Virginia is for Book Lovers (Freebie & giveaway!)

Hello again!!  Yes, I am hopping again.  All of these hops give me a focus (and you lots of freebies).  I have been networking/collaborating with the Virginia Teacher Bloggers since last summer.  It is a great group and we talk way more than blogging.   A few weeks ago (maybe even months ago) we decided we were due for another blog hop.  Virginia is for book lovers was born!! 

I have always loved to read and I have shared that love with my children.  We all get super excited about going to the book store or library.  I also think our school librarian gets excited when we get to the book fair.  We have been known to buy a few ton of books. 

Today I am sharing with you one of my favorite books, Aliens Love Underpants. (Feel free to giggle!!) I found this book last year and it was a favorite of my preschoolers.  This year, I have been reading it  my K-2 kids and they also love it.  I think it is the underpants that wins them over. The great thing is that there is a whole series of underpants books.  You can check them all out at http://www.underpantsbooks.com/.  Yes, that is really the website.   There is even a new book coming out (Monsters love underpants) just before my birthday in May.  It is on the top of my birthday wish list

Today I wanted to share with you part of what is becoming my Underpants Bundle of activities.  This is a matching game to practice rhyming.  Some of the words are from the book, others were just added.  Kids can play this like a simple matching game during literacy centers or you could put one half of the pair in a pocket chart and hand out the other half.  Read the word and have the kiddo with the match come up and put it in.  So many options!!  You can get it by clicking  here.

Be sure to keep your eye out for when I finish more activities to go along with this book.  Also, make sure you enter the giveaway below to try to win your own copy.  Keep hopping through to make sure you get to the HUGE giveaway at the end.

Entry-Form

Keep hopping along to Owls  & Lessons Etc.

My favorite things

Hello!!! Welcome all of the new shipmates to Learning Ahoy!! Are you enjoying the blog hop?  So many great things up for grabs and lots of great products 50% off!!! (Be sure to search for #myfavoritethings2014 in TPT to easily find everything)  So now it is my turn to share my favorite things.(Make sure you go all the way to the bottom so you can enter the giveaways!)

One of my favorite ways to start the holiday season is to visit my family Christmas tree farm.  My grandfather started this farm when I was just a baby and I grew up helping him.  My boys have grown to love the farm just as much as I do!  This picture of B was taken at Thanksgiving when we made our annual trip to start off our Christmas season.

So my next favorite thing to share is my favorite restaurant.  Now, I am not sure if it counts as a restaurant, but I big puffy heart Dunkin' Doughnuts.  I love their coffee and their doughnuts.  I think it goes back to being younger and my dad always stopping at DD when we went to "The Shore" to visit family.  I am working on passing this love onto my children. (I promise there was no coffee in that cup and he had a pacifier in his mouth. )

So
my third favorite thing to share is an It Works! Body Wrap.  I love this for the holidays because it helps with all of the holiday extras you eat!  And to help one of you out with those extras, a wrap is what I donated to the giveaways.









If you want to check out what I have marked down head over to my TPT store .  If you have had your eye on Oh snow! or Where is the Gingerbread man? now is your chance to get them at 50% off!

Because we value our followers and wanted to treat you to our favorite things Oprah style, we have put together the best giveaway of the season! My bloggy friends and I welcome you to the best, biggest, most cheerful event of the season:

7 winners for 7 prize packs!

Come and enter the giveaway and check out my bloggy friends' favorite things:



a Rafflecopter giveaway

An InLinkz Link-up

Matics Math Game: A differentiated card game

I was contacted by KabukiHelps.com a few weeks ago and asked to review a card game called Matics   I checked it out online and it seemed like a game that my kiddos should like to try.  Matics is a game that was created by a mom who wanted to help her child who was struggling with math.

Well after trying this game with my 5 year old B, I am in love.  This game has built in differnitation.  There are multiple ways to play  and B even came up with more as we were playing. 

Matics is a 2 player card game for ages 5 and up ( I feel like my preschoolers would be ok with this game also).  It uses card numbers 0-12 and each card has different shapes on it and different colors (similar to a traditional set of cards, just different shapes).  The game comes with 5 levels of play.

1. Greater Than/less than:  Each player turns one card.  Announce the value of each card,  larger number wins the hand.
2.  Addition: Each player draws two cards and  adds his/her two cards.  The larger Sum wins the hand.  (For this one students can do the math in their head or count the shapes.  I introduced adding to B with this)
3.  Subtraction: each player turns two cards. Subtract the smaller number from the larger number.  The larger difference wins the hand.
4.  Multiplication:  each player draws two cards and multiplies them.  The larger product wins the hand.

Before the start of the game players decide how ties are resolved.  I just told B that we would draw another card to determine who wins a tie. 

We started by playing greater than/less than.  B did great with this and picked up on it right away.  During the game C (2 years old)decided he wanted to join in on the fun.  He helped me by flipping a card when I said "1, 2, 3 flip!". After I was demolished in a round of greater thanLess than we tried additon.  B did great with this also.  First I showed him how to count all of the shapes, then we moved on to counting on.  I again was badly beaten. 

I was thinking of other ways to use these cards in my classroom and came up with a few.

•  Sort by color
• Sort by shape
•  Sort by number
• Player with the smaller number wins
• Put numbers in order
• Play go fish to work on number recognition (that was B's idea)

I think my most favorite feature of this game is that it comes with its own hard plastic case,  no more flimsy boxes falling apart.  The cards are also durable and survived my 2 year kid throwing them all around the living room.  

