A Favorite DAD!!

Happy Monday friends!! We hope your week is off to a great start!! We are so excited about a book written by one of our own School DADS. 
Yep, I taught this Dad's two boys in kindergarten several years ago! Last year, of course after I left the classroom, this DAD returned to kindergarten because he had written a children's book!! It is a really cool concept!! It is interactive. You can read the story, then color the pictures!! Later you can even write some of your own ideas!! He came back to kindergarten to read to Cristy's class and left all the kiddos a book!! He is awesome!!
Back in the day when he came to Kindergarten for a visit, he would stir the kids up with bumblebee eggs (cool trick in an envelope)!  We loved when he visited KINDERGARTEN!!   My favorite thing he ever said, "After Tarleton's class, I never knew the teacher!"
Show some love for this DAD!! Check out his book !!! Click the image if you want to check i out!!

Thanks for reading!!!

Emergent Readers - Individual Packs for Fall, Halloween, and Thanksgiving

Hey guys!  Just a quick post to let you know we separated our BIG Fallin' for Fall Emergent Readers Bundle into smaller packs.

We know you may only need 1 particular set to fit into your classroom plans.  Hope this makes it easier on your wallet and your planning!

Happy Columbus Day!  

Let's READ! Getting books into your kiddos' hands!

It's so important to get GOOD FIT books into your kiddos' hands!  We have a TON of great guided reading book sets at school that work really well for our CAFE strategy groups.  BUT...what about getting these books into our kiddos' homes??  NOT SO MUCH!

Our librarian loves us, but not THAT much!  We can't let the littles take these perfectly suited books home since they are library sets.  Our kiddos DO, of course, get to check out library books, but these are not always "Good Fit" books where they can apply all of their new strategies to help them read.

SO...we came up with some EMERGENT READERS that are PERFECT for getting books into our kiddos' hands that they can TAKE home and actually READ!!!  It can be so frustrating for our guys to know all these new strategies and then when they open their library book...it's just FRUSTRATION-VILLE because the strategies aren't working...not a GOOD FIT!

These readers use almost all of the PRIMER and PRE-PRIMDER Dolch words, making them perfect books for most of our readers at this point in the year.  We included an easier version and a more challenging version for 5 of the readers, since we do have some kiddos who are already in the 100 word club.  (Read more about our word clubs here!)

These readers are great for working in guided reading strategy groups

on standards such as tracking left to right/top to bottom,

reading sight words, blending unknown words, using picture clues,

reading for meaning, and much more!

Use the You Be the Author version to work on writing standards such as spacing, capitalization, punctuation, blending, sentences, and more!

So we hope these might be helpful to you too!  We love watching our kiddos discover the JOY of reading and finding out just how powerful words can be!

Please visit our TpT store and download the preview of this pack.  We included the emergent reader, LEAVES (all 4 versions), for FREE as a thanks for your awesome support of our blog and store. 

Download the Preview at our TpT store to grab all 4 versions free!

And as always, we will give away this pack to one winner chosen randomly from ALL the comments left below!

 Now...off to the front porch to drink coffee with the hubs, pooch, kitty, and kiddos and enjoy this GORGEOUS fall day!

Great Reads for Building Character and Friendship!

So Page's post got me thinking about my favorite back to school books that help build character and friendship.

I have to say it was hard to only choose a handful because I have so many favorites, but these, well these---they all make me smile and feel all warm and fuzzy inside!  They are great books to teach what TRUE friendship is and help you build a sweet little class community.

Many of them are pretty darn catchy/funny too (See Pout Pout Fish!) so they are definitely winners with the littles!

So...here goes some of my favorites.  Keep your favorites coming too.  We love adding to our collections from year to year.  I swear I do think I have a book addiction!  Pretty soon folks are going to say "Would you like some classroom to go along with those books?" ;)

Stand Tall, Molly Lou Melon - This is a sweet read about a little girl who might just be a bit different from others, but that doesn't stop her from seeing her faults as something pretty spectacular!  This little cutie knows how to take lemons and make lemonade!

My Friend Is Sad - Mo Willems is just awesome.  These Elephant and Piggie books are a HUGE hit with our kiddos.

Chrysanthemum - I LOVE THIS BOOK!  It is a great book for teaching how our words can really hurt others.  We always do the "crumpled heart" lesson with this book and leave the heart hanging up all year long.

Frog and Toad Are Friends - Toad does headstands, bangs his head against a wall, and paces on the front porch ALL to think of a story to help his friend Frog feel better.  Great example of what we do for the ones we love!

