February Calendar Cards Set #2! FREE

I had a request for a set of February Calendar Cards with an AABBCC pattern. This request was made by another teacher in my building so I thought I would share them with you too, just in case you were interested in a different pattern!

You'll notice the cover page is the same, but the cards are different. And I didn't forget the leap year this time! :) There is also a page of blank cards included as well.

Head to TpT or TN to "purchase" for free! Enjoy!

P.S. I'm on an activity creating roll because I'll be releasing some "Gummy Bear Fun" later this week! I promise you it'll be really sweet! :)

Learning & Teaching with Pre-Schoolers Giveaway!

Tami from over at Learning & Teaching with Pre-Schoolers asked me if I would be interested in teaming up for a giveaway. Shew! All these great bloggers asking me to be apart of giveaways! But I'm happy to give away stuff! And I hope yall are excited for a chance to win my new Dental Health Mini Unit!

Here is what all you could win! (4 units total!)

 

You need to head over to Tami's blog to find out how to enter & to actually enter. I'll give you a hint though, before you leave my blog, you MIGHT want to make sure you are a follower of my blog and my TpT store to help with your entries!

Good luck to everyone! And don't forget, my Dental Health Mini Unit is for sale in my TpT and TN store in case you just can't wait! :)

Dental Health Mini Unit!

Drum roll please.....a Dental Health Mini Unit is finally here! In case you didn't know, but let's face it, you're a teacher and you probably do know, February is dental health month so this mini unit is here just in time!

Included in this unit:

-Dental Clip Cards: Print & cut cards. Student count the pictures on the card and clip a clothespin or paper clip onto the correct number of pictures. Recording sheet included. (pg. 3- 8)

-Writing Teeth: Print this tooth page multiple times. Place in your writing area with expo markers and tooth brushes. Students either write or “dirty” their teeth & then brush them clean with the tooth brush! (pg. 9)

-Dental Word Wall:Various dental words to display during your dental mini unit! (pg. 10-13)

 

-Teeth Counting & Addition: Using the mouth printable, have students roll a dice. Using small teeth cut outs (not included) or white unifix cubes, have students apply that number of teeth. Don’t have either of those? White playdoh balls could work too! Use the recording sheet to have students practice their addition with adding teeth to the mouth! (pg. 14-15)

-Dental Puzzles: Cut the puzzles apart and give them to your students to put together. There are also puzzles with numbers included. (pg. 16-23)

This unit will be up for grabs in a giveaway starting tomorrow! (You'll get more information about that tomorrow obviously!) Or you can click the buttons below to purchase this unit on either TpT or TN for $3.00.

P.S. I have had it on my agenda to have a 400 followers giveaway. And then I had 450 followers. And then I had 500 followers. And now I'm over 500 followers! I've been asked by 3 lovely ladies to participate in giveaways so I haven't even gotten to my OWN giveaway yet! But it's coming. Promise.

There's been a winner!

Julia posted the winner of the giveaway! In case you haven't seen it...

Anonymous, be sure to check your e-mail! You should be getting lots of awesome units! Congrats!

I need to ask... linky party

How in the world do you organize your TpT units after you have purchased and prep them?! I need some direction here. I'm a big fan of putting activities into gallon size baggies & then I just put them in my themed boxes, but I don't know if I'm content with that.

How do you organize your larger units so that everything stays together? Like the recording sheets along with the activities? Please share all of your ideas and suggestions, and post links to ideas if you have them by joining the linky party below!

P.S.: I didn't realize The Lesson Plan Diva posted a very similar question on Monday! (Um, hello, catch up on my google reader..) I'm headed her way to check out more ideas too!

Reese's Peanut Butter Banana Bread

I bake? Really? That's apart of this blog? You wouldn't know it because it feels like for.ever. since I have done a baking post!

I'm sure a lot of you have this recipe on your Pinterest boards, I know I do! It's been there for a while & I had a desire to make a bread last weekend so I gave it a shot. Would you believe me if I said it was SO YUMMY that I forgot to take a picture of the sliced loaf before it was all gone? Well you have to believe me because that's a true story.

I actually put mine back in the oven after this picture, so it was darker in the end!

The original recipe is from this blog here.

Head on over there to get the directions & the ingredients. (I'm not trying to steal her idea, or re-invent a wheel here) But I will show you my step by step photos. I personally prefer step by step photos of recipes. I'm a visual learner.

Ingredients:

Step One:

Step Two:

Step Three:

Step Four:

Step Five:

Step Six:

Step Seven:

This would be where you would remember to take a picture of your bread sliced. (If you're so inclined to photo every baking step like I am) Next time I make something, I'll try to remember not to put my camera away while it's cooling!

