Friday, June 20, 2014

What does the C say?

Hey friends!! I hope y'all are doing well. I've been very busy taking care of the baby and my crazy, active toddler. Let me tell you ladies...it is a J-O-B. I cannot believe how fast the day goes because we just don't stop!  

I've been trying to love on my toddler and keep him busy. We've been doing some activities from my alphabet packs and he is just soaking it up!!






Isn't he sooo precious!!? I'm pretty sure he is a little toddler genius, he's getting his letters and sounds down no problem. We need to start working on number sense, shapes and colors soon. 



Here's his little wrist in one of my alphabet bracelets. Sorry the picture came out blurry! You can grab the letter C bracelets for free here.

Getting stuff done around here is taking me waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay longer than it used to...but hopefully it'll get easier as the boys get a little older. I have managed to finish units N-Q and I've posted the growing bundle. Right now it is only $10 and the price will grow as I add units to it. 

On a side note...my 8 week old has slept through the night the past two nights in a row! And I'm so excited about that I'm throwing a sale in my store all weekend. Everything is 20% off until Sunday night!! You never realize how much you miss sleep until you don't have it anymore!! :) 

Alright I'm off to being unit R. Have a great weekend y'all!!

Saturday, June 7, 2014

FarFaria Reading App Winner!

Hey friends! I'm about to head out for some fun toddler pool time with my sister but wanted to announce the winner of the reading app give away. 



Congratulations to Angela K! I'll be emailing your information to my friend at FarFaria and they will hook you up with a free 3 month membership! Thank you all for entering the give away!  

Thursday, June 5, 2014

Unit N Freebie!

Hey Y'all! It certainly takes me much longer to get things done around here with two babies...CRRRRAZY! Thanks to some help from my bestie Hannah and my in-laws I was able to finish unit N of my alphabet pack. Unit N is the first unit in the second half of the pack. So like Unit A, I'll be posting this unit for free. As of now you can only get unit N on my blog, eventually it will make its way to TpT but for now it's just for my readers. :) 

Here's a peak at what's inside:


Alphabet Cards:



ABC Book Page and Practice Page:



Letter Sort:


Practice Pages:



Little N Book:



Play Doh Mats:



And much more! You can download the file in two parts. Part one here and part two here. In a week or so I'll be posting the growing bundle for units N-Z at a very low price. As I add units the price will increase, so if you're interested in this bundle make sure you buy it early to save money. 

Also, don't forget to enter my FarFaria reading app give away for iPod or Android. You can enter the give away here. Have a great Thursday!

Monday, June 2, 2014

FarFaria Reading App Membership Give Away!




Hey friends! Today I wanted to share a new reading app called "FarFaria". I've been playing around with this app on an iPad and it's really great. In my second grade classroom my students used iPads to practice word work but this reading app would allow your students to use technology for reading to themselves, reading to someone or listening to reading. Great for daily five classrooms! 

Here's what I like about this app:

*The stories are leveled PK-4

*There is an audio feature that highlights the words as they are read (really great for emergent readers)

*You can save stories for offline reading

*The app will recommend books for readers based on books they choose

*The books are separated according to genre and within each genre the books are leveled 

*The auto play button is great for early readers who won't know when to turn pages

*There is an adorable option for a "Photo Finish" that the kids will love!

Here is a screen shot I took of the different genres:


Here's a shot of the "photo finish" option, so cute!!


My mother-in-law helped me review the app. She was a great sport and let me take her picture! Ha!

My mother-in-law loved the app as well! She thinks it would be great to have on her iPad to read stories with my 20 month old son. 

If your district purchases apps for your classroom, this is a great app to ask for. There are over 600 books and 5 new books are added each week. Today FarFaria has offered to give away a free 3 month membership to one of my readers. In order to win you must follow Teachin' Little Texans and FarFaria on Facebook. You can earn extra entries by blogging about this give away or sharing this give away on your facebook page, this is not mandatory but will get you extra entries!

Here's the rafflecopter:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Sunday, June 1, 2014

I'm Back! *Updates*

Hi everyone!!  Our second baby was born on April 23 and we are just thrilled and blessed to have him with us. His name is Brandon and he is a delightful, sweet and happy baby. These last 6 weeks have been a little bit crazy with 2 under 2. I've forgotten what it's like to sleep for more than 3 hours at a time....oh sleep...how I miss you!!! Brandon still wakes 1-2 times a night and my toddler is up early...so mommy and daddy don't get much time to sleep. Hopefully Brandon will start sleeping for longer stretches because we are all exhausted!

Here is a shot of our little family at the hospital:



Now we have two boys under the age of two! I knew that having two kids under two would be crazy but...OH.MY.WORD. It's not just crazy, it's absolutely INSANE! *A good insane though!*

I've been very fortunate to have my husband home with me on paternity leave. I honestly have no clue how I would have managed without him. Tomorrow Daddy is going back to work though and I'm on my own...pray for me y'all!! :) 

Right now my biggest struggle is finding time for everything: nursing, chasing my toddler around and having preK homeschool time, exercising to get back in shape, creating and finishing products, blogging and keeping up with the housework. I told my husband that if I could go on just 3 hours of sleep a day, I might be able to do it all! Something has to give and at this point it's the housework...maybe I can convince him to get me a maid?? Doesn't that sound AMAZING?! :)

Here are some pics of Brandon at 1 month:




 I caught him smiling but he was also wiggling so the photo is fuzzy:


I feel so blessed that God sent me such a beautiful and loving baby boy!! :)

Alright so back to teaching stuff...

This summer I have a TON of projects lined up for my preK-2nd grade friends. The first thing I'm finishing is my alphabet curriculum for letters N-Z. I need that finished to use with Jackson so that is first on my list. The letter N unit is almost complete and I'll be posting that as a freebie soon, so stay tuned! 

After that huge unit is complete I'll be posting individual packets of the ABC pages, the ABC headbands and the letter hunt pages as separate files. I've had requests to offer those separately for people who don't need the entire curriculum. 

Once those units are posted I'll be finishing my second grade social studies notebook file, then it's first grade science notebook and possibly the pre K TEKS illustrated. Those units are all HUGE undertakings I'm hoping to finish in June. Luckily my mother in law will be coming to take Jackson once a week for Grandma fun days and my bestie Hannah will be coming to play with him as well. That will free up some time for me to work, work, work! I also have tons of freebies planned and milestone give aways coming up so stay tuned for those!

Tomorrow I'll be posting a review of a really cool app called FarFaria. The nice people at FarFaria have offered to give away a free subscription to one of my readers! How cool is that? I'll be posting that give away tomorrow so make sure you come back and check it out! FarFaria is a great app to use in any prek-3rd grade classroom. You can view their website here. We will see you tomorrow! :)