Hi friends!  I'm so excited to join Jennifer from A Dab of Glue Will Do for her Winner Wednesday linky party!  Have you checked out her blog?!?!  It is adorable!!! Jennifer does this linky party the first Wednesday of each month.  For this link-up each blogger will highlight a product from their TpT store and then give it away to one lucky winner!  Be sure to join in the fun each month!  

This month I am giving away a copy of my best seller in my TpT store to one of YOU!  It is my Alphabet Game - POP!  My students LOVE the POP games we play.   I usually play this game with a small group.  To play this game, just cut out all of the cards.  I also laminated my cards for durability.

I like to use a paper bag to put the cards in, but you could also put them in a basket. 

 

Students take turns picking a card.  They say what letter is on their card.  If they get the letter right, they keep their card.  If not, they put their card back in the bag.  Students continue taking turns picking a card.  When someone pulls a POP! card, they put all of their cards back in the bag.  My students always get the biggest kick out of someone pulling a POP! card!!

One of my favorite things about this game is that you can play with any amount of letters you want.  You can use all or some of the uppercase letters, all or some of the lowercase letters, or all uppercase and lowercase letters.  It's completely up to you and what you want to focus on with your students! Here is your chance to win a copy of this fun game for yourself!  Just enter the Rafflecopter below.  All you have to do is enter your name for a chance to win!  This giveaway is just for today so I will announce the winner on Thursday!  Good luck!  

a Rafflecopter giveaway

  Check out all of my POP games by clicking each image below to go to my TpT store.  They are only $1 each!

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Just wanted to share a quick blog post about a new freebie for you!    Last summer I created a First Day of School freebie and posted it on TpT.  That product currently has 2,317 downloads - wow!!!  I thought I would create a Last Day of School freebie for you too!    As you are winding down the school year, you could use this Last day of School activity on the last day for students to draw a picture of themselves.  This would make a great keepsake for them to share with their families.  You could also use both products together for next year.  Have your students draw themselves at the beginning of the year (save in their file) and then draw themselves at the end of the year to compare just how much their artistic skills have improved throughout one school year! Grab both freebies from my TpT store just by clicking the images below!  Enjoy!

 

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Happy SPRING!!  Are you enjoying warm weather where you are??  We keep going back and forth between warm and cool days!I wanted to share a few of the fun spring themed activities we have been doing!  Warning - You are about to see a lot of FREEBIES!!!!!!   Spring Math Chat

 If you missed my "You Oughta Know" blog post about math chats, you can find it here.  I explained why I LOVE math chats and gave you some simple directions for doing a math chat in your classroom within that post!  I shared the math chat as a freebie in that post and I am sharing it with you here too.  Just click the picture to download!

Jellybean Math

My students really enjoyed this activity!  

Jellybeans + Math = FUN!

 You can find this in my Teachers Pay Teachers store for FREE!!  Just click the picture to go to my TpT store and download!

"Crack the Egg" Word Work 

So do you own Miss Kindergarten's "Read and Reveal" CVC words activity?!?!  If not, it is AMAZING!!  My kiddos love doing this activity!  Click the picture to buy it!!

I have been using her cards with my students during small groups.  I also have it at a letter magnet center to tap out words and spell with letter magnets.  The idea came to me to print the cards smaller and put them in eggs and the "crack the egg" activity was born!!

I shared this idea on Instagram and had some interest from some of you to get a copy of the recording sheet.  So...just click the picture to download!  Enjoy!

Hope you enjoy these spring freebies!!  Have a great rest of the week!!

 

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Recipe for Teaching

Brrrrrrr....it's so cold outside!!  Who else is thinking warm thoughts?!?!  Here is a warm picture for you:

I wanted to write a blog post about Math Talks because I LOVE using them in my classroom and my kindergarten students also love using them.  My students seriously ask me if they can say the Math Talk or ask me for a Math Talk if I don't give them one to use.  I love that they get so excited about math because math is one of my favorite subjects to teach! 

