OMG! What fun is this book – InvestigatingKindergarten ! So, there is a story to read to the child with a problem to figure out at the end. Then there are skill pages that review CCS and “ clues ” to help solve the mystery! There are top secret files. There are clues on pages. There are questions to answer. There is also an answer key – for those adults who like to look ahead and read the last page of the novel before finishing the book! Oh, wait- that ’s me! LOL Any one else?? Back to this book… each top secret file has learning goals. It tells where the evidence can be found and gives clues. The activities are grouped in the secret files by topics – Langauge Arts: Letters and Sounds; Math: Numbers, Counting, Adding,& Subtracting; LA: Grammar, Sight Words & Vocab; Math: Greater/Less, Measurement & Shapes. There is a Detective Notebook to keep track of all the DATA. The kids will love making sure they are filling in all the clues!   This would be such a fun, ...

The Interactive Notebook Language Arts K from Carson Dellosa is so much fun! The more hands on, the better! This is a great resource to keep those little ones busy and learning. They won’t even know they are learning – best part! There are great tips about setting up interactive notebooks, record keeping and organization. We have seen many different ideas on the web. Do what feels right for you! You don’t have to do a notebook. You can just use the resources. You can go big or you can go small. Start where you feel comfortable and move from there. This book covers the basics in kindergarten. Starts with the alphabet, goes to vowels, word families and sight words. It has parts of speech and sentence writing. It has literature and Informational text features. One of the best parts, to me, is it has reproducibles included. That means if I can’t find exactly what I want, I can make it. I can make it without starting from scratch! The template is there and I add what I ...

Kindergarten Skills We all know they need them.   We all know there are tons of skills needed. We all know the kids need to practice. Making a recommendations to a parent to help them practice can be hard.   Carson Dellosa has some help with that. They have a book – 100   Kindergarten Skills. You guessed it- it covers 100 skills. It is divided into math and language arts. Yup – 50 of each. It has a nice progression of skills also. Math goes from counting   and writing 1,2 and 2 all the way through 30. There is adding, subtracting and shapes. The Language Arts starts with identifying the alphabet and moves to nouns, verbs, sentences, letter sounds – beginning and ending sounds, short vowels, rhyming and color words. There is an answer key included also. I think this would be great for parents to work with their child over the summer. I see this going in two different ways. I see parents using this before kindergarten to help prepare them. I also see thi...

WOW! This book has a lot in it's 96 pages! All those big reading comprehension standards are covered. This will be so useful to help assess and form groups by skills. There are skill assessment and practice pages - story elements, summarizing, compare and contrast, cause and effect, and inferring are all covered. I think the best part is the skill assessment analysis. Use that DATA! It shows the skill, the standard, the assessment item and the practice pages. It's organized and done for us! THANK YOU Carson Dellosa! This is NOT for the beginning of the year. You may need to use this whole group or individually as a teacher. We need to use our teacher judgement. We may look at it and have it spark an idea for a class lesson that is more hands on. This is the age we live in. These are the standards we are responsible for. We need to make the best of it and show our students how they can succeed. This will be a great tool for that, I believe.  I participate in the Brand Ambassad...

 What a great, helpful bulletin board set! There are very helpful anchor charts for learning all those tricky rules to figure out words. It is a very cute theme - pandas "attacking" the words. Great way to hook the students into their learning. These posters are great reminders for all those rules I've forgotten over the years. LOL  They have an anchor chart for silent letters, syllable codes (never knew these till I taught second grade), vowel teams, r-controlled, silent e and ways to figure out a word. These will be a little hard for the kinders to use but from first grade up- they will be great! I will be using these as a resource for me as I'm teaching.   Lots of product here too for the money - 4 large posters, 2 small posters, 4 pandas and 4 stars. Oh, and the resource guide. The guide has some great bulletin board ideas and a great bookmark to give the students. Way to go @Carson-Dellosa! I participate in the Brand Ambassador Program from Ca...

Interactive Word Study http://www.carsondellosa.com/products/104946--Word-Study-Resource-Book-104946#/?book media type=f389e45b92884d48844baaf09d49e3c5 Carson-Dellosa sent me a GREAT back to school package! I couldn’t believe my luck when I opened it up! I was wanting to do more of this in the upcoming school year- did they read my mind? My kinders LOVED doing interactive math journals last year. I knew I needed to do more with ELA. They answered my prayers. 😊 Interactive Notebooks Word Study is the latest book from CD Publishing on my bookshelf. It covers TONS! From sight words to phonics (and not just general phonics!) to syllabication patterns to word parts. OH MY! I thought it was just going to be sight words, but happily so much more! Then when I saw that, I thought – oh, we could divide the notebook into sections. GUESS WHAT? They have tabs that you can run off and use. I’m thinking bright colored paper for that (wink, wink). That also tells you about the last s...

Infographics! How cool is that? Carson Dellosa has a cool new tool for us to use! This book fits great into the new in-depth reading that Common Core is looking for. This covers many different content areas. I think I found one for almost all the content areas that I need to cover- including math! The pages are perforated of heavy card stock!  I’ll be taking the book apart and putting each card in with the materials for the units so I don’t forget to use one. The pictures are colorful but not over stimulating. Well labeled too! That is another bonus – use it as a modeling tool!  The topics range from insects to dinosaurs to video games – with tons in between! And the questions are on the back of the pictures! This will be a great resource to start a topic or to end a topic. It will be integrating reading and content knowledge. Did I mention hitting the standards? What about: ·          With prompting and support, retel...

Phonics- The simple definition from Merriam Webster is “ a method of teaching people to read and pronounce words by learning the sounds of letters, letter groups, and syllables ”. Kindergarten teachers do this all day long. We sing, we dance, we match, we play. Sometimes it feels like we stand on our heads to do this! Once students start making the connection – it is WONDERFUL! There are those students who just don’t seem to “get it”. They are the students who need the small group/one-on-one time. They are the students who we work it into EVERYTHING for. They are the ones who need some practice at home. We can help them get the practice they need at home by recommending Spectrum Phonics K from Carson Dellosa. You can go right now and see the page – but don’t forget to come back and finish reading! http://www.carsondellosa.com/brands/spectrum This is a well-organized workbook. It practices what we do in school. It has a few pages for tracing lines, left to right practi...

Oh the happiness of a clean cabinet! I moved schools over the summer. We were given time to unpack, but I was shortened by two weeks. They needed to get rid of some "small visitors". I already had plans to go away - so I did. But it just meant unpacking faster and messier than I had planned. I shoved things in the closets to get the boxes emptied. I had started out a little neater, but then they said stay home and away from your room. So I shoved it all in! :-(  It's hot in the building on the weekend. I just couldn't bring myself to go in in that heat. Plus I think I might be getting hot flashes! :-0 So this Saturday I decided I wanted needed to go in! I knew my center signs were in there somewhere! I FOUND THEM!! YEA!! I pulled everything out of the cabinet and "organized" it by topic - abc's, beginning sounds, rhyming, general materials - on the tables. Then I put it all back neatly. I cleaned out too!!! I filled 3/4 of the recycling can! Yee haw...

Here is Mrs. Wishy Washy !  I hope you heard the story already! We worked on the pictures and read the story. Wishy washy! Wishy washy! Enjoy!

Here is number 3! Can I just mention that I am proud of myself for getting these up on this blog??? It took awhile, but I persevered and did it! Just like I tell the kiddos - I kept trying! I worked hard! :)

Here is the second one!

Here is a retell we did of Joy Cowley's The Monsters' Party. The students made new pictures and then we retold the story to go along with it.There will be three different videos to watch because we had enough students to make three different retells.