A BOO! means a freebie for YOU!!!

I got Boo-ed!! And I'm super excited about it! I saw it going around and I was secretly hoping I'd get a Boo! too thanks to Vanessa at Kindergarten Schmindergarten. I send her a GREAT BIG THANKS!! As part of this Boo I am posting 3 October products I love, including one NEW FREEBIE!! Who doesn't love a freebie?!

So, here are the rules...

1. If you've been boo-ed, copy and paste the above pic and these "rules" into your post.

2. Give a shout out to the blogger who booed you and link back to their site!

3. Share 3-5 October activities, books, products (maybe yours or someone else's) or freebies(s) that you love!

4. Share the Boo love with 5 bloggers-make sure you check this link so that you don't repeat the "Boo"

http://toristeachertips.blogspot.com/2012/10/ive-been-booed-fun-october-linky.html

5. Link up {here} so that others can find you and read about your October ideas! While you are there check out the other great blogs!

Here are my 3 October Products:

FREEBIE Graphing Activity

NEW FREEBIE!! Numbers to 20!

  Here are the 5 WONDERFUL bloggers I'm featuring!

Check out Simone over at Busy as a Honey Bee! I fell in love with this blog instantly, and I'm sure you will too!

I think I love the title the most for this next blog...mainly because I tend to use the phrase to describe my own class too! Her class is full of lots of love and care as you can see by the warm glove box for chilly days (we don't get those here in Cali, so I have no need for a snow day box, but I love it none the less).

 

I wouldn't be a SPED teacher if I didn't show some SPED teacher love! I've check this blog for new ideas OFTEN! 

Now if you need a laugh and some great teaching ideas all at the same time, this is where you go! If there is one blog I read almost daily, it's this one!

Here is another SPED blog that's a goodie. You don't have to be a sped teacher to appreciate great teaching ideas and lessons!

Halloween Pocket Books and Counting Pumpkins

Happy Monday! My day went surprisingly well for a Monday (minus the kid whose parents were an hour and a half late!!!). I taught the kids a new sight word practice strategy, Kindergarten practiced their counting skills, and we started our newest theme pocket books. Have I mentioned how AWESOME Evan-Moor theme pockets are?! I am in no way paid or encouraged to promote these, but I'm OBSESSED with them!! They teach common core standards in fun hands-on ways. Read on to see why I think they are so amazing and totally adorable!

Kindergarten is starting to get pretty good at their sight words, so we practiced identifying them in print. I had the students use a different color for each sight word. We actually did 4 sight words, but I took the pics in the middle of the task. The kids really liked this, even more than I thought they would. My kid with more fine motor skills chose to trace each letter, and one of the boys with fine motor struggles just colored the whole word. I wasn't picky, I just want them to be able to read the words.
 

My Pumpkins, Bats, & Spiders! Oh My! Activities have been a huge hit!! The kids were fighting (more like seriously discussing) who was going to get to count the spiders first! LOVE it when they can't wait to learn! I also bought these perfect little counting pumpkins at Target (did I mention I have a serious Dollar Spot problem?!). They call them "table scatter," but I prefer "fun kindergarten counting stuff!"


 
Time to explain the oh so amazing theme pockets!! I use them all the time for theme units. Some are made up by me, but this week they are made by the wonderful publishers of Evan-Moor. The kindergarten Halloween pockets focus on fine motor and other basic school skills like cutting and gluing. The pockets are: monster puppet, costume popup book, mummy, pull-up Jack O'Lantern, candy corn craft with acrostic poem, and paper bag ghost and riddle activity. Today we focused on making the books and Haunted House cover page.



First/Second graders are doing the Night Creatures theme pocket. They will learn about nocturnal animals, and compare/contrast them. The 3 pockets are: bat, owl, and koala. We made the cover and page labels today, and we'll start the bats pocket tomorrow. The kids were soooo engaged in the activity that I barely heard anything other than the sound of pencils tracing or scissors cutting! Note: I cut the pages and folded/stapled the pockets ahead of time. Older kids can do this...little guys... not so much!

1st/2nd Night Creatures Cover

I alternated the page colors, these are the labels the kids cut and glued

Kinder Halloween Book Cover

The pockets that will be stapled behind the covers when they dry

Apples! Apples! Apples!

Our apple week was a big success. The kids were super excited to do each of our little projects. One kid asked for another apple art project so I brought two ideas yesterday and we ended up doing both of them. Then the kid was very disappointed when we we're painting WITH the apples this time, we were just painting something to LOOK like the apple. Apparently the apple stamps the other day were an even bigger success than I realized! This time we made apple cores out of paper plates (thanks Pinterest!) and then tissue paper apples. The tissue paper was still wet when I left school, so I'll cut them out on Monday.

