Teacher Appreciation Sale and some FREEBIES! :)

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!  

As you know, there is a HUGE TPT sale this week!  Make sure to check out my shop, where you can get 28% off of some great products.

Thanks to Amy Lemons for this fab button!

Click the button to go straight to my store!

I just added a very sweet Mother's Day craftivity to my shop.  

Tomorrow, I will be adding more I Have, Who Has games.

Also, each day after school this week, I will be making one item in my shop a FLASH FREEBIE!  make sure to like my Facebook page in order to know when the freebie starts each afternoon!

Teacher Appreciation Blog Hop

It's Teacher Appreciation Week!  There is absolutely no other profession on Earth like this one, and I'm proud to be a teacher.

You're probably here because you've hopped right over. :)

I am so excited to share with you one of my favorite units in my little shop.

Community helpers week is one of my favorite ways to start the year.  Our kindergarten team has always done community helpers week the second week of September.  The kids are used to school and know the rules and routines, and they can finally handle their first big unit.

To celebrate this week, we always invite numerous visitors to give the kids a hands-on experience of learning about the people who help in our community.  Next year, I plan to reinvent this unit a tad to align it to the PBL model, but essentially, it will be the same.

Here are some pictures of our community helpers week from last year.

Our local firefighters show up in full gear.

The kids get to tour the firetruck.

A real medical helicopter lands on our playground.

Here we are with the crew.

One of our city police officers comes to teach about his job.  The kids get to tour his car too. :)

The kids love this visit.

The kids also do reports on a job they would like to have when they grow up.

We literally do so much stuff that week, it's hard to include everything.  Call me crazy, but I love having stations that math the theme of the week.  At the beginning of the year, we do very few independent stations; this is really one of the first weeks where the kids are working independently on stations.

This product is my giveaway item!  You can check it out on TPT by clicking the image above.  Included in this pack are the following activities:

“I Can Be” Student Predictable Reader
Color version of “I Can Be” reader
Labeling activities (Firefighter and Teacher)
Can Have Are chart (Veterinarian) 
When We Grow Up Class Book
Helping Out! Memory Match Game
Letter-Sound Correspondence Game
How Many Heartbeats Syllable Sort
Vocabulary Cards
Helpers Craftivity
Future Jobs Survey

I really love this product.  I hope you do as well!

You can enter to WIN this and other great products that you've hopped through.  Just enter the Raffelcopter below for your chance!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Now, hop on over to the next amazing blogger to check out more great giveaway prizes!

Continue on The Best for the Best Teacher Appreciation Blog Hop by clicking the link below.

Shannon from Diary of a Nerdy Teacher

Spring Clean-Up Blog Hop!

Happy Sunday!  This weekend, some of my blogging friends and I are sharing our favorite ways to stay organized in our classrooms.  

I don't have to say this, but being organized it crucial to a successful classroom.  There are many things I can do by the seat of my pants, but not being able to find things drives me insane.  Over the years, I have learned many tips and tricks to staying organized.  It makes my life as a teacher much easier. :)

In this specific post, I am going to focus on how I help keep my students organized.  Let's face it, five year olds typically don't have an organized bone in their sweet little bodies.  At least my own five year old doesn't.  Teaching them organizational skills early in their little lives makes everything so much easier. 

I have used tables in my kindergarten classroom for six years.  If you told me tomorrow that I had to use desks, I might go nuts on you.  In my opinion, tables are the way to go.  However, they don't lend themselves to organization very well.  In my early years of using tables, things were EVERYWHERE.  I had no place for my students to put their folders, work, books, or anything.  It was a hot mess.

Enter my favorite classroom product:  The Seat Sack.

A teacher friend of mine had purchased these for her own kindergarten kids, and as soon as I saw them, I knew they were an answer to my prayers.  I begged The Hubby to buy them for me for my birthday (only a teacher would understand).  To this day, I have to say they were the best birthday present ever.

The first year of having Seat Sacks, I bought the beautiful blue for all of my students.  They worked like a charm.  Even my most unorganized kids could stay somewhat organized with the Seat Sack on the back of their chair.  It was WON.DER.FUL.  Before leaving for summer break, one of my teaching partners was looking through the Seat Sack website, and noticed that these little gems come in a variety of colors.  Her genius mind made the connection in these colors and the fact that we assign a color to each table (i.e. "Orange Friends").

Being the charming teachers we are, we begged our principal to purchase the variety of colors for each of our classrooms.  He agreed, and voila...  One of my favorite organizational tips came to life.  

Seat Sack has more than just those colorful, handy, heavy-duty sacks that go on the back of chairs, though. 

This year, I have stopped doing homework with my students.  Instead, I send home a book bag filled with the student reader for the week, sight word cards, a tic-tac-toe activity board, a highlighter, a handwriting book, addition and subtraction fact rings, and a pencil.  I discovered Seat Sack has a product that is perfect for my students' take-home bags.  This has helped so much with student organization this year.  Instead of having papers here, there, and everywhere, all of their homework can go neatly inside of their take-home bag.

In the next few weeks, I will be blogging more about classroom organization using Seat Sacks.  Stop back by for a GIVEAWAY, too! :)

But right now, all of us who are part of this amazing hop want you to enter for your chance to win a $50 TPT gift certificate!

. a Rafflecopter giveaway

Onto the next blog, friends!  Check out what Hilary at Second Grade Is Out of This World has to say about organization!

Link-Up Two for One!

I'm going to follow suit from my friend Elizabeth and get two linkys done in one day. :)

First up... I'm linking up with Farley for May's Currently.  

Now onto the second link-up of the day....  Of course it's FRIDAY!  I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for this week's Five for Friday!

This week was all about the Kentucky Derby!  It's a huge deal in our parts since we are just 29 miles from Louisville.  

Yesterday, we had our annual Run for the Reese's, which is our stick horse race.  The winner gets a crown of Reese cups.  Get it?  

Here are some pictures I snapped in the middle of things.

Here are all of the kindergarten classes ready to race!

These kiddos were the winners of each of the heats from our class.  They were all about it.

Aren't they cute in their Derby hats?

This sweetie won the Run for the Reese's, but the crown completely fell apart before I got a picture.  It only had 63 Reese cups on it. :)

I had my final observation of the year this week.  Sheww... Am I glad that's over!  I obviously wasn't able to get a picture of it, but I was observed during the math block.  We were starting a new topic--sorting by attributes--so we played a find-a-friend game with blocks.  Then, we learned the new vocabulary words (same and different), and used the iPads to show what the words meant.  The kids had to describe the picture.  It was great!  

I did a similar activity for vocabulary in reading this week.  The kids were assigned one of our Derby words, and they had to research to find a picture that showed the word, or they could draw a picture to show the word. 

We kicked our farm unit off with a trip to the farm today.  The kids loved it.  I can't wait to share all of our farm fun with you next week!

My sweet girl is all geared up for dance recital, and my boy is full-on in t-ball season.  I just have to share some cute pictures of my kiddos. :)

I am so excited for some things coming up this weekend and over the next couple of weeks.  Let's just say... Chances to win free stuff galore. :)  Check back for more soon! :)