My Valentine to YOU: A Give-Away & a FREEBIE

It's Time For A Give-Away!!!

My favorite graphics!Click the image and search for "Early Years" on DJ Inker's site.

Take a look at what you can win !

"Early Years" from DJ Inkers!
It comes in 2 versions: CD or Download.

Click the image.

I LOVE DJ Inkers Graphics and Fonts

 and I have made so many of my products with them.

DJ Inkers is giving away an entire set of their 

"Early Years" graphics and fonts 

to one of my lucky readers!

There are over 900 clip art images
including nursery rhymes & characters, kids at play, 
ABCs, 123s, shapes, colored crayons, and dress-up kids! 
And you get all of the graphics in both color and black & white. 

Click the image.

You also get 3 fabulous fonts!

Click the image above. 

Can't wait?
CLICK HERE 

to grab the 

"Early Years" set
or

Enter my give-away 

to win this awesome set

below!

I even made this little FREEBIE using 

graphics from DJ Inkers Early Years.

It's perfect to use as a center during February!

click the image above

click the image above. 

This center activity 
comes with 10 cute hearts 

that will help your students 

subitize and match sets of dots 
with their matching numerals.
They also get a chance to trace numerals 
printed with a dotted font.

CLICK HERE 

to grab this FREEBIE.

I also used graphics from 
DJ Inkers "Early Years" 
to make a cute 
Valentine's Day Subtraction Book 
that is perfect for your students complete 
at your Valentine's Day celebration!

Here is a sample of just some of the pages: 

Click the image above to grab this entire set.

You can grab my newest 
Valentine Take-Home Book
by 
CLICKING HERE!

This "Early Years" set 
has become my new favorite set
from DJ Inkers!

Don't miss the DJ Inkers Valentine SALE 
which is going on right now!
CLICK HERE to see their 
Valentine's Day Sale.

Here is your chance 

to enter the contest for 

a Free"Early Years" set 

with 900 graphics and 3 fonts 

all from DJ Inker's! 
Enter before Feb. 4.

The winner was 
Angela Rooney!
Congratulations, Angela, and thank you all for entering!

(Angela, I emailed you.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
a Rafflecopter giveaway

My Rafflecoptor will begin at the stroke of midnight on Jan 28 and the winner will be announced here and on
 KFUNdamental's Facebook page 
on Feb. 4.

Good luck!  :)

File Organization to Maximize Planning Time!

Hello teacher friends!  It's Cori from Mrs. B's Beehive with a quick organizational tip for some Winter file clean-up!

If you are anything like me, you have a million resources all over the place.  Resources that belong to your school or district curriculum, resources that you've purchased from TPT over the years, and things that have inherited from other teachers.  Every class is different, and I definitely don't use the same resources every year, so I have quite a collection of resources at my fingertips.

To begin with, I make a curriculum plan for the whole year usually during my summer break.  I try to match-up my different resources, and focus on the same things each week, such as penguins, pumpkins, reindeer, etc. I use this resource to help me see the big picture.

I check my school calendar, and give each week a number.

I transfer the week numbers over to my planning calendar, and I start to organize my files. I label each file with a week number.

I put in all of the resources that I think I will need for the week, including homework and art projects.  I really do use a lot of TPT materials, and over the years I have prepped and laminated so many resources!

I used to keep every resource in a separate binder, and pull out things as I needed them, but storing all of my materials by week has really helped me be efficient in my lesson planning and copy making.

Every Wednesday, I pull out the file for the next week, and fill out my lesson plans on Planbook.com.

If you haven't checked out Planbook before, you really should! It takes a little bit of effort to set-up, and the first year is a little more labor intensive, but it really keeps me organized! I love how easily you can designate standards for each lesson, and get a tally of how many times you have taught each standard in a year.

My copies are already in the folder ready to go.  From year to year, there are some things that I keep, and some things that I change, but this system has saved me an incredible amount of time.  I hit print on my lesson plans, and head off to the copy room!  Honestly, after having this system in place for about 9 years, it takes me a maximum of 30 minutes to complete my lesson plans, and get my copies ready for the upcoming week!

I know this is a super simple technique, and I hope all of you are already using it!  Hopefully it will help some of you out there cut down on your planning time, so that you can focus on one of the other million things on your to do list! : )

Classroom Organization: Getting a handle on all of the STUFF!

