NEW Wintertastic Fun Centers!

Hey y'all!  I posted on Facebook about my new Wintertastic Centers a week or so ago, but I wanted to show them on the blog.  My kids are having so much fun with these.  If you're like me you have a TON of centers for each season, but I always like to have some new stuff too.  I just pick and choose from year to year depending on my mood AND most importantly what my kiddos are needing at the moment.  Here we go!

You can find all of the centers you see below plus about 10 MORE in this packet!!

It has over 230 pages of winter fun!!

 Practicing vowels with owls...

 still practicing spelling cvc words...on this one they use the letter "marshmallows" to spell the word in the top of the mug

 We are practicing reading phrases...

 This one they had to segment the word for the picture...

 Scrambled up sight words are always tricky...

 Practicing counting on from a given number...

 This is hard for my kids, but we got lots of good practice with these icy number bonds...

You probably know that I like to have something hanging from my ceiling for centers from time to time...this week it was snowflakes.  We've also had leaves falling and kites too!

 On this one they had to "catch" or find a snowflake then color the tens and ones...

 Practicing base ten counting...

 And, man we have been working SO hard on making number pairs to ten so this was some great extra practice!

If you're interested in using these in your classroom click the first image in this post or click HERE.

Happy Monday!

Getting Ahead in Planning

Wow!  I have not blogged in forever it seems!  I had this post to share way back when and then life happens so...

I'm really trying hard to stay ahead in my planning because that's my weak area.  I'm always waiting until the last minute to do things.  Then, I see something on a blog somewhere or on Pinterest that I want to squeeze in so I'm having to stay late to plan those things and it's just bad.  My goal is to be better at planning and sticking to it!  (yeah, right)  Here's one thing I'm doing to plan ahead.  

WARNING:  It is NOT fancy by any means.  No, neat notebooks, no pretty covers, no typed up notes, nothing of the sort.  Just Ziploc baggies, post it notes, and my awful handwriting.  But, it's what works for me...for now.  

If you read my blog regularly you probably know that I teach through thematic units like most of us do.  Instead of pulling out 1 unit, I'm trying to pull out the themes for each month and go from there.  Here's how I am organizing them.  

I put my centers for each week in a Ziploc bag with the game pieces in front of each game.  Then, I put a sticky note with the week for each month inside the bag on the front paper.  

It looks like this...this was for week 3 of November.  

this was week 2 of November

This is a top view just so you can see that I even stick in my sentence strips for my pocket chart stories...it doesn't bother me that they are folded.  I know for some of you it would... ;)

 Okay so here is what the planning process looks like for me in December...I throw all of my December files into a big basket...then I go through and pull out what I want to do.

I know for some of you this looks like a train wreck...I am NOT "pretty" when it comes to my files.  This is how I learned to do it so it just stuck.  I should probably buy 3 ring binders and sheet protectors and organize, but that won't happen until my kids are grown probably...HA!

Then, once I pull and run copies I sort through the copies by literacy and math games.

 Last, they go into the Ziploc baggie like this until it's their week to come out and go into baskets!

So, now you know how I TRY to plan ahead on centers.