Resources and Freebies Galore!

So excited to have new resources and freebies for you today. Thanks to Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching for throwing her weekly Five for Friday linky party to help me share them.

1.  I'm starting with what I am super excited about doing this year with my kiddos. I think it is wonderful when the early years of education are cherished by families– kids grow and learn so much! I help families collect memories in many ways throughout the year, and this activity adds to that collection.

One poem is for the beginning of the year and one for the end. Each poem is about how tall the child is at the moment, measured by the string, and reflects on how much they grow in a year. You do the measuring in the first and last weeks of school. I wrote the poems and include a copy for kindergarten, preschool, and first grade. You'll need yarn in two colors, one for the beginning of the year, one for the end. I am making them FREE to download, so all you have to do is print on cardstock. Directions for an easy way to measure your students' height is included, too. To get this freebie simply click on the photo above. I hope you enjoy it! PLEASE leave love in the comments and PIN!

2.  For the last month or so I've been posting on start-of-year topics– from the first minutes of the first day, to anchor charts, to info cards, to getting parents involved on many levels. And there are freebies to download, too. I've made a special page to connect to all the topics and will be adding to this page as time goes on so all back to school ideas and freebies are easy to find. You can go there by clicking on the photo below. I hope this is useful to you now and in the future. Pin so you can come back as I add on, too.

3.  In one of my last posts I talked about Think-Talk Sticks and I mention them here again so you don't miss out on a useful freebie.

These little babies are going help my kidpeople think and talk during various points in our day– guided reading, writing workshop, and general discussion. I got the original idea from Two Writing Teachers and include a link so you can get their freebie. Click on the photo above to see.

4.  The folks from SightWord.com contacted me to ask if I'd share the news of their resource site with you. I checked it out and, whoa, there are many, many FREE resources here to help teachers teach sight words, phonemic awareness, and counting. Resources include video lessons and lesson tips, games to make, and word cards, too– word cards that are completely editable. You can add any words that your unique class is working on. And did I mention it's all free! There's nothing to buy and you don't need to give your name or sign-up for anything. I suggest you check them out by clicking the icon below. They are not compensating me in any way, just think they are a goodie to know about.

5.  And last, a little bit of shopping fun. If you have a Meijer close by you might want to keep your eyes open for these little babies.

Are you kidding me! Watermelon seed sticky notes! Jonathan had to hold me back before I bought them all– they are on sale! Bonus! If you teach from Lucy Calkins you'll know that small moment stories are like seeds in the juicy watermelon of life, and this is a big idea that kids really latch on to. I can hardly wait until we get to those lessons- I'm going to give each student a watermelon sticky to keep in their notebook to collect watermelon seed ideas for small moment stories. I bet everyone comes up with a few ideas just to use the notes– mwah ha ha, the teacher laughs gleefully. I love when little inexpensive notions translate into good learning for kids. These are fun and novel and the brain grooves on novelty.

Well, that's all for this Friday. Hope you are happy with your finds!

Oh, yeah, almost forgot. Click back to the linky for more great ideas.