Basic Learning Pack

My first Learning Pack is ready! I have been working very hard at this as I wanted something that covered a lot of the basics but didn't really have a theme. I wanted it to be something that we could use over and over again through out the school year. 

It has 50 pages plus ideas and tips for using it!

Included:

Alphabet match

Flash cards

Word cards

Numbers

Counting

Prewriting Practice

Sorting Colors

Shapes

Size Sorting

Sentence Practice

Addition

Subtraction

Missing Numbers

Count by 2's, 5's, and 10's

Plenty to use during the school year for Preschool, Pre-K, or Kindergarten! 

You can get it HERE 

It is on sale for $4.50 for 8/29-8/31 

(sale price shows on page of product)

 Returns to $6.00 September 1st! 

It will go great with my Alphabet and Number Tracing Pages!

Enjoy! 

TPT Feedback

If you have purchased items from my TPT store. 

I just wanted to remind you all to give feedback as it helps me and also you get Credits that you can use towards other purchases. 

I have had a lot of sales with no feedback and realize you all were missing out on your TPT Credits! 

Could mean free printables in your future if you leave feedback!

Hope you are all having a great week! 

We are starting school in our finished classroom this morning! 

Classroom Pictures!!!

I am thrilled to say our schoolroom is complete except for our Art wall which will come as he completes art work! 

I have been working on this room since before Summer. 

Now on to the pictures! 

When you walk through the doorway this is what you see.

My desk and planning area.

Here is a bit of a better picture of my area. The area above my desk is our Art Wall.

To the right of my desk this is what you see.

Our bulletin board, Numbers 1-30, Colors, Table from IKEA, Our Trofast System from IKEA and Word Wall.

To the right of the Word Wall is our Ordinal Numbers at the top, Schedule below that and our Calendar in the orange square.

Just to the right of that and on the left side of the door are our shapes.

 

 And between the entrance door and bathroom door is our Alphabet and Geography area on those white boards, and the bin on the bottom is our Sensory Bin.

I am in love with our room and can't wait to start our Curriculum on Monday as we are ready to go now!

Last day...

As I have done this for free for several year now,  a few of my printables are going to be moving to Teachers Pay Teachers on August 21st. 

I can no longer offer a few of them for free. 

The printables that will no longer be free are

Alphabet Tracing Pages

Number Tracing Pages

I just wanted to give fair warning and hope that you all will understand that I have to do this to be able to afford to offer new printables for free due to the price of clip art that I use. 

All will be fairly priced no more than a few dollars as I want it to still be cheap enough for people to enjoy. 

You can check out my store and there will be freebies offered on there as well.

That being said I have my first new product up in the store.
It is a set of Pre-Primer Dolch Sight Words Read, Build, and Write!
You get 40 words which means 40 pages!


You can get them HERE for just $3.50!

Be the first two people to post a comment including your email and you will win this set for free!

Teachers Pay Teachers

From now on I will be uploading my printables to Teachers Pay Teachers as well as pdf's on my domain. You will have the option for both. 

I will also start to create some printables for  a small fee. This is to help with buying clip art to use to create more printables for you all. 

You can find my Teachers Pay Teachers store HERE and please Follow me on there so you can see what all I am adding!

Hey Diddle Diddle Nursery Rhyme Preschool Pack

It has been awhile since I have made a preschool pack. This pack is not near as big as my usual ones as we are only using it as a mini-unit this year. I am introducing nursery rhymes to Dylan one a month or so as he memorizes them. Our first one is Hey Diddle Diddle. So I figured a nice set of printables would go great with it to help with his memory and to keep the key parts fresh to him.

The pack contains nine pages.

Included:

Nursery Rhyme Page

Alphabet Letters

Numbers

Prewriting Practice

Patterns

Tracing Letters C and D

Which One is Different?

You Can Download it HERE or over at Teachers Pay Teachers for Free

Enjoy!

Sneak a Peek Linky Party

I am linking up with Blog Hoppin’s Linky Party.

Last weekend was the huge Back To School Sale at Teachers Pay Teachers so I decided it was time to get the things I had been eye-balling.

Here are a few of my recent purchases!

My favorite purchase is this and I went crazy and printed and hung it up in our room immediately! Dylan loves it too! It is so colorful and very well put together.

I also bought a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Mini-Unit that we will be using next week as that is our theme for the week.

And a few other ones that I bought.

Our Five Senses Unit

My First Day of School Keepsake Book

Math Centers

 

What did you buy if you participated in the Back To School Sale?

Go Join up at the Blog Hoppin’ Linky Party!

Back to School

It is officially the first day of school here at our house. Austin has headed to school and Dylan has started school at home for this year.

Austin is in 1st grade and Dylan is in Pre-K.

Each year we take a back to school picture and this year I wanted a sign that showed what grade they were in.

So I made some up!

And now I am sharing them with you all!

You can download them HERE

Enjoy!

When do you all start school?

Linking up at:

School Supply Table Top Caddy

This is another thing I found on Pinterest and knew it was something I had to have in our school room. I like that it keeps all the important supplies within arms reach.

What you need:

1 Lazy Susan

4 or more tin buckets (check Target’s dollar spot)

Screws or Magnets to hold the tin buckets down.

And a drill or a handy man to help

 

My Lazy Susan that we bought was brown and would not go with our school room so first up I painted it with primer and white spray paint.

Once dry I place my tin buckets on to get an idea on how many would fit and placement so my husband could screw them on.

Once I had them where I wanted them my husband screwed them into place. (note: make sure your screws aren’t to long because they will go through all the way. Trust me.)

