Alphabet Train Table in the Works and Awesome Deal From the Lakeshore Learning Sale!

I finally was able to snag the Alphabet Train from Lakeshore Learning, that I have been coveting for so long, at an AMAZING price!  It includes an engine plus 26 colorful, wooden train cars each with a letter on it and a toy that fits in it that starts with that letter. It's on clearance for $39.98 which is half of the original price!

I have several planned activities for this train set.  I plan to let the kids play with the train cars as a choice time activity initially.  I'm hoping kids will recognize letters that they know, look for the letters in their names, or the letters in their peers names.  I also hope some will try to put the train in order from A to Z. During small group time I will allow the kids to use the little toys and try to use their phonics skills to figure out which letter goes where.  I also want to use the little toys to change out the toys I have in the Lakeshore Learning Alphabet Mystery Box. This is a favorite game in my class, but it becomes too easy after awhile with the same items. It doesn't look like there are too many repeats between the 2 items which is awesome. So I am excited to have more little toys to change it up! 

I plan to use the Alphabet Train with the Lillabo train tracks from Ikea which are a great buy at $9.99. Now that I am moving and will have my own garage to work on projects and a place to spray paint my issue is how do I fix my train table. I have had a Brio Train Table sitting in my storage unit for almost 2 years now just waiting for me to fix it up!  It needs the plastic trim replaced, but other than that it is in amazing condition considering I paid $5 for it. It's all cracked and has rough edges so it must go! It can't be that hard, but honestly I don't even know how to begin.  Have you ever replaced the plastic trimming on wood or particle board furniture before??? Any ideas???  

Lakeshore Learning is Having a Sale!

Lakeshore Learning, my favorite teaching supply company, is having an amazing sale right now!  Go fast, seriously!  Many awesome items are on sale for 20% off plus if you spend $79 or more shipping is free.  What they aren't advertising is that they dropped the price recently of some of their sale/clearance items!  If you haven't figured out already, I love a good sale!  Especially when it is on things that I have been wanting but won't let myself splurge on.  Last night I picked up 3 things that I have been wanting for my classroom from the sale.  It took everything in me not to buy more to get the free shipping, but I'm moving in a week and Mr. B school is already complaining about the amount of teaching stuff I have currently...

Anyways back to the sale!  I just ordered

• The Lakeshore Learning Alphabet Train for half price at $39.98.  I'll be making a post later about my plans for the Brio Train Table I scored at a garage sale.
• Hook and Link Alphabet Letters for $3.18/each in both uppercase and lowercase to use with my felt board when we read the story Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and also for uppercase/lowercase letter matching

I can't wait to use my new items this fall!

My Owl Classroom Theme 2011-2012: Part 3 - Utility Cabinet Transformation

If you haven't read parts 1 and 2 of my owl classroom theme, then go do it!  This post is dedicated solely to this boring lovely gem used to house art supplies and paper that I was required to have in my classroom.  I decided since it was within the kids reach that I should take full advantage of its magnetic surface and try to make it a fun place for kids to play with magnetic letters.

My Owl Classroom Theme 2011-2012: Part 2 - Bulletin Boards

If you haven't already read part 1 of my Owl Classroom Theme post, go here and do it first!  This part is solely devoted to my Owl themed bulletin boards

So last year I wanted my main bulletin board to really stand out!  I decided to cover it in bright orange fabric.  Then I used a plain bright pink border that I randomly was given by another teacher when she left the field.  I covered it with orange dot stickers to imitate the cover of one of my favorite 4K books, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.  This is my best bulletin that I have ever created.  I absolutely loved it!  So much so, that it stayed up all year round.

My Owl Classroom Theme 2011-2012: Part 1 - The Hallway

Since I was assigned to teach yet another new grade level in a new school, I decided I needed a new classroom theme to go with it because I was tired of penguins.  I wanted something new and different so I chose an owl classroom theme for my 2011-2012 classroom theme.  I loved it!  It was so different and cute. My colors were teal and orange.  They were inspired by the lovely orange accent wall in my classroom.  What goes better with orange than teal?! I called my AM class the Blue Owls (teal) and my PM class the Orange Owls. Throughout my room I used the plain brown and green Carson and Dellosa owls that were the only owl decor I could find at the time.  Now owls are EVERYWHERE!  Yea that's right, I'm saying I'm a trendsetter.  I'm such a hipster teacher. No, not even close. Really though, I am seeing them in every teaching supply catalog and all over my beloved Pinterest.  This year's owl decor is also so much more colorful and cheery! I have a board on Pinterest solely devoted to my owl classroom theme, but I must say I think my owl classroom is the cutest one I have seen to date.  I might be just slightly biased...

Hope you enjoy Part 1 of the tour of my owl themed 4K classroom from the 2011-2012 year! Stay tuned, I to post my penguin themed kindergarten classroom from 2010-2011.

Tutorial: Angry Birds Pig Ball for $1

When deciding to do Angry Birds Live in my classroom I struggled to find enough of these green pig balls, so I decided to take matters into my own hands and try to make one!  I was inspired by the amazing Angry Birds balls in this post, but I am lazy and that seemed far too expensive for something that will literally roll around in dirt.  So I decided to buy a ball at Dollar Tree, grab a Sharpie and a stencil, and try my best to make it look like a pig.  This was a surprisingly easy thing to do and I kind of regret buying the 2 I did at Walmart for $8.97/each.  My students didn't seem to notice the difference between the 2 store bought ones and the one I made.  Below is a simple tutorial to make your own pig ball for about $1!

