Help my brain

I found this AWESOME sight word color, cut and paste sheet on someones blog as a freebie and now I can not remember who made it.  I am sure she said she was making more.  Does anyone know who made this sheet?  It probably said on the bottom, but when the kids cut the words out, the bottom gets thrown away.  I only printed out enough for my class and did not keep an extra.  I can't even find it in my saved documents.  :(  I hope someone recognizes it and can help me solve this mystery.  Thanks!

UPDATE:  I found them!!  Fran over at Kindergarten Crayons made these and is selling a whole bunch of these and other great sight word stuff in her packet, Sight Words to Rock your Room Too.  Check it out! 217 pages of awesomeness.  :)

Big Book Center

Here is an idea I am going to try with my class with a big book we have read as part of our reading series.  It has the sight words "my" and "the" on almost every page.  I thought that would be a great way for them to see it in context.  They will look at each page hunting for sight words.  One of the pair will point to the sight words with the special teacher pointer.  Then the other partner will take the sticky notes that have the words on them and stick them in the book on top of the sight words.  I will model a bunch before letting them do it alone.  I am hoping it will help them learn to recognize the words.  :)

I have the sticky notes all ready in the back cover of the book.

Let me know if anyone has any ideas about how to improve this activity.  :)

Tawnya

A great science resource

I'm joining the Linky party at TBA about great science videos and websites.  Check it out by clicking here.


Our #1 go to for Science videos in my county is Discovery Education. We have a subscription and I use it all year as often as I can.  It is full of videos and clips about all kinds of science topics.  We have used it for everything from five senses, to plants and animals, to magnets, fire safety week, community helpers...the list could go on and on.  It even has full episodes of one of our favorites, "The Magic School Bus".  :)  There are more than just science topics too.  You can learn about nouns, addition, algebra, history, anything.  They are all standards based too.  You just type in a search for any topic you are teaching and you can narrow it by grade level.  I don't know how much a subscription is for a school, but I can tell you it is well worth it.  It is a great resource.

www.discoveryeducation.com

Another site I love to use for Science with my own personal children is www.pbskids.org.  My 3 1/2 year old girls love to get on mommy's computer and go to "Sid the Science Kid".  The other day I was swinging them and one said, "Mommy use more force so I can go higher!"  I was impressed!  

www.pbskids.org

I also stumbled onto another site from PBS that is a great place for teacher resources.  There are links to videos, lesson plans and interactive games.  I like how you can narrow the search by grade level, topic and media type.  

PBS Teachers

Science is so fun!  I love teaching it, I just wish I had more time.  Or if I had a class like on Sid the Science Kid with only 4 kids and every inquiry lesson all prepared and ready to go for me I might teach it more often.  :)

Tawnya

Fantastic Giveaway

Annie Moffatt is awesome!  You do not want to miss this giveaway!  Her Ready2Read units are amazing and she is giving away units 1-8.  I am so excited!!  I hope I win, but I'll be happy if one of my new blogging buddies wins too.  (But I really hope it's me!)  LOL!

Please go to The Moffatt Girls right now to put in your entries.  The winner will be announced Oct. 2nd.  

Here is an example of her amazing units.  The winner gets all 8!

A peek at my week

Hello!  I am joining in with Clutter-Free Classroom for a peek at my week linky party.  Yeah!

Make sure to click here to link over and see all the great "Peeks" into all the other amazing classrooms.

We had a really good week.  I am really impressed with how quickly they are learning.  They are so excited to see that they can read a book and write a sentence.  It is amazing to watch them learn.

We do Saxon Phonics so we have done the letters l,o,g,h, and now t. So we can really start to build lots of words.  We built a caterpillar to add all our CVC words to. Click here to see our caterpillar.

 We sorted letters written in different fonts.  They really liked this and it kept them engaged for a good amount of time.  However, I discovered they need a quick lesson on how to cut the letters out without cutting the paper into a thousand little pieces of scraps that end up all over the floor.  :)

This week was also Freedom week so we talked about our country and our freedom and read about the Pledge and what it means.  We practiced saying it together.  I love it when they think the word "indivisible" means that we can't be seen like invisible.  :)  Funny!  We also made a Flag in our Poetry Journals.  We read the poem and then they made the flag on the paper using pre-cut pieces.  They also circle sight words and the letter T in the poem.

In writing  we are learning to draw a picture, label it and then use the labels to write a sentence.  We have been writing about our families using sight words "the" and "my".  We wrote about things their family does together.  I didn't bring anything home this weekend to grade or I could put a picture of some.  :( Maybe I can add one later. 

In math we have started working on the numbers 6-10.  We are counting and making sets of 6 right now and writing the number 6 and the number word six.  Our Math series is kind of backwards.  We start with 0-5, then 6-10 and then chapter 4 is adding and subtracting.  It is really messed up we think. They just barely learned to count and write the numbers.  They are not ready to add and subtract this early in the year. We are going to move the chapters around and do shapes and patterns next, then we will go back to adding and subtracting after Christmas.  

We did some good science this week too.  The lesson was on living and non-living things.  I was really surprised to find that many of the kids did not know plants are living.  So it was a great learning opportunity to talk about what makes things live.  :)   I love Science, but find very little time to squeeze it in.  

How do you guys find time to teach Science??

That sums up my week. Thanks for taking a peek!

Constitution Day

Constitution Day was the 17th, and Freedom week is this week so we are getting crafty and patriotic!  Here are a couple of the cute flags we have made.  I LOVE living in the USA and I love teaching a love for our country to my students.

We used torn paper to fill in a flag template. I like to look of this over just coloring like I had them do last year.  I think they came out great.  

Poetry Journal - They are circling sight words and the letter T this week.   Then they are building a flag with the strips.  He is still working on gluing his together nice and straight.

A peek at my stations this week

I have been feeling really great about my stations this week.  Things are going much more smoothly.  The kids are getting the hang of where to go and what to do without me.  I love seeing their independence come out.  Here are some of the great things we are doing...pretty much all inspired by great blogs.  :)
A couple literacy and a few more math...

They love to stamp, I love it too even thought it is messy.  I can't remember where I got this, please tell me if it is from you.  I will keep looking and update when I remember.  

Love a flip book to review the beginning sounds for L,O,G and H.  I got the inspiration from Kindergarten Crayons for this one.

Race to Trace dice game is from Sheri Sloane.

Counting Clothes pins - again, can't remember, but I will look on it at school tomorrow and update.

The are Learning Pallets and they have several different cards and levels

Using bingo dotters to make groups of 5.  They dot, then circle.  They come out nice when they don't go splatting the dots willy-nilly. :)