2015 Spring Teacher Blogger Meet-up Weekend in Review

Wow, where do I even begin to review my amazing trip to the beautiful French Lick Resort in French Lick, Indiana for the annual Spring Teacher Blogger Meet-Up? So much anticipation led up to this trip, and I must honestly say, it did not disappoint. Holly Ehle from Mrs. Ehle's Kindergarten Connections and my teaching partner, Brittany Banister from Mrs. Banister's Kindergarten Kids, really put in the hard work and time to not only put together a great opportunity for all of us teacher bloggers from around the country to get together and collaborate, but for us to also receive some great teacher swag! Seriously, just so amazing. I'm excited to share it all with you, and when I am finished, you have an opportunity to win some teacher swag for yourself! So, here it goes...

I met up with my bestie, Jena Hudson from Sew Much Music, and headed to French Lick on Saturday morning for the day and night full of fun. 

A detour and a few scary minutes of driving through flooded waters later, Jena and I finally arrived in French Lick, excited and anxious to see everyone. 

This was only my second time visiting French Lick Resort, but it took my breath away just like it was my first time. The inside of the resort is seriously stunning.

While waiting for the time to enter our designated room for the meet-up, I immediately began running into some of my favorite people in the resort lobby. One of them being by Breaking Bad buddy, Deedee Wills from Mrs. Will's Kindergarten. I first met Deedee when she presented at the Indiana Kindergarten Conference presented by SDE in November, and I was excited to be able to reunite with her. 

Once the doors opened to the meet-up room, I was instantly surrounded by over 100 of the best teacher bloggers around, and a handful of them were all teachers from my district. 

{The room was once again decorated beautifully from pom centerpieces to name tags by the wonderful Schoolgirl Style.}

{Below are all the girls, minus Brittany Banister, who attended the meet-up from Scott County District 2 in Scottsburg, IN where I teach at. I am so proud and blessed to be a part of a district who encourages and supports all of us to grow professionally through blogging about our teaching.}

While at the meet-up, we were able to enjoy lunch and then we introduced ourselves to everyone. I loved being able to put faces and "real" names to blogs that I have followed for a long time. 

Introductions was then followed up by breaking up into grade levels and conducting our "Teacher Tool Gift Exchange." You can read all about it on my previous post by clicking on the picture below of the teacher tools I received during the exchange.

{Pictured above is the four groups we broke into for the exchange. I was obviously in the Kindergarten group on the top right.}

After the exchange, we were able to see what Holly and Brittany had been teasing us about for weeks. We had donations from several companies such as Lakeshore Learning, Scentos, Vera Bradley, Erin Condren, Creative Teaching Press who provided all of us in attendance with some amazing teacher swag. Everyone was seriously so blown away by the generosity of these companies!

{Below is all of the goodies we were presented with, aka: Teacher SWAG!}

{Above are all the goodies we were given from the above companies. We were clearly excited and thankful!}

After we were all blown away by the amazing gifts, we were released for dinner on our own. We hit up Chicago's pizza in French Lick for dinner and returned to our hotel room for a little friendly game of "Heads Up" on our phones and to change into our pjs.

At 8:30, we headed down in full pajamas and slippers to the PJ Party. A huge thanks to both Teachers Pay Teachers and GoNoodle for sponsoring the party. GoNoodle also donated lanyards for each of us teachers. We had so many fun things at the party to keep us busy such as pillow decorating, a photo booth, GoNoodle fun, a "business card" exchange, and lots and lots of food goodies!

{French Lick has the best ice cream, so we needed wanted to grab some before heading to the PJ party.}

{Photobooth station fun with my favorite ladies!}

{Pillowcase decorating station. Photo credit goes to Brittany Banister's Instagram account: MrsBanistersKindergartenKids.}

{GoNoodle station. Who says only our students can love GoNoodle?!}

{As the fun started to die down, many of us gathered together on the floor with our pillows and enjoyed catching up with others.}

My entire reason for this weekend was to be inspired all over again. I'm inspired almost daily by so many of these wonderful educators via their blogs, and I loved the opportunity to collaborate and continue the inspiration face to face. {Each letter is signed by each person at the meet-up.}

After hours of fun, everyone returned to their rooms, and if others did what my roomies and I did, we stayed up for hours continuing to talk until the wee hours of the morning. 

The next morning we all met for breakfast and said our goodbyes before heading home, rejuvenated and inspired about teaching our little ones.

Whew, now that you've got the inside scoop of all the happenings at the Spring Teacher Blogger Meet-Up 2015, now it is your chance to win your own teacher swag!

You can win all of the items below by entering our giveaway below. Also be sure to check out the fun that the other bloggers at the meet-up had!

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An InLinkz Link-up

Valentine's Day Giveaway

I have been on a serious hiatus from blogging lately, and I've been struggling with getting back into it. My wedding has consumed so much of my time and energy (and money!) lately that my time I would typically spend blogging has now been spent on Pinterest or out doing all things wedding. I am, however, going to start trying to do better, and what better way than with a giveaway of my new Valentine's Day Literacy and Math Pack?!

Valentine's Day is right around the corner, and although Valentine's Day is a stressful day in the classroom with five and six year olds bringing in handfuls of cards to pass out with names they may or may not be able to read, and the gobs and gobs of sweets, it is a lot of fun for the kiddos. So, I created a literacy and math center pack to accompany the chaos in my classroom. Let me tell you a little bit about it by starting with the literacy pack.

