Pounding the Pavement and Compound Words

I'm so excited. After weeks of trying, the hubby and I finally snagged seats on a bus to Washington DC to take part in the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington. Anyone who knows me knows that I am always ready to pound the pavement for something that I believe in and I am ecstatic about the opportunity to participate in such a historic event.
So in honor of my upcoming trip, I have created a Compound Word Song Freebie! (Yay!).
Initially, when I planned our compound word unit, I watched and sang Dr. Jean's "Compound Word Boogie' on Youtube a gazillion times, so that I wouldn't forget it. I had my pictures printed on cardstock, cut and magnetized (I put magnet dots on the back),  had my marker poised over my magnetic dry erase board and COULD NOT REMEMBER THE SONG!! No matter how hard I tried, I could not get the beat in my head. For some reason I cannot explain, the only tune that would come to my head was "Sally the Camel". ARRRGGGGGHHHH!!!!
So in Super Teacher fashion, I just made up a compound word song to that tune. I wrote it on my dry erase board leaving blank spaces for pictures (I switched them as the verses changed) and the children LOVED IT! In fact, we began singing the song during transition times. The children all stop what they are doing and yell out the compound word (which makes the little teacher in my head start doing the running man).

If you use these with your children, let me know how they like it. While you are there, click the follow button so you can be one of the first to know about my new products.

Compound Word Song Freebie

Remember Your Passion

RAM

You "Get" to Read This!

I am officially on vacation (Applause! woo hoo! oh yeah, oh yeah!). By vacation I mean completing administrative work for The Children's Magic Shout Out Foundation, attending the 13th Annual Stop the Violence event, working on my teaching tips book, updating my blog and planning my routines and lessons for the new school year which begins September 4th. 

A wise man (my boss, who doesn't read my blog, but you can never be too sure :-D) reminded me that I "get" to do these wonderful things, I don't "have" to do them. I "get to help underprivileged children. I "get" to stand up for what I believe in. I "get" to prepare myself for molding young minds. The best part is, I "get" to share my crazy world with all of you lovely folks. 

Hopefully, I also "get" to get all of those posts that I meant to put up during the school year. Don't be surprised if you see a post on Arctic Animals on a 90 degree Sunday, rest assured, they were covered in January (I think). 

I will try to throw a freebie or two in also. (Why else would anyone come to this page? :-D)

If you haven't already, visit my TPT store and download my current available freebies 

Dodecahedron Sight Word Game

    

Leadership Quote

The Ants Crawl All Around    

Update: My two week break, turned out to actually be one and a half, as the staff must report to work on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of the second week for staff development and to prepare the classrooms. This means I "get" to spend more time than I thought perfecting my room layout for the new school year. Yay me!

Remember Your Passion

RAM

Endings & Beginnings

What a crazy week this has been. While most people are preparing for back to school, I am preparing for the end of the school year and the beginning of a new one at the same time! My school runs year round and only closes for two weeks in August. So while I am closing the year out and saying goodbye to my future kindergartners, I am also preparing for a new batch of  little ones, who are just beginning their preschool journey. 
Good thing I have those two "vacation" weeks coming up. :-)
In the spirit of endings and new beginnings, I am finishing up some lingering projects, closing out some business ventures and focusing on what's ahead. I am putting together a teaching strategy book (tough project), I will be uploading some new things to my TPT store and working on making my blog look as spectacular as some of those others I have seen. 
I am so new to this. I still haven't learned how to link to my blog when I write comments. Hopefully, somewhere in those two weeks, I will come across a good blog tutorial. If anyone knows of any, please leave the link in my comments.

And now for a freebie--Just because.
I saw this quote on leadership at a community center where I was volunteering and had to have it for my classroom. 

You can get it from my TPT Store

    Free-Leadership-Quote

While you are there, become a follower so you can be among the first to know about new freebies.

*Remember Your Passion*
   R.A.M

Summer Sizzlers

(Freebie Alert)

The past few weeks, I have been focusing on ways to get organized and manage my time, inside the classroom and out. I have a planner, cutsy to-do lists and files for almost everything. 

