Summer Share and Prepare: CVC Crossword Puzzles

Happy Thursday everyone! I am linking up with the super-sweet Marie from Once Upon a Classroom: A Teacher's Tale for her Summer Share and Prepare link up!

With this link up, we get to share all sorts of different resources we use in our classrooms. Then we get to hop around to everyone else who linked up and prepare for the upcoming school year! I have been having a great time with this linky, sharing many of the Write the Room activities I use in my classroom!! This week I'd like to share my newest creation!

This is something I'm going to use during our Word Work rotation times. As I introduce each new word family, we will use the sheets in this packet to help practice.

Working on crossword puzzles was one of my mom's all-time favorite activities, and I used to love helping her figure out the different clues. My mom was the inspiration for this newest packet.

I wanted my kinders to be able to complete crossword puzzles, but I knew I had to keep them as simple as possible. I thought the best way to do that was to use CVC words and pictures, since these are familiar words and there are only three letters to write per word.

 I made sure to cover every medial vowel and as many word families as I could find clipart for! There are at least five puzzles for each medial vowel, and then at the end of the packet are puzzles with all of the vowels mixed up. The image above shows all of the different word families that I created puzzles for.

The clues are pictures of the CVC word. Each clue is labeled with a number and an arrow. The top box are for clues going across, and the bottom box are for clues going down. Students should find the matching number and arrow combination on the puzzle and write the CVC word for each picture.

I'm going to use these puzzles during Word Work rotation times, but they would work perfectly as morning work or homework. You could even leave them for a substitute as a quick and easy activity for your kiddos to complete!!

Would you like to win a pack? Just enter the Rafflecopter below!! I'll choose a winner this weekend!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Don't want to wait to see if you've won?? You can purchase this pack in my TPT store for 50% OFF today and tomorrow ONLY!! If you win a pack and you've already purchased one, I'll send you a product of equal or lesser value!!

Swing back over to Once Upon a Classroom:A Teacher's Tale to see who else has linked up, and get yourself prepared for this upcoming school year!

Don't forget that it's not too late to link up for Spotlight Saturday! This link up is a Teacher's Show and Tell to share our favorite resources, products, activities, tips, ideas, tricks, and anything else that makes our classroom lives easier!

New Product Giveaway

Hey friends!! I've been working really hard on getting some back to school TPT products up! I have been creating some activities to help address the beginning of the year kindergarten skills. I'd like to share with you the three activities I just finished!

I found a whole class set of BINGO daubers at The Dollar Tree, in every color I could think of! I grabbed as many as I could, and then decided to create some activities to go with them! I know my kinders LOVE using BINGO daubers, and these packets are perfect for incorporating into daily learning. But if you don't have BINGO daubers, no worries! You can have your kiddos use crayons or markers! Here's a closer look at these activities.

Dot-A-Letter packet focuses on the uppercase, lowercase, and beginning sounds of letters. There are three different dotting mats, and each mat has its own set of cards. Laminate the cards, cut them out, and put them in a bin/bucket for students to pull from. As they pull each card they'll find the corresponding letter on the dotting sheet. The sheet with lowercase letters on it has uppercase cards to go with it, the sheet with the uppercase letters has lowercase cards to go with it, and a second lowercase letters dotting sheet has a set of beginning sounds cards to go with it. This will hopefully help you to differentiate in your classroom! 

If a student is using the uppercase mat, he will pull out lowercase cards and search for their matching letter buddy to dot it. There is also a lowercase mat with uppercase cards to find the letter buddies matches. Finally, a third lowercase mat has students pulling cards with simple word pictures on them. Students identify the beginning letter of each word and dot it on the mat.

The Dot-A-Number packet has the same flow as the Dot-A-Letter packet. For the Number pack, there are two mats with several sets of cards to go with each. The first mat focuses on the numerals 0-10 while the second mat focuses on the numerals 11-20.

Students have several card choices to use for the two mats. They can pull a numeral card to match up to the numeral on the mat. They can also pull a ten-frame card, a number word card, a finger set card, or a number combinations card. I tried to include at least two combinations for every number. You can mix and match these cards, the more ways students can recognize a number the better! The dotting mat with 11-20 has the same types of cards that the 0-10 dotting mat has.

Finally I created a pack to work on colors and color words, Dot-A-Color. This one is slightly different than the other two. There is a color word dotting sheet that can go with several sets of cards. One set of cards has the matching color word, another set has real-life objects that match each color, and the third set is colored paint splatters (there is a black and white version of the paint splatters cards too, in case you want to save your ink and color them in yourself!). There are also several different dot by code sheets included. Each sheet has a key using four pictures coded by color words. Students must read the color words and find the matching pictures on the mat to dot in with the same color.

