Flurry of Freebies - A Winter Ebook and Link-Up

Happy 2016 everyone!
We over at the Primary Pack are excited to start a new year together and with all of our readers! We'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for stopping in and supporting us!

With school starting up again for the new year, we know that it can take a little extra to get motivated. We know you have new ideas and things you want to try out, but that takes time and energy!

We wanted to help YOU out with a special winter surprise for you and your classroom! It's our Flurry of Freebies Winter Ebook!

In this FREE ebook, you will get an amazing collection of printable resources from us at the Primary Pack. They are ready for you to use in your classroom TODAY!

Just download and print...you're all set!
Simply click the image below to download your FREE copy.

But that's not all! We would love for you to show us your winter resources as well.
Do you have any winter products are freebies to share with our readers? Let's see them!

To link up and share, please follow the instructions below. 

Thank you for joining us!

We hope you enjoy our freebie booklet and that you grab and discover many great winter freebies and products from the link-up. Please check out our full products and stores, included within the booklet.

An InLinkz Link-up

Seasonal Organization FREEBIES

Last week I participated in a 12 Days of Christmas linky with Focused on Fifth. Topics ranged from products to get you through the busy month, bringing positivity to the classroom, and tips to keep you organized. Since organization is so near and dear to my heart, I thought I would share my seasonal organization freebies with you as well!

To read more and download a free resource, visit my post here. 

Dove Peace Foldable Writing Craftivity

Happy November everyone! 

It's Elyse from Proud to be Primary. 

I'm popping in today to share some activities for you to use in your classroom this month. On November 11th, it is Remembrance Day in Canada and Veteran's Day in the US. To prepare for this important events, I like to teach my students about peace.

Last year around this time on the Primary Pack, I shared this post that includes FREE peace writing templates. Head HERE to read about it and grab your freebie.

This year, I've created a dove foldable craftivity that will make a beautiful display in your classroom. To learn how to create this craftivity in your classroom and grab the templates for FREE, head to my blog HERE.

How do you teach your students about peace? 

We'd love to hear your ideas!

Halloween Write the Room

Hey y'all! It's Kourtney blogging from Mrs. Payton's Precious Kindergarteners! (It's a ghost town over there y'all...just bare with me!)

Seriously cannot believe it's already the end of the first 9 weeks for me! I'd love to say we have established a routine, but I just overhauled my schedule and so we are learning a new routine! The good news is, we have learned how to do everything and I just completed assessments and my kids are SO SMART!

They love, love, LOVE centers! One of their favorites? Write the room! Years ago, when I first started checking out the world of Teachers Pay Teachers and Pinterest, I had no clue what a Write the Room Center was...but once I introduced it to my students, I have never looked back!

All of my centers have an icon..here's Write the Room.  I leave the sheet, the markers, and the clipboards at the center for the students to pick up when they get there. (Check out those glasses in the caddy...I started using those last year! Those are a score from the Target Dollar spot!)

Then I place my picture cards around the room. Sometimes the kids count things too.  I told them they are detectives...sometimes I forget where I put the cards...it's always a mystery.:)

Then my sweet children, find the words and record...I mean...y'all these glasses.  I.can't.even.  LOVE!

And there you have it.  Learning made fun!  Want to try write the room next week? Here's a free one for you!

I hope your kids enjoy! AND - RUN don't walk to Target and get some glasses for them to wear while they are hunting for the words...they will love it...and you will smile every time you see them.

Until next month, 

BOO-yah! You've Been BOOed! [FREE!]

Happy Halloween! It's Dianna here with you today from Sassy, Savvy, Simple Teaching! Click my button below to follow me along my journey!

It's the season to spread some BOO! So get started SPOOKING a few! Start a little fun this season, put smiles on faces & TREATS at their places!

It's a great activity to build school morale with the entire staff! You can also play with your friends or neighbors too! Keep it a SECRET, nobody will ever know who BOOed who! 

It's simple to get started, just BREW your SPELL! Take a day to make 2, 2 treat bags & 2 copies of each! 

Join the fun, the season is here. So spread the BOO & keep the CHEER!

Click on any of the photos or HERE to grab this for yourself!

