Rainbow Brights Chalkboard Kids... AND a FREEBIE!!

Hi Ya'll!  I have been busy working on this classroom set for a fellow teacher for a WHILE now.  She gave me some ideas what she was looking for and I started creating.  I have to admit this has turned out cuter than I ever imagined.  She wanted BRIGHT colors, she wanted chalkboard and she loves the Melonheadz Kidlettes. So I meshed all three and came up with this.

As usual I've bundled lots of stuff in this pack so here's a little sneak peak of some of the items:

Alphabet

One of my favorite things in this set are the shape posters... I love the polka dots!

There are even calendar pieces that go with this set.  My FAVORITE part of this set are the Color Posters!  I know they don't go with my room but I want to print them out and use them anyway!!!

There is a ton more to this set and I won't bore you with all the details but if you would like to check out the preview file you can go HERE. I am having a GIVEAWAY on my facebook page right now... so if you want to enter, like my page, share the post, tag a friend and they can win the pack too!  If you don't like bright colors or want a different theme, I have lots of other decor packs in my store you can pick from if you win!  I will be choosing a winner tomorrow at 5 p.m. CST!  If you just can't wait, everything in my store is 20% off today and tomorrow! (July 29 and July 30) 

I mentioned in the title of this text that there is a FREEBIE today!  This pack inspired me to create some posters with cute rainbow sayings... they turned out like this:

With all her cute kidlettes, Nikki makes it SO hard to choose which cutie patooties to use ~ so I made two different options.

And this is definitely my new mantra... Enjoy your last few days of summer break and don't forget to play in the rain, laugh often, smile, paint rainbows, believe in fairy tales, sing silly songs and DREAM BIG!  Click on any of the pictures above to grab this for your classroom! Happy Tuesday!

Freebies and Birthday/Back to School Sale!

The last few days have been super busy!  As I'm sure it is for all of you... back to school is here and I'm checking things off my to do list only not as fast as I want.  I don't have much to share today - because I'm getting ready to head out the door to celebrate my birthday! Nothing spectacular other than spending the day with my kiddos and having a dinner out ~ (Actually that's pretty spectacular) but I feel like I need a little break from it all. :)

I recently went to a whole brain teaching conference and absolutely L.O.V.E.D. it!  I used whole brain some in my classroom last year but now that I've experienced the workshop I'm ready to give it all a try this year.  First freebie I'm sharing is the WBT rules and signs I made:

You can download them for free HERE.

I have included these WITH and WITHOUT backgrounds in case you want to save some ink :)

I'm really excited about implementing Whole Brain and one piece that I'm SUPER excited about is the Super Improvers Wall.  All students start at the bottom and work their way up to the top by accomplishing goals... not just accomplishing but by showing IMPROVEMENT.  Students strive to make it to the top! You can always visit the Whole Brain Teaching website for more information.  SO - My next freebie are the super improver wall headers (10 levels and 10 different colors):

 Click on the first image to download for FREE!

But wait ~ there's more!  LOL For those of you who are interested in a Forest or an Owl Theme this year, I've had some requests for Daily 5 Posters in those themes.  So I've recently posted those for free also in my TPT Store.

These are the Forest Posters. Click on the image to download :)

These are the Owl Posters. Click on the image to download :)

Both of these poster sets also come with and without the backgrounds to save on ink.

There are so many other things I've been working on for Open House and the First Day of School... but I will save them for tomorrow. 

My daughter surprised me this morning with a homemade card.  It was super sweet... but I could've done without the birthday candles on the cake. :)  Takes the guessing out of how old I am! 

I just realized she left the d out of birthday.  She's really into writing in cursive right now. As far as I'm concerned homemade cards are 1,000 times better than Hallmark ;)

One last thing...I'm throwing a sale in my TPT store today through Saturday!  EVERYTHING is 20% off!

How many more days for you?  Our first school day is Wednesday, August 14th. I'm already getting the jitters!  Have a great day!

Saxon Math FREEBIE!

It's still H.O.T. in Missouri ~ 107 degrees today!  I was going through all my math stuff today and thought I would share my printable math calendar pages I created to go along with our Saxon Math Meeting.  I know many of you do not teach Saxon but if you use any of these same components, these pages might work for you.  If you teach Saxon (1st Grade) then this should be perfect!

