Category Archives: FREEBIES!

Reading Is Fundamental

Not sure how it happened that my baby girl is to be reading, but she’s 5 1/2 and so very smart and has the desire to learn which is so vital to success. She LOVES our one-on-one time together with our Phonics book and honing in on those skills with some resources I’ve made for her to use and interact with in a way that fosters a love of learning! I will share about those resources as well as some other learning tools we use in our kindergarten reading adventures. I chose the title for this post, because I do believe with all of my heart that if we as teachers nurture the love of learning through developing good readers they sky truly is the limit! If you can read, you can learn anything really!

While I don’t employ the use of screens for very long periods of time, we do use screens everyday in our classroom. It is where we find ourselves today as a society, and if I’m being completely honest and why not … I need to use the screens to keep the proverbial wheels of progress turning with six students grades 11 down to kindergarten.

Li’l Bit loves to watch these videos from time to time. Now they are for review purposes only as she has a solid grasp of letter sounds for both the consonants and vowels. I highly recommend this little series because the videos are 30 minutes or less in length and they are engaging without adding unnecessary fluff to them. I purchased ours with a groupon code about a year ago, and they are well worth the $35 I paid for the entire set. Continue reading →

CVC Word Work Freebie

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I have a brand-new resource I made for Li’l Bit to work with her magnetic letters, and I’d love to share it with my readers!

Just CLICK HERE to go to dropbox where you can download your own copy FOR FREE! If you’d like to share, PLEASE, PRETTY PLEASE, link your friends back to this page on my blog. Let me know what you think! I will be working on some more magnetic letter resources soon.

If you like this freebie, you might also like Magnetic Letters Print and Go: Vowel Blends.

Back-to-School eBooks Are Back!

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Whether you’re new to Teachers Pay Teachers and the amazing resources there or you’ve been finding gems there for a long while, you’ll want to check out this year’s Back-to-School ebooks for every grade and subject from Kindergarten through 12th grade!

You can find the K-2 ebook by clicking the image above. Links for the other ebooks are just below the image. These books contain HUNDREDS of free resources, but they don’t stop there! Each and every page has Back-to-School tips from teachers as well as links to resources that will help you and your students have a successful transition BACK TO SCHOOL!

Grades 3-5 ELA Back-to-School eBook

Grades 3-5 Math and Science Back-to-School eBook

Grades 6-12 ELA Back-to-School eBook

Grades 6-12 Math Back-to-School eBook

Grades 6-12 Science Back-to-School eBook

Grades 6-12 Social Studies Back-to-School eBook

Five Free and Frugal Ideas for Your Classroom

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Here’s five free and frugal ideas you can use for educational pursuits today!

1. REPURPOSE plastic pieces leftover from broken or partially misplaced games.

Use them for new game markers for:

homemade or TpT games (like the ones in my store)
sorting
matching
counting
one-to-one correspondence

2. ACCESS tumblebooks.com to read and/or listen to thousands of FREE books with audio and highlighted text.

You can sort by type of book, age, reading level, etc.
If you have an account with your local library, be sure to ask if they have a tumblebooks account. We are able to access it completely FREE with our library’s code!
This site is formatted to work on tablet devices as well as your laptop!

3. TRY simple scientific experiments with your students!

They can be done with items you DEFINITELY have on hand and will DEFINITELY inspire your students to seek out even more LEARNING opportunities!

A review of the Commutative Property with four glasses of water, two with a smaller but equal amount and two with a larger but equal amount.
Does it matter if you add the glass with the lesser amount of water to the glass with the larger amount OR if you add the glass with the larger amount to the glass with the lesser amount?
No it doesn’t! Whether you add 4 + 6 for instance or 6 + 4, you still get 10!
Try it especially if your students are struggling to understand why the two amounts are in fact equal no matter which way you add them up!

All you need for this experiment is MAGNETS of various sizes and objects to test whether they are magnetic or not!
If you have them, brass brads are the MOST FUN, especially with a large and very attractive magnet!
Challenge your students to see how many they can pick up with just one magnet!

4. GO OUTSIDE and explore in nature.

Whether you can find a nearby creek or just a nearby tree or field to explore, get outside and see what you can discover with your students! The world is our classroom!

5. SAVE PAPER and packaging you find in products you buy.

It has so many uses, not to mention it doesn’t end up in the trash or recycling bin quite yet!

Paper piecing: you might notice the chicken pictures in the picture below. They were created with scrap papers including another piece of brown paper that was salvaged from packaging!

The history projects on the top of the shelves in the picture below were also saved from the round file! They were intended to be the back of some cubeical shelves, but my Dad made me real wood back instead. These very sturdy (but still paper) boards were the perfect size for 2nd grade history projects!

