Are you ready for JANUARY!?

Start your New Year off in your classroom with this creative Art/Writing project about Martin Luther King, Jr.

Here are a couple great books to read to your primary classes to go along with the study of Martin Luther King's life, death and his legacy.

I love this series of historical books for my primary students.  My library has some of the titles, but I am growing my own collection as well.

A Picture Book of Martin Luther King, Jr. by David Adler

 Happy Birthday Martin Luther King by Jean Marzollo.  

Beautiful artwork in this one along with the story of his life.

SALE DAY! Here's a little football fun!

Enjoy some great resources for your primary students.  And if you purchase them this afternoon, you can get them all on sale!  Everything in my store on TPT and TN are on sale for 12% off today!  It's a Seattle Seahawk day, so I am having a 12th Man Sale!

For 12 hours....from noon today through noon Monday, you can get 12% off your purchase of any item in my stores.  So head over to either of my shops and enjoy the deal....no, you don't have to root for the Seahawks...but it's ok if you do :)  UPDATE:  Neither site will let me choose 12%...so you will actually get 15% off! Woohoo...Lucky you!

Primary In IDaho on Teacher's Notebook    
or    
 Primary In IDaho on Teachers Pay Teachers

Here are some examples of what you can find....

My Ten Frame Math has been very popular.  I wasn't smart and fancy and put a link in them to the second one I created...

 But there is a Ten Frame Math #2.  It extends the first one in a nice progression for those that want to give your students a bit more practice with missing numbers.  It is a nice transition to getting them to think about subtraction.

And once they start to have a sense of numbers and what addition and subtraction are...then it's the perfect time to move into my new creation.   It's called Building Houses and Number Bonds.  I used them throughout 1st quarter with my 1st graders and it was a very helpful addition to the non-existent math curriculum we have right now.  It made for a wonderful transition into subtraction facts!

 At this time of the year, it would still be helpful for resource students, Kindergarten students, Homeschool students, or those who are still just a bit behind.  The number bond pages are great for homework or entry task pages as well!

Here are two other things I would like to highlight for the sale....

My Fun with Facts Coloring pages.  My first graders love doing these...they don't even consider it math because they get to color!  (I have an easy bunch this year that LOVE to learn!)

And besides math, my other true LOVE in teaching, is writing!  I love to have my first graders write.  They do it from day one in September and we write a couple times a week.  Our new Language Arts adoption has a writing component in it, but sometimes they have a difficult time drawing from personal knowledge to write on those topics.  So I fill in with things they know and love to talk about...here is a great winter one about Snowmen.

Cuties and Crayons in Kindergarten

Here is another wonderful kindergarten blogger...

Jennifer Drake at Crayons and Cuties in Kindergarten has lots of fun ideas for her K-kids.  She also loves a good blog hop.

Check out this cool activity for helping your young ones learn to spell their name.  Very clever with a little cowboy kick....I can appreciate that in this part of North Idaho! The students can walk on the letters of their name to practice spelling it.  There are some cute cowboy boots and a hat they make to go along with it.  Be sure to visit {this page} for more details.

The feet are printed on double sided scrapbook paper and like most of us...we hate to throw things away, so Jennifer shreds the paper scraps and saves them.

Then she fills a box with them and the students have to hunt for letters in the box.  I think this would be fun in one of those rice/water/bean table in your classroom!

My last weekend of Summer 2014

Yeah....life is busy and life is full and life is flying by....But this blog is something I really want to revive and move forward with because I realized I am neglecting some of my hobbies I love the most!

This is the blog post that inspired me to blog again!   Post --> {Click THIS}  

Kathy has a whole list of great math game ideas for levels K-3.  My first graders will be coming right after Labor Day, and when I saw this I knew exactly what I needed this for!  

I am going to make one of these...

• My version: The game will be for two-4 people.
• Each person gets 6 linking cubes of of one color (or little bears or whatever you have that they can have six of one color per person) 
• They will roll one die and they get to put a color token in each section when they roll it.  
• If they roll the same number twice, they lose a turn.  
• The winner is the one who gets one of their tokens in each section first!
• This is a very easy beginning of 1st grade center game which won't take adult involvement to participate.

