Ready Confetti

Thank you Pinterest again! I found this adorable and amazing Ready Confetti idea over at First Grader at Last thanks to Sarah.

These were super easy to print and prep.

I put a little bit of confetti in a clear small jewelry bag and taped it in the inside.

I folded the Ready Confetti poem and placed it in the "Do Not Open" sheet.

I used a hole punch & ribbon to keep the poem in place and add a touch of cuteness. :)

I absolutely love this! I just found out our meet the teacher night got cancelled so now I have to find out my parents' addresses so I can mail these to my soon-to-be kinders before the first day of school on Thursday.

The Fruit Trend Train...Choo Choo

Everyone is talking back to school but I am trying to drag out this summer as long as I can, especially since I have to return back to work at the end of the month. Our kiddos have their first day of school on September 3rd. I just can't get off this summer's fruit train trend. Last time I brought you the pineapples but today it's all about watermelon. 

 I heard this is a super cute book and I plan 

on finding it and reading it to my kiddos this year.

 How awesome are these watermelon counting mats? What's even better is that they are FREE. Head over to Modern Preschool and check them out. I found these via Pinterest.

 Wear a watermelon bikini?! Umm... yes please!

 I am totally the mom that uses any excuse to have a theme "party" and have all the babies over for play dates. I heart <3 this watermelon decor.

 This is such a cute DIY watermelon tote. 

If you want all the details on these just head 

over to my Pinterest board to check them out.

I loved my Pineapple Lovely Little Planner so I had to create a Watermelon Lovely Little Planner. 

If you are looking for a teacher planner/ lesson planner that will save you time and money then you don't have to look any further. It's all right here! If there is something that you would like added to this planner all you have to do is let me know and I will do my best to create it for you.

I really like this watermelon print. I am a big fan of fun and bright colored paper.

This planner includes: cover page, info. page, events page, holidays & special dates page(s) that include American & Canadian holidays, birthday lists page(s), a glimpse at the year page(s) for long year planning, email list, transportation list, schedule sheet, monthly overview page(s), weekly meal plan sheets, make a note of it sheet, lesson plan pages, guided reading recording sheets, guided math recording sheets, writer's workshop recording sheets, checklist pages, notes page(s), spine covers.

Throwback Thursday

I am linking up with Freebielicious for a Throwback Thursday. I am taking it back to a post from October 2013. I would've shared a post from the first days of school but I was so bad at actually taking photos because you know how busy that first week is. 

Back to 2013...
Ahhhh! These past weeks have been CRAAA-ZY!!! Kudos to you lovely ladies & dudes that are able to blog every day. I feel absolutely terrible for not finding enough time to get on here more often but every extra minute I get is spent with my nose in my Canadian history class that I have to pass in order to get my permanent certification in Canada. UGH! It really stinks.... It's like pulling teeth to make myself read. I CAN NOT wait until this course is over, well if I can pass it that is. I pray that I can pass this course even if it is by a thin thread.

On the plus side I have lots of photos & freebies to share with y'all :)

We are working on patterns. I made these strips of cube patterns so that students can extend the pattern. Freebie--- cube pattern strips

We learned about the letter & short sound of Aa last week. We did an apple observation. The kiddos loved it! They predicted whether their apple would sink or float and then checked their prediction.

Download our Apple Observation Sheet

Check out the Apple Unit on TPT, or TN,. 

We measured our apples.

We recorded our observations.

Students read their Fall Sight Word Reader. Another FREEBIE

I saw a cute craft on Pintrest similar to this so I free handed a template for these fun scarecrows.

The kiddos enjoyed making these. This was our first "big kid" writing. Together we wrote the sentence- I see a scarecrow. Then students created their own sentence by telling me what they would like to write about their scarecrow. I wrote their sentence on a sticky note and they wrote it on the scarecrow writing sheet.

Next week the students will begin to use the letter sounds that they know to write words.

Here are our turkeys and corn crafts that students created for Canadian Thanksgiving.

Students created these name plates on poster boards using snips of construction paper about 3 weeks ago but I just got these up in the classroom. I know I know... bad teacher.

A few books we read for the letter Aa.

Our letter Aa cards for the kiddos to refer to through out the week.

Letter of the Week Picture Cards

Our Apple Graphing

Grab it for a buck here or find it in the Appl-i-cious Unit

After reading Johnny Appleseed we created Johnny Appleseed hats.

The Letter Dd & Dinosaur Unit

Students created their own patterns with these dino cards.

Freebie--- Dino Pattern Cards

Dino Pattern Sheet

We've learned the letters Pp, Uu, Oo, Mm, Xx, Aa & Dd so far.

Students write & read words that have the letters that we've learned so far.

The dino pattern sheet that you can grab above. :)

Students LOVED being Paleontologists and creating dino fossils using noodles.

Our paleontologist hat we made using construction paper.

Our witch writing... Another Pintrest find!

Students listed their witch brew ingredients.

These turned out cute!

Tonight our school had a Halloween dance which is a great way for the PTA to raise money. There were a good amount of other Minnie Mouses there too but I was the only one with a red dress.

I like this post because it has quiet a few freebies which I love sharing with other teachers. :) Happy Thursday y'all!

Wonderful Idea >>> Wednesday

 The creative peeps over at Freebie-licious are hosting a linky all week to share some things with you. Wednesday is all about a wonderful idea that works for you in your teacher life, classroom or just anything that you would like to share. I am all about what's easy, organized and works best for me.

First, let me start off my saying I love love love Pinterest but it kills me when I see pins for meet the teacher night and a teacher has like 2-5 stations for the parents to grab all these papers to fill out. I'm sorry if you're one of those teachers (no disrespect), but ain't nobody got time for that. lol. I will save the loonger post all about that for next week where I am going to share ALL about meet the teacher night, first impression and the first day of school. 

Okay. Okay. Let me get back on track here. One of my go-to things is my student info. binder. I keep my student info. sheets and all student assessments in this big binder. I do this so that when I need to mark the assessments, contact parents or fill out report cards then I have everything I need in one binder. It also makes it super easy to bring home all this info. for whenever I may need it.

 My binder looks like this and is empty right now because it's summer summer time y'all.

I created this student info. binder cover page and spine cover which you can grab for free by clicking here. 

Below is what my binder looks like on the inside although it is empty minus this one student info. sheet from last year. I add tabs and put each student's name on a tab. The Welcome Parents sheet is what my student info. sheet looked like last year.

Here is what my student info. sheet will look like for this year. I will print these front/back to make it one page. Okay, so this is kind of where I was going with my rant above. lol. Sorry. I have EVERYTHING that I need parents to fill out on one page. :) I will have this student info. sheet available for you next week for free so stay tuned. 

Here is what my beginning of the school year assessment looks like for my kinders. This will also be available when I talk about the 1st day/week of school so stayed tuned for this goodie as well.

I think having one binder for student info. & assessments is a great idea. Before I was always having to pull out all of my assessments from the filing cabinet and then file them away again after parent conferences and report cards. (insert monkey with hands covering face emoji) It was a hot mess. This is just what works for me! What also works for me is having only 1 student info. sheet for parents to fill out at meet the teacher night. I much prefer to spend my time talking to all of the parents, telling them about myself and my expectations for the school year. Again, stayed tuned for next week where you can get all the details about how that goes down in my classroom.