BLAST OFF to Back to School with an Amazing Sale!

I am SO not ready to go back to school yet (we still have a month of summer in MA) HOWEVER this is the time to start stocking up for the school year because Teachers Pay Teachers is throwing their annual Back-To-School Sale. My store will be 20% off- the WHOLE thing, including my bundle packs. Be sure to use the promo code BTS14 to get an additional savings adding up to 28% off. Wowza! That is amazing savings especially if you are purchasing bundles which already have 20%-25 %off. You could end up getting products in these bundles for less than half price. This summer I've updated my store and added many new products and bundles just in time for Back to School. I can't wait to share them with you and use some of these products in my classroom with my kinders. Check out some of the amazing products below.

Cookie Monster Math Fun with Tissue Boxes                            Fall Bundle Pack

 

              Teacher Evaluation Evidence Portfolio Binder                                  Owltastic Bundle  


Enjoy the rest of your summer! Take advantage of the incredible savings as you "Blast Off" into another school year!

How To Use Free Online Animated Gifs and Create Exciting Pins

I just recently discovered the Free Online Animated Gif and I just love it. It is so easy to create a mini slide show and post. I just started using it to create animated Gifs on Pinterest to try and promote some of the products I created this summer. I am happy to see that these pins seem to be getting more attention as they are repinned more often than regular sized pins or even some of my longer style pins. Here is the link to get started. http://gifmaker.me/

Begin by created your product as you normally would on Powerpoint or Word and save as JPEGS or PNG's. I ususally just save them to my desktop to make it easy for me to find. Next, open up gifmaker and upload the slides you want. You can rearrange them in any order you want. I uploaded a few slides from my Kindergarten Back to School Bundle to show as an example.   Your screen will look like this.

 On the top where it says canvas slide, I just leave it at 100% 720 X 960.  Next, you will need to select animation speed. This tells how many seconds between slides. I just set mine to about 3400 miliseconds. As I count in my head, it is about 5 seconds between switching to the next slide. You can set music to the slides only from YOU Tube, but keep in mind that this music will not be playing on Pinterest. Once you are happy with the order of your slides, click create now at the bottom of the screen. Then hit download the Gif Image now. It should go directly into your picture folder. 

Next, if you want to use these images on Pinterest, you will need to open up your Pinterest page and hit the + sign next to your name. Click on upload a pin and choose your Gif Image from your files. Write out your pin description and do not forget to link it back to your TPT or TN store. 

Below is the example of my Gif found on Pinterest.  If you click on the image below, it will enlarge on your screen to even get a closer look. This is pretty cool! There are some boards on Pinterest that do not allow you to pin long pins and this is just another way to show off your products. Learning how to create animated pins was one of my summer goals. I am so happy that I learned how and now I can share this information with you. It is super easy and it only takes about five minutes to upload a great looking pin. Since I am out for the summer and these are brand new products, I do not have pictures of the kids using them as of yet. However, it is great to show slides of your products actually being used in your classroom. 

Another one of my summer goals was to create lots more products. I really wanted to have 100 products posted by August 1st. I am so excited to have reached this goal. I worked for several hours with my head buried  behind my laptop this summer to finally get there. I was even able to make a few bundle packs. Below are slides from one of the bundle packs I put together. I began created products for TPT during my February vacation in 2013. It has taken time to reach 100 products. Most of the products I posted were during my winter, spring or summer breaks. I just can't seem to be productive during the school year, since every ounce of my energy needs to be focused in on my kindergarten class. I am hoping these animated Gifs will bring some more attention to my store and I am hoping this tutorial helps you to be more successful. I learned so much from reading the forums and I am so very grateful for all that I have learned so far from some amazing teachers. Now it is time that I give back something I learned and pass it on to you. Keeping my fingers crossed that we can all be successful. Happy Pinning with your new animated Gifs! 

Happy 4th of July~Enjoy savings at my stores.

Happy 4th of July. I hope your day is spectacular. Have fun with your family and friends.  Enjoy special savings at my teacher stores today and tomorrow. I've been super busy updating products and creating lots of exciting new ones. I've only been out of school for nine days. The summer goes by soo quickly. We had so many snow days here in New England, therefore we got out of school pretty late. My summer will be cut short. This year our district will be starting a few days before Labor Day. I know for some of you that you start at the beginning of August.  I will continue uploading lots more during the upcoming weeks to help you get  prepared  for back to school. Check out my stores and enjoy these special savings.  
 http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/123kteach

http://www.teachersnotebook.com/shop/123kteach

You're Simply The Best

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week! I know how incredibly hard teachers work throughout the year. Please take some time off and do something special for yourself. Take a moment to recognize all the accomplishments and growth your students have made this year. I am very excited to be a part of this blog hop as we honor  our fellow teachers and thank them for all they do.  Here is a special activity that has been a huge success in our classroom and I am delighted to be sharing it with you.

