphabet puzzle cards
• animal action cards
• desk nameplates

I LOVED these animal action picture cards. We use HeidiSongs Elicit a Physical Response movements all the time for patterning, calendar time, counting, saying letter names and sounds, etc. I have the sheets in a sheet protector attached to our white board so I can access them quickly. The cards are two-sided and seem pretty durable. There are 40 animal actions.
I thought these cards would be perfect for transitioning from our seats to the carpet, lining up, etc. For example, hop like  kangaroo back to your seats or flutter like a butterfly to the carpet.

Dollar Tree: $10

• number magnets (2)
• jewelry links (2)
• shapes sticker charts
• numbers chart
• tiki ice cube trays (3)
• palm tree drink stirrers (10/pack)

Ideas:

• number magnets for a math work station, along with a small metal for comparing numbers, matching numbers, etc.
• jewelry links can be used for patterning, sorting by attributes, graphing, measurement, weight, etc.
• numbers chart-cut apart and mix up for students to put in order or for one-to-one correspondence using manipulatives
• The tiki ice cube trays will be used as ten frames with number cards and manipulatives for students to create a given number. These would be fun for making Play Doh manipulatives, too.
• Palm tree stirrers will be used as pointers during small group reading instruction.

Mardel: $10
Both sets below were on clearance for 50% off. Yay!

• Cat in the Hat bulletin board set - $5
• Carson Dellosa Tropical Palm Tree bulletin board set – $5

Ideas: pictures with students for Dr. Seuss celebration and measurement

Chicka Chicka tree to replace the real one I use to have that took up so much room.

What are some of your frugal finds this summer?