Rhyme Guy and Calendar Journals

Howdy friends!
I wanted to share something that we do with our students each year to help them with their math skills and reading skills... RHYME GUY and CALENDAR JOURNALS! After winter break, the students always return juuuuussstt a little bit more mature and they are ready for this next step in our routine. Sooo, after recess each day with have our Class Meeting. On Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays we complete our Calendar Journals and on Tuesdays and Thursdays we do Rhyme Guy. The students pick up on this routine quickly and I don't have to do much work to get them with that (I am a creature of routine and my students follow suit). OK, OK, hold on, before we alternate, we spend a week completing each one slowly together and then after that we alternate and work slowly until they can get to it all on their own. Let me show you pictures:

Calendar  Journals

Calendar Journals

Calendar Journals

I use my interactive whiteboard to walk the students through each step. We walk through all the steps together and they know exactly where to find the information they need.

Calendar Wall (imagine March has numbers on it)

Calendar Journal

I LOVE using the calendar journals! After a week or two of doing strictly calendar journals, we start rhyme guy...
Rhyme Guy is a superhero who only speaks in rhyme. He says a word and the students try to write as many rhyming words as they can...

When they are done writing, we put as many as we can on the board. I call on a student, they tell me their word, spell their word and we all read it together. LOOOOVE Rhyme Guy! After a while, I ask some students to write silly sentences using those rhymes, "The dog sits on a log with a hog."

Ok, ok, that was A LOT! You can pick up Rhyme Guy at my TpT store soon and my Calendar Journals are already there!

Want the Calendar Journal for free?? Leave a comment with your email before tomorrow night and it's yours!

Vanessa

200 Followers and a Freebie!

I can't believe I have 200 followers! It took some time but now we are here! Time to celebrate... anyone want in on a giveaway??
Side story- We had a Chinese New Year parade today... anyone else do that? We don't have a big Chinese population and we don't have parade for any other events (besides Halloween) so I'm not sure I like it too much! Luckily, today was a nice, cool day so we weren't sweating as we were wearing our dragon hats. =)
Anyway, since I'm in such a great mood because I'm at 200 followers... here's a freebie! We've been working on our best estimation skills and I have to say, they are pretty good at it! There are some, of course, who don't realize the difference between 100 and 40 but besides that, we are all good. Here are some shots of my kiddos in action...We used the Sunflower Estimation sheet where we estimated how many seeds would fit in the middle of the flower. The other is the Marshmallow Mouth... how many marshmallows will fit in the mouth? You may notice that in one of the shots there are circles drawn in the center of the flower. In my classroom, everyone gets what they need and not all students are quite ready for estimation so their job is to glue the seeds in the circles and count them. The same goes for the marshmallow mouth except there is no picture. 

Want the Estimation Sheets?? You can snag them on TpT by clicking the picture OR leave a comment with your email letting me know that you'd like a free copy... today only! =)

If you're interested in being a part of my 200 follower giveaway, please let me know also... leave me a comment or shoot me an email: vanessa.escobar17@gmail.com

Thanks friends!

Is it vacation yet?

Is anyone else feeling the drag?? I feel like my students are getting a little crazier, my patience is getting smaller, and I just want to sleep! =) Anyone with me??
Even though we have been on the coo-coo side, we have still been getting lots of work done!
The past week we have been teaching calendar: the parts of a calendar, how to read a calendar, etc. My students are already pretty strong in this area but we teach and re-teach, modify and extend for all! The reason why they are so great is because we do the Starfall calendar each day along with our morning meeting. The Starfall calendar is an AWESOME way to get the students talking about the calendar and interacting with the calendar. I just added a bookmark to my desktop and so that it is easy and ready to go! Before I had my fancy schmancy interactive whiteboard, I just used my projector and my laptop and a wireless mouse. If you don't have a interactive whiteboard, I HIGHLY suggest a wireless mouse. They are about $20 but it is soooooo worth it. I used to just hand the mouse around and the students were involved!
Here's a glimpse...
First go to the homepage...

Click on the calendar and you are set to go! AND if you haven't explored this website... DO IT NOW! Especially if you teach Kindergarten or first grade.
Here's a snapshot of the first calendar page...

I LOVE this calendar and site... My students are excited to play even when they can play any Starfall game! The best part of it? It's free!!! In the picture above you can see that there are little icons to mark special activities throughout the month. It doesn't save but by the end of the month, all my students have those special days memorized because we do them over and over again.

Tomorrow I'm going to snap some pictures of the students and the calendars that they are currently making AND if you're back tomorrow, I'm even throwing a freebie your way!

One last thing... I decided that I wanted to change my RAK (random act of kindness) to something different. I really like the idea of the Starbucks thing BUT I was thinking about it a little more and I'm going to donate to a Donor's Choose classroom of someone who I don't know and someone who is far away from me. I know how much all of us need things for our classrooms and I know it is so exciting to get a donation so I figured that that would be worth my $10-$20 instead of a cup of coffee (which is also much needed sometimes). So, who is with me on that one??? If you are, feel free to donate to my classroom (hehehehe). If you do, I'll give you anything you want from my TPT store... ANYTHING! 

Be back tomorrow!

A Saturday post? Yup!

Happy Saturday everyone! I rarely post on Saturdays but I here I am!

We continued our numbers through 20 centers this week and the kids are gobbling it up! (haha, since Thanksgiving is coming, haha) Harry Kindergarten's Numbers in the Teens video has been really fun and engaging for the kiddos, thanks Harry!