Here is a close-up shot of one of the projects in progress!

Instant mural! (this paper below that our children turned into a mural of space “and other things” was wadded up as padding in a package of books I ordered.

These ideas are free and frugal, yet they are sure to enrich the education of those you teach! If you have some more ideas, PLEASE do SHARE in the comments!

Another Post About My Desk

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How is that for a hook?

Yes I have rearranged my desk again. Actually, I never really arranged it. Until now. It has looked like this … well usually messier … than this. For nine months.

Not bad for nearly one year since we purchased our new home, and nine months since we moved in. Mind you, things weren’t finished when we moved in (and still aren’t), but the library was a top priority and was *mostly* finished.

But my desk. That is another story. The word piles comes to my mind. A fairly accurate description actually. Workspace would definitely not be an accurate description of my desk these last nine months.

Continue reading →

Sweet! Our New Still in Development Writing Station

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~~For now, just some photos …~~ (Edited to add: some more explanation!)

I recycled this tub from the garage. 🙂 DH wasn’t really using it. Each side has notebooks and writing tools for each of my 2nd grade students.

Some of the items I’ve included in the tub: notebook with blank lined paper, small notepad for list-making, envelopes to actually mail hand-written letters, erasers, scrap papers for rough drafts, notes, etc. Continue reading →

Game On! and a Giveaway!

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If you are a large family or just a group who likes to play games that appeal to multiple ages and abilities, this post might be one to read on to the bottom!

In the spirit of giving I thought it was high time for some giveaways here!

My Teachers Pay Teachers store has a few games in it and some of my most popular have been my BINGO
games.

I have BINGO games for the youngest of learners and older learners too. I will give away ONE copy of each of my FIVE BINGO games from my store. The choices are:

NOUN Bingo

VERB Bingo

COLOR Bingo

FARM Bingo

and my MOST popular BINGO Game … 2D Shapes Bingo!

Please post away if you’d like a set. Let me know which one you’d like and be sure to put a valid email in with your comment (no one but me will be able to see the email addy). The first one to comment for each set will get the one set of their choice. For those who aren’t first to comment, I will have all of my BINGO sets on sale in my store at 10% OFF through December 31st!

If you need something fun and educational to do on these long winter days or even during an indoor recess for your class, these make great resources! The Noun and Verb Bingo boards are completely black-and-white for easy printing, but they look amazing on colored copy stock which is how I printed ours.

Oh and one more gift for my readers: I have a FREE Preposition BINGO game in my store.

You might want to go and download it today! Please let me know how you like it if you download it! I always appreciate feedback on my TpT products.

Be BLESSED Today!

**GIVEAWAY ends on January 4.**

Making Meaning from Math

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I like math because it is useful. I don’t enjoy math though.

But, our little ones love to learn and exercise their math skills with hands-on activities. I have to admit this keeps it interesting, usually results in greater meaning for them, and it allows me to see exactly what they know regarding math fundamentals.

Here are some recent math lessons with a hands-on approach:

Skip counting with ice cream cones

You can grab this great freebie at Krista Wallden’s TpT store!

Numbers 11–20 Review in 10 Different Ways

Continue reading →

SHAPES Freebie!

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This FREEBIE has been in my Teachers Pay Teachers store for a long time, but I recently updated it due to some customer requests. After an appearance in the TpT Sunday FREEBIES Newsletter, it has been downloaded a LOT and the feedback has been positive. I wanted to be sure all of my blog readers knew about it and also that anyone who has it might want to download the updated version, which includes 3 new shapes: cone, hexagon and octagon!

We use this a LOT in our homeschool, particularly my three-year-old, but it is so versatile you can use it with many ages and abilities. It has a self-correcting version of shapes names as well as two more versions that require your students to read and decipher which name matches which shape.

If you haven’t stopped by my store lately, why not come by and check out my recently uploaded products ? I’d love to have you visit!

I am giving 10% of all net sales from my TpT store to the Love Without Boundaries Unity Fund.

Please know that for every purchase through my TpT store, you will be directly helping children in China to NOT become orphaned and to have the blessing of staying with their birth families, and you will be helping those families who find themselves in a desperate and seemingly hopeless situation with an ill child for whom they have no means to provide medical care. You can help make a difference!

NEW FREEBIE!

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Finally!

I posted a new freebie. I’m not calling it monthly anymore as I don’t seem to be able to get them posted monthly.

It is live though! Just click the freebie tab at the top of this page or the photo above to link to my store for your FREE download of this sampling of CVC task cards! Hope you enjoy!