Mix-It-Up Monday: Freebielicious!!

Happy Monday everyone!!  If you read my post yesterday, you'll know that I'm starting something new for the summer.  In order to keep myself on some sort of schedule, each day of the week I'll be blogging about a different topic.  Here's the schedule I decided on:

 I'm lucky enough to be participating in a Linky Party on Tuesdays and Fridays, so I didn't have to think of anything for those days.  Today is the first Monday of my Summertime Blogging Schedule, and I've decided that Mondays will be for mixing things up.  It's pretty much a hodgepodge of topics, from classroom management to Pinteresting ideas I've found and would like to try.

Today, I'd like to share with you an AWESOMELY AMAZING blog that I follow, Freebielicious.  In case you have never heard of them, Freebielicious is a blog that has many contributors and is dedicated solely to getting awesome freebies out to as many educators as possible.  This is such a wonderful blog to follow because every resource they post about is FREE!!!  Many times, the resources are made specifically to share on this blog.  {click the link above or the pic below to go become a follower and sign up for email notifications}

Freebielicious has many, many incredibly talented and created educators as contributors to the blog, with a focus on primary grade levels.  There is ALWAYS something new and different to see and snag on this blog, and I LOVE getting the emails that tell me what is being offered up each post.  I have gotten some truly wonderful and amazing creations from this blog, and activities that I use in my classroom again and again.

Lately the folks at Freebielicious have been focusing on a book study of The Daily Five, Second Edition.  They have turned this into a Linky party, and many, many blogs are offering up some AWESOME Daily 5 freebies!!  I just downloaded a ton from Mel D over at Seusstastic Inspirations, and I CANNOT wait to try out her awesome idea for Stamina Necklaces to hand out to the one boy and one girl each day who show excellent stamina during Daily 5 rotations.

***all credit for these photos and creations goes to Mel D from Seusstastic Classroom Inspirations***

Please, please, PLEASE go over to Mel's blog post about how she uses her awesome creations with her Firsties!!  She provides oh-so-many freebies for the Daily 5, you REALLY need to go over and read it to believe it!!  Seriously, GO READ IT!!!  :-)


You can literally spend hours cruising through the different freebies posted onto Freebielicious, and find some truly great little gems from some incredibly creative educators.  The most recent post about The Daily 5 Book Study  from Jennifer White and First Grade Blue Skies offers up some more great ideas and freebies about The Daily 5.  She included a super-cute packet of Brain Break Cards that can be used during the transition times of Daily 5.  I plan on using this little gem with my kinders in August when we launch our Daily 5 routines. {click on the picture below to grab a set for yourself!}

The post just before this one was from Tara West over at Little Minds at Work, and is a truly exceptional 'Guided Reading Guru' presentation that she created.  She has recorded her voice to go with pictures of how she handles guided reading in her classroom.  It is truly a gem that needs to be added to your collection, and it's FREE!!!!  Please go check it out by clicking on the picture below!! It is AMAZING!!!

Last one I'm going to mention (but there are TONS more you should go check out on this blog!!) is another creation from Tara West from Little Minds at Work.  She has created letter name and beginning sound writing strips that littles can use during the beginning of the year.  I am SO EXCITED to have gotten this freebie, because now I have the PERFECT activity for the beginning of the year when we start our Work on Writing during Daily 5!!  You should go grab a copy for yourself!!

 

 Last thing I want to share with you today is the state of my classroom.  I didn't realize just how much STUFF I have until today!!   I have spent the morning cleaning, purging, covering, and putting things away. It got to a point where I was just shoving things into cabinets and drawers with no system whatsoever {yikes for next year!!}  I have to finish my cummulative folders and meet with my team for next year's supplies and then I will be officially on summer vacation!!  I'll have to post some pics of my packed-up classroom tomorrow!!

p.s. - My posts are going to be later on in the day during the summer, not the typical 8:00 am 'school year time' post!!  :-)

Last Day of School AND Following Free Font Friday

It's the weekend!!  I had totally meant to post this yesterday, but time just seemed to get away from me!!  Yesterday was my last day with my kinders, and I must admit that I choked up a few times today!  :-)  It was amazing to watch them learn and grow this year, and I know that some of them have made friends for life!!  Each one of my Dragons had such a unique style and personality, and I will miss each of them!!

My littles got to help me begin the room pack-up process.  I am going to cover my bulletin boards to protect them when the walls are washed, so I had them draw and write on white bulletin board paper today.  This took up over an hour of time with them completely engaged (which surprised me).  They were very excited that they would get to do this with no shoes on, since our countdown envelope today was "Shoe Break"!!