Kathy has other great resources on her website...check her out!

KathyGriffinTeach.com 

Super (bowl) Sale!

Please stop by my TpT or my TN store to get sale prices on all my teacher creations!

I live in Seahawk territory (Shhhh...I'm a Niner fan myself) and all around me are 12th Man signs, symbols and flags.  So I decided that today would be a perfect day to jump on board and have a 12% discount in my stores.

One problem with that.  Neither shop will let me do 12%...they only do increments of 5, so you lucked out and I am doing a 15% discount!

Now if the Seahawks win...there will be a special sale ALL next week to honor the victory, so check back after the game :)

Visit my Teacher's Pay Teachers store HERE

or my Teacher's Notebook store HERE

Nearly Famous!

Woo hoo!!  My day was made today when I opened up TpT and found myself (well, my store) as one of the featured stores!!

I'm not one of those 6 digit earning teachers....yet....but I did break $100 this month!  So maybe this is a good sign for 2014.  14 is my lucky number after all!! :) I believe that right now I have 14 items in my store too...there's that number again! I need to increase that to have more earnings.  It's not that I don't have the ideas or the projects to load...but the time to do it would be nice.

Perhaps you could stop by my store {click here} and see if you can find anything useful for your classroom. I teach in Idaho and we are 17th below the national average for teacher salaries (33rd from the top--yes, thank you Mr. Luna and Governor Otter for perpetuating that!).

I'm not even at the Idaho state average yet!  What a goofball I was to leave my salary in California and move $20,000 backwards.  But if you have ever been to North Idaho, you would understand why we did it.  It is a wonderful place to raise your kids.  Everything balances out in the end.

So, I did notice that a lot of teachers who have stores on TpT are from those states that are hanging with us below the national average!  For me, the reason I do it is because my brain is full of ideas.  I have had co-workers tell me for years (before TpT existed) that I should make a book of what I do.  Well this is one way to start.  Also, there is the cost of college....one daughter is starting college next fall and our second daughter is going to dual enroll next year during her junior year in high school.  Now comes the next 4 or 5 years of poverty for us...so anything I can create and load on TpT will help get my kids through school!

Do you have a TpT store?  Do your earnings go to something special?  Do you have a favorite store you go back to over and over?

ok...gotta go finish the comments on my report cards tonight!  Oh, yeah, and make 14 cheer bows for the Mini Hawk performance at the Varsity game tomorrow. Phew....I'm tired already. lol

Lost in Idaho...or parenthood...or work...or life

So intentions, if they were worth money, would make me rich!  I got lost this year.  Strayed away from some of the things I wanted to accomplish.  It wasn't because of a lack of trying and it definitely wasn't because I was being apathetic and not doing anything.

It started with the end of the school year last May, then summer came, and summer stuff that kept me away from my computer. I guess in some respects that is a good thing.  But not what I was hoping for.

We bought a camper this summer...something that my husband has wanted to do for like forever...so we had to use it.  Then the next thing I knew, August cheer practices started, and fundraisers and team bonding and then school began again.

Now add in my daughter being a senior, which means I have been on the Senior Parent Committee planning the grad night party this coming June, filling out FAFSA paperwork and scholarship and college applications, and two varsity competitive cheerleading daughters, which I coach, and of course there are the 21 1st graders I live with Monday through Friday...and the icing on the cake:  Common Core adoption and no math curriculum so we are fudging our way through the next two years until it's in the budget to adopt an actual curriculum.  I feel like I am swimming against the current just to keep up and getting nowhere.

Anyone else out there feel that way??

So 5 hours of sleep in a night is a good night.

I don't want to wish for summer because that means my first baby will graduate...and there is no way I am old enough for that.  But could we please have a few more hours in my day.  26...is that too much to ask?  Really, just one or two.  Just slow the spin of the earth just a tad bit.  Is that too much to ask for??

Here are my two biggest distractions...my girls:

So hopefully I will find more time to post and actual get to the 365 blogs I'm looking for!!  

Happy New Year!

And yes, I haven't sent my Christmas cards out yet either! lol