100 TPT Follower SALE 3/29/15

I have reached 100 followers on TPT!  I've been creating resources since June 2014 and started selling a few weeks later in July.  

It has been such a fun journey!  I've connected with many awesome educators across the country!  

In honor of my small milestone of 100 followers...I am throwing a sale at my store.  Go to my TPT store: Miss Kate's Desk . 

The sale runs tomorrow (March 29th) and I may extend it longer than that.  ;)

Check my Instagram: @misskatesdesk to see what best selling items I will be putting as *FREEBIES* for tomorrow only!  Follow me on IG to know what is a limited time freebie.

Have a great rest of the weekend everyone!  Thank you so much for supporting my young TPT store.  

Spring Break Recap

My Spring Break is coming to an end.  I have a few more hours until I hit the hay and get rested up for tomorrow.  I wanted to share some of the highlights of my break.  I feel pretty refreshed but anxious for the busy times coming up this last 1/4 of the school year.

#1 Yummy food.  Joplin has really come along the last 5 or so years with new local restaurants and bars with great food and drinks.  Throughout my break there was several times that I met up with friends for some delicious local food!  My favorite is Instant Karma.  I tried Gaslight for the first time (nachos picture below) this break.

#2 Bedroom Makeover.  I decided it was time for a new and bigger bed.  I found a deal at a local furniture store and it was a metal frame.  It wasn't exactly what I had pictured but I LOVE it.  The prints in the frames were found on various Etsy stores.  I also purchased frames on sale at stores like Hobby Lobby, Michael's, and Target.  I went for a sorta girly and mismatched look.  Suits my personality well.

#3 Working out.  I have been back to working out daily and it has been great...besides the fact that there are some days when I moan and groan when sitting down.  The below picture accurately describes the pain.  So far since last Friday (first day of break) I have lost 4lbs!

# 4 Friends.  I have spent a lot of time with friends this break. I have seen a movie or two, went to dinner, went to karaoke, and to a day trip to Bentonville, Arkansas.  Here is one of my best friends and I at our karaoke night.

#5 Day Trip.  My friends and I went to Bentonville, Arkansas to go to Crystal Bridges.  Crystal Bridges is an awesome museum in Northwest Arkansas.  If you are ever in the area...stop by!  It is free...but we got a $10.00 ticket to see a special exhibit for Van Gogh to Rothko.  It was great!  We also walked a little on the trails around the museum and I saw the new Frank Lloyd Wright house being put together (well, it's not new...but they are moving it from NJ to AR).  

(a Jackson Pollock and I)

Not quite sure if I'm ready to power through the next month and a half.  It's been a trying year in my personal life.  One day I'll share about that and how depression affected me this past school year.  Good news is that dark cloud hovering over me since the fall is more like a little fog now.  

Positivity.  :)  I do feel refreshed...which I was in desperate need of.

May will be here soon.  It's the most magical month to me.  Happy Spring everyone!

It's almost March?!?

It has been a while.  Eeek.  February has been a bizarre month for me so far.  Lots of ups and downs in general and I've been in a creative slump.  Here are somethings that has been happening this month that I want to share.

My blog design is on Designs by Kassie.  :)  I absolutely love the new design she made for me.  Go check out her website (click the picture).  She does great work.  I had a very tiny idea of what I would like and she took it and made it awesome!

I am going to PARIS again this June.  It's is definitely official now because my friend and I booked our flights.  I have been to Paris, she has not.  We are beyond excited!  I'll be gone 7 days and have 6ish days in the city.

Last week we were off for 2 days because of snow and ice.  It was a 3 day week with Friday because a professional development day.  On Monday I had a slight freakout that 3rd Quarter is almost up and conferences are around the corner.

If you follow me on Instagram you know that this little guy has been showing up in random places in my classroom.  One of the kids has fallen in love with the penguin and he leaves it in the most interesting spots (but I never see him do it...sneaky).

