I'm a Cheese Head and Word Family Fun

As I was blog stalking Elizabeth at Kickin' It In Kindergarten, I found out about this great Linky where you can find other bloggers from your state!!  I love finding other Wisconsin bloggers....so some day (when it stops snowing!!) we can have a bloggy meet up!  Head on over to Diane's blog Fifth in the Middle and find your state and link up!!  She even has these cute buttons you can grab and put on your blog!

Now on to some Word Family Fun!

During our RtI time this week we are working on word families and I am lucky enough to have the group that  understands word families already! So we have been able to do some fun activities. 

Yesterday I gave them 6 word family endings and pieces of construction paper.  I asked them to each brainstorm 2 words that fit in each word family.  When they were done they each had 12 cards. Then I put them in groups of 4 and we put all of their cards in a large bag and mixed them up. Then time ran out for the day!

So today when they came in they got back into their groups and spread all of the cards from their bag in the middle of the table and played word family memory. If the words were in the same word family they were a match!  They loved it and it was even a little bit challenging for them because I gave them the -ick and -ock word families, so they really had to pay attention.

Here are some pics!

 Ready to play!

Woohoo a match!!!

Another match!!

Hope everyone has a great Friday!!!!!

Jury Duty and a Math FREEBIE

I wish I could post about all of the cute projects and learning we did last week but...........I really have no idea what my kiddos did last week!!! GASP!!! Why you might ask????  

Well I had JURY DUTY!! 

And despite my best efforts to fidget,  look and the clock and explain that my kiddos certainly wouldn't be able to live without their teacher I was picked to serve on a jury for an actual trial!!!!!  Obviously they have no idea how hard it is for a teacher to sit still and only pay attention to one thing at a time!! I was constantly reminding myself to pay attention to what was going on and not think about the other 100 things I could be doing!

The case actually turned out to be pretty interesting and I was able to come home at night.  However we had strict instructions not to blog or use other social media - GASP!!!!! I survived (barley)!

Of course since I wasn't planning on being picked so I only prepped for 2 out of the 3 days ahead of time. I was planning to squeeze in all of the fun projects that I didn't want to leave for the sub on Friday....alas no such luck...instead I was scrambling to make plans for Friday.  Luckily I have an AWESOME team who pitched in and made things so much easier.  My kiddos survived too.....mostly.....as Friday was also our drill day so they had a fire drill, tornado drill and lock down drill with the sub!!! (I felt awful for her!)  We did  have a serious talk today about the expected behavior during said drills regardless of if I am there for them or not! 

So to make up for not having anything cute to share from last week I have linked up a Teen Number Math freebie below.  I am using it as a recording sheet in one of my math centers this week, but you can also use it on its own.  In my math center the kids are picking a teen number card and then building the number with 10's rods and 1's cubes. Next they find the number on the sheet below and cut and paste the 10's rods and 1's cubes and make it on the ten frames. Click HERE to grab your free copy!  I would love to hear your feedback if you download it!

Hope everyone has a good week!  Hopefully I will have pictures to share this week!!!

Valentine's Day Sight Word Freebie

Happy Monday! I wanted to share a little love with you all before Valentine's Day.  I just finished another sight word book called You Can Have My Heart and uploaded it to TpT. Until Valentine's Day you can click on the picture below and grab it for FREE, after that it will become a paid item.  I am using it in literacy centers this week and my kiddos love it.  I hope your kiddos do too! If you grab it I would love to know what you think!!  Happy Valentine's week!

I Survived the 100th Day......sort of

Friday was our 100th day of school!!!  I love doing fun thing in the classroom but last week just seemed REALLY stressful, I HATE weeks like that.  Especially when I don't know why, my kiddos was really good so it wasn't that! I did have a parent issue that was drug out for the whole week (like I got an email on Sunday night and it wasn't resolved until the end of the day Friday!) and then turned out to be something really easily solved, so I guess that must have been part of it.  But anyway we did manage to have some FUN on Friday!

We started by making these cute 100's day hats.  My kiddos spent about 45 minutes or maybe more writing the numbers 1-100 in groups of 10 on strips for their hats. The kiddos did a GREAT job, you could have heard a pin drop in my room while they worked. Then they arranged them in order on a sentence strip and glued them down.  Next we added the cute front plate from the 100th day of school hat by Kinder Craze    and Q-tip painted the 100 dots.  The kiddos loved the painting!

 Then DISASTER struck!  It was my own fault!  I was being impatient! It was getting close to lunch time and  I had other fun activities planned!  So instead of waiting for the paint to dry before I fit their hats on them, I started stapling them while the paint was wet!  Can you guess what happened next?????  Yup I got paint all over my cute t-shirt that we had made just for the 100th day of school!  Oh and did I mention the paint was on my chest and that we had a staff outing that night at a local restaurant and I didn't bring any other shirt to change into and I had a meeting with the above mentioned parent after school!!!! So yes I met with the parent and went out for beverages with paint on my chest!!!  But the hats were cute!

