Whew! I'm still Alive I Swear!

Hey Sweet friends! I'm sorry I've been MIA recently. I've been trying to get adjusted to the new school year and new grade in Kindergarten. I like it, but it does have it's ups and downs. I haven't been getting home until closer to 6, but finally made it down to 5 this week...so I haven't had the energy to blog. However, I'd like to do a quick post to catch you up! :)
2 weeks ago, we had our bridal shower. We were so grateful for all who attended and the awesome gifts we got! (PS. Today marks 1 month until the wedding!!)

my awesome ribbon bouquet made by one of my bridesmaids!:)

In school this week, we've been starting workshops (centers) I do 2 a day, for about 15 min each.

couldn't find my number 5, but I remade one the following night

one station was playdough with letters

game with letter sticks

drawing friends at the writing station

 And finally I will leave you with this yummy picture..we got an Ice cream maker attachment for our stand mixer and made homemade peach ice cream. It was very good!

See you later and Happy Friday!!

Math Centers (freebies!)

hey everyone! Hope you all had a nice weekend! I drove up to Ohio on Thursday to attend a wedding and also to get some of our own wedding stuff done! I am glad to say we have the tuxes picked out, put more money down on the hall and I booked a block of rooms at a hotel for our out of town guests. Feels good to get more and more done each day! 88 days left!!
I have a ton to do today, we move on Saturday and I need to start packing, but before I get my butt of the couch, I wanted to share with you what I ended up doing with the cutouts I found at the dollar store a few posts back...

beginning sound match up

number-word match up

ten frames match up

 Each center comes with its own recording sheet as you can see to add a little extra practice and for documentation. The best thing is if you find these at your dollar store, you can click on the pics for the files to make them! Ok, off I go, tonight I have a staff meeting at a pizza place for my new school! (love talking and eating great pizza at the same time!)

How do You Organize Centers!?

Hey friends! So Monday and Tuesday I had common core training in Winston and we talked about a ton of topics in Kindergarten. One of them being centers or what we're supposed to call them "workshops." I did mine super different last year because I had such a big first grade class and even though it worked, there were a ton of centers each week to deal with and organize. This year, I'm told I should have no more than 20 kindergarteners and so I've been thinking about how I am going to organize centers. Some of the teachers said they do Daily 5 and while I like that, I also like using all the cute holiday and seasonal centers I find on TPT. So I've come up with this plan...

I would like to meet with my groups twice a week (and of course this is assuming I will have 4 groups of 5) It incorporates some daily 5 aspects (read to someone, word work, writing) but also a math center and a seasonal center. Then on Fridays, I'd like to just monitor and allow them to go to fun stations like painting or play dough. What do you think? Would this work? How do you organize centers?

Also, there is a ton of change going on in blog land, we all must make the switch over to blog lovin'. I've installed my little code to the side to follow me there! I hope to see you all again! I've been looking at the features and what I do love is that you can manage the blogs you follow into categories.

 Above each blog is a button and you could create a grade level group and manage all your blogs specific to that under there. I will be doing that today!

Also, GREAT NEWS!! My fiance just got a promotion at work! He will be the youngest branch manager ever in his company! They are giving him a new branch to manage in Kernersville which is nice because we will be 15 min away from that in our new place. :) I am so excited and proud of him!! 

AND FINALLY, if you've managed to read all this, I am giving you a freebie! It's a beginning sound sort. I plan on putting this in my word work center once school starts! Click the pic to grab a copy! Thanks everyone and have a great day! I'm off to Asheville tomorrow for a min vacay! 

St. Paddy's Day Fun (giveaway)

Hey friends! Where has the weekend gone?! Ugh, it's Sunday morning already! I have lots to do today, but I wanted to share with you my newest upload to my TN store. I created 4 st. paddy's centers I'll be using next week. They cover word work, write the room, math and pocket chart. 

 I've been thinking about adding a sight word station to my center rotation. Do any of you do a sight word center? If you do, what resources do you use and how do you set it up? 

The above centers are at my store now for $4.00. I'm giving you a chance to win the packet! Since the holiday is on the 17th, the 1st and 7th bloggers to comment will score it free! Good Luck and let's hope today goes slow as molasses! :)

Curious About Centers

I'm having some trouble trying to implement "cute" centers into my literacy block. Here's the scoop...I have 7 groups of 3-4 kids in each group. We have rotate through 3 centers a day and each rotation lasts 25 min. If I wanted to do those really cute centers that are always seen on TPT and things you all have created, would I have to print enough sets for each child in that center? (that's a lot of ink and lamination) Or do you somehow have your students work on those together? My only concern with that is they would get done in 2min and then what do we do? So Help me out! please....tell me how you organize your centers.

