End of Year Lollipop Holders EDITABLE FREEBIE

A few years ago I shared a picture of the lollipops and holders that I created for my students to send them off for the summer, telling them, 
"Have a sweet summer!  Love, Mrs. McKown"

Just recently, "The Mailbox" shared it on their Facebook page.  Ever since I have been receiving emails, requesting a copy of the flowers.  I hadn't shared the file before because I had listed my name right on the flower, but I just recreated the file to say, 

"Have a sweet summer!  Love, Your Teacher" 

You can choose to print them out as is.  Or since I left the file as editable, you can change the text so that it includes your name or your own clever saying!

Once printed, simply cut the flowers out, stick whatever brand of lollipop you choose in the center of the flower, and hand them out to your little sweeties!

In the picture of the final product, you can see that I used the "DUM DUM" brand of lollipops.  By reading comments posted through social media, I learned that a few people found this brand to be somewhat offensive.  To be quite honest, I never even thought of them that way before I read the comments and they are just great little lollipops to me!  I have used this brand of lollipops a lot, both at home and at school, and the kiddos really enjoy them and do not think twice about the name of them.

Summer Early Literacy Calendar FREEBIE

Oh my goodness...it is June!!  I just can not believe how fast these last few months have gone!

I still have a few more weeks, but soon the school year will be ending.  As I think back to the beginning of the year, I am so proud of the amazing progress my Kinderkids have made!  Now I start to worry about regression over the summer.  

My little ones truly need daily practice and reinforcement in order to maintain what they have learned.  Knowing that routines will soon be changing at home once school gets out, I want to provide my parents with some fast and fun early literacy activities they could easily slide into their daily routine.  So as I have in the past, I created a calendar for the summer months.  Each weekday, I listed a simple activity that could be done almost anywhere.  I tried to keep them somewhat quick so that parents can combine a day or two together in case they need to skip a day.

  The activities are pretty much the same as listed on the calendar I created last year.  They include reinforcement of:

~  rhyming

~  syllable segmentation

~  alphabetic knowledge

~  phoneme isolation (beginning, ending, and middle sounds)

~  sight words

~  early reading

Knowing that school districts across the country have different beginning and ending dates, I made two sets of calendars.  One for June-July of 2014 and the other for July-August of 2014.  The activities are the same for both sets.

I also wanted to add that since at the end of each school year, I send home all of the Student Readers the student has read.  There is an activity listed on the calendar that says, "Read your pack of student readers".  If you do not have these Student Readers, you could always supplement with a bunch of reading at the student's current reading level!  

As always, I would love to hear ways that you try to prevent the summer slide!!

There's No Place Like TBA

Happy Summer to you all!
I haven't posted since I was still in school because I have been enjoying every little bit of my first two weeks of summer vacation!  Wooo hooo!The weather has been A.MAAA.ZING!  Hot and sunny each day, which has allowed me to enjoy the new pool we just installed this year!  My days have been spent going to the gym, drinking my iced coffee, floating the in the pool with my little honey, spending time on our boat, and eating ice cream...lots and lots of ice cream!  It has been nice to take a break from thoughts of RtI, APPRs, SLOs, and any other educational acronym for a little bit and just focus on my little one and having fun!
Did you know that today is International Blog-Hopping Day?Over at TBA we are celebrating with a Wizard of Oz theme because there is truly NO place like TBA for educational blogging of course!

My fellow and authors and I invite you to join us in the journey by clicking on the picture above, which will take you to 9 different routes on the yellow brick road.  You will then be able to find some fabulous FREEBIES and link up your own posts along the path if you choose.
I have linked up two FREEBIES for:and

Hope to see or hear from you along the way!  Have fun!!

End of School Scramble

My students love scrambled sentences, do yours?  Since there are many special events happening in these last few days, I am not sure how much I am going to be able to see my first and second graders.  

I do have a few activities ready to go in case I am able to see some of them.  One of the activities is the End of School Scrambled Sentences.  This is an activity I created last year, but just adapted a teeny tiny bit.  (If you want to see that post, you can click here.)

This activity has 5 different sentences all about the end of school or summer vacation.  I pre-print the document, laminate, and cut out the word cards.  I then place the cards with the like pictures in cute little buckets.  The students then select a bucket, pull out the words and place them in the correct order to make a complete sentence.  Once they have it in the correct order, they then write the correct sentence on the recording sheet.  This incorporates use of their sight words, comprehension at the sentence level, and the need for proper punctuation when writing. 

Here are some 1st Grade CCLS that can be addressed in this activity:

RF1.1. Demonstrate understanding of the organization and basic features of print.
a. Recognize the distinguishing features of a sentence (e.g., first word, capitalization, ending punctuation).
RF1.3 3. Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.
a. Know the spelling-sound correspondences for common consonant digraphs.
b. Decode regularly spelled one-syllable words.
c. Know final -e and common vowel team conventions for representing long vowel sounds.
d. Use knowledge that every syllable must have a vowel sound to determine the number of syllables in a printed word.
e. Decode two-syllable words following basic patterns by breaking the words into syllables.
f. Read words with inflectional endings.
g. Recognize and read grade-appropriate irregularly spelled words.
L.1.2. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.
b. Use end punctuation for sentences.

How many of you are still in school?  One full day and two half days left for this girl here!  How about you?