Centers Sunday #11

Hi friends! Today I'm bringing you three new centers for K,1 and 2.

All of the centers have an Easter egg theme and follow the same format. First students sort pictures or word cards and then they complete a recording page. This is great for daily five word work or small group activities.

For kinder there is a long a and short a center you can pick up here.

For first grade I have digraph eggs. You can pick this file up here.

For second grade I have prefix eggs. You can pick the file up here.

I hope y'all can use these in your classrooms. I am now 37 weeks pregnant with baby Brandon and I'm really not sure how much longer I'm going to go! I'll keep blogging and posting "Centers Sunday" until I deliver the baby but then I'll be taking a little "bloggy" maternity leave. :) I'll keep y'all posted of course!

Oh and tomorrow is the final day for my "Team Jackson" giveaway! Thank you so much for supporting this amazing cause. I really hope our donations will help this little boy and his family. Make sure you enter the Rafflecopter for a chance to win $40 and my entire TpT store for life!!


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Here's a link to the TpT bundle that has a ton of amazing products!! 

Alphabet Cards for Small Group! {Shhh! A little freebie!}

Hi friends!! I wanted to share these cute alphabet cards I created to use with Jackson and Hank. (I also created them for my friend Hannah's kinder kids.) Hannah and I were sharing ideas on how we could use them with their kids and I got excited, so I had to share.

Initially I thought these would be great for Jackson because they are small and portable. After I laminated them I cut them out, hole punched them and added them to a ring. If your students have book boxes, they can keep a ring of alphabet cards in their book boxes for independent reading. These cards are great for Jackson because they are a review of our big book plus two extra words that are not in the big book. I'm teaching him how to go through the kids by saying, "E, eh, elephant...etc". This is great reinforcement of the letters he's learned as well as a fluency and vocabulary activity. 

Hannah was sharing that she could use them as a small group warm up for her struggling kinder kids. She liked the idea of adding the letters the kids didn't know to a ring and then taking them off as they mastered them. She also likes the idea of having them at her guided reading table to use in her tabletop pocket chart. 

I also thought these cards could be used for simple memory games. Either create double sets of the cards and have kids play "Letter C Memory" or mix and match cards with other sets to play a more complicated memory game in which the students have to match up pictures that begin with the same sound. 

I've been working like a mad woman trying to get Units A-M posted before Baby Brandon arrives. So far it's been taking me about 3 days a unit. I have 7 units left, that's 21 days and Brandon is due April 20th! Ah! Crunch time!! I was hoping to get the units done so that I would have them ready for Jackson, but I'll just do my best and hope that Brandon is a VERY good baby!! :)

Each unit in my "I'm Learning My Letters" packs will have a set of alphabet cards to use. I just posted unit F tonight, so that unit and the entire bundle is on sale for 24 hours. If you'd like to use a set of these cards, I'm posting the letter A cards for my blog readers here. Y'all can download them for free and use them if you'd like! Thanks for being a reader!! I'm SO tired it isn't even funny so I'm going to hit the hay early tonight. Night y'all!!

Centers Sunday #10 on a Monday!

Hey Y'all! So sorry I didn't get to post these centers yesterday! I was very, very busy. But here I am bringing you "Centers Sunday" on a Monday! :) Yay!!

All of the centers this week have the same format but the skill level changes for K,1, and 2. Each center is a "Spin and Color" or "Spin and Cover" game. You can choose the version you want to use. To play spin and color you will need to copy the black and white recording sheets for each student to have their own game board to color in. For spin and cover, you can print the colored game board on cardstock, laminate and cut out. You'll need 1 game board per player. (You can have kids share a game board and use different colored counters if you want to save on ink and paper and make the game shorter.)

Print out the version you want and kids just need a paperclip for the spinner. The kinder version covers word families: -et, -in, -at, and -an. The first grade version covers -ail, -ake, -eel, and -eat. The second grade version covers vowel diphthongs: oi, oy, ou, and ow. 