Truth be told, my life is still a hot mess, but it's gotten a little easier. I've picked up a bunch of tips and tricks from those with lots of experience, as well as gaining insight from those, who like me, are just starting out in the field. I've also discovered some cool things on my own, which I am super excited to share.

Unfortunately, I am so disorganized that everything is all jumbled up in my head and on my hard drive. So I decided to organize it all the only way I know how - by writing it all down.

So with everything else going on in my life, I have decided to write a book. It will be called "Summer Sizzlers" and it will be a compilation of some of the really cool summer themed ideas that have been shared with me and that I want to share. 

I have shared this idea with my co-workers and they have been amazing in helping me out and with trying some of my ideas out in their classrooms. There are so many things that seem good in theory, but fall flat in the classroom, so I am not putting anything in the book that I have not actually done with my class. 

There are also a lot of amazing ideas that I have come across that are suitable for one or two children, but not for a group of children. Those are not for this book. This book will be for summertime group activities.

It will be an EXTREME amount of work, I know, but not only do I think it will be worth it, I think it will help me organize a lot of the ideas I have floating around.

I will be posting a lot of teasers over the next couple of months and really need your feedback to know that I am on the right track. So if you see something  you like-leave a comment or a rating. Follow my blog, my facebook page and my TPT store. Tell a friend to tell a friend to tell a friend.

My first teaser is a really cool sequencing song that I made up to the tune of "The Green Grass Grows All Around" created for a picnic theme. I used manipulatives when I did this activity with my preschool class and they LOVED it. I have done it numerous times since and it is met with the same enthusiasm each time. 

If you use it with your little ones, let me know how it goes. 

RAM

Click on the link below to get the freebie.

The Ants, They Crawl All Around Freebie

Drowning in Much More Than Applesauce

It's been so long since I have been able to update my blog and it is simply because I CANNOT FIND THE TIME. I am juggling so much with work, family and volunteering, that I am utterly exhausted. I visit my favorite teaching blogs daily ( Teacher to the Core, Growing A Jeweled Rose, 1+1+1=1 and Playdough to Plato, to name a few), but I am too tired to even come up with a clever comment to leave. My weekends are filled with lesson planning, Pinterest hopping and trying to catch up on a week's worth of sleep in one day. 
I was so excited to FINALLY start my blog and I have no clue on how to keep it running. 
I even joined a webinar, which was SUPPOSED to help teach me to maintain my blog...sadly, I didn't have time to participate.
I imagine the writers of the blogs I follow to be some superhuman, fruit-ninja type warriors, able to slice life's obstacles in half, while simultaneously avoiding the bombs. How they still find time to share such fabulous ideas dressed in witty banter, I will never understand. 
Heeeelllppppp!!!!
I am shining my floodlight with a capital T in the sky and hoping one of my super blogging teacher/this/thatandthensomes will give me a clue. How do you juggle teaching, family and LIFE and still find time to blog about it?

#drowninginmuchmorethanapplesauce

Chinese New Year!

Being a first year teacher, I am extra excited about every holiday that comes around because I feel as if I am celebrating them for the first time. In the case of Chinese New Year, this really is the first time I am celebrating it, making it super special. Adding to my excitement was a chance to use all of the cool stuff in the Chinese New Year unit that I won from http://teachertothecore.blogspot.com/. It was created for first and second grade, so I modified some of the activities to fit my preschoolers. It has everything you need for a successful Chinese New Year celebration, including bulletin board goodies.

 
The Panda Smart Art was a big hit with the kids.

 

 



We also used the dragon hat template to create our tissue paper dragon head.
I recreated the image on poster board and wrote the color names in colored marker. I gave the children sheets of tissue paper to tear and glue onto the poster board.

 
 

 

Then it was time to decorate the body. I drew scales onto yellow roll paper and let the kids do the rest.

Our original costume was really long in order to accommodate all of our kids, but the day of our parade fell on the same day of Nor'easter, so many of our children did not show up for school. We cut the roll down and cut the excess into strips to hang from the sides. (We were originally going to do this with tissue paper). Sticks were added and Viola'!

