Never make a MEMORY BOOK again!

Oh my word?  Have you ever spent hours at the end of the school year sorting through student work to put into memory books.  Have you ever lost your mind trying to figure out who stole the binding machine to put together books while you so desperately need to begin yours.  Were you that teacher who took the binding machine?  Oh geez, this is stressing me out just hearing about this!

If you hate putting memory books together, then I've got the solution for you! All you'll need are file folders with the prongs and a two hole punch.
See the entire tutorial over at Easy Teaching Tools!

Want your very own editable copy of the memory book cover?  Head to Easy Teaching Tools to pick up several color options for FREE!

HOORAY FOR THE 100TH DAY!

Hello Friends!

It's Jennifer from Stories and Songs in Second here to share ideas for one of my favorite classroom celebrations!

Has the countdown to your 100th Day of School begun yet?

My classroom celebration is only four days away, and I've rounded up some of The Primary Pack's best and brightest ideas that I plan to use in Room #2!  Before I share my list, I must take a moment to just say THANK YOU to this group of bloggers that I am honored to collaborate with.

Two years ago I was a struggling "baby blogger" and TpT creator.  Finding my way, making mistakes, feeling frustrated, and floundering more than swimming.  Thankfully, many of the fine ladies in this colorful box of crayons reached out to help, give advice, answer questions, and offer support. Featuring their great work in this post is my way of showing  gratitude for their encouragement.  While we all have moved on to post for other groups or primarily to our own personal blogs over the past year, we continue to be friends and support each other's journeys as teacher-authors!

First up is DOTTY DUDE from Kelly and Kim's Kindergarten Kreations!  What a fun way for your little learners to visually "see" their sets of ten!  Grab this fun activity for FREE in their TpT store!
They also have this cute, free HAT your kids will love to color and wear!

A special learning celebration is never complete without a sensational snack, and Kelly from Sweet Sounds of Kindergarten has a great recipe for 100TH DAY TRAIL MIX  .

You'll want to grab her 100TH DAY ACTIVITY PACK as well!  You'll find a coloring sheet, and a crown for your students to decorate and wear, a mini-memory book, and a gumball machine craftivity! Be sure to check out this grand entrance that she made for her classroom too!

Elyse from Proud To Be Primary encourages you to go into "full Granny mode" along with your students!  I've never dressed up myself, but am considering "getting my gray hair on" this year!  I think the kids will get a big kick out of it!

Laminated snack sorting mats are another stroke of genius Elyse shares in her 100TH DAY post, along with this great STEM Solo cup challenge!

Elyse over at A is for Apples has these beautiful BRAG TAGS that will make a great 100th Day souvenir for your students!  What a fun way to commemorate a special milestone!

She also has this POEM that your students will love reading with a partner!  Imagine.....if you have 20 students, and they each read the verse 5 times!  Woo hoo for 100!

Gina from Teaching With Heart adopts a CENTER-BASED APPROACH to her 100th Day celebration! Some of the choices she provides for her students include making a design with 100 pattern blocks, stringing a 100-bead necklace, building a 100-piece unifix cube structure, and creating a 100's chart with Starburst candies!

Grab these free PUNCH CARDS to keep your busy learning bees organized!

This SMART COOKIE  gift bag from Jenn over at Crayons and Cuties in Kindergarten was a HUGE hit with my second graders last year, and your families will truly enjoy working together to collect 100 items for this TAKE-HOME PROJECT!

Your Bingo dotters will be working overtime as students fill in these glorious 

GUMBALL MACHINE, and they will have fun rolling and RACING TO 100 with this board game from Ashley over at One Sharp Bunch.

Be sure to check out the other products and blog posts below!  Feel free to link up if you are a fellow blogger or TpT'er!  I hope that they help make your 100th Day celebration something to cheer about!

An InLinkz Link-up

As always, thanks so much for allowing me to share my story.  Continue to hold a song in your heart and teach your children well!

Be sure to check out this fun FREEBIE from

my TpT store!  

It includes banners for your students to color

and an awards certificate!

Click {HERE} to grab it!

PIN FOR LATER

Let's Get Scratching! Using 'Scratch-Offs' In The Elementary Classroom!

