CONFESSION

At the end of last year I cleaned out my closet and found so many unused centers, work jobs, and manipulatives that I have made over the year I swore to myself that this summer  I would not make anything else new and use what I already have.

That lasted about a month.

I honestly love creating new things and could do it all day everyday.

So here is my latest. My good friend, Mrs. B from kindergarten requested some easy reader flip books that concentrate on color words and a few sight words. I am so excited to share these books with her and you. These little 'flip books' are a great way to both introduce and review colors and color words to your early emergent readers and writers!

The pack includes 10 Color flip books and 10 I See Color Flip Books in color (teacher and small group books) and black line (student books). I have also included some blank books for writing practice.

For children who want to make their own book there is a blank book included for them to write the sentence and draw their own picture.

Click on the picture below to get your Color Flip Books and download a free preview.

Enjoy the rest of your summer!

Posting once a year. Sad but glad to be back.

OK as my two devoted followers can see writing a blog is my super favorite thing to do nemesis.
I hope you all have been enjoying your summer as much as I have! I love creating things for my classroom.
My latest is Pete's Shoes and Buttons. It is styled after the Chutes and Ladder games where you can move ahead several spaces or go backwards.

Children move their pieces around the board (my pieces are different colored bears cause well we are the bear class). If they land on a square with a road then they can groove on up the road to Pete's shoe and a new square. If they land on a square with a spiral then they follow it down to Pete's popped off button and a new square. The first one to reach Pete's heart wins.

Pretty simple, right?

Well to make it a more diversified game it can be played 3 different ways depending on the objective the child needs to learn or review.

Included with the game is a simple colored spinner. 

1.Children spin, identify the color and move to that color on the board. 

2. They can roll one or two dice and move the total number of squares shown on the dice roll. 

3. Also included with the game is ABC and color cords. The child chooses a card from the top of the deck, names the letter or sound and if correct moves to the next colored square shown on his card.

Something for everyone!!!

And for fun I stored it all in a pizza box!

To get your very own Pete's Shoes and Buttons game click here.

Hope you enjoy this game and yea..............I am shamelessly promoting. Just sayin'

Who doesn't love a sale?

For 2 days my entire TpT Store is on sale for 20% off!

Jump on over to shop till you drop!

Get Assessment tools, math centers, Pete the Cat Pocket Chart Games, Zip It Games, and so much more!

This is simple instructions on how to print on the cutout stationary or accent packs you find at stores from Dollar Tree to teacher supply stores.

I wanted to make a new job chart to go with my bear themed classroom. I had these cute bear cutouts which are easy enough to write on but I have the worst printing of all time and always prefer my computer to print things out.

Supplies:

• Cutouts
• Post-It Notes
• Scissors
• Computer and printer

First of all take your cutouts and lay them on a letter sized piece of paper. This gives you an idea of how many fit on a page. Two of my bear cutouts fit on a page. I then used Microsoft Word and just kind of guessed where to print the words. This isn't scientific at this stage. Print.

What you need now is just the sticky part of the post it - approximatly 3 or 4 per cutout. These will be the tape that holds the cut out on the paper. Post-it notes work much better than tape as they are easy to remove without damaging your cutout. Lay your cutout on the words and hold both up to light if needed to line it up. Use the post it notes to tape the cutout on the paper making sure not to block the area you want to be printed.

Send this sheet back through your printer and ta-da your cutout has been professionally printed. Here are some of mine completed.

I'm  very happy with them! I will put clear plastic pouches under each one with the children's name in the pouches.

Hope this makes your preparations for the new year easier. Let me know how you used this easy printing method. (yea I'll beg here..............someone talk to me, please!!!)

Posting Two Days in Row

Lookout! I'm either getting this blogging stuff down or I'm way bored.