Here are some shots of my kid in action...

This activity is part of my UPDATED Number Books

Uh, oh! He got carried away with the dot marker!

Look at this kiddo... she decided not to go on the traditional route to the treasure.

He's going for the more traditional route.

WOW! Look at her go!

I loved seeing the variation of work with all of my students. Our centers are only 15 minutes long so for some of them, I had the ships pre-cut so that they could focus on the number part. Others cut in 10 seconds and were gluing away in no time.
Check out my updated products The Number Book now with 11-20 and The Treasure Hunt with the number sequencing activity shown above. They are both $4 for now but the price will go up next week!

Last thing...
I have been reading a new blog that I LOVE! She is a special education teacher and the way she talks about her students is amazing. I think she belongs at my school but she doesn't! She is so close to 100 followers... head over and check her out!

Ok folks! Enjoy your weekend, I am spending mine with my veteran hubby. Don't forget to thank a veteran this weekend!

Learning numbers through 20

Hi everyone!
We FINALLY got some rain today! Luckily, it only rained during classroom time and after school. The bad part of any rainy day (besides crazy kids locked in the classroom like wild monkeys) is that I don't have any closets so I have piles of backpacks. Ugh! Very disrupting to my OCD tendencies. Although today, one of my students, let's call her "I", did such a nice job of lining up all the backpacks and putting them in boy/girl lines. It was so cute! I'm sure my OCD is rubbing off on her a little. One student walked in and threw their backpack on the pile and "I" jumped up and said, "That doesn't go there, it's the boy's pile!" So awesome!
Here's a snap...

Ok moving right along... We also finally got to use my Treasure Hunt Pack!

Click on the picture to grab your copy!

The kids LOVED it! It was so successful!! Well, aside from the little meltdown that included throwing everything in sight. BUT, even with that going on, the kids we so focused on counting and matching the numbers. You could use them for what you want but we talked about being Pilgrims and looking for the Mayflower and using our maps to find America by finding all of the ships. SUPER CUTE!
Here are some shots of the fun...

 Sorry there are some blurs but you get the point. Now that I look at these pictures, I realize my classroom is quite messy. lol. Don't judge me.
I am giving away 3 today for 3 people who want the pack and comment!
Oh, one other thing... I reached 100 followers on my TPT store!!! I'm so excited about that!!! I'll have to do something special soon, any ideas?
Last thing, the elections were so exciting and nerve-racking at the same time. On Tuesday afternoon, the director of our school had a long conversation with us about what would happen if Prop 30 didn't pass in California. He said, "Don't worry yet but if the prop doesn't pass, we are getting a paycut, furlough days will come at the end of the school year and our school alone loses $700,000. But don't worry yet" So that wasn't an exact quote but you get the point. I went home and cried to my husband. One of my co-teachers and I called dibs on teaching summer school and I contemplated calling Red Robin to be a server again. When I went to sleep on Tuesday, I cried a little again because at 10pm, the Prop hadn't passed. My husband tried to lift my spirits and reassure that all would be fine but I was a mess. Then I went to school on Wednesday and found out that Proposition PASSED!! Woo Hoo! I don't have to be a server again. Phew. Our school budget is still a hot mess but it is out of hot water, for now.
Ok, I just wanted to share that because I didn't get to post yesterday. Let me know if you'd like a copy of the Treasure Hunt! I'm giving away 3!

Dictionaries, Numbers and Freebies!

Hi Friends!
So if you read my post yesterday, you should know that today was a successful day with everyone keeping their clothes on!! Woo Hoo!! If you didn't read my post yesterday, you HAVE to read about my day.

Has anyone seen that new spot on TPT called New Product Requests? I find it on the My Sales page. Well I was looking at my TpT account the other day (because I track that thing like noone's business) and I started reading some of them. I was scrolling through and thinking, "Nope! Not an 8th grade teacher. Nope! Not a science teacher. Nope! I don't have any of my own clip art to sell. Nope! Can't do that. Hey! I can do that! That seems easy peesy!" So I emailed the person who requested it, told her my info, crossed my fingers that she didn't send me a virus and started creating for her! I asked her questions about specifics, she gave me an idea to go by and that was that. I created the Student Dictionaries for her and it was exactly what she needed! I was so excited that I could help her AND even more excited that I could sell it to her. She showed me what she was looking at purchasing and I saved her about $75 so we both scored. Thanks TpT!

Want one? I'll send the first 3 peeps to comment one for $ free.99. Just leave your name and email and tell me you want a dictionary... but wait! There's more...

I also wanted to show you all the number books we have been working on in class. 

These have been my favorite this year! We always work on numbers and number formation for a long time and these books have been wonderful! There is one for each number where they are counting, writing and saying the numbers 0-10 repeatedly. We broke the book up into pieces and started with 0-2 then moved on to 3-5 and now we are working on 6-10. It has been really great too because the students have the routine down on how to complete the task so I can really focus on the formation of the numbers. They love it and so do I! We use cute poems to go with the numbers and the Handwriting Without Tears formations. HWT is a great handwriting curriculum that really focuses on the fine motor movement of letters. Love it!
I have this on my TpT store as well.

 Want one of these? Be one of the first three to comment and this baby is all yours!

Ok one more time... Comment if you want a dictionary, comment if you want a number book or comment because you love me and my blog! lol. Let me know which you want!

You can also check out Sensational Seconds' giveaway... She's giving away a laminator!!! Head over a check it out...

Be back tomorrow friends!