Tpt Challenge: goals

When I originally started blogging and using TpT I had no real aspirations as to where I was going to go with things.  As I have learned and grown I now have some goals that I am hoping TpT will help me reach some day.

1.  Pay off our mortgage.  Yes, I know we just bought our first home yesterday, however, I would like to take less than 30 years to pay it off.  I can imagine how freeing it would be to not have to make a house payment each month.

2. Pay off my college loans.  I have high aspirations with my education.  I do plan on getting my doctorate some day just so I can be called Dr. Orsborne.  I am currently working on my master's in Special Education Research.  I am not exactly sure what I will focus on specifically for my Doctorate, but I am sure it will have something to do with Special Education.

3. Vacations!!!  I want to be able to explore the world with my family.  Unfortunately on a teacher & survey managers salaries, it will not happen with out a lot of skimping and saving.

TPT Challenge

I know everyone probably knows about the TPT challenge and I am participating.  I  am just late to the party.  We went on vacation to Pigeon Forge, TN last week for a family vacation.  We went to Dolly Wood, Splash Country, and Ripley's aquarium.  Today we are closing on our first home (Talk about stress!!!).  Since I knew we would be gone I was focusing on getting my grad school work complete so that I would not have to do school work during vacation.  Busy, Busy!!

The first part of the challenge is to know your stats before you start.  So here they are!! I wrote them down on 6/14/2015, but never got around to post them.  

The next two parts that I have not done yet are Makeover Madness and Blogging about my goals so be on the look out for those posts later this week!!  What are you all up to? 

Color Snowflake freebie!!

Hi everyone!! Guess what!?!  I am posting and it is not a linky party or a blog hop.  Just a good old post from me.  It has been busy with the 3 boys for Christmas.  My living room floor is covered in toys and packaging.   Grandpa bought the boys play bow and arrows so I have been dodging arrows being shot through the living room while a transformer runs over my toes.

I have been working on a lot on some of my TPT products and stuff for my classroom.  I found that the color tree file folder game I made recently was a big hit with my students, so I just made another one!  This one has snowflakes and instead of the color word purple it has the color word white.   You can get it by going here.  Please leave a comment on this post if you download it.  I love to know if you find things useful.

My boys and I have also been working on our Random Acts of Kindness.  Anyone else? I was so proud of my middle son on Christmas day.  He opened a present from his aunt that was in a Kohls box, except he never made it past the box.  He thought it was his gift.  He told his Aunt thank you for the box and moved on to the next gift.  We had to tell him to look in the box.  My husband and I were so proud that he was happy with a box and showed appreciation to his aunt for it.

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

Getting Festive for Fall with the VA Bloggers

So how has the hop been treating you so far?  I love blog hops.  I get to check out new blogs and get lots of new ideas.

Fall if my favorite season.  Partly because I grew up on a pumpkin and Christmas tree farm in NJ that had the Application Mountains in our backyard.  The fall view was always gorgeous. Now that I have moved down here to VA I don't get to see as much of the beautiful changing colors, but I do enjoy the weather.








In my classroom we are busy talking about community helpers, fire safety, and my favorite PUMPKINS!  We have been playing one of my favorite letter games called Oh Pumpkin.  It is a forever freebie in my store so if you have not downloaded it already, what are you waiting for?










There seems to be a lot of Halloween themed freebies going around right now so I thought I would make my freebie Thanksgiving/November themed.  This will give you ahead start on planning for next month.  This is a color by word activity that works on different sight words.  It is free for this hop ONLY!!! It will go to paid item on Monday so get while it is free!!  Click here to get Thanksgiving Color By Code: Sight Word.

I hope you enjoy the rest of the hop.  Now it is time to head on over to The Techie Teacher to see what Julie is cooking up!

Dr. Seuss week

Are you celebrating the life of Theodore Geisel this week? We love Dr. Seuss books in our house and at school.  I have already read some books this year and wanted to show you an activity I made to accompany the book 10 Apples up On top.

Last year, I had the kids put an apple on their head and then I took a picture.  They then typed the sentence “I have one apple up on top.”.  This was great for the group I had last year, but with this years crew I knew I needed to do something different.









My preschoolers are working hard on counting, one to one correspondence, and number identification. So I made them a book to count the apples on their heads.  I took a picture of each one of them, cut out the background (that tutorial is coming up soon!), then placed apples on their heads.  It is perfect and the kids love it!!  For the apples I took a picture of an apple we had in our classroom (Ok, really about 15 pictures. I had to have the perfect one) and cut out the background.  Then I just pasted the number I wanted on their heads.  I had pictures to share, but my flash drive is not working.  Hopefully I can update in a little bit with pictures. Yay!! My husband fixed my flash drive!!!

I was trying to figure out how to share this adorable activity with everyone, so I made a version of the book  How many apples up on top? with animals.  You can find it in my TPT store.   If you would like a book with your students in it, send me an email.  I am thinking about offering a custom book in my TPT store, but want to gauge interest.  The price would be $5 or less (up to 25 pictures).


Last year I also made the green eggs with my kids using the vanilla wafer and pudding.  You can find all about that by going to this post.  Anther yummy activity we did was with bananas and strawberries.  We were able to practice fine motor skills, patterning, and communication with that one.  You can find a post all about it here.

