Monthly Archives: June 2013
Sunday Flash Sale
Don’t forget about the Sunday Flash Sale! 🙂
All day today my entire store is 20% off!
Click through my blogroll to find my other Kinderland friends who are also on sale. 🙂
Kristen 🙂
Sale on Sunday!
Click on the picture above to go to my store. 🙂
Freebie Friday 4
This week’s Freebie Friday is to help you get your dismissal organized! I have a “How we get home” sheet for you. 🙂
Just click on the picture above, LIKE my Facebook Fan page and you’ll be able to download it! 🙂
Kristen 🙂
Thoughtful Thursday 4
I’ve been thinking about our new reading series a lot the last few weeks. We adopted Journeys 2014 Common Core for the next 6 years and I’m just wondering if you use it and how it looks in your classroom.
This is the first time our Kindergarten’s have officially adopted a reading series that we need to follow with fidelity, so I’m a little nervous because I’m not a “follow the basal” type teacher. We have adopted a reading series in the past but it’s either been just as a resource or to use a specific part of the series (phonemic awareness).
I will admit that I really like the texts (both trade book and big book size) that come with the series, but was disappointed that there wasn’t more in the way of AimsWeb/Dibles practice (nonsense words) in it.
I’m going to give it a chance and see what happens. 🙂
Any thoughts?
Kristen 🙂
Wishful Wednesday 4
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my Listening Work Station for next school year. I would really like to move from CD’s to iPod Touches so that I wouldn’t have to keep track of all those CD’s and their cases anymore! I also want to get everything moved to an iPod so that my Listening Work Station can be anywhere in the room (as long as we remember to charge the iPod). The kids won’t have to be tethered to the wall anymore because they won’t need a plug! 🙂
Have any of you tried this idea with success? I got one of these headphone splitters at Target a few months ago so that I could use the one iPod that I have with more than one kiddo.
I can have up to 5 kiddos listen to the same book at the same time. I would like to get one more iPod just so the kids can listen to separate books if they choose, but I think to begin with, one will work. 🙂
For those of you who have used this idea, how has it worked? I’ve been researching it and it seems to work okay (as most kids know how to run an iPod already!) and the kids can navigate through books easily. How do you make sure your kiddos match up the book audio track with the right book in their hands? I read somewhere that you can put a picture of the book cover to help this, but I haven’t tried it yet–any suggestions? 🙂
Kristen 🙂
Technology Tuesday 4
I’ve posted about this site before, but Sesame Street just keeps adding new games, and I keep loving them! Here are some new favorites as well as some older ones! 🙂
When you first go to SesameStreet.org, you will see this page. To get to the games, click on the blue games button at the top.
Then, this screen comes up. You can click on any of the games to get started. If you’re looking for a specific game, click on one and then on the next page you can search for it.
You can click on the character selector wheel at the left to pick a different game to play. This is a picture of Bert’s Bottlecaps (a GREAT game for sorting by more than one attribute!) I also like how the parent/teacher directions/ideas are written to the right so that they know what’s going on if they miss the directions. The extension ideas are awesome! This one tells parents to have their child sort the laundry to keep practicing this skill.
This game is a new one. It’s a word building game and my most favorite thing about it, is that the children cannot click on the first letter of the word until they listen to Bert and Ernie talk about the words. It cuts down on the kids clicking at random letters and gives them time to think as they hear the word being said. 
We play lots of the sorting games on Sesamestreet.org. We really like the “Elmo’s Laundry” game and “Bert’s Bottlecaps”.
Here is a picture of Elmo’s Laundry. Elmo gives the kids a description of how to sort the laundry (it keeps getting more difficult each round they play). It might say “pants with white stripes” and the kids tap the laundry that matches that description. It falls into Elmo’s laundry basket and then they tap the next one. It starts out with underwear, so they all get a kick out of that! 🙂 See the tiny green button just to the right of the laundry game? If you tap/click that, it will make the game screen larger, helping us to reach on the Promethean Board. This game has been bookmarked on my student computers so they can all play it there during Math Work Stations.
Here is “Bert’s Bottlecaps”. The kids have to sort Bert’s bottlecaps based on the attributes he gives them. This one was red objects on the left, animals on the right, and red animals in the middle. This one is a little bit harder, but once the kids catch on, they really do well!
I also like that it’s free and there are no ads that pop up on this site! 🙂
Kristen 🙂
Magical Monday 4
Pinterest can be a girl’s best friend or a girl’s worst enemy! 🙂 I find so many great ideas on Pinterest, but who has time to make them all?? So I just pick what it most immediate to my needs and leave the rest for later! 🙂
Last week, I shared the drawer organizer and I made one of my own:
Here’s what it looks like finished! 🙂 It took me about an hour of Hell’s Kitchen episodes to make it (I really think it slowed me down watching tv while working!! 🙂
Do you think there is a 12 step program for washi tape addicts? I got all of these tapes at Michael’s craft store (the three large rolls in the back came from Target). They were $2.99 a roll–addiction will do that to you! 🙂
Here are the drawers before I added anything to them. 🙂
These are the labels I created to put in the large drawers and I’m getting ready to cut them with my paper trimmer. 🙂
This is a close up of some of the drawers after they were done. I used clear tape in my P-Touch label maker so the labels wouldn’t cover up the pretty washi tape. 
Here is is again all finished. I might need to add labels to the bottom drawers because it’s hard to see what those drawers are labeled with unless you are looking right at them. I can see them sitting at my desk, so I’m still trying to decide. You can see that I have 12 drawers with no labels on them. I left them for expansion–mostly I couldn’t visualize what else was in my desk drawer and make a label for it! Can you think of any other labels I could add?
I realize this organizer is pretty big (44 drawers total) and I’ll admit that I stood in the aisle for 15 minutes trying to decide which organizer to get (22 or 44 drawers) until my hubby asked which one I was leaning towards. I told him I liked the amount of larger drawers on this one, so he put it in the cart and said “keep moving or we will be here all day!! :)” So I ended up with 44 drawers! I’m sure I’ll figure out what to put in them! 😉
Kristen 🙂
Stamp an Uppercase letter
By popular demand, I’ve finished creating a Stamp an Uppercase letter activity to go along with my lowercase/numbers pack.
There is a version for readers where the color words are written in all black, encouraging them to use their reading skills to figure out what color they need.
There is also a non-reader version. This version has the color words written in color so non-readers can focus on identifying letters and stamping them rather than reading the color words. 🙂 This version would be great for ELL/lower students! 🙂
Click on either of the pictures to get your “Stamp an Uppercase letter” activity from my Tpt store. 🙂
Kristen 🙂
Freebie Friday 3
As promised, here is the Science Notebook Table of Contents for you. 🙂
Click the picture to get it for yourself (and then click the blue chevron Fan Freebie tab to download).
Kristen 🙂
Kristen's Kindergarten 