Hello Kinder Tribe! Heather here from Learning with Mrs. Langley. Today I am here to talk all about organization. Let me be honest....I am the WORST! I have great intentions and then I start making piles and throwing stuff in my closet and pretty soon I can't find a thing. I usually spend a day each Winter break cleaning out said closet and getting everything back in order. This year was no different! 

Tip#1THROW IT AWAY!

I don't have a picture of this one because I had to take my haul to the dumpster before I could change my mind. STOP hoarding! You will feel so much better...I promise! I had an entire garbage bag full of coffee cans that I have been tripping over for months and I can't think of a thing I want to do with them so I gave them to a friend instead. I threw away/recycled about 2 boxes full of other stuff and it gave me SO MUCH ROOM in my closet. Now my brain can function again.

Tip #2 A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING

Have you ever realized that you missed a fun unit because you FORGOT you had it? ME TOO! I started keeping these binders with my master copies of everything for the month to help solve that problem. I keep our Monthly Homework in these binders and some monthly Easy Prep Centers in case I need to grab something quick. 
I also keep our important school supplies in clear drawers with labels so I can send kiddos into the closet to grab more glue sticks if we need more. It helps me know when we are getting low too! 

I also keep my Reading Street materials in binders so all the extras I have to go with each unit have a home. I keep the unit I am teaching on my desk and these stay in the closet. 

Tip #3 CLEAR BINS SO NOTHING CAN HIDE!

I have slowly added to my collection of clear plastic bins so I can see what is hiding on every shelf. The $1.00 shoe bins are my favorite!

It took me all day but I got my closet cleaned out, made my trip to the dumpster and the recycling bins, and donated the rest of what I didn't want. I started 2017 with a little extra organization under my belt and it helped things run smoothly those first few days back.  
Thank you for stopping by Kinder Tribe today. I hope some of these tips can help you get a great start to a new year! 

Happy New Year..Let's get ORGANIZED!

Happy New Year from everyone at Kinder Tribe! We are so excited for 2017! 

I'm Breanna from A Pinch of Primary and this month the Kinder Tribe members are going to be discussing all things ORGANIZATION. 

Organization can mean a number of things for you, your teaching BFF next door/across the hall, or the loud voiced teacher that needs to close her door because she gets so into her read-alouds (maybe that's just me?? LOL). To me organization is something huge and/or something tiny. Whether you're cleaning off a few papers on your reading group table from September (hey, no judgement) or completely revamping your classroom library so it makes sense for you and your kids...IT WORKS and you can make it happen.

Now, I'm still on Christmas Break for another week few days (where did the time go?! #Denial) and I cannot deny that thinking about school has been the last thing on my mind. I haven't touched my school bag and I probably have the start of some dust bunnies on my beautiful Erin Condren planner, but that's what break is for, right? I scroll through Instagram and I see so many teachers working on so many amazing things to get themselves ready to go for the second half of the year, which gets my wheels turning. Yes, they might only be turning between shopping trips and SVU episodes, but they're still turning.

A very simple organization tip that I do at the end of Christmas Break is get the new school supplies out of my tubs and ready for the kids to come back to. They do not get all new supplies, but they will get new crayons, glue sticks, and pencils/erasers. I KNOW I am not the only one whose kids end up with roughly 11 half-broken (possibly half-eaten) crayons by Christmas. I mean, half of my kids haven't seen their black crayon since about Halloween...possibly before then. During Back to School time, I purchased these crayon boxes at Walmart for $1.00 per box (link is not through Walmart).

These have been LIFE SAVING! They fit 24 crayons perfectly and they fit so well in my supply caddies for my table groups. I use the standard supply caddies from Really Good Stuff.

To make my life (and their life) a little easier, I realized the 2"x4" shipping labels fit PERFECTLY on the boxes. 

Add some clipart and a few cute fonts and VOILA, they're ready to go. There's nothing quite like the smell and look of fresh out of the box Crayola Crayons. 

The lovely ladies at Kinder Tribe are going to have some amazing ideas for you and I can't wait to see what's up their sleeves. (Mostly so I can get it together this month!) #StillRecoveringFromChristmasBreak

Have an amazing New Year!