A Teacher’s Resolution

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 Have you set some New Years resolutions for yourself this year? If I were to write down a list of things that I want to do differently this year, the list would be looong. It can be a little hard trying to find some realistic goals, but all we can do is try 🙂  A good way to stick to your goal is to set something out as a reminder because we can easily…  and conveniently forget that we even set a goal at all ;p
My friends at Freebielicious and I want to share some of our goals and resolutions for 2014 with you! To help you get a jump start on the new year we’ve also added some freebies that may help you reach your own similiar goals. 
Many of us are teachers, moms, wives, and bloggers. Our time is very valuable! How many times have you left work late? There is always so much work to do and so many people to talk to, right? Well, getting work done is a must. But, how can we get our plans and materials ready when we chat with our friends so much?  LOL. We are very social butterflies. We like to talk. We talk about things that are work-related and other things that are not so much work-related. And that’s OK, but if you want to pick up your kids from daycare at a decent time,  take the kids to ball practice, get home before the sun goes down, make dinner, help kids with homework, make sure everyone has showered before they go to bed, read the kids a bedtime story, clean the kitchen, and sit back-relax-and watch TV with your hubby, then maybe we need to get a little more work done during our planning time. So here’s my teacher’s resolution that might be similar to yours. 
Ok. To think it and say it might not be enough because I might forget all about it later. So, I created a nice little sign that can be used as a reminder. It’s free for you. Just print, laminate and post it next to your desk or classroom door. Hopefully this will help us learn how to finish early at work and go home early to enjoy our families EVERY DAY! There is a signature line at the bottom so that we can hold ourselves accountable.

Did you notice the signature line? LOL. It says “Signed with high hopes” because no matter how easy the resolution might seem, it can be a little difficult to stick to it at first 🙂
Hop on over to Seusstastic Classroom Inspirations for another resolution and matching freebie!

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Happy New Year and a SALE

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The holidays are always full of food, fun and family! But, the New Year is just a few hours away! Let’s bring in the New Year with a SALE! This will give you enough time to download, print and prepare your lesson plans before you return back to school 🙂

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Reindeer Noses and Snowman Poop

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Are you looking for a quick and fun snack for Christmas? You can make reindeer noses or snowman poop! They are very simple to make and you can even buy the materials at a dollar store.

Reindeer Noses:

Materials:
1-  Reindeer Noses Printable
2- Whoppers
3- Cherry Sours or red gumballs
4- Baggies
5- Glue
6- Stapler
How to make:
1-  Print the reindeer noses printable
2- Glue it to a 7″ by 3″ construction paper
3- Add some whoppers to a baggie
4- Add one cherry sour to the baggie
5- Staple the topper to the baggie

Snowman Poop

Materials:
1- Snowman Poop printable
2- Marshmallows
3- Baggie
4- Glue
5- Stapler
How to make:
1- Print the snowman poop printable
2-Glue it to a 7″ by 3″ construction paper
3- Add marshmallows to the baggie
4- Staple the snowman poop topper to the baggie

Here are the free printables for reindeer noses and snowman poop toppers.
Enjoy!

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Christmas Ornaments

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It’s so easy to get in the Christmas spirit with these bead ornaments. They are so simple to make. 

Supplies needed:
1-  Pipe cleaners
2- Beads
3- Scissors
Instructions:
1- Have a Christmas ornament in mind.
2- Cut a long pipe cleaner in half.
3- Choose the color beads that correspond with your ornament.
4- Fill the pipe cleaner with beads.
5- Mold the pipe cleaner into the desired shape. 
Candy cane ornament: Students can work on math skills by creating colorful patterns with the beads.

Star: Tie the ends of the pipe cleaner before you mold it into a star shape.

Christmas tree: We used a long pipe cleaner for this one. It gave us enough room to make the bottom of the tree.

Wreath: Students can make a pattern with the colorful beads.

Icicles: Just bend the pipe cleaner to create the shape.

Have fun!

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How to Make a Snowflake

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The weather has been a little crazy lately. Some days were very cold, windy and rainy. We did have a little ice on the roads and schools started 2 hours late. 
This is the perfect time to make our very own snowflakes. 
It’s actually very simple and quick to make. Here are some detailed pictures to this cute snowflake craft.

Materials needed:

1- Beads

2- Two pipe cleaners

Steps:

1- Take one long pipe cleaner.

Fold it in half and cut it into two small pieces.

2-  Take the second pipe cleaner and cut it just a little bit longer so that you can make a loop at the top.

3-  Take the two small pieces and lay them like this.
4-   Take the longer piece and lay it straight down the middle, like this.
5-   Remember the left over piece? Lay it on top of all the other pipe cleaners.

 And wrap it around them, like this.

 6-  The snowflake shape is done. It’s time to decorate it.  Simply slide each bead into the pipe cleaners. The more you use, the more colorful it will be 🙂

7-   Here’s the finished snowflake craft.
8-   Now, you can put it on a window as a sun catcher.

Or, decorate your Christmas tree.

Have fun creating your own snowflake with beads:)

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FREE Letter to Santa Templates

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Children always look forward to writing a letter to Santa. This is when you see students trying their BEST to write neatly and make sure that everything is spelled correctly. Writing a letter to Santa lends itself to learning about the parts of a letter (greeting, closing, body and date).

Here are 2 free templates that you can use.

One template has space available for a drawing at the top of the letter.
This other template just has the writing lines. It can be used by advanced writers who write longer sentences with details.
Also available in Spanish.

