Batty fun freebie!

Our field trip was AWESOME! We had sprinkling rain most of the day and found some muddy trails to the pumpkin patch but the kids LOVED the cider mill and pumpkin patch! It was so cool seeing kids who were new to our country stand in awe of a live pumpkin field!

Tomorrow starts our week of bat fun! I finished the emergent reader for "The Old Lady who Swallowed a Bat." I added color words to help kids practice reading the color words AND so we could make a retelling bead bracelet later in the week! (I had some kids sort my big bead container, great fine motor work!)
I wanted to share the reader and hope to take some pictures of the retelling bracelets this week.
Don't forget: B-b-b-bats, the only mammal to take to flight! :) (I can't wait to share that big book and song with my kiddos!!)
Click  HERE  for this freebie!

I've gone batty!!!

Wow! The first 6 weeks just flies by! I went from 17 kids (12 boys and 5 girls) to 25 kids (17 boys and 8 girls) in a matter of weeks! My room is MUCH more crowded!! I'm wearing tennis shoes to keep up with all the boys!! We are going full steam ahead with Daily 5 and so far have conquered Listen to a Story (Thanks to my DonorsChoose Cd players!) and Read to Self. Getting to Read to Someone Else tomorrow and Working with Words next year!
It's mid October and we are looking forward to heading to the cider mill/pumpkin patch soon! Our school has a large population of ELL students. This means doing traditional Halloween activities might not work. I've always done a few days on bats, but this year I'm going batty and doing a WHOLE week!
So I've got big plans!
1. I'm working on an emergent reader for "The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat". I remember last year how amazing the Gingerbread emergent reader/retelling bracelet from Kindergarten Crayons worked for retelling. Fran used beads on a bracelet for retelling, using one color for each character. That's my plan for this book too!!Last year I had students who could retell weeks after based on looking at that bracelet!!
2. I have seen the games where you put programmed cards in a pocket chart and hide one little card behind one of them. The kids read a card and try and find the hidden card. Well, I've made one using numbers and BATS!!

You can get your free copy HERE
3. We will be doing a schema/new learning/misconceptions chart. Can't wait! Plus I am going to make a labeling sheet!
Hope you are not quite so batty as I am:)
Susan

Reinventing the wheel.....

Sometimes I easily find JUST what I want . I'm not a fan of reinventing the wheel and there are many amazing K teachers out there making things I LOVE.
We've been working on recognizing color words. My collection of color word worksheets seem to be a bit hard this year. Actually, every year they tend to be hard for many kids. I really wanted a sheet with pictures for just ONE color, not mutiple. Right now we are on blue.
I searched TPT and google and never found JUST what I wanted.
What's a K teacher to do? MAKE MY OWN!! (Even though I am fighting a sinus infection and REALLY need to go to bed.
What's a super cool K teacher to do with that sheet?
Why SHARE it of course!:)

Click Here to get your copy!!!

SWEEET things for my classroom!!

I spent today putting together things at home to get ready for working in my classroom again. Basically I stopped procrastinating and finished some projects!

First up: LAMINATING! 
I don't know about your school, but our laminator is constantly either out of film or broken! I found a deal on amazon.com about 18 months ago for a pocket laminator by Scotch. WOWZA! This thing ROCkS! It only cost me $16 and it's great! Yes, I can only get an 8 1/2 x11 sheet in , but it works FABULOUSLY! Plus, I found 5mil laminating pockets on amazon for under $20. Seriously, this is the ONLY size to go with! (You can use plain printer paper and not tag board and still get great results!! )
Here's a link to the pockets I use:
5 mil laminating pockets, 100 for under $20!

Then you can purchase the laminator also!:
Right now it's $30, but keep your eyes out, it sells for less often! (Some stores carry it too!)
Scotch laminator


One of my favorite papers to laminate was this  pete the cat freebie from Heidi songs! Can you see my new Pete the cat I ordered from Amazon too? My littles will LOVE him!!  I need to get velcro on the pages (see Heidi's post) but that can wait til later this week!

 Another project I finished up was my gumball sight word center. I purchased a gumball from where else...AMAZON. :) I used gems and homemade modge podge recipe from Pinterest to add sight words. My helpful hint would be to print the words REALLY small, cause those gem suckers are super small ! I also did numbers and letters...

Finally, I found this GREAT sign on Pinterest!! I laminated it and put it in a picture frame. I sing this song with my kiddos daily for the first few months and they LOVE it. I have a book with pictures, so this will be icing on the cake!!

 Click  HERE to get this great freebie!
Hope your year is off to a fabulous start!!

Helper chair covers AND a freebie!!

Who ever thinks teachers don't work during the summer has not been a kindergarten teacher!
I've pinned ALL summer! LOL! I also made a pinterest project (gumball letters and words) and sewed new chair covers for my daily helpers!

I also made a "How many days have we been in school" sign for my calendar area. I'm giving you a free copy!! Click on this link for your copy!
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-CnVuZ5ZdeBX2s4TjQwNnlJMW8/edit

Hope your back to school is an easy transition!

Kindergarten teachers are all sorts of colorful!!