I think these activities are going to be a huge hit in my room this year, especially since they get to use the BINGO daubers! I can't wait to try them out!! If you'd like to try to win all three, enter the Rafflecopter below! I'll announce winners this weekend!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Don't want to wait? No worries! These three activities are 50% OFF ALL DAY TODAY!! That means that you can scoop all three packs for a grand total of $3 for TODAY ONLY! Follow the links below to head to my TPT store and add them to your cart! (If you buy them and then win them, you can pick a product of equal value from my store!)
Dot-A-Letter Pack
Dot-A-Number Pack
Dot-A-Color Pack

I'd love to know what you think! Leave me some feedback love in the comments!

Five for Friday

It's Friday!! My favorite day of the work week, and just another day in the summer time!! :-) Friday also means it's time for one of my favorite link ups, Five For Friday hosted by Doodle Bugs Teaching!

This is a link up where we can share 5 random things from our week. I must admit, being stuck on the couch unable to walk makes for a boring week, but I'll try to find 5 things to share with you all!!

My niece is helping to extinguish the myth that pit bulls are vicious and dangerous animals!

Kobe is an incredibly strong pit bull that COMPLETELY worships and adores my niece!! Lilly can pull his ears and tail, smack him around, stick her fingers up his nose, take his toys from him....she can literally do whatever she wants to this dog and he has never once even raised his voice to her. He takes all her 'loving abuse' and comes back for more! They are truly best friends, and she could not have a more playful and protective companion! I just love how much Kobe loves her!!

My girl here has been carrying around that dog biscuit for over a month now. I can't believe she hasn't demolished it yet!!! Toys and treats don't last long with her, but this one has definitely become the exception!!

I have been doing a lot of 'TPT Stalking' lately, looking for great freebies and new clipart sets that I simply must add to my collection. Did you know that Edulips offers each of her new sets for 50% OFF the day she releases them??? I have gotten so many incredible sets by stalking her store!!! :-) Each time I log on to TPT I search the Our Teach Authors board for anyone I might now. If I find a friend, I snag a screen shot and pop it on to Instagram so my friend can see! Imagine my complete surprise and delight when I logged on to find this!!

Check me out!!!! Bottom right corner is all mine, and I am SO EXCITED to have FINALLY found myself!!! I may or may not have smiled all day, and if I could jump up and down with a broken ankle I totally would have!!!

Have you noticed how social media is exploding with teachers and teacher bloggers?? So many platforms to get our names and 'brands' out there, and I can't believe how far the social media has come since I started blogging almost three years ago! Periscope is the newest fad, and it's so neat to put a face to so many of the bloggers I have become friends with since starting this journey! With so many different forms of social media out there, it can get hard to keep track of them all! Luckily for us, the incredibly talented @thetwentysoomethingteacher created a really awesome template to help keep us all on track!

Here's all of my info! If you want to fill one of these out for yourself, log onto Instagram and follow @thetwentysomethingteacher. She has a blank template in her Photos section!!! It's a great way to network!!

I have been really hard at work on some activities to help get my school year started off right!! I am so proud of my work that I am raffling it off using Rafflecopter! All you have to do is click on one of the images to head over to that blog post where you can enter to win a copy for yourself!

I wish you the best of luck in the giveaway!!!

For those of you who have been following along with my blog for a while, you know that about a month ago I set a challenge for myself.

I, like many of you, truly enjoy finding awesome freebies on TPT that I can use in my classroom again and again. I am constantly downloading activities and clipart freebies created by some pretty amazing people. 

As a TPT creator, I know and understand the amount of time, energy, and hard work that goes into the creation of each and every product, whether it be free or not! I also know that you can have a freebie be downloaded thousands of times, yet only a handful of people took time to rate and leave feedback. I realize how frustrating that can be, and soon found myself guilty of not leaving freebie feedback. I have tried all sorts of things to keep myself on track and held accountable for giving freebie feedback. Nothing was working. 

Enter the Freebie Feedback Challenge!!

This is a little challenge that I created for myself. I needed something to help me keep track of the freebies I have left feedback on, as well as something to hold me accountable for actually LEAVING the feedback!! 

This graphic really helps me to tick off the freebies as I leave feedback on them. Also, posting it each week definitely helps to hold me accountable for my challenge! As you can see, I have left feedback on over 200 freebies since I started this challenge!! Some of those freebies were downloaded last year, and that makes me sad that it's taken this long to give them feedback! I'm so grateful to have made this challenge, and taking ten-twenty minutes out of my day to let other creators know how awesome their creations are is a great use of my time!!

Well, that's all I have from this week! Swing on over to Doodle Bugs Teaching to see who else has linked up and what is going on in their week! You can link up too!

