Yee Haw Shout Out!

A big shout out to Jennifer at Herding Kats who is having a big ol' Texas Giveaway!  Click on her button to check it out!

Is it hot where you are? Ack!!! Twas 102 here in the Ozarks today and forecast is the same for the rest of this week. Stay cool out there!

I'm working up a packet (my first) on The Kissing Hand for the beginning of the year. I'm also thinking of doing a set for The Gingerbread Man beginning of the year to include the Missing Gingerbread Man and hunting throughout the school in order to familiarize our new Kinders to the building and important people. There is a lot of ideas and resources out there for both of these but I thought I would gather the best of the best, add my spin on them and then package them together. Is this something that would be helpful for you? Let me know your thoughts and anything else you might want to see included. It looks like I will have some good 'inside' time this week trying to stay cool!

Teachers as Writers!

I am really trying to become more disciplined about writing. If I ever dream to be a published writer I have to work and train that writing muscle. I stumbled upon a virtual summer writing opportunity hosted by the author Kate Messner.

Check it out here

I was especially intrigued by the mini-lesson this week which utilized a Noun Generator (http://www.wordgenerator.net/noun-generator.php).  What a great idea! My word for the day is Neighbor. I'm working on that now...I will share more later!

Summertime Creations!

Soooo...I think I am finally rested up and recovered. However, my body clock is really screwed up! Must be too many naps...which leads to staying up late ... which leads to sleeping in until 8:30 (gasp!)

I worked some additional hours at school once the kiddos were gone to produce some materials for next year. A huge shout out to our wonderful principal who budgets a big chunk of $$$ for as many teachers as possible can work 25 extra hours for pay to accomplish some of this work. Her only requirement is that 5 hours must be used for building related items (like school wide behavior incentives, bulletin boards, etc.) The rest of the hours can be whatever we need to do! Isn't that awesome!?

My team focused on Math stuff since we have a little more flexibility with our instruction. We are bulking up on resources for our Math Centers and specifically the Common Core and our specific district assessed Progress indicators. One activity that my kids love is the Roll and Record. I created a set (one for each month) so I can grab and go to this center easily.

Grab yours here

One of my goals this summer is to get really good at this blog thing...bear with me!