Today I had the great opportunity to participate in The Color Run in Grand Rapids! (Michigan). It was a ton of fun and I got to share it with my friend!

I also thought I'd blog about the experience of doing a 5k, just in case you're like me: not in awesome shape and pretty much a newbie!!:)

So here's the story:

I signed up for this event a few months back, I had heard about it from some online friends. Sounded way cooler than some plain old 5k!!

I also liked that the color run advertised that it was not a speedy race, but more about FUN! (and who is more fun than kindergarten teachers?)

I talked my neighbor into doing the run with me. Let me say that Grand Rapids is about 1 hr 15 min drive from here......

So we had GRAND plans of training..Then summer and all the stickyness and busy schedules came!

So, I think we walked 2 times? We also did some zumba classes (toning and aqua, her much more than me!)

I offered to drive. The alarm was set for 5 am. OMGOODNESS! I NEVER get up at 5am unless I'm going to Cedar Point or Cancun!! LOL!

I did okay going to sleep early last night, until the thump thump of the dog in the bathtub at 2a.m..... Let her outside, then flopped for a good 30 minutes before falling asleep.

Checked the weather in the a.m.: It was a forecasted 71 degrees! How AWESOME!

Drove to GR and my neighbor (and awesome friend!) spotted a SWEET parking spot in a lot one block from the start! (and it was FREE! Teachers LOVE FREE!) The best part of the sweet spot is that we could grab our color run tshirt and put it in the car! Put our towels on the back of the car seats to prep for the ride home, and  slammed a 5 hr energy drink on the advice of my teacher friend, Ann. (she's not only a runner/super athlete, but she's a middle school science teacher, so she had to be RIGHT!) Here we are all pristine and white..LOL! 

We walked up to get checked in. The paperwork we were emailed said, "get there early! The lines will be long!" Well, apparently most of GR picked up their packets the night before! It was super fast and we had time to take pics, walk around and let this small bladdered teacher find the porta potties..

We lined up in Wave 2. Did I mention there was 11 THOUSAND people participating? Oh my goodness!! Tutus, bride dresses, babies, littles, bigs, so cool!

SO there I was, NERVOUS as ALL get out. I knew I couldn't run it. I had only jogged maybe a 5 minute stretch once on the treadmill when doing C25K earlier this year. I hadn't run more than 1/10 of a mile since probably college! So, we got all pumped with the music, and saw the first wave GO!

There we were...and then the second wave (US!) moved up and were off!

Did I say I don't run? Or really jog? Well, I totally impressed myself folks. I decided that no matter what I should start and end the 5k jogging!! So, we jogged most of the first kilometer. The first color explosion area came up pretty soon!!  It was purple (my favorite color! Go Kstate!) There is no explaining the color zones. Okay there is, but until you DO it, you won't really get it!:) You walk by and tons of volunteers use bottles of colored corn starch powder and spray it all over you! The first station wasn't too dusty!

Well of course right after that my right leg started having a shin splint issue. I walked as fast as I could and the 2nd color zone seemed to take FOR EV ER!! After we got pummeled with orange, I stopped and did some ankle circles and stretched for a second. Oh my that ankle was TIGHT!

So on we went. I jogged every down hill of the race:) We got blasted with Pink and Yellow:) It was super!! The weather was gorgeous and a bit cool was awesome!

One of the coolest parts was the road back when you saw later waves of runners with their VERY white shirts compared to our very NOT white shirts!!

We jogged one more downhill, and I pushed myself around the corner of the next light. We walked one block and then I realized we were close to the FINISH!

So I kicked it in high gear and RAN the rest of the way (when there was a clear path!) . It felt GREAT to run across a race line!!

Did I say I was proud of myself yet? It felt GREAT! (and truthfully , if my leg didn't hurt I could have jogged a lot more, breathing wise I was doing great!)

After we finished we moved up onto the plaza. Every 10 or 15 minutes they would do a color throw. Each runner got a packet of color. Brandy and I had already thrown ours, so we went up to benefit from the big throw. It was COOL, Crazy, and a bit scary for a second!:)

AND we got COVERED! (as you can see in my pic above!)

So, there it is, Kindergarten teachers ARE Colorful! (and I think I'll sign up for another 5k and run a bit more next time!!)

Oh Target, you temptress....

I LOVE me some dollar zone deals at Target!! I wanted to share with you some of my new favorites that I found!
First up...

This super cute tray for papers. I use a tray each day for morning work. This one is super cute and at only $1, I'm okay if it doesn't last!!

Next up:

Oh my goodness! Are you KIDDING me? I sewed some seat covers a few years back and need to redo my helper covers. But these are nice cheap cool ones to give to a hard working students..and $1 !!! WOOT!

Finally, thanks to my teacher friend posting her purchase, I got some of these:

 

It's a cute little 2 pack of magnetic erasers.

I saw someone post a picture of dry erase sleeves in the dollar section. You KNOW I'm going to go look for those tomorrow!! I also bought some little caddies. I am really going back and forth on how to arrange my table tops this year. Last year I did a spinny caddy from Target. It got messy quickly and I couldn't store folders at the desk too...This year I found the SMALL four pocket caddies, those might work! So get your Target on and pick up some great deals!!