Do your students use their brains? Freebie alert!!

I had an awesome planning meeting at the beginning of last week. We usually have release planning meetings (on site meetings that are half a day with our grade level and administrators). Part of our meeting was focused on how to help our students learn at their highest level. Isn't that what we all want to do?

Well, I had a brain storm during that meeting about having my students explain their thinking. I figure this is possible even in Kindergarten! When I was in college, one of my professors had us do Think-Pair-Shares and we had to draw what our experiment or activity had been. Based on these two things, I came up with these sheets:

Brain Book Full Page

My students have used this once already and it went really well. We did a math activity with estimating how many huffs and puffs it would take to blow a toothpick off their desks. We did fill it out together but I'm thinking that after a couple of times, they will be able to do it independently. The top section is for what they think will happen, the middle for what they did, and finally for what they found out.

Here's a half sheet in case you want to use this with older kids in a journal of some sort. That had been my original idea until I printed it and realized that most of my pumpkins can't write that small yet :)

Brain Book

I hope you enjoy your freebies and are able to use them to get your kids thinking!

Have a blessed day,

Freebie #5- Back to school packet

Our final giveaway! This is one that I will have to e-mail to you unfortunately because it's a tad bit bigger. Each year we have a registration day and an open house (after the year starts). This packet I give out at Open House it is a detailed packet full of information on everything that a parent could want to know: how to celebrate birthdays, our lunch time, our schedule, the special's schedule, how to contact the teacher, even a summary of each subject that the kids study! It's all inclusive and wonderful! If you would like this please do two things for me, #1- follow my blog and facebook and #2- blog about all these great freebies. Then just leave me a comment below with your e-mail address. I will send you the packet as a word document so you can edit it as you need to for your classroom/school. Thank you again to all of my wonderful followers! You all rock!

Have a blessed day,

Freebie #4- A Helper for all those meetings....

Does anyone else brainstorm during meetings? I typically take notes and make to-do lists all over whatever handouts I have from meetings. Of course, as soon as I get back to my room I set them down and they are lost... never to be seen again. Well, I saw an idea the other day to have a form that you use just for this purpose. The person who shared the idea uses the sheet by attaching it to her plan book. I'm actually going to use my cute new clipboard that I made for keeping copies of my sheets. I used pretty much the same concept. But I did change a couple of the boxes to fit my needs a bit more.

To Do List Template

One more freebie to go! I sure hope that you are enjoying the freebie party :) Please make sure to blog and spread the word!!

Have a blessed day,

Freebie #3- Student Information Sheet

A goal of mine this year is to be slightly more organized. If you know me, you're probably laughing and wondering how is that even possible. But I promise, I have a few ideas up my sleeves to do just that. Here is one my ideas: a student information sheet. Now, I have done this since my second year of teaching thanks to one of my really good friends sharing her document with me. However, the other day I was surfing on Pinterest and saw another friend pin up this:

So, I used Creating and Teaching's version (Pre-K) and made my own (new and improved) student sheet. Plus it's even cuter! Feel free to grab the freebie. Plus, don't forget to like me on Facebook! I've been updating a lot lately :)

Student Information Sheet




Have a blessed day,

Freebie #2- Teddy Bear Match-up

This is a great freebie if you have little kids or to use reinforceing basic numbers. My school purchased this adorable set of math fonts for the entire school. So, so great!! I used it to make this adorable Teddy Bear Math Match-up. I plan to use these as a memory game during math or morning work. Enjoy! (And if you you could take a moment to blog about all my freebies please! I'd love to try and get the word out about my little blog so other teachers can use these too!) Thank you bunches!

Teddy Bear Matching Cards


Have a blessed day,

Freebie #1- Folder Stickers

I love having everything labeled in my room. My folders are no exception for sure! It's actually kind of silly how much time I've spent thinking about my folders for next year. Coming from 3rd grade to Kindergarten means going from having 2 folders (Friday and Homework) to having over 4 folders (Daily, Friday, Math, Writing, etc.). It's definitely going to require color coding my folders and what not. But in 3rd grade, with only 2 folders, I typically used the really pretty printer paper that has the border around the edges. I just couldn't see doing that on all of those folders, plus laminating them too. So, my solution were these type of stickers:

These were also found at Target :D They were on sale for just barely over $3.00!!! I can't wait to start printing these next week on the color printer at school. Below is a set of the adorable labels that I'm going to be using this year. (The labels code is 18163.)
Sun Labels

Book Worm Labels

I hope you can use these in your classroom. Once you download them, you can add your name, grade level, and the student's name. That's my plan at least :) Enjoy!

Have a blessed day,

Take a peek at this awesome new blog! It comes with a freebie... ;)

A new blog called Peace, Love, and Learning is offering a freebie birthday packet. It has so many great things that come with it! Take a peek.. or a long look at her blog. I especially love her adorable book pages for Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten.

Have a blessed day,

Freebies, Facebook, and Followers

Happy Sunday! I know that there is a ton of celebrating going on this weekend (Happy 4th of July!!)... however, some of your celebrating can be for wonderful, wonderful FREEBIES!! I discovered a wonderful new blog today called Just Add Clipart. She is hosting a linky party for teachers to share their wonderful freebies with others. Head on over.. there are more than 60 teachers (including me) who have linked up to share!

I hope everyone finds something that they can use this fall! I know that my hard drive is getting awfully full from all the generous teachers out there!

On other news... did you notice something different on the top left of my pretty page? That's right! I now have a Facebook page for my blog! I'm super excited to be taking this next big leap in supporting my blog. I hope everyone will click the Like button to be able to keep up with my updates.

I'm also very, very excited to say that I now have over 40 followers! Wow! I'm thinking up something super special for a giveawy when I hit 75 followers. If you like what you see, please pass my page along so that we get there soon!

Have a blessed day,

Play-Dough and the Internet with a freebie!

Interesting title right? On Facebook yesterday, I shared the link about my Play-Dough adventure with my little guy. A fellow teacher posted a great list of ideas on how to use Play-Dough in a Kinder classroom. One of the ideas that I really liked was making patterns with it or later on making addition and subtraction number sentences with it. I decided to make a couple of sheets based on the pattern making skill. I also thought that as gracious and sharing as some of the other teachers on here are, they might like some delightful new things as well! Each of the follow sheets is linked up to Google Documents for your viewing and downloading pleasure:

Click below to view these documents :)

Apple Pattern

Balloon Pattern

Baseball Pattern

Sun Pattern

 I hope everyone enjoys them and can use them in the fall! Feel free to blog about any of my freebies. I'd love to have 50 followers (or more)... and have a massive end of the summer giveaway to celebrate!

Have a blessed day,

A Present for YOU!

Good afternoon everyone! I have a present for everyone... or at least I hope you consider it a present! This past year I had a parent who I had the need to keep track of all our communications. It made me realize that I really need a consistent form to be able to record for all of the parents, not just those certain ones who really need it. So I came up with the following form. I'm hoping that it will also be helpful for others. I'm planning on having a communication binder specifically for this purpose that way it will be on hand. This will be so much better than just sticking the printed out e-mails into a page protector. I will still be printing off the e-mails but they will be filed seperately in my filing cabinet so I can access them as needed.

Documentation Sheet

I believe that you can click on this and be able to download the document. If you aren't, I will research a bit more and see what else I need to do.

Have a blessed day,