SPED Tricks & Treats blog hop

Hello!!  I hope you are enjoying the SPED tricks and treats blog hop!  I can't wait to see the goodies everyone can collect.  Special educators always have to have their bag of tricks handy and you can never have too many. 

My trick is all about metallic sharpies (and this will lead right into my treat)!  I love metallic sharpies.  They show up great on dark paper (especially black) and look so much better than a white crayon or colored pencil.  I have been able to get them  almost anywhere sharpies are sold and they come in gold, silver, and bronze. I used these twice this past week to make the activity I am about to show you and also to make dots on a black circle (that activity went with my letter F week, I will share it it soon). 

Last weekend, The Printable Princess  posted about some activities she made for her kindergarten classroom.  I just loved the spider webs!  However all I could find at the dollar store was black plates, which I ended up loving even more.

 I used the silver sharpie to draw the webs.

1.  I started by adding the targeted skill in the middle, for example the letter Y. 

2.  I then drew a circle around the Y 

3. Next, I added lines going out from the A to the sides of the plate (I usually did 4 or 5 lines on each one). 

4/5/6.  Last I connected the lines to make  spider webs.  I found it easier to start on the outside of the plate and work my way in.   

I made these adorable spiders to go with the webs.  I used graphics from My Cute Graphics and added letters, shapes, and numbers to the back to make a matching game.  I also picked up some spiders at the grocery store that my kiddos who are practicing 1:1 correspondence can count out the number of spiders to match the web.  This week with one of my kiddos we matched the letter spiders to their webs.  She loved it!  I told her the spiders were sad and needed to go back to their homes.  This worked like a charm (sometimes she is tough to get started )!  She was practicing identifying upper and lowercase letters, I was able to sneak some letter sounds in and we even practiced counting by counting how many spiders we had matched to their webs.  I can't wait to do this with her again this week.  

So this leads me to my freebie!!!  I am sharing the cute spiders I made to go with these webs.  I have included all of the lowercase letters (you would write uppercase on the web), shapes, and numbers.

 You can get them by clicking on the graphic below!

I would love to hear how you use these spiders or any of the tricks I shared with you.  Please leave a comment below!

If you are not already, make sure you follow me on Facebook, on my blog, and on TpT so you never miss another freebie!

Now hop on over to Breezy Special Ed to see what tricks and treats Brie has in store for you!!

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.

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Keep hopping along to Owls  & Lessons Etc.

Valentine Blog Hop: My turn!!!

Whoop!! Whoop!! It is my turn to have a Valentine treat for you. Before I share my goodies though, how has the hop been going? Lots of fantastic stuff!!! Last year I made a book called Valentine, Valentine (You can check it out here) and it was a huge hit in my classroom. I read it again this year and my students just love it. One of my boys gets so excited when I bring it out he almost falls out of his chair. To keep the excitement going into March I made a new book call Shamrock, Shamrock. It is the same pattern, just using a St. Patricks Day theme. I thought this would be the perfect thing to share since we are nearing the end of February. Please leave me a comment if you download this file and let me know what you think. I would love to know if your students like it also.  (Make sure you scroll to the bottom of this post, there is a giveaway!!!)


Without further discussion, here we go! You can download the file by clicking on the picture or at this link. I had hoped to to have actual pictures so you could see this book in action, but the weather had other plans.  I ventured out to school today just to get out of the house.  I brought home my copy of Shamrock, Shamrock, but unfortunately the pictures are not the best.  To make the book, print the pages, laminate, bind, and then use the included shamrocks (or foam ones made out of a die cut) and put velcro on the page and one the shamrock.  I try to put the Velcro to the side so it does not interfere with the picture (someone else put the Velcro on this one for me, so I need to move a few pieces).  Then as you read the book, students can take turns pulling off the Shamrocks. My students often start chiming in and saying the repetitive line with me.

 I am not only giving away Shamrock, Shamrock to everyone, but I am having a giveaway for winner's choice of 1 item from my Teachers Pay Teachers store!! There will be two winners!!!

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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!

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.

Autism Awareness Blog Hop Giveaway

I hope you all have been enjoying the blog hop and all of the great stories (a few tear jerkers out there) and freebies. Just in case you missed any of the posts, below is a list that will take you directly to each stop.

 Don't forget to stop by Teaching Through Turbulence where Heather has a fantastic giveaway set up.   There is a $25 Amazon Gift Cards and a a surprise item from Therapy Shoppe (Check out this post for a hint.  Shhh don't tell anyone I told you.)!



 

Autism Awareness Blog Hop

Welcome to the first stop on a special blog hop for Autism Awareness and the Special Educators who dedicate their time and talents working with students on the spectrum. Today being the official day for Light it up Blue & World Wide Autism Awareness Day that is sponsored yearly by Autism Speaks we thought it would be a great day to start this hop.  There a lots of great bloggers participating and I hope you find lots of great information in the linked up posts.  The last day of the hop will stop at Teaching Through Turbulence where Heather will feature a giveaway.  You will have a chance to win a great prize from Therapy Shoppe or Amazon Gift Card! (I am crossing my fingers for the Therapy Shoppe one!)

Some of you may already know that I am a parent to a child diagnosed with PDD-NOS.  My son is 6 years old and helps (along with his 2 brothers) to keep my husband and I on our toes. He is technology geek just like his mamma and could probably teach anyone how to use a computer.  I recently explained to A about Autism and how it is something he is diagnosed with.  To help him understand I used this great video that I discovered a few months ago.




Great right? Anyway, I have been teaching in special education for 8 years now and if you follow my blog, you know that it is my love. I decided to share some of my  teacher, student and data collection forms with you as a freebie!

Click here to go to the Google Doc to check them out and to download them. I hope you find these documents as useful as I do and if you have any comments or questions please leave me a note below.

In addition to the freebie, I am also throwing a sale in my Teachers Pay Teachers and Teacher's Notebook store.  Everything is 15% off!!  This will be from April 2 -5.


 Make sure you hop on over to The Resource(ful) Room  and to For the Love of Teaching Math to check out what Amy & Andrea have in store!! (If you click on the link, it will take you directly to the blog post, if you click on their button, it will take you to their blog homepage)













  
Did you miss the hop?  Check out the links below to visit all that participated!