This bread is absolutely delish! Cookies & Cups mentions that you may have to vary your baking time and temperature because she used a ceramic loaf pan. I did have to do this with mine. Like I said, I had to put it back into the oven after this picture because it wasn't quite done!

If you give this recipe a try, I'd love to hear how yours turns out! And even if you don't plan on making this, still head over to Cookies & Cups because she has some AWESOME recipes!

Dear Target & A HUGE Giveaway!

Dear Target,
Thank you for stealing $21 from my wallet tonight.
Love, Erin.

Ok, for those of you who may not know this (and since 18 of you have been here less than 24 hours, you may not), I live in a target-less town. I know. Shocking. You can pick your jaws up off the floor now. Because of this, whenever I am near one, I HAVE to stop and check out at least the dollar section, but most often the entire store. Well, dollar spot, you got me tonight. Check out all my goodies.

Not pictured, would be the other container, baskets, and heart erasers I purchased 2 weeks ago from the dollar spot. Please don't turn in me in to container & small manipulatives anonymous, this stuff is a need, I promise.

But, now that I'm $21 poorer, I'm going to have a giveaway. Well, WE are going to have a giveaway, as in myself and 5 other fantastic bloggers. Since I'm clearly the last one of us to post about the giveaway (sorry, ladies) I'm sure you already know whats going on. In case you don't check out what all you can win below!

Alessia from Mrs's Albanese's Kindergarten Class is giving away a wonderful Valentine's Day pack.

Jennifer from First Grade Blue Skies is giving away her oh-so-cute Seuss-tastic Literacy and Math Pack.

I am giving away my Lots of Love Valentine's Day pack.

    

  

 The oh-so-sweet Cheryl from Crayons & Curls is giving the lucky winner a $10 gift certificate to TPT!

Rebecca from Teaching First is giving away her awesome Valentine's Day pack.

Julia is giving away her fun packed Valentine's Day pack!

  

There are lots of awesome prizes here!! :)

SO, you want to enter? Well, you'll have to head over to see Julia at her blog to do that! No entries can be posted here! But you can tell us how awesome we are tell me how much you love my Target finds!

P.S.: This giveaway will end on January 27th at 9pm Central time. The lucky winner will be announced on Saturday. Good luck!!

Igloo Alphabet Recognition Freebie

So I ALMOST went back to the old days of cut, color & laminate again, but then I remembered I had some cute polar DJ Inkers clip art I could use instead!

The concensus was that we could use DJ Inkers in a freebie right?! If not, you better download this fast before someone else tells me other wise & I take it down.

I created a quick letter recognition activity for letters Aa, Bb, Pp, Tt, Ee, & Rr. Each penguin either has a capital or a lowercase letter on him. Students must find out which igloo the penguin lives in by looking at the letter on the igloo door.

A nice sweet & simple activity that I can do with my kiddos at small group time this week. I only have students 3 days this week. Yes, I will be there all 5, but only see my kids 3 times! One group of my kids will only be there 1 time this week! Crazy. Don't be too jealous though, I also have 4 IEP meetings this week!

Click the picture to download this freebie from Google Docs! Yes, I finally think I have it figured out. I hope it works!

ALSO, if you downloaded my February Calendar Cards, you may want to re-download. It was kindly pointed out to me that this year is a leap year so I added a card for the 29th. Yes, there were blank cards that were included, so you may have already done this yourself, but in case you haven't, re-download by clicking one of the links below!

Teachers Pay Teachers    Teacher's Notebook

The days before blogging...

You might feel like those days were YEARS ago, but for me they weren't. I jumped on the blogging train in April 2011 & the digital activity/unit train over the summer.

But what on earth did I do prior to TpT and TN & the bloggy world?!? Well, I spent A LOT of time coloring, cutting, laminating, and cutting again. I still cut & laminate until I get a blister on my thumb. (Yes, that's true. I actually did that last weekend- cutting cardstock will get ya!)

I still use these activities that I've made in the past, but it's been a while since I've had to pull out my markers, crayons, and construction paper to create lesson materials. (Aside from an art project of course!) This week I did. This is the first time I've done a penguin unit & while I did have some printable TpT and TN activities, I supplemented with some classic cut & color activities!

I wanted to share this activity with you, but you'd have to make it yourself if you want it! :) I used patterns from this pattern kit I purchased from Staples last year with a gift card. It's awesome if you don't have it. Not only does it have tons of patterns that can be used for just about anything, but they also have activity suggestions listed on the back- standards included! :)

We had color matching penguins! We had talked about what penguins eat & they had to match the fish to the scarf color on the penguin. I have still kiddos working on color identification & matching on their IEPs so this is great practice. I told them if they feed the penguin the wrong color fish, he was going to get a belly ache and be really sick. If they matched the wrong color I'd totally exaggerate it & they loved it!

