I have several new things at my TeachersPayTeachers Store!
Click on the pictures below to purchase!

I told you I have been busy!

I came up with a new concept for independent games.   It may not be new to some of you but it is for me and it is working wonderfully with my little ones.

First of all, I am a teacher "hoarder".  I hate to throw anything away!  Can you relate??  I had a ton of frosting cans so I created "Can It" games.  They are simple matching and memory games for lots of different skills.  I put them in frosting cans.  I put the language arts in the cans with red lids and the math games in the cans with blue lids and the concepts.

My kiddos can go get a game and grab a partner whenever they finish their work, or we have small groups, or there are visitors in our room and I need to talk to them.  The instructions are basically the same for each can, so they know what to do.  They can choose what skill to work on--literacy or math, and then go have fun learning!

I have loaded the beginning sounds games  and the addition games to my store.  Hopefully I will get the rest of them loaded this weekend.

I also made the labels for the cans and they are FREE at my store.
Start baking and saving those frosting cans! (or you can have your children bring them in for you)


In the addition and subtraction cans I put counters in the can so they already have counters to solve the problems and don't have to ask for any or look for any.  Make it easy!!

I also put a new Silly Snakes Sounds game at my store

And SWIPE!  It's played like battle and it's great for comparing numbers! 

Oh how I wish I was a better blogger!  I can't ever seem to find the time to post anything!  I am always busy making things for my classroom (my brain is usually in overdrive), teaching my kiddos and running my own children to and from their activities.  I don't know how these other teachers do it.  I need a secretary!! We have finally been getting to enjoy a little Spring here.  I am so thankful.  I like warmer weather and the sunshine makes me happy!.

I feel like with all the snow days we have had, that we really have to hurry to get everything in before the end of the year!  Here are some things we have been up to in our classroom:

We celebrated Mardi Gras as our Pre-K3 class had their annual parade.  We love catching beads and dancing the music!

We did our Louisiana Unit that week and learned about the foods, products and state symbols.  This art project made us all hungry for some crawfish!  I am so glad it's finally crawfish season!

We love to have celebrations around here and St. Patrick's Day was no exception.  It fell right on our "R" study week.  How wonderful was that!  We studied about rainbows and did lots of rainbow activities.

 We even tried to catch a leprechaun in our Leprechaun catchers!  They were WAY to sneaky!

 Maybe if we dress like one, we can trick them into coming back!

Snow Day???

This is what we woke up to this morning.

Now, we live in Louisiana.  We get "Hurricane Days" and the occasional "Ice Day" , but "Snow Days" are pretty much unheard of.  We are now on our 3rd snow day in a week.  We are not sure what to do with ourselves.  Each year we make snowballs out of paper in our classroom and have snowball fights inside.  This year, it didn't have it's same impact.  My kiddos were talking about their "real" snowball fights.  We make snowman pictures and read snowman stories, but honestly most of my kids have never seen or built a snowman.  I can't wait til we get back and hear all about their snow adventures!  I know my own girls have had a blast.  We have one hill in our city in the park and I think most of the city was at that one hill with their makeshift sleds--innertubes, boogie boards, rafts, laundry baskets, political signs --you get the picture--no sleds here! Ha!

It is absolutely beautiful!  I'm enjoying it from inside sitting by my fireplace working on my school stuff and new things for TPT.

Stay warm and check back soon for some pics from our classroom! 

Santa's, Candy Canes and Reindeer! Oh My!

During the holidays I tried to catch up and get my room ready for Christmas and collect my thoughts about all the things I wanted to teach for the next 3 weeks.  This first week we are doing Reindeer.  My little ones love learning about animals!  Of course, we had to sing "Rudolph"!  Then we rewrote the song choosing our own names and colored noses. 

 

Since it was cold and rainy for almost the whole week I also revised and made some new Christmas activities for my store on TeachersPayTeachers.  AAAHHH!  I love when I have more than a few minutes to work on my stuff. 

Just click on the images below to go straight to my store!

Get Ready to Do a Little Shopping!

