Giveaway at Learning and Teaching with Preschoolers!

Tami at Learning and Teaching with Preschoolers has asked me to be a part of a fabulous giveaway! So, I am teaming up with some very talented preschool teachers/bloggers who are giving away some amazing products!  Wouldn’t you love to have all your planning done for free?! :)  Enter over at Learning and Teaching with Preschoolers and it could be you!

Here is a peek at what you can win:

Head on over to Tami's blog and enter to win. Good luck!!! :)

Sun and Moon Activities... with a fun freebie game!

Hey sweet friends!
Well, we went to the museum yesterday. It was a lot of fun and the kids really enjoyed it. The dinosaurs were the coolest thing. I had to keep little hands and feet from climbing on the rail. Do field trips wear y'all out too? HA!

This week we have been learning about the sun and the moon as well as talking about day/night activities.

We started off by talking about what we know about the sun. Sorry I don't have a picture of our moon chart! I left school and completely forgot to take one!

 

We are still working on number recognition and so I made this little activity for my sweeties. They draw a number card and place the corresponding number of yellow straws around the sun.

 We cut and pasted beginning and ending sounds.

 This is our moon poem/song that we sing. It is to the tune of the Farmer and the Dell. I think I got this idea from Julie Lee and changed up the words. I wish I had a picture of our sun song!

I introduced the term 'sphere' to the kids. We read a book all about spheres and then they made their own. They rolled a die and made the number of spheres as shown by the die. My kids LOVE play doh and it is such a great fine motor activity. We use play doh a lot. :)

For the ABC center, I had my little ones match letters to word cards. Or, if they are ready for independent spelling, they chose the blank cards to write the words.

 Our Mr. Sun glyphs turned out super cute!! I was so proud of them. They are really getting the hang of glyphs. Just about all of my sweeties chose the orange suns because they like day time the best. I think there were 2 that chose the yellow ones. :)

Lastly, I wanted to share a really fun game with y'all that I made. It is called Craters on the Moon. I created this game for my sweeties who struggle with number recognition. You can click the link below to purchase. Basically, all you do is turn all of the cards face down and give each child a moon game mat and approximately 6 quarters (or some type of manipulative.  So, the kids will draw a card from the face down pile, identify the card and keep it. If they cannot identify the card, it goes back into the pile. If they draw a Craters on the Moon card, they get to place a quarter on their game mat. When their game mat is filled, the game is over. My little ones love games like this so I knew it would be a hit! Seriously y'all, it is allllmost as fun as Vroom, Vroom! (So you know that means it's FUN!!)
*The picture here is before I changed the craters on the game mat... I like the smaller craters that are in the freebie game better. You live and you learn. :)

All of these activities (and more!) are in my Sun/Moon activity pack that will be available soon!! :) It will definitely be posted by the end of the weekend and maybe even tonight. :)

Tomorrow is our 100th Day of School so I'll be sure to post about what we did. I am still getting things together for that. Is it the weekend yet? :)

Giveaway ends tomorrow! :)

I'll leave you with some encouragement. I have this on my desk and I read a new inspirational quote each day. It's always such an encouragement for me and I hope it is for you as well! :)

What are we up to this week?! Transportation!

OHMYWORD....what a day. Whew!! I love my sweeties, but they just about wore me out. So glad to be home and relaxing... :)

We are learning all about various forms of transportation this week. On Monday we brainstormed all of the types of transportation we could think of. Here is our list.

 

Color overload!! HA! Y'all, we seriously brainstormed for like 10 minutes. They just kept thinking and thinking of things. My favorite was the carriage. :)

This is the famous "Vroom, Vroom!" game. My kids LOVED this game! They seriously kept asking to play over and over. Fine by me! The object of the game is to fill up your game board with cards. They turn the cards over face down and take turns turning them over. If they are able to name the letter/sound/number/etc., they may keep their card. If they can't, it goes back in their pile. If they draw a Vroom, Vroom! card, they may remove a card from the other player's board. I love this game because you can differentiate for each child. You can have one group working on letters/sounds/numbers, while the other group is working on sight words or CVC words. Sight words and CVC words are available in the transportation activity pack. We have played every day this week and my kids haven't gotten tired of it yet. :)

Here, the kiddos sorting pictures based on their beginning sounds. They did this during centers and then we did it as a whole group. I wanted to really see who was getting it and who needs some extra practice.

 

 

My kids LOVE, LOVE, LOVE writing in sand, cornmeal, salt, paint, shaving cream, etc. so we wrote transportation words in the sand.

Sight Word Matching- They were really into this little game. We really focused on matching the letters rather than the pictures. Not many of my little ones can read (about 2-3), but this is great sight word exposure for them.

 

So sorry that is sideways. This is a great activity for your students who are reading or are in the beginning stages. They placed the set of large train cards face down. Then, they drew a card and used the train cars on the cookie sheet to build the word that the picture was showing. For example, there's a dog on the train card in the picture above, and the child looked for the letter 'd, o, g.' The recording sheet was great for my high level students. Some students weren't really ready for the recording sheet, so they just found the letters to build the word. Either way, it is a wonderful literacy activity. 

 

Syllable Sort.

We are having a fun week so far! We are going to be doing an airplane glyph tomorrow and a paper airplace race! :) All of these activities are included in my Transportation literacy activities pack. You can purchase it at my TPT store on TN store. Click the picture below to go to my TPT store.

Oh, and look what came in the mail yesterday... :) I can't wait to be Mrs. Stephenson!!! :)

Have a great rest of the week, y'all!