Hey, don't forget that you can link up for Spotlight Saturday! It's a link up I created to act like a Teacher's Show and Tell, where we can get together and share our favorite products, activities, ideas, resources, tips, tricks, and anything else that makes our classrooms and teaching lessons more awesome!!

Share and Prepare: I Love My Letter and Number Shoes

Happy Thursday everyone! I know that many of you teachers out West have been working in your classrooms and getting ready for the new year! I can't wait to see pics of your classroom and how the beginning of your year is going!!

This is perfect for me! We head back to school mid-August, and time is just a'tickin' away!! In order to help get ready for the upcoming school year I have lined up with Once Upon a Classroom: A Teacher's Tale. She is hosting a summer linky where we can all link up and share our favorite back to school products and help each other prepare for the new year!!

So far I have been able to share my Color the Room pack, which helps kinders get used to the rules and routines of Write the Room without actually having to write anything.

The second activity I shared was another beginning of the year Write the Room activity called Which is Which? where students must differentiate between a letter and a number.

I decided to stick with the Write the Room theme for this week's Share and Prepare! After my kinders have used the above activities to practice how to complete Write the Room activities, then they are ready to move on to different styles of Write the Room. 

As I imagine is the same in every kindergarten classroom everywhere, my kinders each year fall in love with a certain blue-furred, sneaker-wearing, singing star of a super cool cat!! You all know who I'm talking about!! My kinders can't get enough of those Pete the Cat books!! I created a letter and a number activity based on our favorite story!

'I Love My Letter Shoes!!' is a Write the room activity where students are matching up the uppercase and lowercase letter pairs, or 'letter buddies'. The recording sheets are broken up so you could either put up all of the alphabet posters and staple the recording sheets together for students to work on finding the entire alphabet at once, or you could put up the alphabet in chunks and work on one recording sheet at a time. 

Students will have a recording sheet with capital letters on it, that match the posters you will hang around the room. Students must find the posters that feature the capital letters on their recording sheet. Once they locate a poster, they must decide which is the correct letter buddy, or the matching lowercase letter. Students are to write that letter on their sheets and color the shoe on their recording sheets to match the color of the shoe above the correct letter buddy. So for example, if a student was looking at the 'Q' poster, they would find the 'Q' on their recording sheet and write the lowercase 'q' on the lines and color the shoe orange, since it is the orange shoe that the 'q' is under.

To go along with my theme, I also created an 'I Love My Number Shoes!!' Write the Room activity! For this one, students have a recording sheet with a numeral in a box with a shoe. Students must search the room to find the poster that has the set of dots which match the numbers on the recording sheets. There are more cards than you need for one week because each number (that can be) is represented in two different ways using black and red dots. DO NOT PUT ALL OF THE POSTERS UP AT ONCE!!! Choose the recording sheets you want to use and then put up the matching number posters, remembering to only put up one combination per number. This way you can use this activity two weeks in a row with different ways to represent the numbers. Great way to help improve that number sense!!

If you would like a copy for yourself they will be 50% OFF ALL DAY today!! Just click on the images below!!!  <**That means you can get them both for $2.50!!!> <***My newest creation Animal Alphabet is also 50% OFF all day today! You could get ALL THREE activities for $5.00!! I doubt they will ever be available like that again!> 

**OR** You could try your luck with the Rafflecopter below! Enter to win BOTH of these packs, and use them in your classroom during the first few weeks of school. Nice, easy Write the Room activities to help kiddos get used to the process!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Swing on back to Once Upon a Classroom: A Teacher's Tale to see who else has linked up to share their favorite beginning of the year products and activities!! You can link up to share yours, too!!

It's not too late to link up for Spotlight Saturday! It's a Teacher's Show and Tell of favorite products, activities, resources, ideas, dollar finds, organization tips, classroom decor, and anything else you about your classroom that you want to share!

What I Made Wednesday with a Giveaway

It's Hump Day!!! I know it's old but I just love that commercial!! It's the middle of the week in the middle of July. I have been reading on blogs and Instagram posts that many teachers are headed back to school in the next few weeks. I'm guessing it's the teachers who live on the West coast or in the Midwest, because teachers on the East coast rarely head back to school before Labor Day. Our district heads back in the end of August, but there have been rumblings of rumors that our state wants to make it a law that school can't start until after Labor Day. We'll see!!

I'm trying to get back into the school year frame of mind and have been working on some activities for the beginning of the school year. I recently finished up a new packet and thought today would be a great day to show it off!

In kindergarten we spend a lot of time focused on the letters of the alphabet. We learn everything we can about those letters. We spend time recognizing them by sight, including both the uppercase and lowercase versions. We practice writing the letters on paper with pencils and crayons. We focus on the sounds those letters make, and find words we know that begin with those sounds. The alphabet is a BIG DEAL in kindergarten, and I am always looking for new and engaging ways for my kinders to work on those letters!