Slept in late today - isnt that the best?! Went to school to look at the banner my dance team girls will carry when they march in the Fort Bend parade. Banner is just a tad too big-(rolling of eyes) - it fits on the side of a building. Looks like my girls will get to create our own banner. Fun!
Been cleaning out my garage where everything for school and then some is stored with the intention of giving away all the things I don't use or haven't used in two years. Yea that's going well (more rolling of eyes). It's more like Christmas, "Oh boy I forgot I had this. I must keep it and use it."
One of the things I found and almost gave away was a felt pizza set. It came with a large round crust, red round sauce, mushrooms, sausage, green peppers, onions, and olives. Pizza needs pepperoni so I cut some out of red felt and also cut some white and yellow strips of felt for cheese. I cut the crust and sauce into quarters.
I then made a menu and laminated it. My plan is for the kids to fill out the menu by checking the box if they want cheese and how many of the items available they want on their pizza. Another child or two will be the cooks and have to create their order folloing the menu.
Lotsa math happening here - writing numbers, reading numbers, following directions and working with parts.
If you want a free copy of my menu go here. It's a direct link to download - not go to TpT. I dunno - it's sometimes so time consuming adding things to my TpT store - so much to fill out. Anyway it's still available and still free. Leave me a comment if you like it!

Well that's all there is folks cause So You Think You Can Dance is on.

The Cutest Pinterest/Blog steal ever!  

Hi all.
I was wholeheartedly indulging my addiction aka as surfing Pinterest and found these adorable decorated supply buckets. Of course they are from the very creative and talented Maria from Kinder-Craze. Well you just have to jump over there and check them out cause she is giving a set away!
She also has DIY instructions. Her instructions are very well written but I don't have a Cricut so I made my own using Washi tape and some huge neon colored labels that I found on sale. The labels can be computer printed so that's fun choosing which font to use. The paint buckets are from Michael's.
Here is my version which I will use to keep the class supply of markers and thin markers. If Micheal's had more buckets I would rush out to buy them all up. The other bucket will be on my shelf to hold my fancy pencils and pens - I need a pic of the pencils and pens because they are a very successful form of reward. When they sit and listen or share things etc. I let them choose one of my fancy pens for writing practice. - Hey new blog post idea!

I don't think instructions are needed but I did want to let you know that the labels are Avery 5168 - there are 10 labels to a sheet and Office Depot had them on sale.

Thanks Maria for the inspiration!

Oh a quick PS - I had a dickens of a time getting them open. I was grunting and groaning, turning up to the light to see if it was taped - pretty much providing my hubby with a lot of comic relief. I think he might have even dampened his Depends he was laughing so loud and hard. After he recovered from his head injury laughing he showed me how to open it- just as any paint can is opened. Just put that little silver thingie that actually comes with each can inside the rim and pop it off. Here is a pic to help any of you out who are also a tad paint-can-opening impaired:

Hellooooooo blog world!

Top ten reasons I like summer:

• 10 - I get to watch all the lady shows like Wendy Williams (How ya doing?) and Ellen (the whole audience is taking home...)
• 9 - I love the sound of cicadas
• 8 - leisure lunches with my friends who I don't get to visit with much during the teaching year
• 7 - shopping! (yea yea I know I can do that during the year but I love it so much I had to list it here)
• 6-  more energy for my dancing hobbies
• 5- clean house (achhhhhhhhh my pants are on fire!)
• 4- lazy mornings staying in pajamas till evening, errr  noon errr 10am!
• 3- family vacations
• 2- sleeping late
• and the number 1 reason I love summer is.......... Having time to make stuff and more stuff for my students and classroom!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am one with the Velcro. 

The one thing I am most excited about is something I have been mooning over on Pinterest forever - scrapbook paper covered sterlite drawers! You can't see the sides too well but they are covered in yellow striped paper. Check them out!

Like my color scheme for this year? This idea came from Maria at Kinder-Craze. She has detailed step by step instructions on how to make a template. You need to pop on over there and see her awesome blog. 

In all honesty though, I didn't follow her instructions exactly. I used small note pad paper and laid one small piece at far left top part of the drawer and used my fingernail to crease the paper. I cut it out and then used another small piece going left to right and taping the pieces of paper together as I went. It took a lot of trial and error but hey it's summer and I had fun making it.

OK what else I have been un making are some fun math centers. Last year I made this one for color matching. It turned out to be one of the kids favorite choices. 

Crazy Colorful Matching

The kids choose a picture and match it to the correct color card. The real challenge is once they finish matching all the pictures to the correct color card they have to put all the pics back in random order - in other words all the red pics cannot be together. Believe it or not this is a challenge for my kiddos.

Well with the success of this one I have spent some days making several more for math centers. They cover shapes, colors, and numbers 1-10 and can be used all year.

As you can see I made them in 1" folders but you can just use them as math mats.

All the above games are available for your classroom too! Just click on the picture.

Make sure and let me know what your top ten list reasons why you love summer!