I have been letting my kids read aloud to the class when we have a few extra minutes here and there.  They LOVE it.  Here's a few who finished math early listening to one of our friends read.  They pick a leveled book they've read before to read loud and proud to their friends.  I've found it to be great motivation and love seeing their excitement.  It's that time of the year where the reading is booming.  I need to make more time for this.  :)  It's also that time of the year that I'm trying to provide my kids opportunities to read to whoever.  I have kids that read to other teachers, other classes, the secretary, principal, or whoever has the time.  Our school does this a lot because we put a big focus on it and on our kids who are below the reading targets.

This friend read a whole Fly Guy book without any hesitation or mistakes to the class before going home one day.  Since this day he's been reading up a storm.  I loved seeing other kids gain motivation from watching books being read to them and thinking they can do it too!  

I made this wooden sign to go above my newish area on the whiteboard for our learning intentions and success criteria.

All teachers and staff gathered at the new high school (the tornado took our old one) to listen to the super talk about our direction.

Snapped this one while waiting to leave the gym and get a goody bag.  Such a funky building.  I love it but I miss the old JHS that I graduated from.

Here I was an hour ago.  Sore throat and feel terrible.  Hoping this crud goes away.  I am sitting upright now typing this...so that's a start.

Have a great week everyone!  Sorry for the lack of posting lately...sometimes life happens.

Five for Friday

Woohoo!  It's Friday.  I was at a training today and everyone was talking about how the past few weeks have been exhausting.

I just want 1 snow day.  That's all.  Please...

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday.  Go link up.  Click the image below!

#1

100th Day of School.

Wednesday was our 100th day of school.  I'll do a post later in the weekend about our activities!

#2 On Monday it snowed...you can hardly see it.  

We have not had a snow day yet...grr.

#3 A student gave me these for reading groups.  

His mom is a teacher.  :)  I use to have some of these little eyeballs but have no idea what I did with them.  Hooray for new ones and thoughtful people!

#4 Paris

I am going to Paris in June.  One of my best friends and I decided this past weekend to go!  I have been once before back in 2011 but I flew out the day of Joplin's tornado and so I slept very little and was very worried.  I'm excited to see it with a level head and just to have fun!  

(Photo by me and an old app I use to have)

#5 New Blog Design

It is almost ready!  Eeek!

Have a great rest of your Friday and a wonderful weekend!  I'm off to Springfield, MO tomorrow to see friends.  

Scurrying Sunday!

Hey everyone!  I woke up early to get a few things done because this afternoon and evening involves FOOTBALL!  

My Green Bay Packers are play the Seachickens today...er Seahawks.  I am extremely anxious and ready for this game.  I'm rockin' my Clay Matthews jersey and anxiously buzzing around the room.

Here's a penguin blubber activity we did.  Click on the photo to get the FREEBIE.

The last two weeks in kindergarten revolved around Penguins!  We loved it.  The students' were so focused and engaged.  We had some of our best writing so far this year!  I've learned that they love to write facts.  This week we will be doing a lot of Martin Luther King Jr. activities.  Also, I do have school tomorrow.  

{Cue sad violin music}

We also made the awesome mittens from Maria Manore at Kinder Craze!  Check out our stained glass mittens on our windows.  Click the photo to go to this activity on her TPT!

Here we go!  I totally ran out of time this weekend to finish up my visual planner for you guys.  Hopefully I will next week.

High: Silent E words and blends/diagraphs and reading comprehension skills.
Medium: Phoneme Segmenting and retelling.
Low: CVC practice and retelling.

I have some flimsy laminated paper elkonin boxes that I have used in the past for small groups and RTI time but I decided to order a set from Really Good Stuff.  It'll probably be in by the end of the week. :)

We have been really getting into informative writing.  Lots and lots of facts!  Previous years we've had some trouble only writing facts and not writing "I like penguins.  They are cute." This year's bunch can write a good fact!  I've been very surprised.

