Five for Friday!

Hi friends!! Happy Friday!! I cannot believe it's already January 17th!  Time flies so fast! Here's what I've been up to...

#1. Jackson and I started going to a "Play and Learn" group put on by KLRN (our local PBS station). The group meets once a week and it is so much fun! We had homework to do from last week. Jackson, Daddy and I worked on his "All about me" poster. Jackson is only 15 months and he can sort of color but will end up eating the crayons if I'm not careful. So I did the drawing and writing and had him add some colorful pizzazz around the pictures. We pointed to the pictures and talked about what I drew. It was my baby's first "homework", *tear*.

I snapped some pictures of Jackson working and playing during our group. We used shaving cream and food coloring for a fun sensory experience. I thought he would LOVE it but he was actually kind of weirded out by it. 

I love this picture of him looking at his hand like, "What in the world??" Oh and yes, he did eat a little bit of the shaving cream. While I was gabbing with another mom he stuck his hand in his mouth and a little 3 year old let me know...ugh! Mom of the year over here!!

We also did some veggie painting! He liked this better than the shaving cream but still wanted to eat everything. 

I've noticed that my son LOVES pianos too. Anytime he sees a real or play piano he is super engaged. I need to add a baby grand piano to my "to buy" list. 

We had some more sensory experiences by playing with spaghetti. We filled letter molds up with the spaghetti, he loved this! We also talked about the letter sounds as we worked.

I LOVE this picture. His fingers are so chubby, like little sausages!! My friends laugh at me because I have chubby fingers too...that's my boy!!

#2. I've uploaded a Valentine's Day math freebie to my TpT store. this freebie has students practice telling time to the nearest five minute interval. You can pick it up here. 

#3.  I created a 100th day e-book, big book and student readers. You can pick those up for free too on my previous post.

#4. Thursday I had a mommy meltdown moment. My son goes to mother's day out from 9-2 on Tuesdays and Thursdays for socialization and so I can get some work done from home. I was so frustrated yesterday though because after dropping him off and cleaning the kitchen it was already 11:00 and I felt like I had so much work to do. Being a work at home mom sounds way easier than it is my friends! Not only do I chase my toddler but I am in charge of the cooking, cleaning, laundry and my online business. If I wasn't 7 months pregnant with baby #2 I would just chug Red Bulls all day long so I could keep going and work through the night...but that's kind of impossible right now.

So...I just had a moment where I was thinking, "I CANNOT DO IT ALL!!!" And I vented to my sister through texts. She sent me this picture and it made me feel better. I need to find this print because it's pretty much awesome! The point is that if you're spending time with your kids, that's all that matters. The rest can wait. Which is true but hard for me to remember sometimes. 

And last but not least...

#5. I've heard about that Teachers Pay Teachers conference coming up in July and I REALLY want to go!! I was talking to my bloggy buddy Marcy from Saddle Up for 2nd Grade and she wants to go too. I don't know details about the conference yet but it is something that I think would be a completely awesome experience for me! Especially now that I'm working from home...I'd love to pick the brains of other teacher-authors and learn as much as I can about growing my business. 

I'm a little apprehensive though because our second baby is due in late April and there are always surprises with a little one around. In my head I'm thinking of all the reasons I cannot go...but I'm going to pray about it. God's been very good to me and I'm hoping that if he wants me to go, things will work out. I'm going to pray about it and we'll see! 

Shared Reading Freebies for the 100th Day!

Back when I taught kindergarten, the 100th day was a big deal! (Pretty sure it still is...right kinder teachers?) We celebrated the whole day with math and literacy centers tied into the 100th day theme. I remember one year we made these silly hats from Shari Sloane's website. If you haven't seen these before you've got to go to her website and read about them. They were so much fun to make and kept my kids busy and engaged. 

This year I'm not teaching kindergarten but I have some very good friends who are. I just finished making an e-book, big book and student booklets about the 100th day for them. 

To use the book as an e-book, just open the PDF file on your laptops and display on a projector. (If you don't have a projector in your classroom, you can print the e-book out and use it as a regular lapbook.)

Here are the pages:

I've also created pages to use for creating your own big book:

If you haven't created your own big book before, it's super easy and really beneficial for your students. I created my own all the time in kindergarten. I haven't put this 100th day big book together yet but I have directions for making your own big book in some of my shared reading packs on TpT. Here's the directions for my Halloween themed shared reader:

I've also created matching student booklets that can be placed in book boxes for repeated reading. These booklets were created for copying double sided in order to save paper. I created a version that matches the big book exactly and one that has more text for more advanced readers.

Regular version:

Challenge Version:

You can pick the whole file up here. I hope this helps you plan your 100th day activities! I'm off to do about 1,567 loads of laundry. ;) 

Snowflake Memory Freebie and My Little Artist :)

Hi friends! This weekend I made a memory game for my nephew Hank. I added some cute snowflake graphics from my favorite clip artist Krista Wallden. Hank loved this game! He's gotten really good at identifying "go", "big" and "the". I uploaded the sight word memory game to my Facebook fans section. The sight words included are the Dolch preprimer and primer sight words. You can pick them up here.

We also worked on the letter "K". I LOVE his lower lip in this picture, so funny!

I've started tutoring Mondays and Wednesdays from 7:45-2:00. I have 2nd-5th grade students. It's so much fun! I love doing small group all day...that was always my favorite time of day as a full time teacher. My second graders reviewed homophones with my "Color by Homophone" page:

You can pick that page up in this blog post. I've also been working on a Valentine's Day unit for 2nd/3rd. I'm hoping to get that finished by this weekend.

Oh and before I forget, I've started taking Jackson to a "Play and Learn" class that PBS puts on in my local library. He loves it so far. We go and sing, read and play in learning centers. Last week the theme was construction. Jackson made his first piece of artwork. (Well he was really just trying to eat the foam pieces and glue...Mommy helped him put the art together.) 

We decided to give this to Daddy to hang from his rear view mirror. Daddy loves it! :)

Have a great evening y'all! :)