Once that is done add your supplies and give it a spin. Just not too hard as you don’t want crayons and markers everywhere!

Can’t wait to see what Dylan thinks of this being on our table and so easy for him to access the supplies he needs so easily.

Do you have one of these? If so share! I love seeing what others do to spiff things up!

Colored Rice

I have seen this many times but always sat and wondered is this something I really want to do. How messy is it going to be to make and then what kind of mess will my kids make out of it in the end that I will have to clean up? Putting those thoughts aside I decided the experience and the things Dylan will get out of it for school are much more important. So this weekend I went ahead and bought a 20 pound bag of white rice. Yes I am sure people at Wal-Mart thought I was crazy and wondering if I thought there was going to be a famine of some sorts soon. I grabbed a bottle of rubbing alcohol and gallon size Ziplocs as well. Then headed to Hobby Lobby to get some of the good food colorings as I wanted some pretty bright colors.

I have no actual recipe to this experience as I basically squeezed the bottle of alcohol three times. Squeezed the food coloring four times and added four to five cups of rice at a time. I did this process two times per color as I had a ton of rice to cover. I mixed it all together in the Ziploc bag and shook it like crazy! Note to self make sure you zip them closed or you may end up with rice everywhere. Luckily I caught myself before I had food coloring everywhere. Once you have all the rice covered from shaking, you lay it out on a pan or like I did on paper towels and it dries pretty quick.

Then I just added it to some shoebox sized totes that I had. And I will pull it out when it is Sensory bin time.

The end process was great and it wasn’t messy at all to make as long as you can keep the kids out of it as you are making it.

Now I have to decide if I am going to mix it all together or use the rice over several sensory bins over the next year.

The Quietest Classroom Pencil Sharpener Review

 I have seen this sharpener pinned a lot of Pinterest lately, so I contacted the owner and asked to do a review. He was all for it and sent me a sharpener very quickly! I wasn't sure what the big deal was about a pencil sharpener, so I was delighted that I was going to get to see it first hand and find out what the deal was. Others had stated that it sharpens pencils wonderfully and the same each time. Never any broken leads in the sharpener and it was extremely quiet when in use.

So my sharpener arrived packaged so nicely in a soft plastic box within the cardboard box.

So I unpackaged it and this was what was inside the plastic box. The pencil sharpener is the lovely green color (they also come in blue and red) and a lever to hold it onto a table.

Here it is out of the packaging.

I of course tried it out immediately! I have never seen a pencil come out so sharp! The sharpener has two levers at the top that you squeeze when inserting the pencil. The metal piece on the front pulls out to hold the pencil straight. This helps to be sure the pencil is straight and results in the best sharpened pencils I have seen. I used to have a handheld little sharpener that we would sharpen with and when you’d pull it out the lead would be broken and back to sharpening. In the month that we have had this sharpener this has not happened once.

The owner is a teacher as well so he knew what teachers were looking for. A quiet reliable sharpener that isn’t going to break and that will sharpen quickly and accurately every time! He in my eyes hit is straight on as this pencil sharpener is awesome!

The cost of these is not bad at all and very much so worth it!

If you haven’t checked these out yet make sure you do HERE! As you won’t regret it!

Toolbox Makeover

I am sure those of you who are on Pinterest have seen these toolbox makeovers before. I saw them and knew it was something that would help me stay organized and keep the little things in places where I could find them. 

I headed to Lowes for a toolbox. This is what mine looked like before (sorry I didn't get a better before picture)

Grabbed a can of primer spray paint and white glossy paint as I wanted to to go well with our classroom.

When I got home I spray painted the base of the tool box with the primer and then once it was dry sprayed the white paint on it. 

While I was waiting on it to dry I had laid my drawers out in order to how they were in the box. This way I could lay out what papers I was going to use. You will need scrapbook paper or fabric of your choice to line the drawers. 

I traced the back part of the drawer on the paper and it fit perfectly on the inside. 

Then I mod podge them in. I suggest taping them though as it was a bit difficult and if I could go back that is what I would have done. 

Once the base is dry place the drawers inside. 

Then it is time to label the drawers. Which I haven't finished as I am not sure what all I am placing in there yet.

I used scrapbook stickers on the outside of the drawer for labeling. 

Have you made one of these? If so share a link in the comments. I would love to see it! 

Our curriculum

I am linking up with the 4th Annual "Not" Back-to-School Blog Hop for curriculum today.

So I though I would share what curriculum I am using this year with Dylan. 

Our main curriculum is made by KidSparkz

Expedition Earth by Confessions of a Homeschooler

I have several other resources that I will be using for things like Science, Preschool Packs, Monthly Themes, Sensory Bins, and much more. So come back throughout the year to see what else we are up to and for new printables that I make for fun learning! 

It's August already!

This year has gone by so fast. I have been planning and planning since before Summer and finally got around to ordering our new schoolroom furniture from IKEA! Bad news it could be the end of the month before it is delivered. Majorly sad here as I have worked so hard to get my room ready for it and now it could be almost September before it gets here. Which means our start date for schooling this year is now being pushed back. I am praying that it surprises me and gets here faster than they estimated as I can't wait to get it all set up and be able to start on time. 

Here are a few of the things I ordered. 

A new table.

A new desk and chair.

 

The Trofast system with white drawers.

And I have also picked up several things at Mardel, Target, Office Depot and I don't remember where else. 

I seriously can't wait to share our new classroom with you all so I hope this little sneak peek into it gets you all as excited as me!