We will continue writing facts about ourselves, winter animals (polar bears), and ending our writing this week with some MLK facts.

This quarter one ELA standard added is the retelling standard.  We will be looking at familiar stories such as "Goldilocks and the 3 Bears" and "The 3 Little Pigs".  We will break those stories down and learn how to tell events in order.  We have done a little of this before, but not at the capacity we need to for this quarter.

We use EnVision Math.  Topic 7 is ending tomorrow and we will be taking our Topic Test.  This topic has been addition.  I feel like in a way it is too short.  So we will be doing lots of addition checks and practices through this quarter and next when we have a little extra time after math or in the afternoon.

Last week we did lots of awesome Penguin science activities!  I'm sad to see it go.  This week we will be doing more Social Studies.  We will be reading, writing, and doing small projects on MLK.

Here is a *FREEBIE* I made for MLK that is in my store.  Click the picture to go get it!

This was short and sweet today because I have a few things to finish up around the house, a Mexican lunch with my parents, and then watch the PACKERS win!

Have a great week everyone!

Scurrying Sunday!

Let me start off with saying GO PACK GO!

I just had to get that out of my system!  Anyways, every Sunday I'm going to post what we are doing this coming week in Room K2.  I don't know about you but I am definitely a Sunday planner.  It's rare and most definitely shocking if my plans are finished before Sunday.  Shocking indeed.

That's why I'm calling my Sunday post "Scurrying Sunday".  Sometimes it's a race to the finish to get everything planned out or last minute...OH YAs for things I forgot I wanted to do or try this week.

I'm working on a Weekly Planner to put on here for you to see my schedule and what we are doing for that week...but it isn't finished yet.  :(  Look for it next weekend!

So instead I'll do some subject headings and just type some of the main things this week.  

My stations do not take much changing or prep work since it is basically Daily 5.  I do put new and take out old Word Work activities on occasion to keep things fresh and match the skills they are working on in small and whole group.  I did just add a couple of activities from my Pocket Pack to the Word Work station.  My kinders have loved using the HUGE pocket chart since the beginning of December when I introduced it.  Don't know why we hadn't been using it before!  Here's a some of my kinders in action with the Pigs in the Mud CVC Match.

I am also putting up my new Write the Room: CVC labels around the room for students to find during word work.  I also made a couple more clipboards for the room that are glitterific!

Guided Reading Groups:

I have 1 low group, 3 on groups, and 1 exceeding group.  Here's the skills we are doing in each group this week.

Low:

• Tracking print.  Christmas break did a number on our memories.  We are doing lots of practice with print tracking.  
• Letter sounds and basic sight words.  We still struggle with this.
• Reading Level 1 books.

On:

• CVC words- making them ourselves and also sounding them out without picture help.
• Reading Level 2 books.  Working on comprehension skills.
• Practice Quarter 3 sight words (we use the Fry First 50)

Exceeding:

• Diving into Silent E word practice.
• Reading Level 3 and 4 books.  Comprehension skills and retelling.
• Quarter 4 words.  This group has already mastered our new words that we work on till March. 

This week we are really focusing on characters, setting, and main events in a story.  We will be reading various fiction stories and talking about the characters and main events in the stories that are in order.  For phonics in whole group we will be practicing blends and digraphs.

Most of this quarter is dedicated to Informational writing.  We are continuing to learn about penguins and also polar bears.  Students will be writing a fact they know about those animals for the week.  I'm challenging many of my students to write multiple sentences.  Our minilessons are about adding more details to our sentences...or adding another sentence.  We also will be focusing on stretching out those tricky words.

