Liebster Award

Wow!  I was so honored this morning to get a message from Alex, at The Kindergarten Connection  nominating me and my blog for the Liebster Award!  It feels so nice to have someone recognize the heart that you put into something.  As a newish blogger, I'm not going to lie, there are times when I am all "is anybody even reading these posts?"  and if not then "why am I spending the time to do this?"  So to get something like this is awesome & uplifting !!
What is the Liebster Award?  I didn't know either, so I googled it.  :)  The Liebster Award is an award given by bloggers to a newish/sometimes not-so-new blog and that blogger then has the oppurtunity to share a little more about themselves before nominating some other bloggers and "passing on the torch".  :)  There is no real trophy, or certificate, but I have the reasons I listed above as well as a chance to connect with other bloggers, which is what it is all about!

Here are the questions I recieved from the nominations, here goes:

1.  How long have you been teaching?
This is my 14th year teaching.  I am teaching at the school I attended as a youngin'!  How crazy is that?!!  I started there as the resource teacher, the next year moved to 5th grade where I taught for 5 years, and then made the big jump to Kindergarten where I have been teaching for the past 8 yrs!

2.  What is your favorite subject to teach?
TOUGH one!!  I will go with ELA.  I love reading and it is amazing to see the growth, especially in a Kindergartner, in that area.  I also love, love, LOVE children's literature and am so glad I get to use those books to tie into other subject areas as well.

3.  What are 3 things you say would describe you?
Without sounding like a goody-goody, I would say kind hearted.  I am a lot sensitive which allows me then to hopefully be empathetic towards other.  I put myself in other people's places quite often. I'd also say I'm happy.  I'm pretty much a glass is half full person, until I reach my limit anyway.  Lastly, I'm a little quirky.  This goes hand in hand with my sense of humor, I think.  I have a weird sense of humor, but I'm very selctive who I share it with.  Anyway, I believe the quirkiness ties in with the humor, b/c otherwise I'm pretty normal.  Right?? :)

4.  What is the best thing about teaching in your opinion?
Hands down, just realizing you made a difference.

5.  If you weren't a teacher, what other career would you have?
An Interior Decorator.  My friends are laughing at me now b./c my house on any given day has been "KIDIFIED".  But I love to decorate.  It's my thing.

6.  What is your favorite children's book?
Not fair,  This question is soooooo tough.  See and I taught 5th grade for 5 yrs so I have read some really good YA books too!  But sticking to primary level, I would have to say, the Pigeon and the ____ series of books.  My own kids CRACK up at those!!!!   And my daughter at 3 had the whole book memorized, she was so happy with herself that she was "reading".

7.  What is your favorite movie?
The Notebook.  AWWW man!  Love that movie, but please don't watch it with me--I ugly cry on that one!!!

8.  Are you a morning person or a night person?
I have small children so at this stage in life that automatically qulaifies me for the "morning person", right?  I struggle to make it past 10pm these days.  Sad face.

9.  Where is the best place you have traveled?
See, my trips all are connected to a certain memory, so I can't just name one time.  I loved going to Colorado and exploring what seemed like EVERY thing.  That's tied to memories of being carefree, and able to just go and do whatever.  HowEVER, I have also had so many fun, beach trips with my kids and family.  I'm grateful for all the places I've traveled, really.  Put me in front of a beach and I'm golden!  I am, however, looking forward to a beach trip maybe to Mexico or the Carribbean without the munchkins!

10.  Are you a coffee or tea drinker?
Um, no doubt coffee drinker.  I may have a problem.

11.  What is your favorite quote?
So many.  One that comes to mind in this moment is "She is clothed in strength and dignity, and she laughs without fear of the future."  Proverbs 31:25

Thanks again @ The  Kindergarten Connection, for the nomination.  I would like to nominate a few people as well.  They have wonderful ideas and I have followed one on instagram for awhile and just started following the other.

Susan at                                                                                             and Tiffany at

My questions for these ladies are:

1.  What grade level do you teach, and in what state do you teach?  Is it your preferred grade level?

2.  What makes you the happiest a snow day or a professional development day?

3.  What would an A+ weekend look like to you?

4.  What is your favorite children's book? 

5.  In 5 words, describe yourself. :)

6.  If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you want to live?

7.  Name 3 teacher must-haves.

8.  What is your favorite subject to teach?

9.  I knew I was meant to be a teacher when....

10.  What is your favorite quote?  

That's all I got ladies, looking forward to reading your answers!  

Everything Alphabet

Truly.  Everything is Alphabet here is KB!  We are off and runing and trying our best at letter recognition, letter/number writing, and beginning to work on letter sounds as well.  Those tricky lowercase letters throw everything off.  So we have been doing a lot of capital./lowercase matching.

