Markdown Monday

Just another 'Mellow Monday'...see what I did there?  ;-)  During the summer, I really don't have a problem with Mondays anymore. :-)  Well, we'll be friends for a few weeks longer, anyway.  My Countdown Clock kindly informed me today of just how long I have before returning to school...

On a brighter note, I am coming up on having my blog for a whole year now!! While that might not seem like a long time, so very much happened during this one little year.  I took a HUGE break from blogging when my mom died, and have only recently started up again.  Grief is a funny thing.  

       ANYWAY, when I started venturing into the world of Facebook as a blogger (that's for a different post, still a work in progress) as well as linking up with various blogging linky parties, I began to meet a lot of amazing educators and educational bloggers.  One of the coolest things about blogging is that you get to meet so many other AMAZING teachers and teacher bloggers!!  Some of them have been doing this for many years and have thousands of followers {gulp}, and others are like me, either just starting out or just recently venturing into the world of social media like Facebook and Instagram.  This summer I decided to really get serious about making more of my blog, as well as my TPT store.  Plus, creating activities and writing blog posts has proven to be pretty therapeutic for me.  So, I've hooked up with various linky parties and made it a point to venture out and communicate with other bloggers, especially those teaching early childhood and early primary grades.

One of the wonderful people I've met this summer is Kim at The Very Busy First Graders.  She has had her blog for almost two years now, and has recently been doing a great job of getting her Facebook page out there!  Through Kim, I learned about story souvenirs.  This is just way too awesome for you not to go check out for yourself!!  Just click on the picture below to go read her blog post about this super idea!!

She has even started a Pinterest Board all about this, and I can't wait to see what she adds to it throughout the year.  I would LOVE to try this in my classroom, and maybe be able to create a board of my own.  ;-)  Click on the picture below to go check out Kim's Story Souvenir Board!!

She even has a FREEBIE for your learners to take notes about the story and it's souvenir.  So many styles of learning covered in one GREAT idea!!!

Since the awesome Summer Bloggin' linky party I was participating in on Mondays ended, I've been looking around for a new linky party to hook up with for certain days of the week.  Luckily, I found a great one to participate in thanks to Kim's post.  This linky party looks like it's going to be really fun, and a perfect way to get some back to school {gasp} shopping done!!

This linky party is being hosted by Kelly and Kim, the fabulous ladies at Kindergarten Kreations.  To participate, just choose a product from your store and mark it down for the week.  How much you discount the product is totally up to you!!  I love that it lasts the whole week, so you have time to check out all the great products and add them to your cart.  TPT does have a minimum limit of what you can spend, so getting the whole week to shop at discounted prices makes it easy to meet their requirement.

Since this is my very first time participating in the linky, I thought I'd start it off with a BANG!!  I'm going to bundle two of my featured items that can be used during the beginning of the year!!!

First up is a Write the Room activity to practice recognizing the numbers 0-10, a great activity for the beginning of the year.  Learners will walk around the room, finding the posters that will match the numeral on their response sheet to a set in a ten-frame on the poster, and color the number to match the color of the border on the poster.

Next is a second Write the Room activity that focuses on rhyming words.  Learners will look at the pictures on their response sheet and walk around the room to find the poster with a picture of they rhyming word. They then color it in to match the border on the poster.

I really like using these types of activities because they are ones that my kinders can complete independently during Word Work time of our Daily 5 Reading and Math rotations.  These beginning of the year skills are perfect to get them into the habit of completing Write the Room activities.  Together, these products cost $5.00 in my TPT store.  For this week ONLY, I will be bundling the two of them together and offering them at the UBER LOW PRICE of $2.50 for the both of them!!

This is a GREAT deal if you're looking for some beginning of the year center activities, or some beginning of the year RTI activities!!  Great for working with those firsties who are still having a bit of trouble with some of the skills they learned in kindergarten!!

This little blog is having a birthday soon!!  Stay tuned for details!!!