Thursday, January 31, 2013

Sunday Super Sale!!! 28% or MORE plus "Buy 3, Get 1 Free!"


It's here!  Wahoo!

That's right!  Oh yeah!  Uh-huh!  Who likes to SCORE!!!!
EVERY item in our store will be 20% off THIS Sunday, February 3rd ONLY!  Plus, enter the code SUPER at checkout and you get an additional 10% for a total of 28% savings.

You can save even more if you purchase one of our bundles.  They are already priced at 20% savings, making your total savings 40% or more on these items!  SCORE!!!

And...as an EXTRA BONUS...you get 1 FREE item ($5 or less) for every 3 items you purchase on Sunday the 3rd only!  Simply email us at foglem@bellsouth.net after making your purchases.  Be sure to include the name you purchased under (your TPT username), your email address, and the item you would like as your FREE choice ($5 or less).  That's it!  Easy, right!

Thanks to Lauren Weese at lawteedah for the ADORABLE sale image!

Happy Shopping!!!

Freebie Addition Game, Unit 4, Shape Shout Out!!

Crazy day friends!! We are sending thoughts and prayers to any friends caught in the crazy, scary weather today! While we were not hit too heavily with storms, the threat was enough to send our poor kiddos into the hall for about 40 minutes during a tornado warning and delay school release time for 30 minutes!

Yikes an extra 30 minutes with our babies who did not get recess today!! NO problem! We really could use an extra 30 minutes in order to fit in everything we need! It's frustrating that everyday we have to leave out something because we run out of time. No, lie! We don't even nap!

So, you want us to stop jabbering and tell you about the FREEBIE?

Oh, yeah! We can finally wrap up our unit on shapes and start with addition and subtraction. Why? 

Well we just finished a huge, action packed unit that is 190 pages long, full of games and activities to make our kiddos and yours magnificent mathematicians!!!

If you like the sample below, just click and check out our complete preview. Oh yeah, don't forget to grab that Addition Freebie Game. Just click the game board below the unit sample and it is yours! Enjoy Friends!




Shape Shout Out!!
 My sister-in-law, in Valdosta, Georgia, sent us her pictures of her kid's shape projects that she used from our Shape Explosion: Unit 3 pack (check that out here). They are awesome!!! Sooooo creative!! 
Hope you have a great weekend!!!

Sunday, January 27, 2013

EPIC success and a GIVEAWAY!

Our super sweet friend Olivia, over at Liv to Teach, is celebrating 1,000 TPT followers!  We started our blogging and TPT journeys right around the same time.  Olivia has always been so helpful, so supportive, and just great all the way around.  She hit success pretty early and has quickly become a top TPT seller!
 

Be sure to check out her store while you are signing up for the
5 AWESOME GIVEAWAYS she is having!  

We are giving away our ARCTIC FREEZE pack as part of her GIVEAWAY #1
Here's a quick peek!

We just got back from a quick ski weekend with our kiddos and some of our besties!  It's the 1st time our boys have ever skied...and let me tell you...they are HOOKED!!!  They stayed out 6 hours straight skiing and snow tubing!  It's was pretty dang awesome!  You know how sometimes you plan these perfect family outings...all the details are worked out...expectations are high...then the event arrives and it's an EPIC fail!!!  Oh how that breaks our mama hearts!

Well not this time people!  This weekend was perfect in EVERY sense of the word!  BOTH boys loved skiing, no one was cold or miserable, there were only smiles, hugs, sweet moments riding the lifts together...just perfect.  An EPIC success!!!  And don't we ALL need those sometimes!!!  Here's hoping you have your own very soon!





We hope you are having a Super Sunday!

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Our New Favorite Thing!!!

Oh...my...goodness!  We LOVE these stinkin' dry erase CRAYONS!!!!

Who knew?  We've been using dry erase markers for-eh-vah!  But I tell you...these little crayon babies are the cat's meow!!!

Top 6 Reasons we LOVE (with a capital L-O-V-E!!!) these babies:

#6:  Because we are teachers, and that's just what we do.  Love new goodies!!!

#5:  They were given to us for FREE at a workshop!  Who doesn't love some FREEEEE!!!!

#4:  They are big and fat and big and colorful...and did we mention BIG?  They don't snap in 1/2 like most crayons!  Is it just our kiddos?  Maybe they work out or something...but they can't break these babies!

#3:  No caps to lose...ever!  These babies DO NOT DRY OUT either!!!

#2:  They come with their very own little black cleaning cloth!  Now we don't have to keep using all our tissues up!  Those things are expensive I tell you.  And on a bad day, 20 kiddos can seriously use 1,000 tissues!!!