What were you doing before the days of TpT & TN?! And, like I mentioned, there will be more  on the way about my celebrating of reaching over 400 followers...then over 450! But first, I've teamed up with some other wonderful bloggers to bring you a unit giveaway next week! Stay tuned! 

Do I still blog?

The answer to that question is yes. I'm sorry I disapeared! Between my super busy week & still dealing with this cold/horrible cough, I haven't found the energy after the work day to post. I promise to be back to a regular posting schedule tomorrow! :) Don't leave me yet. (That applies to all 452 of you!- What?!?! 452?! Since when?! More on that to come too!)

Valentines Unit!

I am really excited to share this unit with you because I truly think that it is my best one yet! It's 48 pages full of fun printable activities and recording sheets that you can do with your students, or set up as a center! There is a great mix of math & literacy activities & I would LOVE your feedback on this unit since I am so excited about it.

The activities included in this unit are:

•Roll and Color Hearts: print out the sheet to make the dice.  Print and photocopy recording sheet. Students roll the dice and color the graph. Students stop when one color reaches the top! (pg. 3-4)

•Alphabet Valentines: print out the valentine letters with capitals. Hide a heart cut out (not included) behind a letter inside of a pocket  chart or on the floor. Students identify letters to find the heart. (pg. 5-8)

•Valentine’s Counting: Look at the number on the mailbox. Give that number of valentine’s to the mailbox. Either use candy hearts or print enough of the small  valentine’s on page 12  (pg. 8- 12)

•Missing Letter Hearts: Look at the strip of hearts. Find the letter that is missing. Write the missing letter on the recording sheet. (pg. 13-19)

•Heart Sorting Mat: Print out as many mats as you need. Give students a box of candy hearts to sort out. Student analyze their data and complete the worksheet. (pg. 20-21)

•Math Clips: Count the pictures on each card. Look at the numbers and put a clothespin on the correct number. There is a recording sheet included as well. (pg. 22- 27)

•Letter Bingo: Print out the number of bingo cards you need. (5 different cards included) print the calling cards (pg 38-39). If students have the letter that is called they place a bingo marker on the card. Suggestions for markers include: pretend coins, heart erasers, candy hearts, chocolate chips, etc. Black & white version of bingo cards are also included. (pg. 28- 39)

•Math Problem Match Up: Read the math problem on the bear’s flag. Find the picture card that matches. Students fill in their answers on the recording sheet. (pg. 40- 48) 

 

I will be teaming up with a couple other bloggers (shh! it's a secret right now) next week to offer this unit up in a giveaway. Just in case you can't wait for the giveaway you can purchase this unit at my TpT store or TN store. Just click one of the *new* buttons below!

Valentine Exchange and A FREEBIE!

When I saw people posting about a Valentine's Day Exchange I couldn't get to the source fast enough. I absolutely love this idea & was bummed that I missed out on the Christmas one. I love surprises and this is like the ultimate secret surprise because who doesn't love getting packages in the mail too?!

I've already signed up & now it's your turn too! Head over to Ms. Preppy to sign up for the Be My Valentine Exchange by clicking the picture below!

To help get you in the Valentine's Day Spirit, here are your FREE February Calendar cards! Again, these have an ABC pattern. My sweeties are trying SO HARD to pick up on this pattern. I have a good handful that have it figured it out, but the rest of us, well, we're trying! :) It's okay though, they aren't assessed on this at this age level, it's just additional practice!

Head over to TpT or TN to download the February calendar cards for free! :)

Help to Joplin!

I'm pretty sure that by the end of tomorrow, almost every teaching blog I follow will have linked up to share with those in Joplin, MO who had their lives turned upside 8 months ago by an F5 tornado.

Mrs. Wills has shared an e-mail she received from a kindergarten teacher in Joplin.

" I teach in Joplin, which made worldwide news last May when our town was cut in half by an F5 tornado.  Many of our elementary schools were destroyed or damaged, and as teachers, we have had a roller coaster year.  I came from a meeting yesterday where many are struggling with the weight of all we are dealing with.  My request is this:  would you be willing to donate a created pack of your choosing to give away at a drawing at our upcoming district Kindergarten grade level meeting?  The meeting is Monday and I am sorry for the short notice but I did not realize until the meeting how down everyone is feeling. "

You can email an item or items from your TpT store or TN store to Erika at edoennig@joplin.k12.mo.us to help out! Next, head over to Mrs. Wills to link up your post & spread the word! Let's see if we can overload her inbox! :)

I'm going to be really sad...

...when I get to the bottom of this milkshake.

