Something New, Something Free, and Lots of Sale!

Sorry for the lack of posting this week!  I was at a three day workshop on our Wisconsin Model Early Learning Standards and the Mr. decided to break his elbow and cut his hand open last weekend, so my "me" time has been limited.  :)

I did manage to squeeze a little time in to post a new item and a freebie to my TpT store.

Click on the picture to take a look at some of the previews of what is included.  I'm really looking forward to using this in my classroom.  My owls last year loved roll and write workstations!

 

 

By now I'm sure you have all figured out that I am slightly obsessed with owls.  I could teach with owls all day long.  :)  I will be honest and tell you that the idea behind this game is nothing new.  I added owl clipart to add my own personal touch.  It is a super way to get the owls practicing letter recognition in a whole group setting or even to help fill in those seconds/minutes of downtime we have at bathroom breaks.  Click on the picture to download your own!  Feedback and comments are appreciated. 

 

 

Thank you Kimberly Ann from Live, Laugh, I Love Kindergarten for the adorable button.  She is hosting a linky for all who are participating in the sale.  Head over to look at all the wonderful stores/bloggers who are getting you ready for BTS.  :)

 

As you all probably already know, TpT is having its big BTS sale starting tomorrow!  I am so looking forward to this sale.  I have a wishlist full of items that I have been itching to get.  My store will be on sale as well during this time.  Please take a look around and grab yourself some great BTS items.  Click on the picture to view my entire store.

 

If you take advantage of this great sale, don't forget to enter the code BTS13 at the check out for additional savings!

 

 

Have fun shopping!

 

~Erin





 

Learning with a muffin tin

Today the little man and I made a trip to the nearest Dollar Tree to look around.  I had a few things in mind that I wanted to pick up but it never hurts to look around the whole store, right?

While we roaming up and down the aisles, I spotted this super fun item!

Table Tennis Balls!

 

 

As soon as I spotted these, my creative light bulb switched on!  We finished looking around, made our purchase, and headed home.  I jumped on my laptop quickly and whipped these together.

 



https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByJSAT7sztfvLWVIamxWWnZVQmM/edit?usp=sharing

Click on the link and grab your own set of muffin tin letter cards.

 

 

Now on to how to play!  Before I start with the directions, let me suggest giving the owls some time to just play around with the table tennis balls to get that sort of silly play out of the way.  If they get it out of their system, you will most likely see a more productive level of work with the table tennis balls.  I placed one letter card in the bottom of each muffin tin.  I would suggest laminating for durability because they will get moved around during the game.  Each owl should have his/her own table tennis ball.  The owls should take turns GENTLY bouncing the ball into the muffin tin.  After the ball has landed, the letter should be read/identified out loud.  It takes a little while to get the hang of bouncing the ball into the tin, so you might want to say three tries and then the next owl is up. 

 

This is what it would like after a couple bounces.

 

The owls would say, "I landed on the D or I landed on the E."

 

For the beginning of the year, I will be putting the letters into the muffin tin in order.  This will allow the owls to go back and say the alphabet in order to find the letter landed on.  After some time with letter work as a whole group and with the game, I will mix the letters up to offer a challenge.

 

I just logged into my facebook page and saw that Julie Lee has a Muffin Tin product with lots of great ideas.  Please click here to head over to here TPT store!

 

 

~Erin

 

Don't forget tomorrow is the last day for my 100 follower giveaway.  Click here to make sure your name makes it into the drawing.  The boys in the house will be picking THREE WINNERS!



Gearing Up for Next Year

My little man decided to put himself back to bed this morning, so I thought it would be a good time to do a bit of updating on one of my TPT products.  Keeping my fingers crossed that it is just the dreary weather that we are having right now and not that he is getting sick.  :(

Last year my little owls LOVED playing a whole group version of Splat using our sight words.  If you would like to read more about how we played this game in the classroom, click here.  As I am trying to put together my list of musts for the beginning of the school year, I thought that using this much loved game with upper and lower case letters would be fantastic.  I want to introduce more games at the beginning of the year that will allow for natural progressions to occur over the course of the school year (ie letters to sight words.)  With all of this in mind, I took my Splattin' Bugs game and added upper and lower case letter cards and a recording page!  If you are interested in a fun game to get your owls hooked on learning, please stop by my TPT store and take a look at it.