Happy BOOing!

Play-Doh Learning

Hey y'all! It's Kourtney blogging from Mrs. Payton's Precious Kindergartners! We're starting our 5th week of school and I can hardly believe it! We have settled into our routines, I've finished assessments, I know what my kids know and what they need to learn, and we are well on our way with curriculum! But seriously...every day I still feel like this:



The first 2 weeks of school I was getting 10k-12k steps before 3pm...now is 8k-10k.  We are soooo busy!!

This year, my school is ALL ABOUT anchor charts.  Anyone else?!  There isn't enough wall space on the earth for the anchor charts we've been creating in room 201, but seriously peeps - these kids are getting something from them, so let me not knock them.  They even know the word anchor chart and they've learned circle map and tree map. Praise!

Last week, we learned all about shapes! We made a tree map with the title 2D shapes.  We added square, rectangle, circle, and triangle.  We added all the characteristics of each as we learned about them.  It was a great way to us to keep track of the information each day.

By Wednesday, we were ready to build the shapes since we knew the characteristics of them.

It's really important to me that they build them correctly with the Play-Doh.  For example, the triangle should be made of 3 "snakes", the rectangle should be made of 4 "snakes" etc.  I call them snakes because that's what we make, but each snake represents a side.

Each student in my room has their own can of Play-Doh (which is labeled), which is to prevent the sharing of germs...and also I'm a little OCD about mixing Play-Doh Colors.  If you don't have this luxury, you could make your own! 

Ingredients:

• 2 cups plain flour

• 1 cup salt

• 1 tbs oil

• 1 cup cold water

• 2 drops liquid food coloring

• What to do:
• Combine plain flour and salt
• Add water, food coloring and oil. Mix until ingredients are combined.
• Knead well.
• If consistency is too wet add a little plain flour.

Seems easy enough, right? The kids LOVE using Play-Doh to learn! We didn't get too much in the floor!  Some of my kids really need extra practice strengthening their fine motor skills and we could stand to use it as often as possible.  I have a Play-Doh center some weeks where students can make numbers, sets, sight words and more.

If you'd like to use these Play-Doh shape mats, grab them for free in my TpT Store!   

Do you use Play-Doh in your room? How? 

Learning Our Colors!

Hi there!! It's Elyse from A is for Apples! This afternoon I want to share some fun ways to practice color words with your kiddos. Most of my students seem to know their colors, but I love showing them that they can learn to read color words too!

Last week we used one of my favorite read alouds and an activity of mine to practice our color words!

We started off by reading and listening to Pete the Cat I Love My White Shoes. (I could listen to those Pete the Cat songs all day...they are so catchy!!) YouTube is sometimes blocked depending on how the WiFi in my building is feeling that day, so I found this video version of the book on TeacherTube.

After Pete the Cat, I pulled up my colors emergent reader on my interactive whiteboard, and we went through the book together. We practiced pointing and reading each sentence and used the picture clues to figure out the color words. I had them put a dot of that color in the hand.

Once we finished reading the whole book, they had to go back and write the sentences. There are 5 different versions of the emergent reader in this pack depending on your students' writing needs.

This year, I chose to use the book with boxes for each letter. It helped them with the sizing of their letters. (I have some kids who are writing really huge and all over the place!)

I did have 2 students who used the tracing version since they are still struggling with their fine motor a bit. All they had to do was trace each sentence instead of write it on their own.

Once the writing was done, we got to coloring!!! Since we already went through the book together, they knew all of the colors for each page and could fill in the rest of the pictures. This activity did take awhile, so I let them leave the books at their seat all day if they didn't finish or if they just wanted to read it again.

I created these differentiated emergent color readers last year, and I'm so glad I did! They hit so many important, beginning of the year skills. We can practice one-to-one correspondence by pointing and reading the text, review color words, and practice handwriting. I told my kiddos to take this book home and read it to everyone in their house!!

Click HERE to see these in my store!

I created a freebie to go along with the emergent readers. This book is in color so it can be printed, laminated, and put together to go in your classroom library! Students can also take it home to practice reading it. Grab it HERE!