Last year, I found that my kiddos needed something more to keep them engaged during our math meeting.  We started using white boards - but some aspects were hard for them to do on a blank white board and then I saw lots of doodling... SO - I came up with these pages to help keep them engaged, on track, and as a nice reference for many of my kiddos - especially my intervention students.  I used these two pages copied front to back for the first 40 lessons:

After the first 40 lessons - I began using one page with all the calendar components.  To save paper, I placed these pages in plastic sleeves and students used (skinny) dry erase markers to interact with their calendar page.  It definitely helped keep my kiddos on track, focused and my intervention students loved having the resources at their fingertips to answer questions and follow along.  Click on any of the pictures to download for FREE!

I'm not sure how many Saxon Math users are out there ~ but I hope you find this to be a good resource.  I would love to hear your thoughts!  My TPT 20% off sale ends tonight, Friday, July 6th at midnight.  Have a wonderful weekend and stay COOL! 

Gung Hay Fat Choy and a Freebie!

Last week we celebrated Chinese New Year.  Since it was the year of the dragon, we made "Dragon Lanterns" to hang in our classroom.  The kids colored a dragon pattern, glued it to red construction paper and then wrote their name in chinese... or at least tried. Here is a picture of my example that my daughter made it for me.  She is in 3rd grade.

I went to a website that allowed me to type in my students name and then it gave me their name written in chinese.  I saved the pictures to a file, printed and cut each one out to give to my students.  They LOVED seeing their names in chinese.  I had a couple different names in my classroom that could not be found, so I used their middle names instead.  They still loved them.  Here is a picture of my name in chinese and what the cards look like.

I also made some chinese fortune cookies for my students - NOT real ones, but ones made from cupcake liners.  I saw the idea on pinterest and thought they were cute.  Here are how mine turned out.

I made up my fortune strips to go inside them.  I made these REALLY late at night, so my creativity was not flowing very well.  I ended up doubling up on the sayings to make 22.  Here is a copy of the strips if you are interested.  Click on the image to download.

I also created a few graphic organizers and some writing paper to write facts about Chinese New Year.  Here is the freebie if you are interested.

We had a LOT of fun learning about Chinese New Year and what animal zodiac sign we are.  Hope you had as much fun!  Oh and I updated my post on the Snow Shovels and Scooping Up Nouns.  Scroll to the bottom and I have uploaded the patterns if you are interested.  Have a great Sunday!

Don't you just L.O.V.E. Freebies?

So I sat down this evening to send out a reminder about my 100 follower celebration giveaway and to my surprise I now have 199 followers!  I am AMAZED (and thrilled) about all the awesome teachers and comments I have encountered on this little place in cyberspace SO I thought what better way to celebrate than to send out some freebies.  So sit back and get ready to download!  I was introduced to the Daily 5 and CAFE' books last summer by my teacher friends.  I took them with me on my vacation to St. Thomas last year and enjoyed every page as I finished both books listening to the waves of the carribbean ocean.  I came back so excited and couldn't wait to implement my Daily 5 routine and put up my CAFE board.  Here is what my CAFE board looked like:

After I put up my cafe board, my teacher partners started talking about switching the letters around in CAFE to FACE and introduce these strategies as part of "The FACE of a reader".  I really liked this idea and thought my first graders would relate a lot better to this analogy ~ so I changed my board to look like this:

As you all know, I have a camping theme in my room (and very partial to polka dots) so I created a bunch of CAFE (or FACE) headers for my board before I finally chose my favorite to display.  I printed out the headers on paper then glued them to polka dotted scrapbook paper and laminated them. 

I then typed up ALL the strategies that go with each header and cut out, laminated and would place on my board as I taught each strategy.  (I know this goes against the sisters a little - but it was my first year teaching first grade and couldn't imagine these little guys writing all these strategies out on sentence strips.)  I surrounded each strategy with a border the same color as my header section.  For example:  All fluency strategies are outlined in blue, all accuracy strategies are outlined in orange, etc.  This helped easily locate and organize my strategy cards.  I only wish I had a picture of my board AFTER my strategies were up, but no such luck.  You will find a variety of header cards below (click on the pictures to download) and then strategy cards for each header.

 

Comprehension Strategy Cards

Accuracy Strategy Cards

Fluency Strategy Cards

Expanding Knowledge Strategy Cards

I hope you find these useful.  I am so thankful to each and everyone of my followers.  I don't feel like I have much to offer but love teaching, love sharing and love kids.  I hope to have much more as the new school year begins. 

OH ~ and don't forget that tomorrow is the last day you can enter my giveaway to win any one item from Mrs. Will's Kindergarten TpT store AND a $25 Target gift card! 

Good Luck!