So after lunch I hid 100 Hersey's kisses with the numbers 1-100 written on the bottom for the kiddos to find and put on our 100's chart.  I wrote this note and put it on the door to our room. They had to read the note before they came in and listen to the rules no running, you can only get one kiss at a time, you have to put it on the chart on the right number before you can find another.  I only had 1 (ok 3) kiddos walk around with a handful that I then had to take and hide again. And we only had 1 kiss we couldn't find (luckily I had extras and could write the number on the bottom and hide it quickly).  Yes that means there is still a kiss hidden somewhere in the room!

 Here is our completed chart!  You can't tell but it was an AABBCC pattern.  We then figured out how many kisses we could each have. It ended up being 5 per person!  They were excited!

In the afternoon we made the cute Zero the Hero craftivity from Foxwell Forest and read Miss Bindergarten Celebrates the 100th Day of Kindergarten. Then we made our 100's day snack mix with the 100 items each of the kids brought in.  They loved it!

 Overall it was a great day and I survived......but my shirt didn't!

Reading Level Freebie, Number Game, and a Giveaway

Sooooo my report cards are FINALLY done!  They seem like they took FOREVER this time (it might be because I kept getting sidetracked with blogs...giveaways....and sales) but they are done and out!!!  I created a sheet to put in with our report cards that explains the Fountas and Pinnell guided reading levels that we use.  We explain the levels at a parent meeting at the beginning of the year but I figure if they are anything like me they have lost the sheets we gave out and only vaguely remember what we said!  If you would like your FREE copy just click on the picture below!

I was also distracted from report cards because I won some great clip art from Erica over at Blooming in First Grade. So I just had to make something with them!  In math we are working on our tricky teen numbers and my kiddos just LOVE a good game of I Have Who Has so I made a 0-20 version with Erica's super cute clip art.  You can click on the picture if you would like to check out my I Have Who Has Game in  my TpT store.

And last but by no means least......my friend Nicki over at Mrs. Thigpen's Kindergarten is having a 100 follower giveaway!!!  It is big and you don't want to miss it!! The contest ends February 10th so head on over and check it out you won't be disappointed she is awesome!!

Currently and Freebie

I know I am a little late linking up for the Farley for the February Currently, but today was CRAZY!!!  It was my son's last pinewood derby race and my hubby has been OBSESSED with learning how to build the best car (no really he has spent 100's of hours researching, prototyping, and networking).  Then he also helped some other boys in his den with their cars so he was STRESSED out about them all doing well.  Luckily everyone did great but it was a LOOOONG day!

But anyway here is my currently!  I am the only one left up so I have control of the t.v. (which never happens)! I should be doing report cards but I keep putting them off!! Actually I just have comments left to do.  I will have to finish those tomorrow after I am done shopping the big TpT sale! And my pet peeve is all about people leaving stuff out for other to clean up, whether it is my students, my kids, my hubby it seems to happen all the time!!

I am also late linking up with Freebielicious for Fabulicious Freebies on the First, but I wanted to share our fun Pirate freebies from our Pirate unit last week, there are 2 of them! 

 We really want to do an art project but didn't want to do people pirates so we decided to do Owl Pirates instead!  We made them as a glyph and the kids loved them! You can click on the picture below to take you to the google doc with the patterns for the Owl Pirate.  You can either copy them onto construction paper or make tracers. If you want to see more pics of these owls I blogged about them here.

I also created a Pirate Story Map to use with my kiddos this week.  You can pick any pirate story to use it with.  We used it after we read How I Became a Pirate.  We also got to see the play How I Became a Pirate at a local theater on Friday.  It was great (as long as we don't talk about the student who was fooling around in his chair and fell off and hit his head on the chair in front of him, who was occupied by a parent chaperone of course!)! Click on the picture below to grab your copy of the glyph we used to make the owl pictured above and the Pirate Story Map.  Hope you can use them!

Super Sale Linky

I am linking up with Khrys from Keepin it Kool In Kinderland for her Super Sale Linky.  The poor think is stuck in bed after surgery (BOO), but good for us because she had time to think up this great linky party!  All you have to do is be participating in the TpT Sunday Super Sale and then pick a few items you are excited about being on sale, blog about them and link up!  Easy! Click on the picture to take you to the linky post!

I have been SLOWLY adding thing to my TpT store, so there isn't as much there as I would like, but I want to make sure that everything that is in my store is stuff I have used with my kiddos this year.

So first up is my Snowman Games for words families.  My kiddos actually cheered this week when I got this game out again!  What cheering for practicing reading word family words?!? Yes they really did cheer! It is super easy to play and it is already inexpensive, on Sunday it will be REALLY cheap! Click on any of the pictures and it will take you to the product in my TpT store.

My kiddos also loved the games that were in my Winter Centers for Addition and Subtraction pack.  We used them over the last few weeks and I will pull out the addition and subtraction cards again in a few weeks for more review.

I also have differentiated sight word books (not as many as I would like to have done, but I digress) available.  I use these in my literacy centers every week to practice the sight word we are working on.  The link below is for the book that works on the words in, the. But there are also a few others that are done in my store.  If you like them and there are specific themes or words you are looking for I would love to hear from you!!!

Thanks for stopping by, I'm off to fill my cart with all the great stuff I have found through this linky party!!