And the #1 Reason we LOVE (with a capital L-O-V-E!!!) these dry erase crayons...

well people...

they actually are DRY (which means they don't smear ALL over the kiddos hands and sleeves as they drag their arm across their work space) and they actually ERASE (not the smeary, smudgy, leaves nasty gunk all over the work space kind of erase...but fo' real erase!)!!!

Clean, brand new game... ready to play!

Awesome work!  Not sure "hents" is a word...but darn good effort!
Look how awesome these thingys write!  Bright and bold!  No smearing!

 This is the SAME board people...not...a...trace...of....gunk...left!  LOVE!

 Boo!!  Hiss!  This is what our boards looked like before!
Still love some dry erase markers...just not in this case!!!  Did I already say... BOO!  HISS!!

 We LOVE them!    So not sure if this is a helpful post, but dang it...we just had to show the love for these babies!!!  Now RUN out and get some.  And buy some for us too if you find a good deal!!! ;)  Cause we were not paid to give our testimony...none...at...all!


PS---Totally random picture coming at you!  One of my dads cows just had a new baby calf...only a week or two old.  SOOOOO cute!  Just thought you may enjoy!

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Valentine's Day Work Work!

Woo-hoo!  LOVE is in the air!  We FINALLY finished up our Valentine's Day Word Work Station Pack!  We can't wait for the "smooch and hug" day to get here!  

Here's a little preview of the pack!
(Click here or on the image to grab the pack on TPT!)

And here is the Super Deluxe preview! :)


And because you are so awesome and still reading this post...
we want to show you some LOVE!  
So here is a little FREEBIE from the pack!  
...because we thought you would rather us show our love by 
giving you something OTHER than smooches and hugs!!! ;)

Happy EARLY Valentine's Day!!!

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Stations in Action- Games, Art, and Writing

Wow friends! Time sure does fly when you're having a great time! Family and administrators often ask, "How was your day?" We always respond with the same answer, "It's always great in K!"

We mean even when it's a bad day in K, it's still awesome because no matter what happens you still have 20 or something kiddos that ADORE you and lots of parents who are grateful to you for loving their babies and instilling lots of knowledge in their eager, growing minds!!

Enough sappy stuff!! Ready for Action!! Well our Word Work Stations are in full swing! The kiddos are learning a ton and working hard.

How do we use Word Work Stations?  While we review all letters and sounds and teach a million phonemic awareness and phonological skills daily, our Word Work Stations are built around a letter, digraph or other phonics skill that we focus on for that particular week.

Each child gets a new Word Work Literacy Station Choice Board  on Monday. We use these choice boards to help keep our kiddos accountable for completing work. You KNOW those babies would never ever just chit chat, visit, and PRETEND to work and not even get 1 station finished by Friday. NO, NEEEVER!!! ;)  Hmm do you have any of those babies? It is amazing, even with the choice boards, some sly little people turn up Friday with only one or 2 smiles!

Smiles? What's that? Well, when a friend completes a Word Work activity, the teacher puts a smiley face on the activity completed. Our friends are supposed to complete at least 5 stations per week. We do have some eager achievers who complete more than 5 and earn a reward. Don't forget there are still a few who may also complete less, but we have Friday afternoon work time for friends who didn't work all week.  It usually  only takes one time staying in from play time to work while other friends are having fun before that student is working harder during station time the next week!

What do our Word Work Stations involve? Well, we like to have a balance of learning games, opportunities for artistic expression, as well as writing activities. All of the activities on the choiceboard are differentiated. Some work/games are differentiated by the activity while other work/games are differentiated by the product. For example some friends may be ready to write a sentence or two while others work on their own level writing words or the beginning sound. The objects is to challenge all of our students without STRESSING them out!!
 

Thursday, January 17, 2013

100th Day-These Kiddos Crack Us Up!

These little people are a riot, I tell you!  What a blast!



So we celebrated the 100th Day of School TODAY!  I know, I know...100 days already???  We start school while EVERYONE else is still out partying like rock stars on  their summer breaks!

To make the day extra special, we do a TON of writing, reading, math, phonics and work these poor babies  like there is no tomorrow fun stations and have a big old 100th day celebration!

We do 3 of my favorite things...eat, play, and party!  Oh yeah...and work (not on our list of 3 favorite things, but really important none the less!)

So the party part really means we do a TON of work, but it's so stinkin' fun that they are begging to have the 100th day EVERY day for the rest of the year.  (Well except for our one little angel that we didn't fool who kept saying, "Are we done with these stations yet!" ..."Shhh baby...the rest of the class doesn't KNOW this is WORK!!!")

We have a station sheet that we created especially for the 100th day.  We have 10 fun stations.  The kiddos can complete them in any order, work with a partner or alone, and earn as many points as possible.  Each station is worth 10 points, and they have to earn at least 70 points to earn a little 100th day prize at the end of the day.