I have been reading Debbie Diller's Math Work Stations book this year and have recently started incorporating math work stations in my classroom.  She talks about using Math Talks during math stations in her book.  They are an easy way to make your students accountable for their learning.  They also keep your students engaged and on task during math stations or partner work.    Math Talks are super easy to incorporate within your lessons.  They are a speech bubble with the math language you want your students to use during the activity.  You can laminate Math Talks and have your students record on them or you can just simply have it next to your students as a reminder of how they should be talking to their friend during math.  I have used them both ways with my students and found both ways to be successful.   Here are a few pictures of my students using Math Talks in my classroom:

 In the picture above, this student could use the Math Talk to say, "19 is more than 15."

 You can see that the Math Talk would be great for keeping students on task with the work they are doing.   I love that they are using math vocabulary throughout the activity.

In the above picture, I incorporated the Math Talk right on the activity I had for my students.  There are so many different ways to use Math Talks within your lessons! 

 

I created a Math Talk Pack and it is for sale in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  Click the image below to check it out!

 If you want to try a preview of my Math Talks pack, I've created a preview for my blog followers!  Let me know if you try them with your students!  Click below to grab the free preview!Math Talk Preview     Do you use Math Talks in your classroom??  If so, I'd love to hear ways you are using them!     

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Happy Wednesday!  I wanted to share some of the FUN we are having in math this week!!

These activities can be found in my Valentine Math Pack.  My kids just LOVE math! We are using this Heart Coverall game as our warm-up.  They roll two dot cubes, combine the dots, and cover the number rolled.  The kids love this game and love the little heart counters.  They are just from the Dollar Store!  Look at how this group separated the red and pink hearts!  I had quite a few groups do that!

 One of my students came in the next day saying she had made her own copy of the Heart Coverall game!!  Seriously the CUTEST!!!

Starting today, I had them record what they rolled in their Notebook of Learning.  We keep our learning across subject areas in one notebook called a Notebook of Learning. 

  

This Inside/Outside the Heart activity really helped us decompose 10.  I had my students "rain hearts" (We read The Day it Rained Hearts before doing this) and then they had to count how many landed inside the heart and how many landed outside the heart.  They had a recording sheet to record their numbers. 

 This How Many More to Make 10? activity is helping us show how many more to make 10 and helping us with our combinations of 10.  I included a math talk on this sheet.  My kids are pretty much obsessed with math talks!  When I don't give them a math talk, they ask if they can say the math talk!!!

 You can find this pack in my TpT store by clicking the picture below!

 

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Happy Wednesday everyone!!  I'm once again joining Mrs. Stanford's Class for her "Hump Day Highlight" linky party!

  This week I'm highlighting something I did in my classroom this week that was SNOW much fun!!   We have really been working on understanding 10 and some more in kindergarten.  We use games, ten frames, Rekenreks, dice, spinners, etc.  A few weekends ago while watching the Ravens game, I suddenly got the idea to make an activity for my students to "Build a Teen Number Snowman."  My students are pretty much obsessed with all things Frozen so I thought this would be PERFECT!  I made snowmen for the numbers 11-19.  Here is a picture of it in action in my classroom this week! 

 I passed out a card to each student and then they had to go around and find their group of 3 friends to build the teen number snowman.  They LOVED it!!  They were super excited for me to take the picture of their completed snowman.  

The build a snowman activity was a perfect warm-up for my lesson which was this:

The snowman was copied on 11x17 paper so they had plenty of room.  They were able to pick a number, 11-19, and then draw the dots on the ten frames to represent the number.  I just had them use crayon, but I could have used Bingo dobbers, stamps, or stickers!  After they filled in their ten frames, they had to complete the sentence: 10 and ___ more is ___.  I LOVE how these turned out and the kids LOVED making them!  

If you would like to purchase my "Build a Teen Number Snowman" activity click the image below to go to my TpT store!  It is only $1!!

 

Have a wonderful rest of the week!!

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