This packet is centered around the alphabet with an animal theme. Each activity includes animals that begin with the letters of the alphabet, and students will not only get to practice identifying their letters but also learning words that begin with those letters. These activities would be perfect for small groups, substitutes, or for students to work on during Word Work rotations in Daily 5.

Here's an inside look at my newest creation!!

This could be a Write the Room activity, or you could put the cards into a bucket for students to pull out and find on their recording sheets. There are 4 different types of recording sheets, each focusing on writing the letters of the alphabet.

Puzzle-piece matching activity for the 'letter buddies', the matching uppercase and lowercase letters. To help students self-check, each piece has the same animal on it, a larger size on the uppercase piece and a smaller size on the lowercase piece. There are three different assessment sheets, focusing on different level of student ability.

A concentration-style activity, one set of cards is self-checking by having the matching letters on the card. There are assessment sheets where students must write the letter for the beginning letter of the animal pictured.

There are several different animal scenes, each with a matching recording sheets. Students use magnifying glasses to search each scene for the letters of the alphabet. Once they locate the letter, they can use a BINGO dauber to dot in the letter on the recording sheet.

This is a set of play-dough mats for every letter of the alphabet. Students can use the mats to help them form each letter from pieces of play-dough. Each mat features an animal whose name begins with the same letter.

Finally, there is a set of pages that are writing prompts. These pages can be used to create a class book. Each letter of the alphabet is represented with a writing prompt. This could be done as a small group activity in the beginning of the year, and students could practice copying from a model or sounding out their response. They are to finish the prompt with their name and the name of an animal that starts with the same first letter. For example, 'A is for Allyson and alligator'. Students can then illustrate their sentence by drawing themselves and their animal.

I am excited to use the activities in this packet during the first few weeks of school. If you would like a WIN a copy of this for yourself, enter the Rafflecopter giveaway below! I'll announce the winners this weekend.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This product will also be 50% OFF until Thursday!! You can grab one at it's lowest-ever price!! Don't worry, if you win one in the giveaway after buying it you can choose any other product of equal or lesser value in my store!! Click the image below to go to my TPT Store!

It's not too late to link up for Spotlight Saturday! This is a weekly linky party for a Teacher's Show and Tell of favorite products, activities, resources, ideas, classroom decor, tips and tricks, or anything else that you do in your classroom and want to show off!

Summer Share & Prepare: Which is Which? Write the Room

On Thursdays in the summer I am linking up with Marie from Once Upon a Classroom: A Teacher's Tale. She is hosting a very cool summer linky, where we get a chance to share some awesome beginning of the year activities that others could use to prepare their classroom for next year!

Last week I shared one of my newest products, perfect for the beginning of the year in kindergarten or pre-k or 1st grade. My Color the Room pack is the perfect way to get kiddos used to the procedures and routines of Write the Room activities, except in this activity they don't have to write anything. Many of my kiddos can't form a letter or copy from a model at the beginning of the year, so this activity is perfect. To get one for yourself, click on the image below to head over to my TPT store.

For today's Share and Prepare, I would like to share an activity with you that you could use after you have finished with the Color the Room packet. It is a great activity to use when your kiddos are beginning to understand the difference between a letter and a number.

This is another Write the Room activity that focuses on a student's ability to differentiate between a letter and a number. It never fails, I always have quite a few students who come to me not understanding the difference between a letter and a number. This activity helps them to visually discriminate between the two.

This packet is chock full of posters that focus on being able to visually discriminate between letters and numbers. It is not intended for you to use all of the posters at once, but to decide what you want to focus on. There are four sets of posters, two of them use white fonts and the other two use black fonts. There is a set that focuses on uppercase letters and numbers, and another set that focuses on lowercase letters and numbers. You can use the uppercase set one week and the lowercase set the following week. This way you're giving your students plenty of practice identifying numbers and letters.

There are also two different styles of recording sheets included. There is a set that focuses on finding the letters and another set that focuses on finding the numbers. You will also be able to differentiate using the recording sheets. One sheet is for students who are able to copy from a model and can write the letter or number on the handwriting lines. The other sheet is for students who are still having a hard time with letter/number formation. For the second sheet, students will have to color in the circle to indicate which circle on the poster has the letter/number. 

This Write the Room activity is a logical step after using the Color the Room activity. Students should by now be used to the rules and routines of Write the Room and should be able to complete these activities independently while you meet with small groups.

If you are interested in adding this resource to your collection, I invite you to enter the Rafflecopter drawing to try and win one for yourself! I will be announcing winners on Sunday! If you can't wait, head on over to my TPT store and snag one for yourself!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Swing back over to Once Upon a Classroom: A Teacher's Tale to see who else has linked up to share their favorite back to school products!