Hi All!

It's Jenn from Crayons & Cuties In Kindergarten!

Today's post is all about a 'Do-It-Yourself' project that is sure to spark excitement while engaging your students in meaningful academic practice!

Grab your coins because it's time to...

Get Scratchin'!

Last year I stumbled upon a 'how to make scratch-offs' on Pinterest...but it was geared toward small business owners who may want to include for a 'mystery percent off' on future purchases when shipping goods.

It got me thinking about how I could use it in my classroom and I gave it a 'trial run' to see how easy/hard they would be to create.

You can read about it in more detail HERE on my blog but here is a quick 'how-to' and some pictures of how well it worked in my classroom last February!

You will only need 3 ingredients...

Dish Soap (any brand)

Silver Metallic Paint (can be acrylic or latex)

Packing Tape

I was able to find the paint at a local 'hometown' hardware store, but you can also find it at craft stores!

I used a glass plate for mixing because I didn't want the paint to get 'soaked' into a paper plate.

Watch how easy this is....

1. Print your scratch-off cards

2. Cover the 'scratch-off area' with a piece of packing tape

WANT TO BE SMARTER THAN ME?!

Just laminate the entire sheet of cards!  DUH!

This occurred to me AFTER I cut packing tape into small rectangles!

Plus then the cards would be re-usable for next year- I'd just need to whip up some more 'potion!'

Now it's time to mix up your 'potion':

2 parts paint to 1 part soap (but I will be honest and say I DID NOT measure!)

I just 'eyed' it and used a big fat brush to make sure it all mixed together well!

Once well mixed, 'paint' the area(s) to be revealed.

You want to sort of 'gob' it on so that when it dries there is no 'see through'!

Let it dry 1-2 hours.

You can check the cards- if you can see through then do a second coat.

All of my cards were A-OK after one coat, but I had put it on pretty thick!

Now comes the magic...

What will be my mystery word?!

Use a coin just as you would for lottery scratch-offs:

It has thicker 'flakes' than traditional scratch-offs but kids won't know the difference (or shouldn't!)

Here is how it went in my kindergarten classroom last February:

I made it a center for the week leading up to Valentine's Day.

They picked a card from a heart-shaped basket (not sure where that picture went!).

I had a cup of coins for them to use for scratching and then they used it in a sentence.

They LOVED that they got to glue the card to the paper to take it home too!

LOOK at all the sentences they wrote using their 'mystery word!'

THEY LOVED THIS!

They asked for 'mystery words' repeatedly after this activity!

They loved it so much I made scratch-offs as part of their Valentine gift:

It went into a baggie with a Smencil and some Smarties candies:

They took them home to scratch and then had to bring it back to me to redeem their prize!

I PROMISE making these scratch-offs DID NOT take a lot of time!

The most tedious part was covering the spaces with packing tape- but that can be avoided by just throwing the entire sheet of cards through the laminator!

Maybe your students are beyond practicing sight words and you are wondering how to use them in your classroom?

How about:

1. classroom incentives (Do 'X-Y-Z' and earn a scratch-off!  You determine the prizes so you can cater it to what you have!)

2. reading log incentives (Read so many books/for so many minutes and get a scratch-off!)

3. participation or attendance in classroom events (this could even work for parent/teacher conferences or open house- attendance gets you (or your child) a scratch-off!)

4. word work centers (vowel patterns you are working on, vocabulary, spelling words, etc)

The scratch off could also determine what they do with their weekly words that day (rainbow write, write 3 times each, use in a sentence, etc!)

5. letter and/or word to picture match activities (scratch the word and find the matching picture in a pocketchart- great for CVC words or beginning sounds!)

All you'll need to get is some soap, paint and tape or laminate because I am giving you the cards and recording sheet for FREE in this download!

I also included the Valentine bag topper pictured in this post if you would like to use that idea for gifts!

The download will included pre-programmed frog word cards, as well as a sheet of blank cards that you can print/write additional words you may want to use!

It also has the monkey gift cards- programmed and blank sheet too!

I used KG Red Hands font for my words.  It is free for personal use and can be downloaded HERE.

And don't forget to check-out last year's Primary Pack 'Valentine's Day' theme post from me...