We are doing a lot more this week and I will post about those activities later.

Dinosaur unit (Freebie!!)

We did so many cool things during our dinosaur unit!  The kids really loved reading  all of the dinosaur books,  playing with plastic dinosaurs in the block area, walking like dinosaurs, and learning our dinosaur song.  We used this dinosaur song to practice pointing to words, identifying our letters (we circled them with a dry erase marker) and to introduce a craft we did with a baby dinosaur hatching out of an egg.  

I had the egg project from a few years ago , but it was hand drawn.  I decided to redraw it (Yes, I drew it all by myself!!! That is so exciting to me!!) on the computer. My kids loved singing the song that goes to the tune of "I'm bringing home a baby bumble bee".  One of my students has never been a tracker or reader (just not there developmentally yet) and he jumped right in with the song and was the best at tracking.  I could have been more proud!


Since I took all of the time to create this craftivity, I though it would be a great thing to share!  So here you go!  Click on the picture or here to download this craftivity for free!!  I would love to know if you have any cool activities that you do for a dinosaur unit.

I am linking this post up over at Teaching Blog Addict's Freebie Friday!!

Deck the Halls(freebie)

**Check out this post for an update on my Gingerbread man stuff!!!**

Have you started your wish list for the TPT cyber Monday sale?  You will be able to save up to 28% at my store and a lot of other stores. I have joined some of my blogging buddies in a links party to showcase some of our favorite products to the tune of some of our favorite Christmas Carols.

Let's get this party started with I'm Dreaming of a Christmas Product.  This is my latest interactive book featuring cute little gingerbread men (and women).  These gingerbread people are dreaming of being put in the correct spot such as over the house or between the elves.  My students have loved doing the different versions of these book.  Be on the look out for the student edition sometime this week!  

Next on our playlist is It's Beginning to look a lot like Reading.  This sight word game, Oh Snow, will have your students rocking and rolling into the new year with sight word confidence.  Put all of snowman cards in a fun winter container.  Students take turns pulling cards and reading the word.  If they pull Oh Snow!   The students needs to out all if his/her cards back.

And the last song on my playlist is Walking in a math Wonderland. This gingerbread themed practice sheet works on time to the nearest 5 minutes.  Best of all, it is FREE!

There are lots of other song on the playlist! Remember to use the code to save at TPT on 12/2 & 12/3!

Head over to Buntings, a Books, and Bainbridge and sing your way into Christmas break.

http://bainbridgeclass.blogspot.com/2013/12/deck-halls-with-tpt-linky-party.html

IEP Cards

 I have been looking for a way to make it easier for people who work with my students to have more convenient access to my students’ accommodations and modifications.

 Last year one of the fabulous paras I work with suggested a small card. I toyed with this over the summer and ran across this blog post from Teaching Special Learners.  That was it, my inspiration.  Later that day, I came up with these IEP cards.  The set up for these was a bit of a pain, but once I had it all figured out, filling everything in was a breeze.
 Each card includes the student name, grade, homeroom teacher, case manager,  disability category, seizures, behavior plan,  services, related services (PT, OT, speech,), accommodations/modifications, and additional notes.   After I had everything set up, I printed them out ( a different color for each grade level), hole punched them and added them to a binder ring.  I also added a confidential cover to the front and the back.  I have already received feedback that these are a great help to our specials teachers and the paraprofessionals that work with my students.

If you are interested in these you can find them in my Teacher's Pay Teacher's Store or try to win them through the giveaway below!




a Rafflecopter giveaway

TPT Back to School Best & Most

A few bloggers have got together to showcase our best and most likely products in our TPT stores, yearbook style.We are linking them all together over at Buntings, Books and Bainbridge.   Just in case you don't know, TPT is having a Back to School Sale.  At my store you can get up to 28% off just make sure you use the code BTS13 at checkout.   So here is my yearbook page..... and just for giggles I am also including my yearbook photo from my senior year.

 Yup, that is me at age 17 getting ready to start my senior year. I almost added my 6th grade graduation picture but that could be used to scare away rats.

Teacher's Pet:  I chose my Happy Grams.  I use these to give to students (and sometimes my co-workers) to send a good note home.  I simply print them and cut them apart in boxes.  Best of all, these are FREE!!! (If you grab them, I would love some feedback!)

Most Likely to Help Your Students Succeed:  Flower Power is an activity to focus on beginning sounds.  It includes a game where students match the picture on the flower to the the flower pot that has the beginning sound.  You could also use the flowers as flashcards for vocabulary building.  Including in this pack is 6 beginning sound practice sheets to help reinforce skills.  

Best Couple:  For best color I chose two of my sight word activities.  The game Shipwrecked and Color by code sight word sheets.  Both activities are great to review sight words during centers or as a small group activity.  You can see a game similar to Shipwrecked (Oh Peep!) in action by clicking here. 

I hope you enjoy checking out all of the awesome products.  Make sure you head over to  Buntings, Books and Bainbridge.and check out all of the other year book pages!

Also, I promise, next week I will have post with a bit more meat to them.  This new classroom has been a bear to set up!