Some of the students in our class were struggling with subtraction. I decided to create a "Subtraction Bowling" activity to help support the idea of taking things away and thinking about how many are left. Bowling is a fun activity and something that most students can easily relate to. I am a hands on teacher and I love to get the kids up and moving. So I decided to purchase a small plastic bowling set at Walmart for under ten dollars. I have to admit that I was feeling a little uneasy at first as I was unsure of how well the lesson would go. I thought to myself "Oh boy, is this going to get my students crazy acting and out of control."  I explained the rules carefully to my students and let my student know that they had to sit quietly behind the lines near our pretend bowling alley to stay safe, if they wanted a turn to bowl.. To set up my pretend bowling alley, I took a long piece of colored bulletin board paper and set up the pins behind it.
At first, we just started with five pins and I let some of the students bowl. I then added more pins and let more student bowl. We kept adding pins as we went along. After each student bowled, I had them go up to the whiteboard and write a number sentence to go along with how well they bowled. You could also pass out small whiteboards while the students are waiting their turn to bowl and have all the students record the information. This activity was a BIG HIT and such a HUGE success. They all loved it, and the best part was they did not act up or act crazy at all. Students were happily cheering on their classmates and very willing to think about the subtraction equations. We followed up this activity with some subtraction bowling worksheets. After doing this activity for a few days, even my struggling students were successfully subtracting.

Check out this activity at
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Subtraction-Bowling-Print-Go-KOA2-1OA1-1159127

Continue on The Best for the Best Teacher Appreciation Blog Hop by clicking the picture below.

http://proudtobeprimary.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-best-for-best-teacher-appreciation.html

Check out a Rafflecopter giveaway in which you could win this activity that I just donated to you as well as 55 best selling classroom resources by some amazing Kindergarten and First grade teachers. Best of Luck!

April Literacy Centers

Me On The Map Mini Book

Egg-cellent Spelling

Noun Sort

Sentence Fences

Earth Day Activity

Bunny Bags

  April     

      Literacy Centers       

Short U Umbrellas

                                              

     Don't you just love this time of the year. All the hard work and effort that you have put into your classroom is starting to make a huge difference. I am pleased with all the gains my students have made this year. Literacy Center Time is my absolute favorite time of the day.Yes!!! Indeed, it is mighty hectic as there is so much going on at the same time. This is the chance where they get to practice all those skills that you have taught them. Here are a few snapshots of some of the things that my students are working on. Since I've been busy taking a few snapshots, I will most definitely be adding some of these to my Teacher Evidence Based Portfolio. Now that the students are used to the routines, it is much easier to take a few seconds and snap some photos.  Each week my centers include an art activity, science activity and lots of hands on literacy activities. I also have a couple of pocket chart activities that my students are busy doing. While the students are busy at their center activities, I am doing a guided reading lesson with a small group. Each center activity usually has no more than four students.We rotate activities throughout the week.The pictures shown are their first must do activity.If students do finish early, they have  differentiated extra work that is provided in their work bins to complete. 

Some of my centers explained.

Noun Sort- Students sort magnetic wooden fish onto the correct pond to include person, place or thing.

Egg-cellent Spelling- Students put together egg shells to make CCVC and CVC words.

Me On the Map Book-Students draw maps of their room, house, street, town and color maps of their state, country and globe.

Sentence Fences- Students read a sentence and decide the correct punctuation mark. (Super easy to put together and make)

Earth Day Activity- Students sort picture cards that they can reuse, reduce and recycle  

Bunny Bags- Students use some tracers and their own creativity to assemble these bags. As a special treat, I will surprise my students by putting in a couple of special treats at the end of this week. (Not candy or food)

Short u umbrellas-We did this one two weeks ago. Students made paper plate umbrellas and cut out raindrops. They were asked to write words with short u on each raindrop.  

Each of my centers include a recording sheet after they have finished the hands on activity. Hope you gained some ideas for your upcoming literacy centers. Happy Spring!!!

Magic Erasers Work Wonders

Teachers just love magic erasers. They can easily get all the stuck on glue, crayon, and pencil marks off desks, tables and walls with ease. They also work wonders on cleaning off all the dry erase boards. Even if a student accidently uses a marker instead of a dry erase marker on the board it will remove it. If you know me,  I just love a bargain and I discovered this amazing deal on amazon. You can have 100 magic erasers shipped to your house for only $9.88. That is less than 10 cents  a piece. A super cheap way to get your home and classroom sparkling clean. I jumped and quickly ordered some before this deal on Amazon ends. How do you use magic erasers? Please share in the comment section.   

100 Magic erasers shipped for just 9.88

Spring Cleaning Sale

                                    http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/123kteach

Many teachers are going to be hosting a Spring Sale on TPT this weekend. I've decided to join in on the fun! Enjoy 20% off my entire store. I've just uploaded several new spring products that are aligned with the Common Core and the best part is many of them are Print & Go. Save yourself lots of time and take some time to enjoy the sunshine now that spring is finally here!