Where Have I Been? What Was I Doing?

Hi friends!  Wow!  I can't believe it's been almost 3 years since my last post!  Time really flies! But I have been very busy doing lots of different things in my life! During that time period, I had another child, a little boy who is now almost 4 years old.  

LOL Read Aloud Teacher in Richmond, VA reading to low-income kids.

My husband opened a local nonprofit in Richmond, VA, called Love of Learning where volunteers provide read alouds to low-income kids living in shelters and subsidized housing complexes throughout Central Virginia. This has been an amazing experience and has brought so much joy to so many children! 

Visit our website to learn more about what we do or how you can help!

One of my passions is creating things digitally!  I did not go to school to learn about computers or digital creations, however, I have found much joy in creating things, especially for my students. 

Since the outbreak of Covid19, I decided to polish up some of my products of TpT and finalize some other activities I've created over the past several years to post.  You can get my newest products on sale for the next few days. Or just visit to see what might help you during this time of being out of school. 

I completed the last three months of my On/Off Addition games so this bundle is now complete!  If you have already purchased, no need to buy again! Just click on "My Purchases" and re-download to get all of the games! :)

If there is something you'd like for your students, please reach out and let me know! I'm happy to see if I can create it for you! Until next time - stay safe and healthy! 

Five for Friday {10/16/15}

It's Friday!  You know what that means! Five for Friday!

We have been practicing "reading" with our little poems to build out concept of word. 

This week I finalized 3 products and posted them. We used the number word practice at centers this week. 

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/October-OnOff-Math-Work-Station-Addition-Practice-2145805

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Fall-Stations-Pack-Literacy-and-Math-Stations-2148003

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Number-Words-Color-Words-Print-Go-2151845

The kiddos are getting the hang of center time and I'm finding myself more and more able to work with small groups and individual students.

Here's my top group. They were so excited when I told them we were going to read a book. We are gonna fly through these easy readers!

Our county requires us to set a goal each year as part of our professional growth portfolio. My team decided to focus on sight words this year. To gather our baseline data, we have to give a sight word spelling test. Most of the children only spelled the word "a" or "I"  these two girls had to go through the 4 lists of 6 words each before I could stop due to their great spelling ability!

Now, head on over and see what everyone else did this week!

http://doodlebugsteaching.blogspot.com/2015/10/five-for-friday-linky-party-october-16th.html

Stop, Swap & Roll - Product Swap and Review {Giveaway}

Hi!  I'm so glad to be a part of this swap again.  I am hopping that my post goes a little smoother than last time.  Thanks to Melissa for getting everything organized!

So I got to partner with Melissa from Creations by Mrs. Mouse.  She is a wonderful paraprofessional from Ohio who recently renewed her teaching license and is hoping to teach kindergarten soon! 

I loved all of her things in her TpT Store and had a very hard time choosing which one for my kiddos to try.  But here is what I picked: 

This pack has 5 different activities for your students to practice matching rhyming words.  For now, I chose to print and use the strawberry, watermelon and lemon packs.  They work well for this time of the year.  You can click their picture to purchase just that pack or the bundle picture above for the whole bundle!  The whole bundle is a HUGE DEAL!  For only $4 you get 5 rhyme packs!!!  They are each $2.75 separately! 

   

So I love that these rhymes are not strictly cVc words.  I just had a conversation with my class this week about how the words sound the same at the end and that is what makes them rhyming words.  One of my students said, "Well they look the same too."  And yes, while some rhyming words do look the same, they don't always have to.  So in steps this matching game.  The rhyming pairs in these games require the students to listen for the sounds as opposed to see the spelling of the end of a word.  

I did choose to write the words on the back of the cards because I wanted this to be a self checking station if there was an adult helper and I wanted to make it easier for me to remember the words too.  You know how busy teachers are all day!  It could take me 15 minutes to remember what that word was!  :)

So here is the prep work that I did to get these "center ready" for my kiddos:

I did choose to write the words on the back as you can see here.

The lemon pack has 3 rhyming words that match as opposed to only two.

Here's what they look like all sorted and stored in bags. 

Here are the finished stacks all cut out.  The lemons should be a much brighter yellow, however, I did not realize my ink was out until they already started printing and I wasn't going to waste the cardstock.  You can see from the strawberry and melon pictures that the graphics are nice and bright.

Here are my kiddos in action: 

  

Here they were stacking up the matches.

This was tricky for them.  They are searching hard for the matches.

So now is your chance to win a copy of this pack.  Enter the Rafflecopter below for your chance to win:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

So here are the other bloggers that got to Swap and Review: 

More Sight Word Practice

My kiddos need a lot of practice with sight words.  We have been using my Sight Word Practice sheets this week.  I was talking to a colleague the other day and we thought about how we could use the sight words in sentences too.  Thus, my new product is born.  I plan to use these in a center but will do a few of them whole group first.  

I included the cover, one example and then a view of all the sentences in the pack (thus far).    Click the title page to head to my store.  It's only $1.50 right now.  As I add more pages I will increase the price.  If you get it now, you can download the updates for FREE!!!
I discussed with a different colleague about our "routine" day.  My thoughts are...in order to be better readers and writers....we just need to practice reading and writing.  Yes, in kindergarten they need a lot of modeling and some work with activities like you see above.  However, for the most part, the kids just need time to work on their writing and practice reading books (both familiar and unfamiliar).  
Well, I did this today.  We still had "centers" but the kids practiced their writing (like a mini writer's workshop) at one center, practiced reading at one center, did a phonics game on the computer and worked on sight words at the last center.  One of my sweet students (who came to me knowing 0 letters and letter sounds), was able to write the sentence he wanted to during his writing center.  He drew his detailed picture and then asked for help to stretch out the words.  As I guided him, he was able to recognize each letter (based on the sounds I was making) and was able to write them correctly.  
I give a lot of credit to Fundations!!!  This is a program that our county has purchased from Wilson.  We are teaching to fidelity.  And I truly believe that the everyday repetition of this program has helped my little guy be able to actually write a (legible) sentence about his picture only after 10 weeks of school.  
I don't know about your thoughts, but I think that is really impressive!!!!