Remember that I'm using Jennie's from JD's Rockin' Readers AWESOME freebie, The Final Countdown?  {If you didn't get a chance to snag it before you were done for the year, click on the pic below to grab one to use for next year!!!)

My kinders LOVED getting to choose an envelope each day...and I managed to 'facilimanipulate' their last day choice to be the 'shoes off' one, since were weren't really doing anything that involved us having to leave the classroom.

Here's a pic of the blank bulletin board paper I had my kinders decorate for me...and on Monday I'll take pics of my covered boards so you can see their finished products!!  :-)

They worked really well together, and it was a great activity for them to participate in on the last day of school.  Added bonus, it did not cost me anything in either money or time, because they were doing all of the work!  Plus, I now have covers for my bulletin boards so that I don't have to take them down and they'll be ready for next year.  BONUS!!!

Something else I wanted to make sure to mention happened yesterday.  It was Week 2 of Free Font FRIDAY!!!

Remember my last Friday post explaining all about the awesome that is happening over at The Teaching Tribune every Friday, that the wonderful Mel from Graphics from the Pond participates in??  I was able to get another FABULOUS FREE FONT from Mel to add to my collection!!!

Don't you just LOVE her creations??!!  I know I do!!!!!  I am so very grateful that she has shared her hard work and creativity in such a wonderful way!!

Oh, and guess what??  When I hopped on over to The Teaching Tribune to continue with my Free Font Friday experience, there was a guest post from Stef over at Miss Galvin Learns.  She has a super-cute free font she created just for the Free Font Friday hop!!

You should also hop on over to Stef's blog and snap up her newest offer!!  For a short time, she is offering her MGL Exclusive Font Pack for just $5!!!  This awesome pack already has over 20 exclusive fonts, and as Stef adds more you can update the pack at NO EXTRA CHARGE!!!  You can also buy the pack at any time, however the price will go up as she adds more of her fonts so grab a copy soon at the perfect steal of $5!!!  I just now grabbed a copy for myself and I can't wait to start creating!!  :-)  Just follow the button below to go to her blog and check it out for yourself!!

Please make sure to head back to The Teaching Tribune to check out all of the other AMAZING folks who have linked up for Free Font Friday.  There are some truly great freebies and ideas being shared, so please make sure to check it out!!  I'm so grateful to be snagging up such great freebies and deals this weekend, that it has inspired me to do a little creating and offer up a few deals and freebies this week!!  :-) {click the link above or the pic below to take you back to the linky}

End of Year Celebration, Pt. 2

It's Thursday, which means it's one more day of students left for me!!  For those of you already out of school, I am jealous.  For those of you who still have time left at school, I feel your pain.  I know there are some places here in the Northeast that still have 11 days left!!!

Today we had our End of Year celebration where my students and their families got to have a picnic lunch, watch an end of the year slideshow, and were given awards.  If you read my post yesterday, you know that I used Michelles Oakes's wonderful Dollar Store Superlatives as their individual awards this year.

I was able to match up most of the awards perfectly, though some I had to improvise because my Dollar Deals didn't have the same exact items that Michelle was able to find.  My team mate Heather found this amazing packet while scrolling through Pinterest.  We were able to purchase the copy, plus 2 extra licenses for the other kindergarten classes, for a grand total of $12.  We each pitched in $4 and were able to have this amazingly wonderful awards packet that can be used again and again through the years to come.  You should really check out Michelle's hard work and creativity!!

Since my students are OBSESSED with the TMNT, I substituted a sports item for a TMNT ball to hand out to my 'Sports Star'.  It was a BIG hit!  I admit I wanted to choose Michaelangelo, but this kinder's favorite was Rafe!!  :-)

Found this little craftivity for my 'Awesome Artist'.  I think she really enjoyed getting it!!

Instead of a highlighter for my 'Handwriting Hero', I got her some notepads so she could continue to practice her handwriting over the summer.

My Dollar Deals had ZERO items related to cheering (no pom-poms or megaphone), so instead I picked her up a hula-hoop and made sure to tell everyone that she 'jumps through hoops' to make her friends feel good!

Instead of a friendship bracelet, I picked up this little 3D puzzle that my 'Fantastic Friend' could work on with some of his best buds.

Instead of a bag of toy bugs, I found this neat little 'Backyard Bug Kit' where my 'Science Star' could investigate the bugs in his yard.

I found a TMNT glow stick for my 'Glowing Example', and it was the envy of the rest of my littles!!

For my friend who earned the 'You Stick To It' award I found some glow in the dark tattoos! How fun!!!


For the rest of the awards I was able to find the examples given by Michelle.  I think that the grown ups and kinders really enjoyed these awards, and Michelle did a really awesome job!!  So glad my team mate found them!!