Assessing Gross Motor Skills by Playing Angry Birds Live

I was inspired by several Angry Birds posts on Pinterest to do something fun at the end of the year in my classroom.  Check out my inspiration here! I decided to assess gross motor skills for the end of the year by making Angry Birds Live in my classroom. I had many reasons for choosing Angry Birds Live: I had to pack up my classroom so I had tons of boxes laying around, I wanted a fun way to assess their ability to throw a ball at a target, my students love Angry Birds, and well it just looked fun!

First Tutorial: "Pete the Cat - I Love My _____ Shoes" Paper Bag Puppet

So I was inspired by this post pinned all over Pinterest, but it was lacking the printable pieces!  Bummer!  I ran to Target hoping to buy these blue lunch bags and to my surprise I actually found them.  They were in the paper products aisle for $2.39 for 40 bags.  So I bought 2 sets. I then searched the internet for far too long, but eventually found this printable PDF to use for the Pete pieces.  Yes, you have to sign up for an account if you don't already have one to access the PDF.  I ended up using the 2 legs, head, tails, eyes, and shoes.  I planned to recreate my own, but really why recreate the wheel!  This one is cute enough as is, plus the extra legs really aren't that bad because my 4 year olds really struggle with cutting and some kids decided to get creative and give Pete 2 arms at the sides with extra legs.  The kids loved being able to choose the color of Pete's shoes.  For my classes red, white, and pink were the favorite shoe colors!

Check out my Pinterest Board dedicated to Pete the Cat here!

Step by Step Tutorial under cut

Backdating and Pinspiration...

So I have an unexpected 5 day weekend due to a crazy heat wave and working at a school with no air conditioning.  I keep telling myself I want to get back into blogging, but for whatever reason I haven't done it.  My new goal is to try to blog 3-4 times a week because for me everyday just isn't realistic.  I am also debating whether or not to back date entries because I have so many things that I have taken pictures of in the past that I would like to refer back to and share with others.  Do you backdate entries?

I just set up a twitter just for this blog. I don't personally tweet, but I do pin like a mad woman. Pinterest is why I want to start blogging again.  I find so many great ideas there and I often tweak them a little when I replicate them to make them work for me.  I also get a lot of inspiration off of Pinterest, or shall we say pinspiration.  Anyways I love to share ideas with others so I figure I should share my tweaks to inspire others...

Follow me on Pinterest to see what inspires me!

https://pinterest.com/kators/

So why am I blogging now after all of this time off?!

I used to keep a Livejournal about a decade ago where I recorded all sorts of random stuff.  Mostly I blogged about life in college, starting grad school, and clothes. I lost interest in that sometime around the time I finished grad school and started working and I deleted it shortly thereafter.  Once I went back to school to become a teacher I started finding amazing teaching ideas online in other teacher's blogs.  I have come across so many awesome teaching blogs over the years, but I have never really put forth the effort to do one myself.  Plus I struggled to come up with a name.  Today a name finally came to me so here it goes...

I am known for constantly finding someone else's idea on the internet and then tweaking it just a little to make it better different.  I tweak for a million reasons: to save money, to use what I already have, to make something easier (for my students or me), to make something more challenging (for my students), to meet the various learning needs of my students, or to simply make it more visually appealing. Whenever possible I will credit back to the original source if I can find it... If you think you are the original source to something that I posted please let me know and I will give you the proper credit. Thanks!

Product Review: Lakeshore Learning Frogs on a Log Counting Kit

I am in an Early Childhood graduate certificate program at a local university which focuses on math.  Our amazing professors arranged for a Lakeshore Learning representative to come into our classroom and let us play with a bunch of early childhood products.  We brainstormed different ways to use the products to work on early math skills.  At the end of class we each got to pick something out to take back to our classrooms.  I ended up with the Lakeshore Learning Frogs on a Log Counting Kit and I could not be any happier!  We were all so thankful!  It felt like Christmas for teachers :)

So far I am in LOVE with this counting kit.  Although it's hard to tell from the picture there are several different species of frogs in the kit and each frog has the species on the bottom of it. There are so many different things we have used them for so far - patterning, counting sets, number identification, one to one correspondence, sorting colors, sorting species, comparing numbers, basic story/CGI problems, and best of all singing 5 Green and Speckled Frogs.  I have the 5 log and 5 of the green frogs sitting in my teaching easel at all times for whenever someone asks to sing "5 Green and Speckled Frogs."  For the longest time I wanted to purchase this "Speckled Frogs on Log" set to go along with the song, but now I have something that works just as go for free!  Thank you Lakeshore Learning!  My students and I really love this counting kit!  I would LOVE to review more products :)

Do you have any other uses for this product?

Product Review: Hoot Owl Hoot

I am always looking for more ways to encourage cooperative learning in my 4K classroom.  I ordered the game Hoot Owl Hoot by Peaceable Kingdom mainly because it had good reviews and it fit my classroom's owl theme. 

The object of the game is for all of the kids playing to work together to get the owls home to the nest safely before the sun rises.  Students take turns drawing cards and then moving any owl they chose to the color on the card.  If they draw a sun card they must move the little square at the top one spot closer towards the sun.