My literacy center time is one of my favorite times of the day. I enjoy this forty minutes of literacy time because I know that each of my students are getting the time to work on the things that each of them specifically need either extra practice in or some reinforcement in. It is also my time to work with students needing extra support in various literacy areas. I typically try to keep the same sets of centers each week, and just slightly alter the answers so that students are constantly getting practice on important skills that I know will show up on standardized tests. It also helps that I don't have to take the time each week to teach a completely new center to all of my students. For the most part I can say, for example, Group 1 you are at Syllable Sort today, and they go and are able to do it with ease. Different pictures, same essential skill being practiced. 

Okay, so now that I have explained my way of doing literacy centers, here is what I included in my literacy pack for students to work on. 

Students will pick an adorable Valentine kid and write down the ten sight words that are hidden in the picture.

Students will walk around the room and write down the first sound for each picture. 

(**This activity comes with a paper saving option.)

Students will put the Valentine's Day related cards in alphabetical order and then record it on their recording sheet.

(**This activity comes with a paper saving option.)

Students will sort the CVC or simple blend cards into a real or nonsense category and then record three real words and three nonsense words on their recording sheet.

Students will sort the Valentine's Day related cards by how many syllables are in the word and then complete their recording sheet.

Students will sort the digraph picture cards with their correct digraph, and then complete the cut and paste recording sheet. (Can be used for whole group instruction.)

2 Activities, Same Skill

Choice 1: Students will use their pencil and a paperclip to spin on the CVC picture spinner. Students will say the picture name and color the cupcake with the vowel letter that is in the middle of the word. (Example: jet; students would color one E cupcake.)

Choice 2: Students will use their pencil and a paperclip to spin on the vowel spinner. Students will then color one of the CVC pictures that has that vowel in the middle of the word. (Example: U; students would color the sun.)

Three different Valentine's Day kids labeling sheets with cut and paste labels options.

Now onto the math pack...

I will be completely honest. Last year, my first year of teaching, my math centers were not pretty. I never could quite get the centers going the way they should in order to be beneficial until the end of the school year. Then, it was a little too late. This year, I started early with my math centers and it runs so much more smoothly, and my kiddos love it! I have the same type of mentality with my math centers as a I do with my literacy centers when it comes to the types of skills that are being covered each week. The centers progressively get more difficult as we dive deeper into math concepts throughout the year. 

Here is what I have included in my math pack.

With the help of the hundreds chart, students will determine what number is missing on each card and record it on the recording sheet.

Students will put numbers in order by 2s, 5s, and 10s. Students will then record the numbers in order on one of the three differentiated recording sheets.

Students will walk around the room and count the number of flowers on each card. Students will then record the number on their recording sheet. (Cards with counting up to ten and up to twenty included.)

Students will decide which number is bigger on each card and write the bigger number on the recording sheet.

Students will look at the numbers on each card and put the numbers in order from least to greatest on their recording sheet.

Students will use their pencil and paperclip to spin the spinner. Students will then add or subtract the given number of counters in each tens frame and write the number of counters they end up with.

Students will use the non-standard heart rulers to measure the height of each Valentine's Day related picture. Students will then record their answers and decide which picture was the tallest and shortest on the recording sheet.

Students will count the number of Valentine's Day kids on each card and record the number on the recording sheet.

Each of these centers, literacy and math, are sold separately in my Teachers Pay Teachers store, and they can be purchased together at a discounted price; however, you have a chance to win my Valentine's Day Literacy and Math Pack right now!

From now until 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, February 8th, you can enter my giveaway to win this loaded pack. Your students are sure to get in the loving spirit with these literacy and math centers!

Happy Raffling! :)

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A Fire Safety Giveaway!

Like all TPT sellers, I strive to make products that are quality, meaningful products that can be used to supplement instruction in the classroom. If I don't feel like a product is good enough to be presented to others, it doesn't get uploaded. So with that being said, I think all of my products are great; however, sometimes I begin to make a product and it far exceeds my expectations of what I had envisioned for it. I feel this way about my Fire Safety Literacy, Math, and Activity Pack that I recently completed and uploaded into my store.

I have put a lot of time into making this, and have already gone back in and added more activities twice because I just keep coming up with ideas. I finally have it the way I love it, and with Fire Prevention Week just around the corner, I want to share it in a giveaway for one of my followers! But first, a little prelude into the giveaway...

Here is a little sneak peek into this Fire Safety pack...

-Write the Room with Writing the Word and First Sound Fluency Differentiated Option

-Can, Have, Are Anchor Chart Labels and Pictures & Student Can, Have, Are Recording Sheets

-ABC Order with Fire Safety Words

-Safe or Dangerous?: Nonsense Word Fluency with Basic CVC Words & Blends Differentiated Option

-Syllable Sort: Cards and Student Recording Sheet

-Rhyming with Fire Words

-Label It! Sheets with Cut & Paste Word Banks

-Color by Color Words Student Sheets

-Original Fire Safety Book for Read Aloud

-Missing Number with One and Two Numbers Missing for Differentiation

-Number Ordering: 2s, 5s, and 10s

-Put Out That Fire! Quantity Discrimination

-Count the Room: Up to 10 and Up to 20 for Differentiation

-Fired Up About Measurement with Non-Standard Measurement

-Fire Collage: Great for Fine Motor Skills

-Three Thank You Card Templates

-Firehouse Glyph

This pack is geared more towards Kindergarten and beginning of the year 1st Grade, but can be altered to be used for interventions in 2nd Grade. 

To enter for your chance to win this product for free just in time for Fire Prevention Week in October, go and follow my TPT store and you're in!

Good luck!

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