You can pick the kinder version up here.

Pick up the first grade version here.

You can pick second grade up here.

 And here is why I was so busy this weekend! I had two surprise mini baby showers! Our second son is due in about three weeks. Our friends threw us a surprise mini shower at their house Saturday and the other Sunday school teachers I work with threw one for me on Sunday! So I was pleasantly surprised with these thoughtful showers and cute gifts!! They even bought some clothes for my 18 month old! So sweet! Look at those matching orange onesies! I have one for Jackson and one for Brandon. So adorable!! :)

I forgot to take a picture of the cookie cake before we started cutting! Oops!!

I also finished Unit E of "I'm Learning My Letters". Here are some pics of the big book.

 Jackson and I used "elbow pasta" to decorate our lowercase e. :)

I made an elephant puppet to use while teaching the letter E to Jackson. 

I also worked with my nephew Hank on -at word family words. I made these puzzles for him and used Elkonin boxes to map out the sounds in each word and match the words to the pictures. This is still hard for him but we are working on it. 

I've been quite a busy bee!! I'm starting on Unit F and Unit G this week. I am hoping to get all units done in the next couple of weeks before Brandon arrives. We'll see if that happens! I would love to have the whole curriculum ready for Jackson and I to use so it's less prep work for me to do in between nursing, tons of laundry and all the other craziness that comes with a new baby!! :) Prayers please!!

Also, the Team Jackson fundraiser is going well! I wanted to let y'all know that I'm extending the Team Jackson giveaway until March 31. I have so many people who are still sharing this, I think it would be more fair to wait and give people more time to enter. Thank you all who have donated to Jackson's fundraiser. If you have no idea what I'm talking about visit my post here.

You view Jackson's fundraiser bundle here.

Have a great week y'all!! Thank you for sharing Team Jackson with your friends, family and fellow teachers! 

What I've Been Up To...

Hey friends! It has been an insanely crazy week! I've got a lot going on, here are some snippets from my week:

Jackson and I had fun making his "R" headband for his library playgroup. I love the way he says, "R", it's so cute...like an R sound plus a W sound in one...LOVE. 

I went to Lakeshore to get our big books laminated...ARGH. The laminator ate up my C and D big books...it was sad. But I laminated them twice and they came out ok...just lumpy. :(

Jackson and I worked on the letter D as well. We stuck some dot stickers on the lowercase d. Jackson LOVES stickers and it's really good for his fine motor skills. We are also working on identifying colors. This is REALLY hard for him. I bought him a little color sorting game from Lakeshore. I would ask him, "What color is this?" and hold up a ring. And he would tell me, "O!" Haha! 

I finished the letter D unit in my "I'm Learning My Letters" pack. I also created a review packet to go over letters A-D. They are all apart of the "I'm Learning My Letters" growing bundle. I am trying to get as many units done before baby number two arrives! (I have one month and counting!! Ahhh!!)

I made these "Read It, Stick It, Find It" pages for my nephew Hank. We used stickers to decorate our sight word. I had him trace over it with his finger to get a tactile experience. He loved this and it was great fine motor practice for him! :) I uploaded that unit to my TpT shop this week.

My second graders did the St. Patrick's Day reading passages on Monday. (These passages came from my "Centers Sunday" post from March 16th.) We practiced highlighting our answers from the text. This definitely took some training but it was awesome to see how much it improved their answer choices! I'm going to be working on some more comprehension passages this weekend. 

Also, I want to thank all of you who have been so supportive of the "Team Jackson" fundraiser!! It's going well so far. Make sure you check out the giveaway I'm throwing. If you buy a "Team Jackson" bundle, you can enter to win $40 in gift cards plus my store FOR LIFE!! And it's all in the name of helping a little boy with cancer!! I've had people who are not teachers ask me how they can donate outside of TpT and if you're interested in that, send me an email and I can help you: teachinlittletexans@gmail.com.

Check out the Team Jackson giveaway here. Have a great Friday y'all!