Wordless Wednesday

Linking up with Sugar and Spice for my first Wordless Wednesday!

First of all, I can not believe this exists.  Second, I can't believe I have a use for it.  Third, I can NOT believe I bought 4. 

Can you guess what I am using them for?

6 Months 'Till Christmas Sale

I linked up with a bunch of other bloggers to bring this fun sale to you!  It is just 6 months until Christmas and you can get your presents now!!

Santa's checked his list (and checked it twice!)- here's a sale for all those who've been nice!

Everything in my store is 20% off for June 24-25.  Be sure to check out all the other great deals going on in this festive event!

An InLinkz Link-up

 

The Creative Teacher Giveaway

This giveaway is something new and exciting for me.  If you have followed my blog at all, you know that I love to create!  I especially love hot glue and trash.  My husband calls me the queen of the upcycle!  I definitely know how to reuse :)

 

For this giveaway, everyone wins.  Each blogger chose something that spoke to them from Pinterest, or, if they were really ambitious, came up with a brand new idea.  Each blogger got their creative juices working and created 2 of the crafts!  This is the exciting part.  One they get to keep and the other is for the lucky winner of their giveaway!!  1 for Me and 1 For You!

When this blog hop came up, I knew exactly what I wanted to create.  I have been wanting a Mini-Anchor Chart Stand for a long time.  I love PVC and just needed the extra push to get this started.  I tutor kids in my home and while I do have a pocket chart and stand (much to my husband's chagrin), it would be soooo convenient to have a small anchor chart holder right beside me. 

 

I found this amazing Mini-Anchor Chart Stand from Stephanie from Falling Into First.  I found the pin on Pinterest here.   One look and I was in LOVE!  Stephanie is so generous, she went to Lowe's and played around with different sizes, until she was able to create this stand.  She shares her dimensions for each of the PVC pipes, as well as detailed instructions on the dimensions of each of the other parts.  I took her list to Lowe's along with the photo of each of the pieces.  With a little help, I was able to find everything!

I'm going to send you over to Stephanie for the exact dimensions, since she did such an amazing job of creating this!  Click here to go straight to the dimensions.

 

I am going to show you everything else here!  I got the PVC pipe from Lowe's, but I must not have looked pathetic enough- they wouldn't cut it for me!  That's OK, my husband had a PVC saw and my kids got in on the action.  We measured.  Everyone helped with this.

 

  We used the saw.  Well, my husband did.  I was documenting :)  The PVC saw ends up leaving a more frayed end, but it doesn't matter.  The ends are shoved into the PVC elbows, so you never see them!

 

 Here is a full set of supplies.  Notice, that my PVC is not exactly even.  It did not matter with the finished product.  It still ended up being level.

 

I used two different types of tape on these stands.  For the first one, I used Duck Tape.  It worked, but was really difficult to maneuver.  That tape is so powerful, that it attaches immediately and very tight to the PVC.  Not great for mistakes!  It ended up working after a few tries, but was much more difficult to work with.

 

Next, I got smart.  I made a trip to Target and got this duct tape.  It is cheaper and not as strong.  Perfect for this project.  You can easily move the tape around, if you make a mistake.  However, it really attaches, once you have it placed correctly.

 You need to leave about 3/4 of an inch of white space at the end of your PVC pipe.  That way you are able to push the PVC pipe into the elbow.  If you tape all the way to the end, it is really difficult to push into the elbow.  I guess you could make this stand without the decorative tape, BUT that is what makes it fun and festive!

Place the tape lightly on the PVC pipe and slowly wrap it around.  I had to place two pieces that overlap.  If you get some air bubbles, just push on it until it gets flat.  You can see that I am starting to push it down in the picture below.

Here you see the two pieces of tape wrapped totally around the PVC and the first elbow attached.

 Here is the completed top part of the anchor chart stand.

I wrapped the bottom PVC pipes in the same way and then attached them to the bottom pieces.

 Then, I screwed the adapter into the side outlet elbow. 

Here is one of the completed mini anchor chart stands.  This one is holding my Alphabet Posters with Visual Images of Beginning Sounds.  I used two different sized binder rings.  If I was putting over 5 anchor charts on my stand, I used 2" diameter binding rings. 

 If I put less than 5 posters on, I used 1 1/2" binder rings.  Below, is the "Super Hero" version!

 The Super Hero version was made with Washi Tape.  This was the easiest tape to use, but I feel like it is not going to be as durable.  The upside is that you can change your tape easily! 

Here is the "Polka Dot" version holding my Rainbow Bright Number Posters.

 Here is my daughter's favorite!  Neon pink!

 

 If you win this giveaway, you can pick your favorite design and I will send it right to you!!  The only catch is you must live in the U.S. 