 

 

Don't forget about my 100 follower giveaway!  Make sure to click here to check out the details and to leave your comments for a chance to win some great prizes.  Three winners will be picked next Saturday, June 29.

 

~Erin

 

Long and Short Vowel Practice

The sunlight at the end of the school year tunnel is finally shining through.  We have three more student days and one teacher/records day left.  Then it is SUMMER BREAK! 

In order to make it through the next few days, I am setting up my work stations as reveiw stations.  They were basically this already, but I really focused in on the skills we wrapped up the past two weeks with.

One of the literacy review work stations is a vowel sorting activity.  The owls will work in groups to sort the pictures according to the vowel sound.  My owls are doing really well with long vowels but some are still struggling with short vowel sounds.  I'm hoping this activity and working with others will get them to a level of understanding that I'm comfortable sending them to first grade with.  If you would like a copy of this activity, click on the picture and download it from my TPT store.  It is my newest freebie!  Please make sure to leave some feedback and to follow my store while you are there.

 

 

Be on the look out for my fairy tale books list and a 100 followers giveaway in the next week.  Thank you so much for helping me get to that major milestone.  Never in my wildest dreams did I expect this!  I'm both honored and grateful for all of you!

 

~Erin

A Little Review Helps the Skills Go Down!

Good evening all!  Hoping that your week has been treating you well.  We had a professional development day on Monday, which translates into this teacher had the whole day to her self for getting things done in the classroom!  LOVE those kind of pd days! 

Anyways, I decided to plan some much needed review into workstations this week in both math and literacy.  My little owls have been lacking confidence lately and I wanted these skill review stations to push them past this little funk.

I was able to take a few pictures of some of the literacy workstations today.  Math will have to be a different post. 

The first pictures are from our writing workstation.  I have been really working with the little owls on their sentence building and sight word recognition.  Since we are focusing on those skills, I put them together into a little page called Shooting Star Sentence.  The little owls have to use the star word in the star in a sentence and then draw a picture to match.  We have done this with 3 different words thus far and some words are definitely easier than others.

I was extremely happy when I saw this work.  She has some great spelling going on and what we call a "strong sentence."

Loved how the picture matched the sentence perfectly.

This work was from a new student.  I am pleased with how well she is catching onto our routine and my expectations.

 

 

The next picture is from the alphabet workstation.  This workstation is my own addition to literacy workstations.  I like the idea of having a constant alphabet letter focus through the whole year.  (One that is just for letters and not for forming/working with words.)  Here the little owls roll a die, figure out what letter the number corresponds with, and then string the letter onto a plastic thread.  Basic, yes, but the little owls were fully engaged and working on math, literacy, and fine motor skills.  All in ONE workstation!!!!

 

 

 

The last pictures are from my word work workstation.  We have started playing around with word families and the idea of switching out the first letter to build new words.  The little owls used magnet letters, the snake mat from Deanna Jump, and a basic recording page.  They needed to be able to read the words back to me later on.

 





 

 

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. 

 

~Erin

 

*Hoping someone understands the title of this post and that my humor was not lost in cyberspace.  :)

A Little Reflection!

So last Thursday was the dreaded highly anticipated first day back after winter break.  Overall, the day went smoothly!  We did a little rule review, focused on the book The Mitten, and did plenty of skill review.  We have some major district mandated assessments coming up so I want my little owls to be beyond prepared.  Test anxiety and my kids are best of friends.  For some unknown reason, they all freeze up when the words "test" or "assessment" are uttered.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that all of this review will wash away their worries. 

Ok!  So remember how I mentioned above that Thursday went well, not so much for Friday!  My little owls just didn't have the motivation or energy to make it through the entire day.  I felt like a dentist by the afternoon, pulling out teeth, to get them working.  I had to water down and even eliminate work in our literacy stations.  I'm hoping that this isn't the new trend of 2013 but instead just winter break still working its way out of their systems.  After I sent the little owls home, I sat down and looked at what exactly was the problem with the day.  Was the work too hard for after a big break?  Was there too much work for them to complete in 20 minute rotations?  Was it not engaging enough?  So after some long thinking and some work done on other areas in the classroom, I decided to take a couple steps back this week.  We will continue to review but one day will be completing the activity together in small group to build confidence and then the next time, a recording sheet will be completed to hold each accountable.

I will keep you all posted on how this works or if it is sent to the curb after a few days!  Enjoy the rest of your weekend and have a great week!

~Erin