My Teachers Pay Teachers sale has been extended!

I decided to extend my 20% off Teacher Appreciation sale on Teachers Pay Teachers through Friday! So if you didn't get a chance to take advantage of the big TPT sale on Tuesday and Wednesday, here is your chance to take advantage of saving a few dollars. :) Happy Shopping!!!!

Kerry's Teacher Pay Teacher Shop

Teacher Appreciation Week!!!

This week is Teacher Appreciation Week! Have you heard about the big sale TPT is having? On May 7th and 8th you can save up to 28% by using the code TAD13.  My entire shop will be on sale during this time so you will be able to save 28% on all of my products! Check out my shop at http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Kerry .

Also if your shop is participating in the sale please post a link in the comments. I would love to come check out your products and follow your shop! :)

Spring is in the air!!!!

This year is flying by! Spring has sprung and I have been busy working on some new products for my shop. In the spirt of spring, I have created a ladybug counting book that can be found in my TPT shop.

What are you teaching about in your classroom right now? Any fun units coming up? We have our big ocean unit on the horizon. It is my absolute favorite unit of the year! I don't know if it's because it was the very first unit I taught when I was a student teacher eons ago or just all the wonderful animals and nonfiction texts available, but I just love teaching about the ocean.

New Year, New Projects!

My oldest started kindergarten this week, so my inner teacher was overly eager to volunteer to help in any way possible during meet the teacher last week. Her teacher asked if I would pull out and organize all the math workbook pages for the class, which I of course, jumped at the chance to help. So this has put me in the mood to start creating more teaching materials. I have a couple of freebies in the works, but was wondering if anyone had something they needed or wanted created for them. Respond to this post and I would be happy to help create what you need! :)

HUGE Teachers Pay Teachers Sale!

My Teachers Pay Teachers Shop is holding a back to school sale for the next two days! All of my items are 20% off and use the code BTS12 for additional savings! Don't miss out on these great items! In my shop you will find behavior management tools, classroom stationary sets, alphabet games, math practice, and much more. So check it out during the big TPT Back to School Sale!

School supplies make me giddy!

Oh, how I love school supply shopping! This weekend we went to pick up the last of school supplies my oldest daughter will need for Kindergarten. She is definitely my child! She was hopping with excitement over pencils and crayons.

I also love that Target's dollar spot has been loaded with teacher stuff! Last year I loaded up on bins for the classroom. My favorite Target Dollar Spot purchase was plastic magazine files (except they were larger) similar to these that Lakeshore Learning carries for $2.50 a piece. It took me most of the summer but I found enough blue ones to put one in each child's cubby to use a  mailbox, so their papers wouldn't get crumpled up.

What has been you best or favorite find on the back to school front?

Beginning of another school year!

As the beginning of another school year is looming, I know everyone is thinking about classroom setup and management tools. Today I would like to feature my behavior management plan that I created for my classroom many years ago.

I've always used a traffic light behavior management plan. It is simple for even my youngest students to understand. I've put together a packet of wonderful tools to go along with this plan. If you are interested, the packet can be found in my TPT and Teachers Notebook stores.

This packet includes the following letters and forms that I use in my kindergarten classroom:

Letter to the Parents:
This is a letter that I send home at the beginning of year to explain the classroom behavior system to the parents.

Weekly Behavior Chart:
I used this behavior chart in my student's Take Home Folder. In my classroom, I use a light system to monitor behavior throughout the day. At the end of the day the student's are responsible for coloring in the block for the day, either green, yellow, or red to reflect their behavior and then I initial the box to ensure the have correctly recorded their behavior for the day. I also require the parents to initial each night to let me know they have seen the behavior chart. I use the comment section to relay to the parents any issues or accomplishments that the child had throughout the day or the parent can comment in that section back to me about any follow-up they have. Later in the year I will often have the student write what their bad choices were for the day and what the consequences were for their action or what good choices they had made for the day.

