SALE!!

I just dropped the price of my Monster Madness unit 50% to only $5.00!!!  I'll leave it at this price for the next 48 hours.  Purchase it before Wednesday, October 24th at midnight.

Check it out here!

BOO!

I was boo'ed.  I've seen this cuteness around blogland recently and was hoping I could get in on the action.  Fortunately, Natalie at Teachery Tidbits chose me to BOO!

It's my turn!  So here are the rules:

1) Choose a fellow blogger that has more followers, another that has about the same number of followers, and someone that has less followers.

2) Blog about each of them and include this cute linky party icon in your blog.

3) Lastly, leave them love by offering them a goody from your store as their "treat." (If you have a store)

More Followers:

Kinder Kids Fun
Joni found my blog through a Carolina Blogger Meetup post.  She was sweet enough to pop over and follow my blog and has left me a few comments.  It's nice to know that someone is reading this thing (for the record, my parents are now reading it after I walked my mom through step-by-step over the phone- Hi Mom!).  Joni has some great resources on her blog.  One day, my coffee and I are going to have a date and read through her archives.  It's amazing how much I continue to learn and grow as a teacher through others. 

About Not really at all the same:

http://teachingwithz.blogspot.com/
Rachel has twice as many followers as I do and we started blogging at about the same time so clearly she is a better blogger than I am ;)  BUT, we teach the same grade in the same county and just "met" through blogging.  It's so fun for me to read what she's doing in her classroom because we are doing the same things.  She's great, check her out!

Less followers:

My buddies at Fanatical in First Grade.  I met Tammy, Ashley, and Autumn at the Carolina Blogger Meetup.  They had also just launched their blog and they share my excitement about the blogging world and the hope of a quickly growing blog.

If I BOOed you, please email me at landingink@gmail.com or leave a comment on this post with your email address so I can get you your treat (a goodie from my TPT store!).  I couldn't find your emails!!

Go check out their blogs.  Happy Halloween!

MoNsTeRs!

This year, instead of doing the typical Halloween activities during Halloween week, I created a Monster unit. It has 7 Literacy Activities and 8 Math Activities.  There are differentiation options for many of the activities. I can't WAIT to do this with my kiddos.  

These cute monsters are not at all scary, but still give a slight little nod to Halloween.  I have several students that don't celebrate Halloween in my class this year, so this unit suits us well.  I don't like Halloween myself, it's second only to my distaste for New Year's Eve (it never lives up to the hype!).

I digress.

This unit does not mention anything Halloween related, so it's easy to do at any ol' time.  It's on sale for $8.50 right now so snatch it up before I raise the price.

Find my Monster unit HERE!

What's your least favorite holiday?  Any other New Year's haters out there?  Everyone seems shocked when I say that I hate it!

A peek at our stations

I recently revamped how Math and Literacy Stations work in my classroom.  That post is coming soon.  In the meantime, here is a glimpse of some our first stations.  They really learned to work well independently doing these centers and got our routine down.

Parker showing off What's Your Bus Number and Victoria showing off Backpack Boogie (version 1) from The Backpack Boogie by Growing Kinders.  I absolutely love all of her creations and they always seem to perfectly match the skill level of my class.  

 Apple patterns from Shannon Martin at Kindergarten Hoppenings.  You can find great free apple activities HERE on her site.  She also recently started creating units for sale and they are great.  She's a rockstar teacher and I used her work a lot last year (my first year teaching K!).

The above activities are all from Deedee Wills' Back to School Math Work Stations.  She's a Kindergarten guru.  She has the greatest games.  My class could play different versions of  them all year!

When I started teaching, I wondered what teachers did before computers and the internet.  Now, I'm wondering what teachers did before the blog world and Teachers Pay Teachers.  It has changed the way I teach and given me access to so many fabulous resources.  Don't you agree?

Columbus Day

On Columbus Day, one of the things we did was the Float/Sink experiment from Kim Adsit's Hooray for Columbus Day packet.  They worked with their tables to see what objects would float and which would sink.  We made predictions and then tested our predictions.  They loved it, but unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of it!

After we tested our objects, I gave each of them a piece of aluminum foil and had them build a boat that would float out of it.  I gave them no more direction than that.  I wanted to see their thinking and creativity.  Would they make it with a flat bottom?  Would it even look like a boat?  Would they make it flat or make sides on their boat?  

Here we are making our boats.  You can see the tub of water we floated objects in in the center.  

Also, there are all IPhone pics, so they aren't so great.

I allowed them to test their boats at their tables.  If their boat floated, we tested them with passengers (Teddy Bear Counters) to see how many each boat could hold.  Our big winner was Nate and his boat (below).  His boat held 16 passengers!

We absolutely loved this activity.  I even had a boy design a new boat at home and bring it in to me the next day :)  

Writer's Workshop: Drawing Unit

In Writer's Workshop, we've been working our way through a drawing unit inspired by the fabulous Jonelle at A Place Called Kindergarten.  It's amazing how these little mini lessons on drawing are sticking with the kids and we have recognizable pictures (and no Mr. Potato Head people as I call them!).  We explored some how-to-draw books.  Check out our neat work!

 

Football Season! {FREEBIE}

Fall and football go hand in hand in so many households.  I'm a Steelers Fan and I married a Bengals fan.  I've converted him, but he won't freely admit it ;)  On Steeler Game Days, we put the game on the radio (no TV here!), listen to it while we get our work done and while our dinner simmers in the crock pot.  Crock pot Sunday is basically a holiday in our household.

Now, Pittsburghers LOVE their NFL football, but never have I seen people so crazed about football season as I have down here in the south.  Y'all (like how I slipped that in there?!?) make this Northern born-and-bred girl wish she had at least gone to an SEC school ;)

Enjoy this little football themed number puzzle freebie.  The first two should be put in order from 1-10, but the second two are a little more challenging and they have to count backwards from 10-1.  Don't forget that little detail in your directions or your kids will have some unfortunate looking cheerleaders.

Please enjoy and keep spreading the word about my little blog.  I check my stats constantly just happened to notice that I am nearing that 50 follower mark.  Leave me a comment if you download this so I know you're reading (Pretty please?  My own parents don't even read this!).  




The clip art in this freebie was purchased from Doodle Darlin' on Etsy.  She has some adorable clip art for very competitive prices and was sweet enough to allow me to share a freebie with my blog readers. Keep her in mind for all your clip art needs!