I have a HORRIBLE sore throat. And it is NOT going away. I woke up thinking, "oh, my warm coffee will fix this." NOPE. Still have it. In fact, it's worse. Ugh. But, I'm a teacher, and I have to just keep on, keepin' on. Yes, I'm that teacher that you probably hate. The one that brings germies to work & doesn't stay home unless I feel like I'm on my death bed. From my perspective, I got the germies from work ( I can probably pinpoint the child they're from) and I'm not really bringing in any new germies so get over it.

An Arby's vanilla milkshake is the ONLY thing I want when I don't feel well, no matter the ailment. I'm going to lay back on the couch, enjoy this milkshake (which I wish I had ordered a larger size) and work on a Valentine's Day Unit!

What are your secrets to keep the germies away?

January Currently

I think every time Farley post one of these I say how much I love it. Because I really do. And this time I especially love the OLW at the end. It really made me think!

I really NEED to go and order DJ Inkers Fontastic CD. Over the summer I missed this being on sale. Then again, over Christmas they had 1 40% off CD each day. The day I forgot to check my email to see what it was, it was Fontastic. Just not my luck. I have decided that I'm going to take some recent TpT earnings and make the purchase. Can't wait for my new cute & adorable fonts!

I picked prioritize for my OLW because I REALLY need to do that. I'm sure the first thing we all want to do when we get home from work is sit down and blog stalk. I usually do. But then I get NOTHING else done. So I need to prioritize more. I was proud of myself today. I took care of some chores before EVER sitting down. I need to do this more often!

If you haven't linked up with Farley yet, which I think all of you have & I'm the last to join you, go ahead and head over to do so! All entries are for a giveaway this time too!

Giveaway Winners!

In case you haven't seen Julia's post announcing our giveaway winners, I am sharing them with you as well!

Winner #1..

Winner #2..

Be sure to be on the lookout in your e-mail accounts for the units & congrats! :)

How to organize those pesky calendar pieces!

Before I get into my excellent organization idea, I just need to show you what is happening outside of my front door.

Yes, that's snow. No, that's not a lot of snow, but it's still snowing and I don't need a lot of snow to be excited. It doesn't take much for us to get a weather delay OR the day off. It's been snowing since 1:30pm, but didn't start sticking until around 4pm. That probably has something to do with the fact that it was in the lower 60's this weekend and the ground is warm.

60's one day & then snow the next? Yeah, that's actually not odd around here. In case you're unaware, I live in Delaware. You know, a tiny state on that little thing that just hangs off the United States like it's earring, or a booger in it's nose. Take your pick. (no pun intended) Either way, we get crazy weather & we can't handle snow. I'll keep you posted about my day tomorrow! :)

Back to the point of this post. How do I organize those dang calendar pieces that are spilling all over my bulletin board drawer?!

This is how mine looked:

They get shoved to the back and they fall out of the bags and I'm constantly sticking them back in the bags. This had to stop. Insert nifty organizer purchased at Staples.

It already has 12 sections & came with labels so I could label each one by each month. It cost about $7, so not too bad. I re-bagged some of my pieces so they were all in zip locks. Put them behind each month.

I also have two solid color sets just in the front. No I can't fit this flat in my drawer, but I have storage space by my calendar in the classroom so I put it on the shelf under my calendar. Perfect, organized, and clean.

Snowman Button Counting FREEBIE

Well here's one new years resolution I'm sticking to- posting more freebies! That one about going to the gym at least 3x a week; not so much.

One of the changes I made in my classroom for our winter break return was to have a separate science area and math area during our center play. We do math and science activities during small group time, but I felt that we didn't do enough. So I have used two tables and am now planning a specific science and math activity to put at each table during centers. For our first week back, here were our activities:

Hot Chocolate Counting: use tweezers to apply the correct number of marshmallows in each cup.

Visit TpT or TN to purchase the mug cards. They are included in the winter activity bundle.

Magnetic Pipe Cleaner Bottles: use the magnets to move the pipe cleaners around inside of the bottles.

This week we will have snowman button counting at the math table & our magnetic pipe cleaner bottles again, but with a recording sheet. I have both of these items to share with you!

I could have just made some snowmen on construction paper but then I wouldn't have been able to share them with you! So I made these ones myself. They are missing scarves because that was above my capabilities! You can download for free below.

Snowman Button Counting

 Don't have a Scribd. account? Download from TpT or TN.

You can also download the recording sheet I made for the science center. In order to create these bottles all you need are some pipe cleaners. Cut them in small pieces, fill your bottle, and hot glue the lid on. The students think this is SO NEAT! Download the sheet for free below.

Pipe Cleaner Bottle Recording

If you want to check out some of the other things we did in our classroom this week, head over to my classroom blog by clicking here!

P.S. Don't forget, mine and Julia's giveaway for each our winter units ends on Monday at 3pm central time! Head over to Julia's blog to enter! :)