Hi ho hi ho it's off to work we go...

I did a quick count today and there are 38 days left until I return to school. It seems like I just got out!! Next week I have CGI (Cognitively Guided Instruction) that I am mostly looking forward too. It's a three year commitment and I hope that it closely aligns itself to Debbie Diller. :)  


There is a summer class in my classroom so I can't get in there to work until after the class is over but the teacher in there is AWESOME! I actually left everything where she could use it if she need too. So since I can't work there, I'm working at home. 

Chant sticks!

I love reading other teachers blogs for inspiration. I have found SO many wonderful ideas a downloadable items from these ladies. I have been working on getting everything printed out and ready to laminate. I can't wait to use these ideas with my incoming kinders!! Here is one that was shared by Kathleen at Growing Kinders. It's spelling chant sticks. I LOVE that she had so many different ways to practice spelling words. Some of them would even work with the ABC chart. I plan on using these starting the first day!! I love the swim one and will probably start with it. here is how I plan to use it. We are going to swim as we say each letter on the abc chart. Then we will hold our noses and "sink" at the end. I already do big poppa and sweet momma voices and I think these will give us more options. BUT I want to mention that the best part of this idea is how Kathleen had them on jumbo craft sticks!! I love that they can be added to a cup as we learn them and then we can draw one out to practice the ABC chart or spelling words!! THANK YOU KATHLEEN!! 

fire theme game

So I got those finished and the kids helped me cut and label a BUNCH of matching games that I use at the beginning of the year as I introduce stations. We also put together more copies of things that I already had so that I could create 2 stations with the same items in it. I found this past year that several children seemed to like certain games better than others, and i never seemed to have enough of that type of game. One of our favorites was a math game that I use for one to one correspondence. The child draws a number card and puts that many pompoms on a work mat. I have some ten frame games that they do this with too. I added two more games, one with a fire theme (community helpers tie in) and the other are apply baskets (apples and pumpkins tie in). 

Sight word books

Then I started to work on my sight word books. This is an idea from my bestie! I love it too! The book is a marble comp book that is cut in half at Office Depot. Then I put a label on the front. Each week we will add our sight words to this book by making rainbow words. A rainbow word is one where the child uses all the colors of the rainbow to write the word. I am so excited about these. They will go into a station with a couple of ideas from Growing Kinders blog after a few weeks of us working on them as a whole group! You can see my book in the picture along with the label sheet that I ran through the printer backwards.