Celebrating Back to School with a Freebie and a “Pin it to Win it” chance!

Happy Friday! Time for our usual Friday post…I have to say now that summer has come to an end I’m excited to start blogging again about what’s been happening in our classroom each week!

1. Well, it’s officially here- school started today! The students don’t start till Monday, but we had to be at school bright and early, so the year has definitely begun.  I’m looking forward to a great year with my old and new little friends! Here’s a little peek at how my classroom is looking before my little readers arrive. 🙂 Most of my walls are still pretty blank because I generally introduce ideas first and then hang up posters that align with our new ideas. They’ll get filled up soon enough, though!

So many posters to add to this wall as we go.

Ready to instill a love of reading with these books!

Word Wall fun!

Colorful spaces makes me happy!

2. Back to School Freebie!

Each year I like to get an idea of what my little kindergartners and 1st graders understand in regard to letters/words/sentences, so each year I do several sort activities with letters/words/sentences.  I will also throw numbers into the mix when necessary– as in, if I can tell words/sentences are above their ability level- then I switch to just numbers vs letters. So, I made a new sort this year that I’m now sharing with you.  My little friends will simply choose a card from the bucket and then determine if it’s a letter, word or sentence.  To help make the activity meet even more Common Core Standards, I’m having my little friends identify each letter name/sound if they choose a letter and then also explain how they know it is a word or a sentence, if they choose a word or a sentence (ends with a period, begins with a capital letter, etc.).  I imagine I’ll partially be teaching these concepts to them as we are doing the sort and then hopefully by the end they’ll have caught on and understand the differences on their own! You can download this freebie here!

3. Back to School Bundle Pack- Pin it to Win it!
This week I got my Back to School Literacy Centers Bundle Pack all printed, laminated and cut out and it just got me so excited to use it with my little friends. These activities will help me see what they know already and what they need some help with to start the year off.

Beginning Letter Sound Sort

Vowel or Consonant Sort

CVC Word Making

1 or 2 Syllables Sort

Sight Words/Rhyming Sort

Reading and Writing Graphic Organizers

Compare & Contrast Graphic Organizers

So, as I said, I’m super excited to use this pack and I want to share it with someone! If you are interested in winning this pack, please check out the simple rules below to enter for your chance to be the new owner of this pack! It is Common Core Aligned for Kindergarten and 1st Grade and works well for both those grades- might be more for introducing the concepts to the little kinder-friends or more of a review for the little 1st grade friends. Each of the literacy centers also comes with a recording sheet and writing extension page. You can check out more about this pack here.  I’m looking forward to using these with my little friends and then coming back to show you all their hard work. 🙂  I also can’t wait to choose a winner!

4. Social Media Fun
  This week Learning to the Core joined Twitter- whoa! If you are on Twitter, please come follow us and we’ll follow you back– just click the link in our sidebar! Or come find us: @learntothecore  Can’t wait to tweet with you! (Haha, really I’m not sure I quite understand Twitter yet- Instagram- totally get that, love all the pics– Twitter, not quite sure yet, but I’ll get there!)  AND- we’re on Facebook as some of you already know…we are going to start randomly doing some Flash Freebies on FB- we will most likely start next week in celebration of our first full week back to school, so if you aren’t following us already, click on our FB link in our sidebar and come join us for some fun!

5. TPT Sale!
I know you already must know about this because it’s just too exciting not to know, but just in case… this upcoming Sunday 8/19 and Monday 8/20 our entire stores are 20% off + you can enter the code from TPT to get a total of 28% off those two days! This really does make going back to school that much more exciting!

Thanks to Krista Wallden for the super cute button!

Thanks to TBA and Doodlebugs Teaching for hosting another great Friday of linkies!