Also I have a question for you. We just took our first math test and 2 questions covered tens frames. They were to look at the tens frame and develop a number sentence from it. For example...

This was the only way my co-teacher and I saw it and the way we were teaching the students. It is always the number on top plus the number on bottom. Is that the way you teach it? Other teachers in our grade were saying the students could have grouped the markers any way such as 6+2. Or even 9+1....My co-teacher and I did not see it that way and disagreed. Can you tell me if our way is the right way..or at least the way you've seen it taught?

Thanks! Hope everyone has a wonderful Saturday!

Hey everyone! I'm linking up with 2nd grade pad to share MY favorite freebie! :)

 It's a coin file folder game! Perfect for those k-2 students. 
 



 Also, I re-did my center board over the weekend with new icons and group organization. Here are the before and afters...

Then I ran into a problem after school, switching the centers! haha..It's kind of a mess right now because we have 4 going at the same time, well no I take the back more like 6 and we have 7 groups. So I figured it out for tomorrow, but I'm going to have to rethink the procedures for the future. How do you organize your centers?

So Much to Share...

Hey everyone! Whew! TGIF!! :) I am officially at home now after a long, rambunctious friday with the kids. I hope this weekend passes sloooowly, but I'm sure it won't! haha
I wanted to share some pics of my centers today. We did these all week and our goal is to keep most ongoing and change out math and word work every week.

here's the center board..working on a new one this weekend!

unifix/math center

computers...he looks bored, but he really liked the game I promise! haha

word work-building

listening..I plan to add a sheet to write after they're done

other math center

 Also, we were busy this afternoon in math with graphing! We graphed the colors from a gummy bears bag and boy did they love that! Here are the results of that...

boy..it took a long time putting these up..but they were troopers! :)

 Finally, on an un-educational note, please pray that my fiance gets a job...he's been without one since we've moved to NC. :( I hope something good happens soon! Have a good weekend!

So Proud!

So I am so proud of my chickies! We started our centers today and guided reading and I was nervous that they were not going to be able to handle it. Well I was blown away. After introducing each center (ps. no modeling) we got right to work and they did fantabulous! :)

We also did writer's workshop and I modeled how they should/shouldn't work and then told them to write about anything until I said stop. (only 15 min today) They did fantastic. I cannot believe this is the same bunch of kids we had a week ago! The progress is great. I told them to sound out words they do not know instead of asking us how to spell and I giggled to myself when I was hearing hushed voices sounding out words. Ah! Great day..Espeically considering I have a big cold and huge headache..I'm heading home to put on pj's and zone out.

Help with debbie diller lit centers

Hey everyone! I am sooo glad it's the weekend. I finished my first full week of school this week and it's been a whirwind! Some things good and bad. I do love the class. We are officially at 26 little ones and we dropped from 32 so this is a much more managable number. :)
They are still getting the hang of everything and I have to say, they are learning quickly. Our mornings start off fairly quiet and peaceful as they know to come in and start their morning work without interruptions. I like to pull worksheets off of themailbox.com. (Great resource!)

One thing I have to say I'm pretty nervous about is next week. We are starting our morning routine of pulling our guided reading groups and starting centers similar to debbie diller's. The groups, I'm not worried about as we do Jan Richardson's guided reading model, but these centers are scaring me already. I'm not sure how they are going to handle them and when I student taught, the teacher had normal kindergarten centers that changed every week..ex. math, science, word work, etc. These centers will be constant and I hope the students can behave themselves. Not only that, but I haven't looked into the model yet of debbie diller. I'm a little dissapointed that all summer I made really cute file folder math centers and independent activites and then realized, only 1 child can do it at a time and that's no good. :/ Does anyone else out there do debbie diller literacy centers?? I'd love your help and advice! :)

PS. I noticed how close to 200 I am getting! :D I will hopefully be planning a giveaway soon!

Center Signs!

Ok, so I'm waiting for the laundry to finish (not wanting to clean the apartment today) and just whipped up these center signs for sale at my shop on Teachers Notebook! Please visit to purchase and download or click on the image below. :)