Enjoy!

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Santa Craft Tutorial

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December is such a fun month. One activity that the children like to do for Christmas is a paper santa. Here are some very detailed instructions with lots of pictures 🙂
Prepare the materials:
1- Cut an oval for the head. We usually use white construction paper. But, I saw it done with pink on pinterest, and I liked it. Just fold the paper in half (like a hamburger). We only use one side of the paper per student. This means that you can get 2 ovals for 2 students from one sheet of construction paper.
2- Fold red construction paper in half again (like a hamburger) to cut the triangle shape for the hat. We make it wider on the bottom part so that we can add cotton balls in that space.
3- Take out those fun wiggle eyes. Another option is to cut small circles in either black, brown, green, or blue.
4- You can’t tell in this picture, but we cut the white strips by using the long side of the paper.
Put it together:
1- Glue the hat to the front of the circle. 
2- Add the wiggle eyes.
3- Add the paper nose.
4- Glue a cotton ball to the top of the Santa hat.
5- Add glue to the bottom part of the hat.
6- Add the cotton balls.
7- Glue the long strips of white construction paper along the bottom part of the circle.
8- Start curling the beard. We had started curling the beard with a marker, but the loops were too big.
Then, we decided to use a pencil to make smaller and tighter loops.
9- The pencil shape made Santa’s curly beard 🙂
10- You can add cotton eyebrows.
11- Or, a cotton mustache (or both). You can even fold the tip of the hat at an angle if you want.
12- Finally, you can add string to the top of the hat to hang it on the tree. It makes a good keepsake 🙂

Enjoy!

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FREE Christmas Printables

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Hi! I’m just popping in to share these Gingerbread Man printables.  Students will be able to identify the characters of the story while practicing some fun word work activities.

If you are working on some Christmas printables or projects, you might like this free Santa. Just right click on the image and save it to your computer.

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Thematic Crowns

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Kids LOVE to wear crowns! So, we use them as a learning tool to keep them engaged in Kindergarten. I’m excited about these new Thematic crowns. They can be used to wrap up a unit on Friday. When the kids wear it at dismissal time, parents will take notice. I see it as an end of the week review for kids and as a conversation starter at home.

I have completed volume #1 for themes from September to December.
Here are two samples of the thematic crowns that are appropriate for this time of year.
pumkin thematic units crowns for kindergarten
thematic crowns fall leaves pic

 

end of a school day funny with crown

 

So instead of this…end of a school day funny

 

The conversation will be more like this…

end of a school day funny with crown

The thematic crown serves as a good visual for conversations about school, at home. It’s a win, win for teacher, mother and kid 🙂

 

Here are the thematic topics. They will be posted as soon as I get some proofers to look over them 🙂

thematic crowns collage pic

thematic crowns collage pic spanish

 

Find it here in English.

Find it here in Spanish.

 

Giveaway

I will give away 2 sets tonight (October 4th). Just leave a small comment on this post. I will send you the packet at about 7:30 p.m. to the email that you sign in with 🙂

 

Good Luck!

—This giveaway is over. Thank you so much for participating. I couldn’t pick just 2 winners 🙂

Congratulations to:

Sarah Limas

Christy Looker

Sandra Balderrama

Please check your email.

-Have a wonderful weekend 🙂end of a school day funny with crown

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Thematic Journals for October- Differentiated

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Students in Kindergarten write at different levels. We try to engage them in activities that will help develop their writing skills, but sometimes it’s difficult to find something that will fit everyone’s abilities. We have always been told to differentiate our activities to meet every student’s needs. But, how can we do this in a room full of 2o+ kids?

I came up with Differentiated Thematic Journal Prompts that include a picture/word bank and sentence starters. How can these journals help? The focus on themes will make their writing meaningful and engaging. The thematic picture/word bank will develop their vocabulary skills. And, the sentence starters will help struggling writers feel successful.

There are 5 journal prompts for each theme which will cover a week’s worth of writing. Each journal prompt has been provided in three versions. As the students develop their writing skills, the teacher will provide the corresponding writing page.

This is how the writing pages are differentiated.

Level 1:

These journal pages includes a sentence starter. They may also have extra wording on the picture labels. This will help students write a complete sentence by using the wording on the picture cues. Extra wording may include something like “a” or “the.”  This format will help struggling writers have a successful writing experience without the stress.level one writing prompts

Level 2:This journal page does not include the sentence starters nor extra wording on labels. Students are expected to use their knowledge of phonics skills.

level 2 writing prompts

Level 3:This journal page is for advanced writers. It does not provide place a for an illustration. This is so that students may have more writing space where they may include details in their sentences. Illustrations may be added to the back of the paper.

level 3 writing prompts
If you need something like this for your classroom, I created 6 themes for an October pack. You can find it here.
 [ezcol_1third]journal prompts for fall[/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_1third]journal prompts for bats[/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_1third_end]journal prompts for spiders[/ezcol_1third_end]

[ezcol_1third]journal prompts for pumpkins2[/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_1third]journal prompts for halloween[/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_1third_end]journal prompts for fire safety[/ezcol_1third_end]

New product= facebook giveaway.
These are our winners.
Screen shot 2013-10-11 at 9.41.09 AM
Please make sure to leave a comment below, if you are a winner. Your email will be recorded in my blog’s dashboard (not on the blog). I will send this entire set to you as soon as I see your email 🙂
Kinder Alphabet
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