Here's our station sheet!

Some of the ideas are our original ideas.  Others we found FREE from some awesome TPT sellers!  We included links at the end of the post to the stores where we snagged some of these goodies!





Now the eating part...this is crucial for any party to be a success! (Well...in my opinion anyways!)  The kiddos made 100th Day Trash!  It's really a trail mix sorta thing where they add 10 pieces of 10 different tasty tid-bits to make a 100 piece snack!  We just call it "trash" cause that sounds more fun than "trail mix sorta thingy"!  You can use anything, but we use small tasties like m&m's, yogurt Cheerios, raisins(this healthy crap is included against my better judgement!), mini-marshmallows, Goldfish, pretzel Goldfish, Cookie Crisp cereal, Fruit Loops, Cocoa Puffs cereal, and white chocolate chips.



But the best part of the day...BY FAR...is the hysterical writing our kiddos did!  





They worked on a "When I am 100" writing piece.  Oh...my...word...we were crying from laughing so hard!!!

One kiddo wrote: "I will be old and wrinkly.  I will be lazy.  I will eat all the time and be big and fat!"

Another kiddo was a bit more somber about old age.  She wrote:  "I will have a lot of wrinkles on my face.  I will probably not have any teeth at all.  I will pee in my pants.  I will be almost bald.  I will give all of my stuff away."

One cutie told it like it was... buddy...no goofing around here!:  "I will be old.  I will have wrinkles on my face.   I will have nasty feet.  I will have to use a cane.  I will be tired."  (Man...this little kiddo is NOT looking forward to 100!) ;)

Well...enough for today!  We hope you will get some fun ideas, some good laughs, and snag a few of these freebies for yourselves!


Sunday, January 13, 2013

Sight Word Clubs!

These babies are reading up a storm!!!  WE LOVE JANUARY!!!!!

It's like all the hard work FINALLY pays off!  They come back from winter break, and the wheels are turning at full speed!  Thank........the.........Lord!!!

We started Daily 5 and CAFE last year around January.  We saw a ton of progress and were really happy with the trial run of these 2 reading components.  So...we started day 1 this year!  Working with our kiddos on the reading strategies, conferencing, and giving them time during Daily 5 to put it all together...has just been A-MA-ZING!

And to double our efforts, we put a TON of sight word work in too!  We work with our kiddos beginning early in the year...even before many of them know all of their letters.  We start with simple words like I, go, to, can, and see.  We play games with them, use them with word chants (click  to grab them FREE), and work on the words by rainbow writing, tracing, finding in sentences, and writing simple sentences.

We also have WORD CLUBS!!!  These are so stinkin' awesome!  The kiddos work really hard to earn their way into a new word club.  Here's how they work:

Our kiddos can read ANY 60 words on the Fry List 1-100.  They earn a gold medal and their name and photo in the class newsletter.  This is a great beginning level because ALL of our kiddos almost always make it into this club!  Everyone wins!


When our kiddos can read ALL of the Fry List 1-100, then they are in the club!  They earn a $1 coupon to spend at our school store and their name and photo in the newsletter!

Next we move on to the Fry List 101-200.  They are in this club when they can read both the Fry List 1 and 2 for a total of 200 words!  They earn ANY baked item of their choosing!  And we mean ANY!!!  We have baked cupcakes, brownies, monster truck cakes, from scratch lemon pies...you name it, we've baked it!

Once the kiddos know 200+ sight words, they start in the Accelerated Reader program.  Most of you probably are familiar with this, but it's basically a paid reading program where the books are leveled, students take computerized comprehension tests, and earn points.  Once our kiddos earn 5 points (10-5 books), they are in the club!

 We take them out to dinner ANYWHERE they want to go.....ANYWHERE!

 Well...almost anywhere!!  No fast food!!!

 And none of those places with the big 'ol buffets where you serve yourself...because people...that's NOT fun for ANY ONE involved!

We made this mistake once...ONCE!  We basically were up and down 100 times, getting food, finding new straws because the old ones fell on the floor, cleaning up spills...NOT........FUN.........AT.......ALL!!!

We learned our lesson!

 Now it's only fine dining for us!  That's right...REAL restaurants that serve steak, seafood, lobster.......ok.... so the kiddos ALWAYS order chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese, but WE eat like queens!!!

We used to take them out 1 at a time, but that got waaaaaaaaay too expensive, so now we let a few of them make it into the club and then we let them pick a restaurant together and have a BIG ol party!!!  This way, we only end up going out 3 or 4 times with 3-6 kiddos in each group!

Well, we hope this gives you some ideas for ways you can get your kiddos
 motivated to learn those sight words! It really is awesome.  All of our kids cheer each other on and encourage one another to do their best!  We celebrate together!!!