If any students are still struggling with color words after this, I always make sure they know where the "color wall" is. This year I'm using brand new color posters from my good friend and fellow Pack member Elyse of Proud to be Primary. I love the black background of these posters because it makes the colors pop!

Click HERE to see these in her store!

This week we will be continuing our color word review by using my Colors Write the Room activity! I just updated this pack by adding 2 more versions of the activity as well as additional differentiated recording pages. I'll post pictures of it in use this week, so be sure you're following me on Instagram!

That's it for me today! I try not to think about school too much over the weekend, so I'm off to go relax a bit and watch my Miami Dolphins try to win a game!! Have a great week!

Editable Class Dojo Parent Letter FREEBIE!

Hi everyone, Alexis here from Laugh Eat Learn! I'm here to share my favorite classroom management tool and a freebie for you! Back to school is a little different for me this year because, for the first time in 5 years, I'm not in a "traditional" classroom anymore. I haven't decided yet if Class Dojo will work with my older ELL students but it's still something I stand completely behind as a huge classroom management tool. I've used Class Dojo in my classroom for my first four years of teaching, with Kinders to 4th Graders, and every single one of them loved it. 

HEAD OVER TO LAUGH EAT LEARN TO READ MORE ABOUT CLASS DOJO AND SNAG THE FREEBIE! 

Incentive Charts...Making Procedures Stick!

Teaching classroom procedures to over 20 children may seem nearly impossible during the first week of school.  One way to help your students (and yourself) stay motivated are to use incentive charts in your classroom!

Incentive charts are inexpensive, adorable and easy to implement in most classrooms...sounds pretty perfect doesn't it???  They can easily be taped inside a student's cubby for them to add to as they make good choices in the classroom.  

When your students are learning procedures in the classroom it helps to reward them continuously and incentive charts make that easy for YOU!  Whether you give stickers or use stamps you can let a student know you are proud of the choice they made by giving them a little token of appreciation that can lead to a bigger prize down the road.  

The great thing about incentive charts is that after a day in, you won't even have to say anything!  You see a child putting their materials in the correct spot once their work is complete...just hand them a sticker...DONE!!! They know exactly what they did and exactly where they need to place the sticker.  And, most other students will see what is going on and follow that student's example. 

You can grab these incentive charts from my TpT store for FREE to help get your school year started off right!  I hope you are able keep your students motivated as you teach them your classroom rules and procedures! 

Enjoy and happy teaching!

Beginning of the Year Teacher Checklist

Thank you for stopping by to read this post. Please head over to Proud to be Primary to read my time saving tips for teachers (link below) and grab your free back to school teacher planner.

To learn more ways to get and stay organized at the beginning of the year, check out 10 Time Saving Tips for Teachers HERE!

Let Them Be 'In A Book!'

Hi All!

It's Jenn from Crayons & Cuties In Kindergarten!

Although I still have over a month left of summer, I know many of you are beginning to think of 'Back To School!'

(Just remember- I was still sweating it out through June 26th- when many ended in May!)

This year I want to do something different for my beginning of the year shared reading/read alouds that we use to inspire our first class books.

I have always used Brown Bear, Brown Bear (and I LOVE it) but am finding with more and more students attending preschool that they find this to be 'a baby book' by the time they get to kindergarten!

Sad- but true!

(I still pull it out as a mentor text for writing and reading pattern books though!)

Last year we used Pete the Cat I Love My White Shoes and it was a hit!

         

 (You can read all about our first week with Pete in our classroom on this post!  It shows how we used each of his books as a mentor text for interactive writing and class books!)

Pete then became our class mascot, so to speak, and spent a weekend home with each of the kids (you can read about that on the post too!)

But then the kids really started taking a liking to Elephant and Piggie books!

They would just about do ANYTHING to hear one!

Fast forward to now....

My boys signed up for the summer reading program and guess what books they decided to check out....

Elephant and Piggie!

As my 6 year old read them on his own and I read to the 4 year old, my wheels started turning!

A few of these titles would be SUPER FABULOUS beginning of the year books!

Take for example...

What a perfect story for beginning of the year!

New friends are great...but we never forget our old friends!

This would be a perfect springboard for listing names (aka friends) and we could also use it to make a class books about friends!

