August Pick 3 Pinterest Party

I am linking up with the Inspired Ow'ls Corner and Pawsitively Teaching with my top three Pinterest picks for back to school.

 Have you seen this sweet sweet note to have students open before the first night of school? I love this sweet note and already have mine printed and ready for my soon-to-be kinders. You have to check this pin out. I can't wait to give this to the parents on meet the teacher night for them to give to their kiddo.

I totally forgot I liked this pin a while back and I would love to use this Daily Focus board in my classroom. I think I am going to use this in my classroom this year but make it interactive on my SmartBoard to focus on during carpet time.

 I always read The Mixed Up Chameleon and A Color of His Own the first week of school. This art would be so much fun and cute to do with the class.

I would love to hear about your back to school ideas and pins because I am always looking for fresh ideas. Please share a favorite pin in the comments or link up. :)

An InLinkz Link-up

Fun Friday

I am linking up with Freebielicious again and it's all about Fun Friday today. We are sharing the fun things we do in our classroom.

The term Fun Friday tugs a string for me. Do you call your Friday "Fun Friday" in your classroom or with your students? At the school I taught at in Mississippi I would call every Friday "Fun Friday" with my students and so did the other teachers. Well that was until the principals kept telling us not to call Friday "Fun Friday". The principals would say- We want students to think every day at school is a fun day. I kind of see where they were coming from. I loved the school I taught at in MS. and love the school I now teach at in Alberta, Canada. I am so lucky to be able to teach at a school where we get to have fun every day.

In the spring we release the butterflies that we watched grow from a caterpillar to a butterfly.

We go for walks on the trails near the school.

Legos are a must in our classroom. Students love to socialize and create using Legos.

We are very fortunate that we get two 25 min. recess breaks every day but sometimes we need to take a break and go out a little bit earlier or at the end of the day.

Who doesn't love a good tea party?

Another free choice activity is the train set.

At the end of each day my kinders get to choose a free choice activity for the last 20-30 minutes of school. I love that this time allows them to socialize, explore and play.

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!

All About This Teacher with the Kinder Tribe

My friend Amanda over at Mrs. Pauley's Kindergarten is part of the new blog Kinder Tribe so I just had to link up & share. If you have not checked out this blog it's a must! I am absolutely in love with the blog design too.

 So here is a little bit about me...

Wow. Has it only been 4 years?! I feel like it should be waaay more. I guess since it took me 5 years to graduate college, then moving to Canada caused me to not be able to teach for 1 year and this past year I have been on maternity leave so there's that. Well I feel like I have been teaching for longer. I am not sure if that's a good thing or bad thing. lol. Maybe I just feel like I have been teaching for longer since I will be 30 this year. Yikes. My 1st year I taught grade one. This year will make my 5th year teaching. I am teaching grade 2, along with kinder this year.

 I would be lost without my phone. I have to have it to take a million photos a day of my sweet baby girl. I know I am biased but isn't she just adorable. I also added that I can't live without my car because for some reason my hubby thinks I should walk to work. Yes, I know my school is maybe like 2-3 blocks up the street but seriously... I live in freaking Canada. Are you kidding me?! It snows like crazy and it gets to like -15 outside in the winter. No sir. I will stick my little fanny in my heated car seats where I am protected from the snow and cold, plus I have to drive my little one to day home.

My stapler and planner are my fav. school supplies. I use my stapler too many times to count in the day to staple newsletters in the agendas, to staple my sight word readers together and put up student work on the bulletin boards. The list could go on forever. I would lose my mind if I didn't have my planner to keep everything straight.

How can you choose only one favorite book? There are too many good ones to choose from. I went ahead and chose The Mixed Up Chameleon because it is one of my favorite to read that first week of school.

Again. How can I choose one? Apparently I am not good at choosing just one. My favorite blogs for kinder are Elizabeth at Kickin It in Kindergarten and Amanda at Mrs. Pauley's Kindergarten. You wouldn't know it, but I actually started blogging and creating TPT products about 2 or 3 years ago. These 2 lovely ladies were my first blogger friends. While I kind of let my little ole blog get some dust on it due to life getting crazy busy with having a baby and being on maternity leave for so long, Amanda and Elizabeth have been kicking the blogging world's butt. By that I mean they are rocking it. I know Amanda has had a few small breaks with being crazy busy with school. I don't know how she does it... being a mom, teacher, student, blogger and tpt creator. Ahhh! She is my hero. I am so- ADD that it's so hard for me to stay focused. Elizabeth has pretty much become famous in the blogger and tpt world I would say. lol. She will soon be super busy with a precious baby girl that is on her way. I'm sure you already follow these lovelies but if you don't you should. :) And thanks ladies.

I absolutely love teaching kindergarten. I was blessed to have been put in this grade and been able to stay in it. These little kids just amaze me at how much the learn and grow in just a few months. They truly do leave for first grade a brand new person. It's incredible and they melt my heart.

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.