Addition!  We started addition last week.  We use Pearson's EnVision Math curriculum.  We have a video and then the students do a guided section with me and then their independent section by themselves.  We will be adding the plus sign this week in our lessons and also the equal sign.  It started out slow last week with just practicing 1 and 2 is 3.  Slowly doing the full equation this week.  On Thursday we will be finishing the topic by reviewing.  Friday I have sub so I will be having the students do a practice sheet to practice the full addition sentence with the plus and equal signs.  We will also be making an anchor chart tomorrow about ways to add: count on our fingers, use a number line, mental math, or draw a picture.  This will hang on our clothesline that runs across our classroom.

On Monday and Tuesday afternoons before Specials (which is our last thing in the day) we do Words Their Way. On Wednesday to Friday we do Science or Social Studies depending on the week or what our weekly theme or unit is.  This week we will finish up our Penguin Lapbooks.  We will also do a blubber experiment with a bucket of ice, Ziplocks, and Crisco.

Here's the Penguin Lapbooks we started last week:

Click the image to take you to the resource!  It's new in my store.  It includes different elements that you can cut and glue to build a lapbook or put into an interactive notebook.  I used those large packs of construction paper and folded them in half like a book.  Similar to the example on the cover of the resource.

Here's one of the cuties with his lapbook. The quote on the picture is what he said.  :) He sometimes can get sidetracked and super silly but he was incredibly focused making the cover and one of the elements that went inside.  It was fun to see!

Have a great week everyone!  Stay warm! & GO PACK GO!

Take Home Book Bags!

Happy Saturday!  Today I thought I'd share my newest purchase and idea...

Take Home Book Bags!

I was slightly hesitant to try this because I didn't want to purchase these out of pocket.  I'm saving the receipt to turn into for PTO $ we sometimes get or thankfully I've had a great holiday season on TPT.  

I ordered from Really Good Stuff these great bags for my kindergarteners to take home their weekly leveled reader.  The past two years I had the books in their plastic 2 pocket folder that they take home every night.  The books tore up those poor folders second semester.  The page protectors were constantly breaking and I'd tape or replace them.  The books would also easily fall out of the folder.

This past week I have gone over the bags with the kinders.  We've talked about how to use them, how to put them in our backpacks, how to take the books out and not to read the books near food or drinks...or those fabulous toddler siblings who love to rip, write on, and spill stuff.

These are the labels that go on the front of the bag along with the first pile of A-D books to put into bags.

Each bag holds their reader and a reading log for the month.  Their parents circle BT or WH (by themselves or with help for how their child read the book).  I also sent home a nice sheet last week explaining the leveled readers, how yes...they sound predictable and maybe even memorized, how to sign the log, and that these bags MUST be brought back every Monday.  I will send home a note each Monday afternoon if a student didn't bring it back.  If it becomes a habit they may have to take a break from the bag.

Here's one bag up close with the log and a book.  The top of the bags have a red handle, but it was tucked underneath and I didn't realize it for the picture.

I only do one book a week except for my students who parents have requested more or if I feel someone needs a little extra practice.  I also will send home other things such as sight word flash cards.  This bag can definitely hold more than one book...that's just how many I send home a week.

My school is lucky enough to have a leveled reader library (a closet the K-2nd hall and the 3-5th hall).  We have baskets with probably 20-30 books for each DRA level.  We can use these in the classroom or use them to send home for nightly practice like I do.  I know some schools do not have a similar resource.  :(  

Here's where I got the bags.  I ordered the medium size and got the clearview. I want to easily be able to tell if the book is in there, if it's messy, etc.  I ordered the blue.  I got enough for 24.  I currently have 22 students but may purchase another set because next year I could have more.

Click the picture to see this bag on the website.  Also click Organization and Storage at the top and then Bags & Pouches to see other size and style options.

I will do an update soon about how the bags have been going, if parents are signing the reading logs, if the bags are being brought bag, and more!  

They are pricy but I hope the kids get excited to open their bag and read, and that parents see we care about literacy in our school.  I'm glad I decided to try it!

In the update post I will also have a *FREEBIE* done by then for the reading logs I use and also for the book bag labels (I'll make them editable).

Have a fantastic and relaxing weekend!