The Pout Pout Fish - LOVE!!!!  I love the catchy rhythm of this book.  The Pout Pout Fish is a pretty sullen fellow until he meets the RIGHT friend...and his whole attitude changes!

The Boy Who Wouldn't Share - What K kiddo doesn't need a lesson on sharing? ;)

A Visitor for Bear - Bear thinks he doesn't need anyone to make him happy, until a little mouse pops up in his cozy home.  After driving Bear nuts, the mouse wiggles his way right into bears heart and an unexpected friendship begins!

The Selfish Crocodile - It doesn't take long for Crocodile to realize he shouldn't always put himself first!

Ruthie and the (Not So) Teeny Tiny Lie - Ruthie comes to realize that little lies can make your heart pretty heavy.  She finds that truth will set her free!

Well...hope you find some great new books to share with your kiddos!  Please keep your favorites coming!

Winner, St. Paddy's, and Great Books!

Thanks to everyone who left us a comment about our St. Paddy's Word Work pack!  The winner is Cherie! I think she MUST have the Luck 'O the Irish! :)

If you didn't win this time, we are always giving away our new packs...so we'll cross our fingers for YOU next time!

Anyhoo, we are out for the week for winter break...and I have to say...been a LITTLE bit lazy!  Ran some errands, cleaned a few piles, decorated for St. Patrick's Day, but mostly...slept in, drank a lot of coffee, caught up on TV...not EXTREMELY productive.  But that's ok every once and a while!  Plus my kiddos actually had the nasty stomach bug for 3 of those days so I HAD to stay home and not do much, right???

Here are a couple of pictures of my St. Paddy's decorating!  Pretty cute, I think!  Do you decorate for holidays?  If so, leave us a comment and share your awesome ideas!

 I think I am going to go back to Hobby Lobby and buy a Y so that it says LUCKY on my mantle!  I think it will just look better!

I had to take the bottle outside so you could see it a little better, but it normally sits on my kitchen table.

That's my dining room next.  I swear we don't drink THAT much wine (there seem to be bottles in ALL the pictures!) but we have friends that DO!  It pays to have wine drinking friends! ;)

The tree is WAY cuter in person, it looks pretty drab in the picture...but ALAS, I have an IPhone 3 and that poor baby DOES NOT have a flash...it's sad people! :)

And lastly, here are 2 new books we discovered at our latest book fair at school. I don't think either is officially a new book...just new to us.  So in case you haven't seen them either, here you go! The kiddos think these are just too funny, and I have to say, we do too!

"Swapped at birth!"  "Princess is a pig!"  Can you imagine the headlines when there is a mix-up at the palace nursery!  Can the piglet pull off being a princess?

The title says "underpants"...need I say more? ;)

Leave us a comment and let us know if you have discovered any new books lately!

Hope you are having a great week!

What about Winter?

What about the book Winter's Tail? Our kiddos loved, loved, loved, this non-fiction book also!! Both Nubs and Winter were great books to teach non-fiction as well as introduce the story elements and using the story elements as a Comprehension Strategy!

The great thing about the book on Winter was the live web cam that we checked every day at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium to check in on Winter and her friends, Panama and Hope. Click the link below the book jacket to go to the live webcam! The link will take you to one camera view. Once you are there, you can click on other views/cameras. Super Cool!

Winter's Webcam

We have to say that this book was also long and had lots of words!! Therefore, it took us several days to read the entire book. We were amazed at how our kiddos became engrossed in the topic and truly excited about Expanding Their Vocabulary and Tuning in to Interesting Words!!

It is so amazing to hear our kids use vocabulary from the story like saying that they are exhausted at the end of the day or they got injured or wounded on the playground!! What was really funny was when one friend said they needed new water for their water color paint because theirs turned murky!! Awesome!!!

Anyway, Winter's Tale provided us with a great opportunity to work on Story Elements. Hope you can use the idea below. Just click on the picture below to grab teh story map :).

Nubs!

Have you guys read the story Nubs: The True Story of a Mutt, a Marine, and a Miracle?  Oh...my...goodness... It's puh-reh-cious!

Our state created some really good frameworks for us to use to support the new Common Core curriculum.  One of the stories in our 1st 9 week unit is Nubs!  This is a non-fiction story that tells a heartfelt chance meeting of an Iraqi dog of war and a US Marine.  These 2 form an unlikely bond that ends with Major Brian Dennis raising over $2,000 to have Nubs sent to the US so that he can have a REAL home with Brian.

It's a pretty long story, so we spread the reading out over several days.  But we have to say, the kids LOVED this book and just couldn't get enough of it!

We created several resources to go along with the book.  We hope you can use them too!  Just click each picture to grab your copy!