The other gift I gave to my littles today was one of the $1.00 books from the last Scholastic order, titled The Last Day of Kindergarten.  Follow the link or the picture to get a copy of your own from Amazon.

On the inside of each book I glued a poem I wrote for them, as well as a 'silly' class picture.

Honest to goodness, I teared up some when I was reading this poem aloud to the class!!  Every year I cry a little on the last day of school.  One would think that after nine years, I would be able to keep it together!!  :-)

After I gave them their books, they were able to share their memory books with their families.  We worked REALLY hard to get them all completed in time for our ceremony today, and I couldn't be prouder of the awesome job they have done with their writing and their sounding out of words.  Here are some of the pages we did this week to finish up the book!!

One of the pages we worked on was about our friends, and the page after that is for all of our friends to sign their names!!

Since we are an all-day kindergarten program, my littles get to go to specials.  They chose their favorite and wrote about why they liked it the best.

The also wrote about their favorite thing to do at school during the day.  Most of them wrote about recess or their friends.

They also wrote about their favorite classroom jobs.  Most of them chose Line Leader.  I guess they all want to be first!!  :-)

They wrote about their very favorite kindergarten story, and we had read A LOT of stories this year!!!  I was surprised that more of them didn't choose Pete the Cat, since they are a bit obsessed with that guy.

At our school, every student in the building is offered breakfast free of charge if they are interested in eating it.  My kinders wrote about their favorite school breakfast.  How awesome is the inventive spelling they're using!!??  I love how far they've come with stretching out their words to write down the sounds they hear!!

Since we're at school all day, they get to eat lunch in the cafeteria.  They wrote about their favorite lunch choice, and not surprisingly the choices they wrote about the most were pizza and chicken nuggets!!  I had some die-hard packers who chose 'Goldfish' and 'Mom's lunch'.  How sweet!!  :-)

During the afternoon we head out to the playground for recess, and that is definitely one of their favorite parts of the day, as well it should be!!  It's when they get the chance to run around, yell, and just enjoy being a kid!!

They chose something they learned how to do this year, and I was proud that so many of them chose 'read', 'sound out my words', or 'my letter sounds'!!  One sweetie even chose 'tie my shoes'!!  :-)

We have had SO VERY MANY awesome days in kindergarten, from assemblies to field trips to field day and working with our 5th grade buddies.  They chose their very favorite day and wrote about it.  This friend wrote about making ice cream with our Buddies (not sure where the neon pink floor came from though....wish my room was that bright!!)  :-)

One of the final pages of our book was for them to say what they would miss most about kindergarten.  I was truly touched that so many of them chose to write about missing me!!  :-(   I will definitely miss them too!!!  And don't you love my Rapunzel hair!!??

Walking around the room and listening to my kiddos read their memory books to their grown-ups was such an amazing feeling for me.  I was so very proud of how far they have come this year, and I know that I am giving the new first grade teachers some AMAZING readers and writers!!  

If you're interested in using this Kindergarten Memory Book with your littles this year, or if you just want to pick up a copy to use with your littles next year, just click on the link to hop over to my TPT store and pick up a copy for yourself!!

Tomorrow is my very last day with my kinders.  I am going to enjoy them as much as possible tomorrow while cleaning and packing up the classroom.  If tomorrow's your last day with your kiddos, have a great summer vacation!!  (If you still have a few weeks left, feel free to laugh at me while I am starting school WAY earlier than you!!)  :-)

End of the Year Celebration, Pt. 1

So sorry for the late post tonight, friends!!  This last week of school has been CRAZY busy for me!! So far this week I have finished entering grades, recorded all subject levels, updated IEPs and progress reports, written report card comments, written report card narratives, and worked on end of the year awards and activities. I do so love the end of the year, but it also stresses me out!  :-)  There are officially two more student days left, one day of meetings, and then it's my summer break!!  WOO-HOO!!  :-)

Tonight I'd like to share with you what we do as an end of the year celebration.  At my school, we do not have a kindergarten promotion ceremony.  Instead, we do things in our own classrooms. Even though Friday is our last official day of the school year, we will be having our end of year celebration tomorrow.  First, we sent home a letter last week inviting families to attend if they can.  We will start the festivities with a picnic, hopefully outside but we've got a lot of rain in the forecast so FINGERS CROSSED!!  If we can't have it outside, we'll be having our picnic in the classroom.  After the picnic the littles and their families are going to watch an iPhoto Slideshow that I created containing pictures from the first day of school to the last week.  Hopefully it will spark some fond memories in the littles, and they will end their kindergarten year remembering all the awesome, happy times we had!