Your choices are neon pink, stripes, polka dots, and super hero.

 

The next stop on this amazing hop is Stories and Songs in Second!  Be sure to hop over and see the what the amazing Jennifer has created!!  Good luck on winning any of these amazing crafts :)

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Reading Comprehension + Freebies!

I'm linking back up with Laura Graham, from "Where the Magic Happens", to dig deep into ourselves and our teaching practices.

 Teach and reinforce reading comprehension strategies.  Before staying home with my kids, I was a special education teacher.  I now tutor students with special needs.  Often many of the children that I work with have great difficulty with reading comprehension.  It is often a struggle. 
Many of the students that I work with have difficulty with phonemic awareness and phonics.  I need to spend a lot of time building up these skills, so that the children can use the skills to comprehend what they are reading.
One way that I keep up student excitement and minimize frustration is to mix the necessary skill practice with "Detective Time".  Sometimes, we get out the magnifying glass or a silly hat.  We always get into the detective persona.  We sometimes use detective focus wands to really examine the words and text.

Instead of always using a text, we scrutinize photos or watch a short movie clip to answer specific questions. 
Many of the students that I work with have great difficulty with inferences.  Both pictures and movies are great real life opportunities to pick apart and understand the plot, emotions, setting, characters, everything that you would work on in a text without physically reading the text.  It allows the students to really work on those comprehension skills, so that they can apply the same skills to text when their phonemic awareness and phonics skills allow them to read the text.  We also use Brain Pop.  Students enjoy watching their great informational videos and are able to "read" text on their own grade level.  It really helps them to keep practicing comprehension skills with on-grade level text, while their reading level skills may be below grade level. 
Here is a great video made by kids that explains why kids need to use the reading comprehension strategy of Questioning!

We also work on repetitive reading.  We often read the same book for many days in a row.  I also ask parents to read it with them each night.  This allows students to build up their fluency and really allows them to become familiar with the words in the book.  Once they are really reading the book fluently, we are able to really go back and pick apart the text.  I am doing a book study this summer on close reading.  I am reading "Close Reading in the Elementary School", by Diana and Betsy Sisson.  There is a wonderful book study group going on at A Year of Many Firsts and Little Minds at Work.  There is still time to join up and read along.  I am hoping to better understand and include close reading with my own children and students.

Some of my students are working on reading passages and answering questions about the passage.  I found this awesome video that I use with students to learn how to attack the paragraph.  It is a cute, but informational video to teach kids to attack a passage!

I recently came across an amazing find!  Miss Lak's Second Grade has an amazing selection of reading and writing strategies using beanie babies.  I contacted her and asked if I could share her amazing ideas with you.  She was generous enough to agree!  This is so exciting for me.  I have seen posters for the beanie baby strategies and have seen some used with beanie babies, but had never thought of attaching a copy of the actual strategy to the beanie baby.  Genius!

This picture is straight from Miss Lak's Second Grade.  This is her comprehension strategy teaching points.  She has a bulletin board with the written strategy and with the actual animal.  Since I tutor out of my home, I will not need a bulletin board, but love this for a classroom.

Miss Lak has bins set up around her room filled with the animals and their attached strategies.  Students are able to access these animals during independent reading or writing, or any reading practice time.

Here is my favorite.  Each animal has the strategy attached.

This gives those students that really need that hands-on learning experience the ability to hold and really interact with the strategies.  I think it is going to literally change how some of my students are able to grasp the comprehension strategies!  I am so excited and can't wait to start my search for these animals.

You can visit Miss Lak's Classroom to see all of her reading and writing strategies.  They are so well thought out and so useful for learners!

I will definitely continue to use photos and videos to build comprehension skills.  I love using things that will help my students improve their comprehension skills.  Here is a great video that helps students work on using inferences.  There are no spoken words, so students really need to pay close attention to the visuals.

I will continue to use fun games to build my students phonemic awareness, phonics, and fluency.  I can't wait to incorporate Ms. Lak's beanie baby strategies and the actual animals into my reading comprehension instruction.  I really think this will bring the extra help that my students need.  I love how it goes beyond the anchor chart!

Some things that I really use to help students focus in on reading comprehension are my sets of "FIVES" poems and tons of extension activities.  You can pick up a free version of the original poems from each of the links below.

Each set comes with an original poem, an interactive book (I use Velcro), tons of extension activities for letters, words, numbers, and more, puppets, Pringle can manipulatives, and more.  I use these poems to help students really focus in on the content and to match the pictures to the text.  To see the puppies in action, click here.  To purchase, click here.

To see the sharks in action, click here.  To purchase, click here.

 To see the Bumblebees in action, click here.  To purchase, click here.

 Kids love the interactive books!