Traffic Light Chart:
I print this out on card stock and laminate it to post by the "How are we doing today?" pocket chart as a reminder.

"Caught You Being Good" Slips:
I cut these out and keep them in a basket on my table. Anytime I see a student making exemplary choices, I fill out what I caught them doing as a way to celebrate good behavior. I send the slip home in the student's home folder so the parents can see what their child was doing well with at school that day.

Red Light Report:
I use this form when a student has a red light. At the beginning of the year, I transcribe what the student says on the form. As the year progresses, the student takes over the responsibility of filling out what choices they made and what actions they are going to take to fix the problem.

I love teaching about the ocean!!!

I'm sure we all have a favorite thematic unit we enjoy teaching. Mine is the ocean! I love teaching about the various animals and aspects of ocean life. It all started when I was an intern eons ago. My student teaching was in the spring and the timing was perfectly aligned for me to teach the ocean unit when I was to take over the class. I had an amazing mentor teacher that let me sift through her ocean unit weeks ahead of time and really develop and awesome unit. With each book I picked up, I got wonderful ideas of comprehension lessons, crafts, math center, etc to go with. Over the years, I have added tremendously to this unit. I probably have enough activities and books to teach ocean for MONTHS now in all different grade levels! I don't know if it's because it was because ocean was the first unit I every taught or if it's because all of the ocean animals just amaze me, but I LOVE teaching about the ocean!

Last year, I lent my unit to my oldest daughter's preschool teacher. She was new to teaching (had only been teaching for a couple of months) and asked if she could borrow a few ocean book (we had become very friendly since I was her room mom and she knew that I had been a teacher before having kids). I almost jumped for joy when she asked! I'd been out of the classroom for four years and was so excited to see all of my beloved ocean stuff again. When I got home, I quickly dug out the multiple ocean bin out from under my stairs and loaded them in the car to take to Ms. M the next morning. She was so appreciate and I was so excited to watch my little girl learn about all the wonders of the ocean. Each day my daughter would come home to tell me about how she learned octopi or starfish and I would just light up listening to her because she had also discovered the same love of all things ocean.

What is your favorite unit to teach?

P.S.~ Be on the look out! If I can rustle up the time, I will be posting some ocean goodness!

Pinterest

How many of you are on Pinterest? I'm totally addicted! I have boards for all the school units and then some. Oh and of course, boards for things around the home and for my own children. There are so many awesome ideas floating around on there. I LOVE IT! I would love to follow you, so if you wouldn't mind posting your link in the comments, so I become a follower of your. Click here if you would like to check out my Pinterest boards.

I've been a bad blogger!

I've taken a long break from blogging! After school kicked off, life got insane. I'm getting back in the swing of blogging so be on the look out for more posts to come!

WAHOO! The furniture has been delivered!

This afternoon 22 boxes of furniture arrive in my classroom.I'm still missing a ton of stuff but atleast I have some tables and chairs. Right now I only have 6 chairs, but hey, it's a start. Now everything just needs to be assembled. What are the chances it will be all put together when I go in tomorrow morning? I'm guess slim, but a girl can dream, right?

Oh the craziness that is my classroom!

I found out my room assignment yesterday and was told that I could start moving in and setting up, so I went to scope it out between training sessions. OMG!!! It is a mess and right now I have NO furniture! Oh and they have been using my room as a storage unit for anything that has been shipped to the school all summer so I have tons of boxes stacked in there of random stuff that doesn't belong in to my classroom. I'm totally freaking out! Meet the teacher is on 8/17 and I have to move all of my stuff in, clean, setup, learn a whole new curriculum, and hope and pray I get furniture soon. I have no idea how I'm going to be be ready for meet the teacher. I'm a nervous wreck!