I can't believe Christmas is just around the corner! We haven't even carved the turkey yet!  All the sales get me excited about shopping though!! I've been taking down the turkeys at school and putting the trees and lights in my room.  The kiddos will be so excited when they come back!

Check out my store on TeachersPayTeachers on Monday and Tuesday for a Cyber Monday Sale!  Everything at my store will be 20% off!!!!!!!!

All my new Christmas items will be there.  I've been making lots of new things during the holidays!  Can't wait to see y'all there!!!

We have been busy, busy, busy since all the Halloween excitement.  It's about this time of the year that my little ones finally "get it" and we can really start working.  It takes about this long to get our procedures and practicing down pat. 

I consider myself pretty organized (in fact, OCD about the whole thing) but I could not get my math centers managed.  I tried several different ways and nothing seemed to work with my kiddos.  I couldn't figure out how to let them play all the games, they lost pieces, mixed up games, had too many playing the games, you name it.  I couldn't decide if I wanted to group them by levels or give them free choice, And I couldn't remember what to put in all those boxes. 

I finally figured out a system that worked!  I have 15 little darlings (don't be jealous).  so I divided them into groups of 5.  There are 5 centers at each shelf with a colored monster on each box.

They look at the chart each morning to see which shelf they go to.  They can play with the friends that are also at that shelfm  in the space designated for that shelf. Each day I change their names.  I have different levels together so they can help each other and learn from each other.That works best for my little ones.  this way we can keep up with the chaos that seems to come at this time.

As far as remembering what's in each box, I take a picture of the inside of each box and then put them on one page.  Then each year I can remember what to put in them. 

We have been squeezing some Thanksgiving activities in too!
These are our "Thankful" books.  Each child gets a turn to take it home and write and illustrate what their family is thankful for.  They get to share it the next day.  We leave these in our Reading center all year.  At the end of the year after our Publisher's party, I take the books apart and put each child's page in their portfolio.

We also do lots of rewriting stories, poems and songs--making them our own.  They love to read things they have "written".  I wrote a poem for each letter of the alphabet and put it to a familiar tune.(they remeber them better if they are to music).  Then I made a version that gives them some options to make it their own.

I hope to get these up on TPT and Teacher's Notebook during the Thanksgiving Holidays! So check back!

We have been working on our Letters and Sounds book.  Each week we brainstorm things that start with the focus letter.  They draw it and dictate to me.  Some of my little ones are wanting to write the word themselves!

In our rug time we have begun to count by 10's.

And work on patterns.  Whoever is my Calendar Coach for the day gets to choose the correct turkey and make a pattern on his feathers.  They have to explain the pattern to the class before they put it on the calendar.  We get lots of different patterns and it lets them be as simple or complex as their ability lets them.

Last, but not least, for this post, I added the DJ/songleader to my jobs.  Their job is to choose a silly song that we have learned.  They get in the front of the group and lead in the motions and the words.  I usually let them pick 2 or 3. The song cards change out often. This is one of their favorite jobs! 

We Are Ready for Halloween!

As one of my little ones said today, "We decorated the whole room! Now we are ready for Halloween!"  And by glancing around, I guess we are.  We have done a week of Spiders and this week is Bats.  Next week we will finish up and do Pumpkins and head to the Pumpkin Patch.  Here are some views from our room:

 This is our Frog Counting. Even though we have content areas, we still have a letter focus each week.  This of course was during our "F" week and our "Number 6" week.

Every week we have a number focus and we write a class book to illustrate that number.  Our book for "Number 8" was 8 is Great!  Aren't we lucky we studied Spiders that week.  

 Each child made their own spider and then put the legs on however they wanted.  When they were done they wrote how many on each side.  We talked about different ways to make 8.  This is now in our book center.  

We did the same thing with bats this week.  Our number was 9.  Our book is 9 is Fine!

We used dots on the wings to make 9.

Our Glittery pumpkins on our Art take-home bags.

We made bats our of old black socks and hung them on our windows.  Very Spooky!!

And to finish decorating our room we hung our ghosts that we made in Art class!  

Now we are ready to Trick or Treat!!