We'll cut these out Monday

Next week I'm going to attempt to do two pocket books at once for my Halloween unit. The kinder kids will be doing a Halloween pocket book with fun coloring, cutting, and writing activities to work on fine motor skills. At the same time my 1st/2nd kiddos will be doing a Night Creatures pocket book to learn about nocturnal animals (bats, owls etc.), compare and contrast them, and talk about habitats. I like the idea of the little guys learning it too, but the materials are too hard for them to read/understand. I figure I can have the 1st/2nd kids present what they learned to the little guys. That's the theory at least...kids with autism don't always cooperate when it comes to sharing ideas (not because they don't want to, but the comprehension and expression aspect are a HUGE challenge for them).


On a personal note, a wonderful teacher left our school yesterday. She's been a wonderful friend and colleague and it's sad to see her go. She does a huge amount of work behind the scenes, and she's just a great person in general. She finished her administrator credential and has a new position using her new certification. Anyway, on to my point...She wrote me a very nice note that I decided I'd share a snippet with you. "It's damn near possible you are one of the strongest women I know [...] You single handedly turned around the kindergarten and Lower El program." It was such a wonderful note to receive! When I took this position I didn't even have a reading curriculum and the class was a loving place, but more like babysitting center than hard-core teaching. I got a bit of grief when I started about all the things the old teacher did, that I should do too, but didn't. I actually hated the imaginary woman in my head (the old teacher) and when I met her this year I discovered she's actually a very lovely person!

It's taken a lot of work to get the K-2 system running with all the kids working at the appropriate grade level and only 1 teacher. Rarely does anyone set foot in my room, so I don't get a lot of feedback about my teaching. My little cottage is in a little corner of the campus, so there isn't much reason for anyone to come in. It was sooo nice to get a letter telling me what a great job I was doing! Sometimes teachers just need to hear that someone notices what a great job their doing, and the hard work really means something. Take a minute next week and tell a colleague something they are doing really great! Spread the love!

Sub Tub Linky with Freebie Friday!

NOTE: I realized Google Docs doesn't recognize my special primary writing lines font so you can find this printable as a freebie in my TPT store now. Just click here for Prompt 1 and Prompt 2 to get the original PDF I created.

I am one of those teachers who never takes a day off unless I feel like I'm dying. Somehow cleaning up the disaster left behind is far worse than just showing up a finding ways to keep the kids quietly busy. Besides, our school has a policy that we have to individually call every sub until we find one that will cover our class, no sub line (I REALLY miss the sub line at my old school!!!). This in itself is torture. If I feel crummy the last thing I want to do is call strangers at 6:00 am and beg them to watch my class. I was in tears once and gave up. I called my principal and said, I can't find a sub, but I can't drive so I'll see you tomorrow. I've emailed sub plans to you. Anyway... it happens... we all need subs, which means we all need Sub Plans! So do you know what that means?! An excuse for Linky Party!!


One of my favorite things to leave is coloring math! I know this isn't a freebie, but it's by far the biggest success every time! You can find them on Scholastic Teacher Express sales for only $1!! Totally worth every penny! I get the emails and stock up a couple times a year on the eBooks.

 I also love to use the Read and Understand series from Evan-Moor. These books have a great set of stories with comprehension pages and other activities that link to common core such as syllables, phonemic awareness, phonics, sequencing, etc. A kindergarten one is shown here, but if you click the picture it will take you to the full list of the series. They've been moving toward eBooks, so you can often get the paperback ones for really cheap as they discontinue printing them.

 
 
Another great thing is a good writing topic! I love coming in to a pile of "get well" letters, and cards that say "we missed you!" So I've created a couple little writing prompt pages. You can get them here! Just click on the images to get the one you want. One is a creative writing about where the kids think you are and what you look like. Oh the pictures you get with these!! I once had a student draw me in a hospital bed :) The other one is a letter format with a little bit of space for an illustration.

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Whole Brain Update and Intro to I Spy!

So my plan for this year was to fully implement Whole Brain Teaching into my classroom full time. I now see this was a very misguided, or rather naive thought. I established the rules, and the kids have gotten really good at "Mirror." The one huge problem is that I teach 3 things at once all day, and so not everyone is doing the same thing. I sadly, cannot implement it as well as I would in a single grade level class. I must say though, it is a HUGE success when I implement the strategies in my small groups. I have one boy who really benefits from WBT methods when we're working on letter and number writing. I've created a movement, a noise, and words to help describe what we're doing. It's sooo cute to watch him write talking to himself "Swoosh, swoosh" or "circle and a monkey tail" (letter g). We draw in the air before I have him write it on his page and he loves it!

Oh Whole Brain... if only I didn't run a 3 ring circus for a classroom! Case and point: Today I was teaching my 1st/2nd graders to circle groups of tens and start learning place value 10's and 1's, my kinders were practicing counting objects to 5, all the while I was holding a kid who seemed to think he was Tigger and bouncing all around and poking people in the face. I held him, while helping the 2 groups learn completely different topics. Whole Brain...not really an option when I only have 1 free hand (sort of...).

Ok, well in between the rounds of Tigger testing limits... here's what we did:

• Halloween counting games (kinder)
• Life cycles paperbooks (1st/2nd)
• Started our Letter P "week" in kinder (yes I know it's Thursday, but 2 field trips and Columbus Day screwed up our 5 day schedule. I plan to fix it by conferences in 3 weeks)
• 1st/2nd started place value and numbers to 100
• I introduced I Spy (AWESOME creation by Marsha McGuire!)