This afternoon after my training was over my husband came and helped me move some of my stuff out of storage and into my classroom while I started cleaning. I found open containers of food in the cabinets. It was so gross! The few manipulatives that are in the classroom are colored all over and have gunk all over them. I have a ton of cleaning ahead of me. Hopefully I can get the cleaning done this week and next week I will work on unpacking and setting up. Fortunately, my husband is home watching our three kids this week since I have training every day, but next week I'm alone with the kids, so hopefully my oldest two enjoy playing with all the new toys as I start unpacking my stuff.

Why had I never tried this helpful little tool before now?

Last week, I picked up a Fiskars circle punch like the one below to cut out some iron on tags I had made for my son's clothes for daycare. Well I haven't gotten around to printing those out yet, but today I made some positive reinforcement coins for my classroom using the punch. I'm in love! I think I need to get more of these in all different shapes! I cut out over 300 little circles in no time. This handy little punch saved me sooooo much time! I laminated all the coins, but the punch doesn't like to cut through the thick laminating so I'm having to cut all of the coins out of the laminating, which is taking forever, but I can't imagine how long this project would have taken if I didn't have this handy dandy punch.

Here are the coins I made. I plan on handing them out to the students for following directions and making good choices in class. After they earn 20, they will earn a trip to the treasure box. If you would like a copy of these, check out my Teachers Pay Teachers shop for a free copy. I printed these on cardstock, punched them out and laminated them.

Cutting Machines

Do any of you have a cutting machine, such as a Cricut, that you use for making things for your classroom? What type do you have and what kind of classroom things do you make with it? How do you like you cutting machine?

I'm debating taking the plunge and getting one (not sure what brand as there are several on the market), but not sure how much I would actually use it. I have lots of ideas for using it, but not sure if it's worth spending the money.

WAHOO!!!

For my new teaching position that I will be starting in the fall, I needed to add on Exceptional Student Education to my current Early Childhood Certification. This morning I took the certification test and passed! WAHOO! One more thing to check off my list and a big weight off my shoulders.

The Mailbox is having a Cyber-Monday Sale today!

The Mailbox is having a Cyber-Monday Sale! All of their clearance merchandise is an additional 30% off and regularly priced merchandise is 15% off (no code needed)! The sale gets even better! SHIPPING IS FREE (no minimum purchase required)! Check out the sale here. You can get some really great deals with the sale. Since I'm teaching a grade I've never taught before I stocked up. I got $188 worth of books for just  $70! I was pretty happy with that since I got 17 books for that amount.

I've opened a Teachers Notebook shop!

I've decided to give Teachers Notebook a whirl and opened a shop! I only have a few items in there as of right now but am slowly working on uploading more. You can check it out here. Please follow me on there so you can get updates on all the new items I add.

Back-to-School Number Fun!

I've made some Back-to-School Number Cards that can be used to play games like Memory and Go Fish. Or put them in a pocket chart to let your students practice matching the numerals to the number words to the picture cards. These are a great way to build number sense and make a great addition to any math center. The Back-to-School Number Cards can be found at my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

Scotch Create, Decorate & Motivate Classroom Sweepstakes

Enter here to win a $500 in prize pack of Carson-Dellosa Products & Scotch Brand products to help get your classroom ready for the new school year! Contest runs until September 30, 2011.

Teddy Bears Galore!

I've decided that the theme for my classroom this year is going to be teddy bears. They are just so cute and cuddly! I can't resist a cute teddy bear! I have been collecting teddy bears since I was a kid so I have quite the collection. Most of them are sitting in storage right now, so I figured why not use some them as a warm, fuzzy addition to my classroom.

Since I decided to use the teddy bear theme, I've been busy making all kinds of fun teddy bear 'stuff' for the classroom. I've created printable nameplates for the tables, cubby tags to label each child's cubby, stationery/letterhead for letters home, sticker/incentive charts, and 2 in. x 4 in. labels to label home folders, bins, etc. I'm really excited about the stuff I made.

If you have a teddy bear theme going in your classroom or just like the stationery set, check it out in my Teacher Pay Teacher store.