Dancing Hearts Experiment if you are in need of some 'love'-ly scientific fun!

 

 Hope you and your students have fun scratchin' and wishing you all a 'love'-ly Valentine's Day!

Until next post,

Easy Name Practice

Every morning when our Pre-K students arrive at school they sign their names in little books that we made for them. Making individual practice pages for each student can be so time-consuming, though! We've developed a way to make it quick and easy!!

Click HERE to see how we use these Name Practice Sheets, and to download a set of sheets for your own students!

Sneezy the Snowman: "Word Melt" Freebie!

Hi friends! Kelly here from Sweet Sounds of Kindergarten. Today I wanted to share a fun activity with one of my favorite winter books: Sneezy the Snowman by Maureen Wright.

My first grade class had just started studying /oo/ words and all of the different spellings that this sound can have. I happened to read Sneezy to them, and low and behold, that story has a TON of /oo/ words with the oo and ew spellings. I thought that it would be fun for us to do a word sort with these different spellings, and whipped up a quick activity: 

For this activity, I had my students sort between the two /oo/ spellings found in the story. We re-read the story, and made a list of words first. Then we put them on our snowballs: 

Next, we started gluing down our labels on the background: 

The picture above shows this activity with two different CVC word families! As I was doing this activity, I realized that it would really work for any groups of words, especially word families. So I made a sample to show that too :)

Next we glued down our snowballs, and melted snowman in the middle:

Finally, we got to put the face and arms on the melted snowman! My kids loved being able to put these however they wanted on their "snowman blob" :)

Here is the finished product with CVC words:

My first graders just LOVED doing this word sort, and I hope that your students do too! 

Click on the picture below to download this activity for FREE!

Have a great weekend!!

Anchor Charts

Hey y'all! It's Kourtney blogging from Mrs. Payton's Precious Kindergarteners. I don't know about y'all, but my school is all about the Anchor Charts this year.  It might just be us, but there's always something new we've got to focus on.  This year it's the anchor charts.  We are a Learning Focused School and I'll have to save that for another post, but seriously let's talk Anchor Charts.

This is totally my school this year:

Before this year...I thought Anchor Charts were something like these:

Now don't get me wrong, my kids NEED these kinds of posters.  They use these types of resources CONSTANTLY.  I will defend myself and my reasoning for having them on the wall...but they aren't Anchor Charts.

Anchor Charts...ARE NOT pre printed.  Take that in for a second.  I know, I know.  I HATE my hand writing.  I want to print all the things.  I want it to have cute clip art.  I don't want to write or draw anything.  Anchor Charts are charts you make with your students that include information, strategies, processes, cues, guidelines, and other content you are teaching for students to refer to.  Since they are helping you make it by contributing information and watching you make it, it is more meaningful and they should use them more often and commit that information to their memory.  Also, you aren't supposed to laminate these..I know GASP! But if the light shines on them the wrong way the kids can't see them correctly and that's a problem too.  Yep, all the Anchor Chart rules.  I didn't make them, but trust and believe this girl follows them.  

So, what do you need to create an Anchor Chart? 

1. Markers!

I prefer these:

Why?  Because they smell and write good.  What could be better.  Also there are 12 colors.  

2. Chart paper.

This is what our school bought us...it's HUGE. Like the Fire Marshall is coming to get you right now huge.  So you can cut it in half or come up with another option.  I used some other chart paper for a minute and then realized I could cut this in half :) 

3. Content.  You can make an Anchor Chart about practically ANYTHING.  Writing and Math are the easiest...but seriously you can make a circle map about ANYTHING!  My kids use the words in these maps in their writing and that's super helpful.  

Here are some that I have up in my room right now.

(By the way, make sure you have designated areas for them...all of your writing ones should be in one area, all the math ones should be in one area etc...it's another one of those rules.)

I didn't come up with all of these on my own.  Some of these came from Pinterest.  No need to reinvent the wheel y'all.  Find an idea and go with it.

Alright...so go and make some Anchor Charts with your kiddos.  I want to make some text connection ones and reading strategy ones next.  It's on my to-do list.  If you have a great one, share it with us! 

Until next time!