 Thanks so much for joining me for the "Digging into Next Year" Linky Party!  Thanks so much to Laura Graham for putting it together :)  Hop on over to Where the Magic Happens to see some more great ideas!



 

Fill Your Year With Goodies!

The weather is hot and humid here.  Perfect weather for the pool, but I am already thinking about the fall and back-to-school.  Why???  It is a little ridiculous, since summer hasn't even started for my kids.  My son still has 3 more days of school. 

I am thinking about back-to-school, because I absolutely LOVE back-to-school time.  Even as a child, I loved buying and organizing all my school supplies.  I loved the smell of new markers, the sharp points of my crayons, the white expanse of an empty notebook waiting to be filled.  Sounds corny, but I felt that as a child and still feel that way now.  I love the anticipation of learning something new, of creating things with my mind and hands!

One of the first downloadable packs that I created was school supply themed.  It has been about a year since I created it and I have learned so much!!  I just recently went back and revamped the entire pack.  It still has my beloved school supplies and tons of hands-on activities.

There are tons of different activities in this set.  The "Roll & Cover" games are one of my favorites.  I have included a few variations on "Roll & Cover".  I include many different mats and different sets of numbers on the mats, because young or struggling learners need a lot of practice with the same skill.  However, you don't want that practice to be boring.  By changing the clip art on the "Roll & Cover" boards, kids think they are playing a brand new game!

To play, you need a board for each student, one die to share, and counters to cover the numbers that they roll.  Students will roll the die and cover the number that they rolled.

I included dice in the pack that you can put together yourself.  All you need is cardstock and tape.

 

I have a wonderful step-dad that cut out a million wooden cubes for me!  I just painted them and used a Sharpee to write the targeted numbers, dots, or number words on the die.

 I included numbers and dots: 0-5, 1-5, and 5-10.  You can use the specific numbers that your children are learning.

 Ink friendly versions of this game include: "Roll & Write".  Students will roll the die and write down the matching numeral on one of the school supplies.  This helps kids work on forming the numerals.

 I also have "Roll, Write, and Graph".  In this format, students will roll the die, find the matching numeral and write the numeral in the graph above the same number.  Students will be able to practice forming their numerals and track which number was rolled the most and least.

 I include number posters with the numeral, number word, and dots on a ten frame.  The odd numbers are yellow and the even numbers are green.  I use these in multiple ways.  I have students throw bean bags and identify the number that their bean bag landed on.  I have students jump from poster to poster on the floor.  We say the numbers out loud, as they jump on them.  You can also give each student a number card and have them find the matching number poster.  This gets kids up and moving!

 Of course, they can also be used as number posters in the classroom or in your home.  Here are mine, going up the stairway in our house.  My kids use pointers or knock on each number as they go up and down the stairs.  It is great for counting forwards and backwards.

There are also some fun clothespin counting activities.  I have both traditional clothespins, but also bought some big chunky ones from the dollar store.  These are easier for little hands to manipulate.  I bought 9 or 10 for $1.

The amounts included on the "Clip It" cards are 0-10.

Here are some of the extension worksheets that go along with the activities.

I have a "School Supply Count Up".  This is differentiated in a few ways.  There are cards that have the numeral written on the card.  Students will count and find the matching numeral card to place on top. 

  I included regular and fun numbers.

 There are also cards with no numbers. 

 

Students must count the school supplies and find the number that correctly matches the amount.

Here are some extension worksheets.

Students are able to load up their crayon boxes with the matching number of crayons. 

Students can draw the matching number of crayons on the extension worksheets.

Students are also able to add the crayons on the addition task cards.  They will use the manipulatives to count find the sum.

 They can also use the crayons to make a pattern.

I've found that the manipulatives are easier for some children to handle, if you hot glue foam to the back of the crayon manipulative. 

Here are some of the addition extension worksheets.

I am excited about the changes in the Back-To-School Math Pack.  Please re-download, if you already bought this last year!!
 

 Now for the fun!  I have also teamed up with Educents with some instant downloads for you!

Educents is a great resource that I found for teaching freebies and discounted teaching supplies. If you have never heard of Educents, it is a wonderful website where you can get tons of discounted teaching materials for school or homeschool setting!  Click here, if you would like to make an account! I get referral credit, too :)

 

This bundle includes a full years worth of activities for your kindergarten classroom!  So exciting because it's stuff for now, in a few months from now, and all the way through the end of the school year!  Check it out below!  

This bundle includes my Back-To-School Math Centers AND my Christmas Trees: Interactive Play Dough Mats.  These two products together would cost you $10.

 

For a limited time it is $24.99 from Educents which is about 75% off!  

18 instant downloads with over 1300 pages of materials you can use all year!

 

You can also take peek at some of the other products included in the bundle at any of the links below!

An InLinkz Link-up