We had been practicing our dragon dancing without the costume all week to traditional Chinese music and learning how to move in harmony with each other, so by the time our dragon costume was done we were pros. 

 

Of course no Chinese New Year Celebration is complete without chopsticks. The children were surprisingly good at using them. It helps that they had been using them in various centers throughout the week. (i.e letter sorting, colored rice sensory table, Lego color sorts). I was still impressed at the skill at which they used them to eat. :-D 

 

Other activities included fan dancing with child created fans, Chinese clothing for the dress-up center and one of my favorite books "Tikki-Tikki -Tembo". It was hi-la-rious to hear the children try to say the full name. I laughed so much my sides ached.

To find it on Amazon Click Here

To get a copy of the Chinese New Year unit I used, which includes many more activities,  Click Here 
To see the blog on the unit by its creator Click Here

I can't wait until next year!!! I have so much more planned. I would love to hear what ideas you have come up with for the Chinese New Year. Please comment below.

From one of our exercises on working in harmony.

Pajama Day!!!!!!

Today was Pajama Day at our school and I was so super excited since I have never been a part of one before. I was so elated to don my favorite Hello Kitty Onesie in public that I didn't even wait until I got to work and proudly sported my ensemble on the NYC subway system. New Yorkers are so cool that even though I got a few sideways glances, everyone tried to act like a grown woman in a onesie and a Cookie Monster hat with a purple spotted frog around her neck was the norm. Being a native New Yorker myself,   I calmly read my AM newspaper, as if this were my everyday gear.
I was all geared up to break all the normal classroom routines, only to find out that today we were receiving a visit from the Department of Health. I was crushed! I tried to imagine myself in a professional meeting with my pigtails and pajamas and it made me cringe.

Imagine my relief when our consultant walked in, smiled and said "Oh, it's pajama day? How nice", never even batting an eye. She must be a native New Yorker also. Gotta love my hometown!

Dodecahedron Sight Word Race

I geared up and began tackling sight words with my children this month. Our word wall got revamped, we were pointing them out, digging them up, tracing them, building them, fishing them out of snow disguised as packing peanuts. We even had a Super Sight Word scavenger hunt, which had children pulling words out of play-doh, manipulative bins and from underneath blocks. 
Half of my children bathed in the word immersion. They were excited as they found and read words around the room. There were some who found the words and could not read them. Those children folded them into pockets or held them crumbled in sweaty fists until they saw them again in small group or afternoon meeting. They would then produce the hidden word, yelling out its name, eager to get a check mark next to their name. There were some still, who were not interested in anything word related. They swiped the coveted pieces of paper out of their way as they continued through their day, not even attempting to view its content.
I scoured books, Pinterest and teaching blogs and websites for a way to get these children interested. 
Then one night between asleep and awake it hit me! A Dodecahedron Sight Word Race! It had everything! It was suitable for my beginners and my more advanced students. It used both gross and fine motor skills. Children who had difficulty reading the words could match them and the entire class could get involved. As an added bonus, I got to use a Dodecahedron, which I have been dying to try ever since I ran across the Dodecahedron Book Report Project. 

I woke up at 4am to work on the game and was carrying it to school at 7am that same day (and still had time to shower and dress). I began with the giant floor game board. This was made on large white roll paper. The twelve words were written at the bottom and columns ran the length of the paper. I then created rows which would serve as the "stops". 

Next, I wrote my words on my Dodecahedron die template and glued it together. I glued my tabs on the inside, but I have seen images with the tabs glued on the outside.

I then placed the sight words in a set of plastic cars ordered from Lakeshore. 

I used the cars with beds, but if your cars do not have them, the words can also be taped to the top.

The excitement began as soon as I started taping the board to the floor. The children rolled the die, read the word and raced the corresponding car to the next stop. As the children were racing, the children on the side were cheering the car on ("Go 'the'! Go 'the'"!). This stopped them from becoming distracted during someone else's turn.

It was a big hit!! I've since developed a table top version to be used for small groups. This will be available for free from my newly opened TPT store!!! 

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Free-Dodecahedron-Sight-Word-Game

Please comment and let me know what you think!