Ok, so more about I Spy, I found it over the summer and LOVED the idea! I bought 2 different bundles of them during the Back to School Sale on TPT. So I was waiting until my little guys got their feet wet with the alphabet stuff before giving it to them. They are getting pretty good at the letter identification, and are starting to learn the sounds, so I thought this would be great timing. I picked up big colorful magnifying glasses when I was at Morrison School Supply getting new tempera paint yesterday (somehow I forgot orange in October, how do I manage that?! Looks like I'll be mixing paint colors next week!).

Anyway... the kids found the magnifying glasses within 2 minutes of getting in the classroom today and wanted to use them right away. It took great restraint to wait until centers time! When I pulled out the I Spy on the Farm sheets they were instantly engaged once they figured out what to do! They loved it! It was also a nice informal assessment for when kids found a letter but could not name it, or named it incorrectly. There are writing responses to practice writing the letters they find, but I chose to just let them have fun with it for today. It was a nice introduction. I think I'll let 1st/2nd do the sight word ones tomorrow. They were really curious when they saw the kinders with the magnifying glasses and wanted to use them too. Take a look at the adorable pictures I snapped as they worked! They are getting so used to me taking pictures of their work! Note: the headphones are to block out the noise of the kid who kept screaming today... he had a rough day, but the other kids were sooo good about complimenting him in his good moments! Yay for teaching them to find the positive!!

Apples!

This week is Apple Week! I wish I only taught one grade level so I could do apples all day long, but I don't. So we get Apple Afternoons instead. I've decided the apple lessons work nicely with the life cycles my 1st/2nd graders are doing in science, so they are doing the same activities as the Kinder kids, but a little "higher on the apple tree" skill level :)

Funny Kid Quote of the Day:
Me: We're going to be playing with apples today!
Kid: Really?! Can we keep them in the toy area?! (I'm pretty sure he was serious)
Me: Umm...no. But we can do fun stuff at the table with them :)

We had Columbus Day off, so Tuesday we started by talking about the parts of an apple, then sliced them in half to make apple paintings. The kids thought this was the greatest thing ever! I had fully intended on only using fall colors but I opened up my tempera paints and discovered several had gone bad. We ending up using half tempera and half finger paint colors. Looks like I needed a trip to the teacher store... Morrison School Supply is my best friend! And yet, my wallet doesn't always agree, but I was good today and spent under $30! Kindergarten does not run without paint, so I went anyway! Plus, I got more big black and orange construction paper for the Halloween pocket books we'll be making starting next week. The kids will love them. I'll post pics of those too!

Miracle: NO kids got paint on anything besides the table and their hands! YAY!

 

The finished apple paintings

Oops... I'm rambling... So today we did our apple investigations which took far longer than I anticipated, but I actually learned a lot about sooo many academic skills through this super informal assessment! I loved it, and so did they. Things got a little rocky in the excitement when no one was listening, but counting blocks on the scale settled them down pretty quickly.

Here's a list of what my kids learned/showed me they know:

• the can all accurately compare sizes and understand how a scale works
•  with a bit of help for kinder, the kids can all group things in stacks of tens
•  they all get the concept of measuring using blocks as units
• one first grade boy understands "half" and was able to use it when estimating his able to 3 1/2 blocks
• the kids are super detail oriented and even included the microscopic "dots" the apples have on their drawings instead of just all red or green
• one kinder boy already understands basic addition with blocks
• they learned (or started learning) to count by 10's thanks to the scale measuring with sticks of 10 blocks

Ok, on my way home I literally drove past Google, Yahoo, Dell, and every other high tech company that makes your computer, and yet somehow I still can't keep a solid Internet signal this week. I wrote half of this on my iPhone and came back to fix it and label pics. I think the internet company is trying to torture me. Every time I call, they push some magic button while I'm waiting to get through to a human, that magically makes my internet work. Then I feel like an idiot when the human picks up and says everything looks fine. I'm convinced they send out a magic reset signal as soon as the automated machine answers so you'll hang up and go away without talking to a living person. Either way, it works now! Yay!

Bye Friends! Enjoy the cute pics!

They compared apples without any help or prompting!

The kids made the stacks of 10 for me, then we learned to count by tens!

This method FAILED the apple was too heavy and all the blocks piled on top crashed to the floor!!

We Have A Winner... Actually 2 Winners!!

Hey blog friends! I got so excited about my very first giveaway that I decided that one winner just wasn't enough!! I selected TWO winners!! The winners are Sue G and Michalene D.M. CONGRATS!!! Check your inboxes because I'll be emailing you the prize in the next 24 hrs. (if I haven't done so already by the time you read this). If you didn't win, don't worry... You can still pick it up in my TPT store. I'm already planning my next giveaway for when I get to 100 followers. We're only 26 followers away from the next giveaway!

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