KabukiHelps.com has graciously offered a giveaway to one of my readers.  They also are giving FREE shipping to anyone who orders any of the learning products on their site.  Just use the code Ahoy at checkout.   To enter just fill out the rafflecopter below!

Entry-Form

IEP card winners and a freebie

I know things have been quiet around here lately, but I am still wrapping my head around this Preschool thing and having a homeroom class again. I forgot about all of the added paperwork that goes along with it. Tonight I whipped up a supper simple oops sheet to send home asking for more supplies. I thought it would be a great freebie to share. I used fronts from Kimberly Geswein and clipart from My Cute Graphics. You can go to Google Docs to get it by clicking here. Please leave a comment letting me know what your must have forms are as a teacher. 



And we have a winner!!! Well, actually 2 winners!  I decided one wasn't enough.



a Rafflecopter giveaway

I hope you all are having a great start to your school year and I hope to add more posts soon!!


 

Who's that Blogger?

Welcome Everyone!!

         Are you ready to have some fun??
        
                                              ....Play a game?
           
                                                              .....Win  prizes and cash?

I have teamed up with 65 AMAZING blogger buddies to put together the ultimate Back to School Linky/Giveaway!!!

Each one of my blogger buddies submitted a cute childhood photo & generously donated something special from their online TpT shops for this occasion!! We have included a fun game for you to play for a chance to win over $300.00 in prizes and a BONUS  CASH-PRIZE raffle you can enter at the end of this post!! 

CHA-CHING!!

The game is easy to play....

 Your job will be to try and match each blogger with their childhood photo!!! With over 60 childhood photos and bloggers to match up, this might get tricky!! As I mentioned above, each blogger has generously donated one awesome prize from their TpT store. Successfully match a blogger and childhood photo, and you win the prize offered from that blogger!!! The more you matches you make, the more prizes you win!!! 

Check out some of the prizes you could win!!!

but Wait....

That's not all....

ONE lucky follower will win a $125 Amazon Gift Card!! Scroll to the bottom & follow the directions in the Rafflecopter for a chance to win $$$

The link below will open a form that will allow you to submit your answers for the match up. 

Use the blogger links and numbered images to help you along the way!! Each childhood photo has been assigned a specific number. 

Once you open the form, use the drop-down menu beneath each blog button and select a number that corresponds to a childhood photo. 

The form results will be collected throughout the week. At the end of the week, each submission will be "graded" and you will receive a prize for each blogger and photo you successfully matched up!!

The game closes on Friday, August 23rd at midnight (Arizona Mountain Time). Answers will be announced on Saturday, August 24th. Winners will be notified through email throughout the week. 

Use the blog links below the photos to search for clues!!

Click HERE to Play the Matching Game!!

AWE!!! PuFfy HeArT SWEETNESS!!!

An InLinkz Link-up

Click HERE to Play the Matching Game!!

Follow the directions in the Rafflecopter for a chance to win a $125 Amazon gift card!! 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thank you so much for participating!!! Good Luck!!!

If you would like to post about this linky/giveaway, grab the special image below to display in your post and link up below!!! Make sure to use the link to the actual post,,,

An InLinkz Link-up

Check out these giveaways!

HI all!
 My friend Heather over at Teaching Through Turbulence is having a huge giveaway for her 1st year blogging anniversary.  I wanted to share the links with you as there is some amazing stuff up for grabs.  She has 4 seperate giveaways going on, primary, clipart, upper elementary and video.  All of the giveaways end on Wednesday.  If you  click here you can find all of the giveaways.  Good Luck!

 

Easter Activities

Yes, I know Easter was 2 weeks ago, but things have been a bit hectic around here (more about that in another post) and I want to share 2 of the activities that we did in my classroom prior to Spring Break.

Can you find the eggs?

The first was an egg hunt.  Now, I had to make it educational, so I put sight words in the eggs to practice reading the words.  Some of my students counted the eggs  or identified the color eggs they found.  There is a lot of room for differentiation in an egg hunt.  The way I made this work was the kids and I read a story about an egg hunt.  Then the fantastic paras who work in my room took them on a walk to find Spring things in the hallway.  While they were gone, I hid the eggs all around the room.  When they came back I gave them each a basket (I forgot to bring baskets, so I quickly ran around the room dumping stuff out of baskets to give them) and set them loose.  I told them that they could only find 15 eggs as a way to try and help my not so quick students to also have an opportunity to find eggs.  The kids really had a blast with this!

 
The next day (which was a half day) we did our weekly cooking project.(I love all of the life skills and fine motor cooking involves!)  I really wanted to use up some of the stuff we had left over from previous cooking projects so we made Trail Mix.  I did pick up some of the ingredients at the store, but the rest was just a mish-mosh of cereals.  We used the white dipping chocolate that was left over from making our supposed to be snow-man pops to make chocolate covered pretzels.  To do this we melted the chocolate in the microwave (the kids each took a turn pressing the buttons) and then stirred in the pretzels   Next we spread the pretzels on a cookie sheet and stuck them in the fridge to harden while we worked on the rest.  






For the trail mix part I gave each student their own plastic bag and let them dump in the various ingredients (Of course they had to help me open the marshmallows and m&ms because I am way to weak to do that on my own, just have to watch out for the student who tried to open the bag with his teeth!)  After we put all of the various ingredients in, we added the pretzels    I made my bag extra big so that we had some ton share with our friends around the building.  We shook the bags to mix everything up.  It was a hit with the kids and adults!!

 Also don't forget today is the last day to enter the Autism Awareness giveaway!!! Click here to hop on over to Teaching Through Turbulence.