After the slide show we will be handing out the end of year awards.  There are the academic-related awards that are handed out every marking period, but there are also special awards we only give at the end of the year.  This year my Pinteresting team-mate Heather found some AMAZING awards to use with our littles.  I am IN LOVE with them so much that I had to share them with you!!  They are a set of color and black & white awards called Dollar Store Superlatives and are created by Michelle Oakes from Fabulous in First. 

These awards are so cute and so much fun, plus each one can be paired with an item from the Dollar Store!!  Michelle includes pictures of all her awards as well as the Dollar Store item she found to go with them.  The awards can be used with or without the items, but it's so much more fun and memorable to pair them up.  Michelle did a really awesome job of creating meaningful awards around different common Dollar Store items.  I love how each award is a reflection of the student's personality.

These are the examples photographs that Michelle includes in her packet, to give you a better understanding of what to pair each award with.  She also provides them as a typed-up description, which I printed out (in black&whute) and used to figure out which awards I wanted to give to each student.  I wrote their names next to each award, and I took that with me when I went to the Dollar Store.  I used it as my shopping list, and crossed off each name as I found the item to go with it.  Most of them I was able to match up perfectly (YAY!!), though my local Dollar Deals did not have all of them items pictured above so I had to find a close substitute.  I think I did okay, though NOT as cute and creative as Michelle did!!

I printed this list to the B&W copier so I could use it as my shopping list.  it is BEAUTIFUL in color, but we are only allowed a certain allotment of color copies and at this point of the year I am running LOW!!  :-)  Luckily I only have 17 students this year, or I may have had to use the black and white versions of each award that Michelle included in her packet!!  :-)

Oh, and one of the coolest parts of this packet??  It comes with a page that....well, buy it for yourself and find out!!  :-)

For tomorrow's post, I'll be including pics of the items I found to pair up with Michelle's creations, as well as some more pics of my kinders' memory book pages.  We've been working on them since last week, and I am SO PROUD of the awesome job they are doing with their writing as well as their ability to sound out their words.  Most of them are remembering and using their sight words, as well as remembering to add lots of details to their illustrations.  I couldn't be any prouder of them!!

The Last Monday

Hello there!  Today is the last Monday of the school year that I have with students, and then one more Monday after that (EOY meetings, etc), then it's summer break time!!  This week I would like to focus on some of the things I do in my classroom at the end of the year, as well as some ideas others in my building do and those I found on Pinterest and really want to do...  :-)

One of the things I am doing for the first time this year is a kindergarten memory book.  I feel like, with the help of the Daily 5,  this year my kinders are more efficient about reading their sight words and using them in their writing.  So to try and encourage that to continue over the summer, I wanted them to have a book about them they could practice reading.  I needed it to have lots of simple words and sight words, as well as space for them to write about each page.  I wanted them to be able to put their favorite kindergarten memories down onto paper so they can revisit them again and again throughout the summer.  There is no set order on the pages, and we are working on a page or two a day in order to get it done by Friday!!  The first page is for a class photograph, but every other page can be a hand-drawn illustration.  Here are some photos of the pages we have done so far:

"Here I am on the carpet square with my homework."

This is the first page of the book, and they were told to write about themselves somewhere in our classroom.  I told them not to draw themselves at the playground or the cafeteria or at a special, because there are other pages for those.  In encouraged them to sound out their words when writing, to remember the main parts of a sentence, and to include lots of detail in their illustrations.

"I am in kindergarten.  I am at the computer center playing on abcmouse.com." 

I really enjoyed watching them share their thoughts and getting to see how far they've come with their writing and illustrating!!

"I am coloring a garden at the table."

The next page we completed was dedicated to our kindergarten teacher...ME!!  :-)

"My teacher is Miss Murphy.  She is the best."

"My teacher is Miss Murphy. She is teaching us math."

I seem to be bald in this picture....

The third page we worked on was a tribute to their 5th Grade Buddies, who have helped us do different activities throughout the year, and are graduating this week!!  We will miss them so much!!

"My 5th Grade Buddy is Shakira.  I love when they play with us."

"My 5th Grade Buddy is Neveah.  I liked when we did 100 Day stuff."

I'll post more pics of our books this week as we work on them.  If this is something you would be interested in doing with your littles, just follow the link below to my TPT store and get yourself a copy of my Kindergarten Memory Book.  There is even a code where you can send me and I will personalize a copy of the book so it is titled to fit your classroom!!

Our FABULOUS 5th Grade Buddies are coming up tomorrow for one more exciting project...making ice cream!!  Look for pictures of that activity later this week.

Don't forget that tomorrow is Book Talk Tuesday, the linky party hosted by Deanna Jump!!  Make sure to come back tomorrow and read all about one of my favorite children's literature books!!