 This was a simple but effective center to help with this concept.  You can find this is my Alphabet Adventure pack in my TPT store.  I decided it would be easier to copy all the lowercase in one color, and capitals in another color rather than have a set with the same color for both, so that is what we did.

 My other center was strictly working on letter recognition with a fun game I call Alphabet Soup.

Also from my Alphabet Adventure pack was stamping the missing letters, and working on matching capital and lowercase letters by spinning lowercase but graphing capitals.  See the pictures below. 

Now to tackle those tricky lowercase letters:  I had them roll the lowercase die and color in the letter if they had it.  (After reading the letter to their group).  It's a form of Alphabet Bingo really, which meant I had some happy kiddos.

We are also working hard on color words, so this center is an oldie but goodie!  

And what would literacy & writing centers be without some "write around the rooms"?  I love how these 2 just got all comfy with it!  :)  

They have been working so hard!  I am proud of them all!  Til next time...

Sing Your Heart Out

This week was all things alphabet and all things number writing!!  This week we started our first alpha friend, and  we also concentrated on writing the numbers 0-5.  I remember when I was a student teacher, (20-21 yrs old, and in college), I was assigned 2 different field experiences in Kindergarten classrooms, and I would come home and tell my friend who was also my age, about how these Kindergarten teachers sang EVERYthing!!!  Me:  "Oh my gosh, Sarah, there is a song for EVERYthing!  And I guess they want me to sing to them too, but I just am not going to do it."  No joke.  I was unsure what grade I even wanted to teach, but I was pretty sure, I wasn't wanting to sing a song about Number 2, the color red, the letter A, and so on and so on.  YEAH.  Fast forward many many years, and here I am: singing, singing, singing!!!  A song for everything.  HA!
So, to my parents:  I take songs from many different people who have been teachers before, and we work them into our learning.  It is amazing how quickly the kids learn things when put to music, so to my 20 yr old self, I say: "Take that!"
Dr. Jean Feldman has made letter sounds super fun.  I always start the year singing "Alphardy" with the kids.  Whenever then we are writing in our journals and they are trying to think of a letter sound, we refer back to the song.  Parents:  This can be found on You Tube...just search Dr. Jean, Alphardy.

For number writing, I use a combination of Dr. Jean and Jack Hartmann.  Parents if you hear your kids reciting this, this is where they got it.

1--Start at the top and down we run, that's the way we make a one.
2-Around and back on a railroad track.  Two, two, two.
3-Around the tree, around the tree, that's the way we make a three.
4-Down over, down some more, that's the way we make a four.
5-Down, around, with a flag on high; that's the way we make a five.

That's as far as we got this week.  :)  You do what you gotta do, right?

We also played some Alphabet Bingo this week.

In addition to lots of singing, we also did lots of dancing this week.  Keep em movin', right?  

Here we are using Go Noodle this week.  Love those brain breaks!!

I love the enthusiasm!  That is MUSIC TO MY EARS!!!  

I'm blogging,,,,and it's not even the weekend!!

Yay for me! I'm blogging and it's only Thursday!! That never happens. Anyways, I'm linking with Farley at "Oh boy 4th Grade" for "Currently."  Here goes:

Listening:  I'm still allowed to call my "baby" a "baby" even though he's 2, right??  I was just thinking the other day how since he's the youngest I tend to baby him.  He still needs/wants a binky at night, and with my other 2 we nixed that at the age of 2.  He turned 2 in July, but I just don't care.  I mean, he won't be 21 with a binky, so I'm really ok with it.  :)

Loving:  Bought a Fitbit the other day and love it!  I love the app that tracks food, calories burned, steps, water....all of it.  It *has* to help kick my butt in gear, right??

Thinking:  Well, I just talked about the Fitbit, so naturally that led to thoughts of working out.

Wanting:  I struggle with this every school year.  Maybe I'm just not as organized as the rest of the nation but my house can become a disaster in 10.2 seconds it seems!!!  I have 3 young kids but have yet to find a chore system that really sticks with them.  Sad face.

Needing:  Ok, so Grace was yelling at Myles b/c she did not want to read him a book on animals for the 3rd time, and Myles (2), was crying, and Gabe (4) was yelling "everybody be QUIET!"  Although his yelling didn't help the situation any, he was saying exactly what I was thinking.  :)

3 trips:  Always wanted to visit Maine in the Summer when the rest of the nation is sweltering hot.  Idaho- always heard the mountains are gorgeous there.  CA- Just always wanted to go but never have been.  (I just did US, don't even get me started on Internationally)!!

That's all I got for now,  if you'd like to link up, be sure to visit "Oh Boy 4th Grade".  Have a good weekend everyone.