Freebie! Spin and Add Addition Game... a Success!

Another week has FLOWN by! This year is going by sooooo fast. I can't BELIEVE it!!

First of all, I wanted to let you know that I have added several activities to the Lessons I've Created page. Creating and Teaching gave me the idea to do this and I think it's great so that everything will be nice and organized.The freebies that I post as well as activities I post to TPT and TN will be there. I hope that is helpful.

I wanted to share with y'all a game I made for math centers this week. It is called Spin and Add and it is super fun! My little 5 year olds were so good at this. They were begging me to keep playing this game. I totally can't pass that up! They make me so proud. :) Here are some pictures.

These are two of the mats that come with the activity. You can also see the spinner. I am not the best at assembling this spinner...HA! Okay, so you spin the spinner, record whatever number you spun (record it in the first box) then count out that many marshmallows or cotton balls. We used cotton balls because I forgot to get marshmallows. Oopsie! Spin again and record the next number, count out that many cotton balls. Then add them up and write the total in the last box. Y'all, I was blown away by my kids this week. They are SO good at math!!

I just love how this little one wrote the 2 so small... :)

Some of my kids were ready for the recording sheet and some were not. This was a child who was ready. Notice his 5+5=6... :) After I took this picture I had to help him figure out that one. HA!

OH! Did I mention you can download this game for free?! Yep, you can! :) Just click the link below. Enjoy!!

Spin and Add Game

One more thing....
Are y'all familiar with Erin Condren? OHMYWORD...I am obsessed with all of her products. I had received some gift cards to her website, so I couldn't wait to order this ADORABLE lesson planner. I won't be Mrs. Stephenson until June, but I could not wait! I am excited to be able to use this cute lil' thing next year! I just had to share it with y'all. :)

Happy weekend sweet friends! Y'all are a blessing to me!

Love to Joplin from Texas!

I am linking up with Mrs. Wills to help out the teachers in Joplin. Can you believe it has already been 8 months? WOW. I sent them a couple packs and I hope they are useful. Please join in to help them out! :)

Valentine's Day Activities and FREEBIE!

Happy weekend, friends!

I hope y'all are having a wonderful weekend! Does it sound awful that I was so ready for this weekend? I was still in break mode and the week seemed to draaaaag on!! I am so thankful for a relaxing Saturday! :) I have been watching The Big Bang Theory and working on lessons plans. I also managed to compile some Valentine's Day Activities.  I would love your feedback on them before I post so I will send a copy to the first 2 people who comment. :)

Click here to go to my TPT store or here to go to my TN store to download a FREEBIE! Don't ya just love those?! I DO! Please let me know if you download it and if ya like it! :)

PS: Don't forget to enter my giveaway with Creating and Teaching! You can go to the post by clicking here.

Blessings to you!

Dinosaur Week, Freebie, and Giveaway

Hi sweet teaching friends!
How was your week back? Mine was actually really great and I hope yours was the same. We spent this week learning all about dinosaurs. I tell you one thing, little ones LOVE dinosaurs!! I am in the process of getting us a field trip set up to go visit our local art museum which has a huge dinosaur on display. Can't wait for that! (*Question: Is anyone else still in break mode? I need to snap out of it!)

Here is a bit of a peek at what we had going on this week:

***Okay, this has nothing to do with dinosaurs but we did this a couple weeks ago and I thought it was a cute activity to share if you are still looking for snowman/winter activities. We cut out the middle of a paper plate for the head and used scrap paper for the rest! Adorable!

Now, for the dinosaur part. (I should have gotten more pictures, so I apologize ahead of time!)

This is a position term activity from Erin at Creating and Teaching. The kids are doing excellent with positional terms!

We had so much fun at the sensory table this week. We were digging for dinosaur bones! I can't tell you where I got these dinosaur bones because my school had them and I think they are fairly old, but they are wonderful. Maybe you could find them on Amazon? I love sensory experiences in the classroom. There are so many ways to incorporate different aspects of the curriculum and my kids love it!

 We traced dinosaurs and I don't know what it was about this activity, but they SWARMED to it!! Oh my gosh, they all wanted to trace the dinosaurs. Fine by me! :) Great fine motor.

We made dinosaur prints this week. These turned out great and the kids enjoyed them. I will be putting them in their portfolios. I wish I had gotten a picture of a finished one. Oops!

At our math centers, we did dinosaur math journal prompts from Kim Swoveland's Dinosaur unit. I was shocked at how well my sweeties did with these. They are showing so much growth academically! (And socially, too) :)

Roll and Race Dinosaur game. This game reinforces one to one correspondence and counting. The kids rolled a die, then moved their dinosaur that many spaces. They love playing roll and count games.

These little guys were a HIT! The kids used foam blocks and regular blocks to build these dinosaurs. The dinosaur parts came from Lakeshore I believe. This was probably one of the favorites this week.



 I hope you enjoyed reading about our week! We are getting ready to kick of Transportation soon and I have made some activities for that. You can check them out by clicking here. I am excited about this unit!! :) Also, here is a freebie from this unit. Let me know if you use it and/or if you can't open it! I am trying new things..HA! :) How can I link the picture below to the unit on TPT/TN?

Don't forget about my giveaway that ends Monday. Scroll down for the post.

I am leaving you with some pictures from my trip to Colorado. It was BEAUTIFUL!!! :) Isn't God's creation amazing?! :)

Happy weekend!! :)