Then there is... 

The whole first month (sometimes longer) in kindergarten is all about learning patience and waiting for your turn!

We can use it to make a list of things that are hard to wait for...birthdays, holidays...a turn at the water fountain!

Then we could make a class book... 'It is really hard to wait for _____!'

Piggy backing off that (no pun intended!) is...

For a 'first timer' all the 'sharing' involved in school can be hard!

This would be a great book to use to talk about the 'pros/cons' of sharing!

We could then use it to generate a list of things you share vs. things you don't (ex we share pencils- we don't share toothbrushes!)

We could make a class book about something we shared....or like the '100' day when we each bring in a snack food and then combine them to make a class snack...we could 'share' a snack with new friends!

And another great one to generate discussions would be...

Especially if you have students that were together the previous year who are 'best buds' and then a 'newcomer' comes along and wants to join the group!

Discussions and lists about things we can play in groups would be a great follow-up!

I love this one for celebrating getting through the first week:

Have a happy pig day- or a happy '-insert your grade level- er' day!

You can let them choose a favorite animal to be and let them announce what their 'happy day' is and try out how to be each other's animal!

What a fun way to end an exhausting week!

Not only is it a fun book, but it has a great message about being different, as well!

But I still needed that 'one perfect book' that would help me make my initial class book.

The one that would have their pictures inside- and their attempts to write their names.

The book they would go to all year long in our book nook until the pages literally crumbed from all the turning and love!

And as I listened to my boys chuckle as we read this one, I knew it was perfect...

My students L-O-V-E-D this one last year!

This book is perfect...I can have them be 'in a book' and also use it to talk about what a 'reader' is and how pictures and words can both be 'read!'

(If you are not familiar with this book, you will want to be!)

What was even better?  I had purchased 'Elephant and Piggie' inspired clip art during the last TpT Site-Wide Sale from 2 Super Teachers!

Time to get to work...and here is what I came up with...

So here is an example of what it could/would look like (thanks to my awesome helpers who don't mind testing out Mommy's goodies!):

BEST YET....You can download it for FREE right here!

The cover has room for a class picture, but if you don't have one, or don't have time to take one during those first few weeks of chaos school, you could leave it blank, cut/glue a picture of Elephant & Piggie (from the last page) in or have students draw something in for you!

The next page is for you!  Glue in a picture of you (your students will LOVE this page the most!!) and write in your name.

You are acknowledging each kiddo that puts this book in his/her hand as a READER!!

Give each student the next page.  Either have him/her draw a picture of themselves and/or glue a picture of them to the page.  Have them write their name in the speech bubble.

(This is also a great way to informally assess handwriting/how and if they can write their name, the maturity of their drawing, etc!)

***There are 2 options for this part- you can use the 'already ready' page that has the speech bubble printed on the page OR go for the 'make it more realistic' option where the speech bubble can be cut/glued to fit exactly out of each mouth!**

Compile the pages (Cover, Teacher Page, Student Pages, Ending Page) and bind into a class book!

Share it aloud with your students- you could even do it each day to kick-off you literacy block or part of your morning meeting, to get students to start to recognize each other and put faces to names! 

It would also make a cute book to display at Open House/Meet the Teacher night!

Now where to get all these great books?

I have gotten many of mine through Scholastic Monthly book club order forms!

But they are also available on Amazon- and you can even find 'used' copies for as low as a penny (you just pay shipping- usually 3.99)

Then there is always the options of  your local library, book stores and borrowing from peers!

But I have a fun surprise for you (and your students) as a 'Welcome Back' gift from me to you...

(To those entering- please make sure you live in a place where Amazon will ship because I will have them ship it directly to you)

I can't wait to read all the tips and am hoping to share some on my FB page and/or blog!

But it won't be until after I return from a much anticipated secret visit with a very large mouse...

Can you keep a secret??

YUP!

This is happening!

I am BUSTING to tell them, but am doing my best to keep this secret until we are headed to the airport!

To those starting school,  I wish you and your students a wonderful year!

To those still enjoying summer, soak up every precious second!

I'll 'chat' again with you on August 24th!

Until next post,