Maria Manore Readers. You Can Win Some!

Would you like to win an entire book filled with about 100 readers like these? 

These readers help your kids in many ways. They practice cutting, pasting, spelling, coloring, and reading too! When they take them home, parents are thrilled that their child has a book they CAN read.

Click HERE to take you to the post. 

Then enter the rafflecopter.

Maria Manore from Kinder Craze was so generous to donate this book to me just so one of you could win it! You have until Sunday to enter. Don't wait too long or it will be over. 

A Giant Give Away! HUGE HUGE HUGE!

Do you know Maria Manore? She has a darling blog called Kinder Craze. She is one of my Michigan Blogging Buddies. I have had the pleasure of meeting her twice and she wowed me both times!

This is a picture of our group when we met in Grand Rapids.

Maria has a wonderful set of sight word books that helped me a ton when I was doing a maternity leave in kindergarten. I love these books and so did my students. 

Click the picture above to go to her store to see this product and its description.

Keep reading for your chance to win this!

I know that cutting, pasting, and coloring is an important skill in kindergarten as well as reading. Her Bundle of Books helped my students finesse these skills. I love to do arts and crafts kind of things too. But when time is an issue something has to go. So I used her books to help with all of those skills. 

You can buy each book separately for $1.00, or you can buy the bundle for $50.00 for 100 stories. It does pay to grab the bundle. 


The pictures below show how I put the books together. It's super easy and you only have to copy enough for half of your class because each set has two books on it. 

First I make my 13 copies, because at the time I had 25 kids. Then I staple the 6 pages together. I use an electric stapler and boy does that make the job a ton easier!

Then I use the trusty old, OLD paper cutter to cut each book in half. And even though this cutter is old, I can cut two sets of books at one time, and who doesn't love time savers?

The last page in the set is the words that will be pasted onto the books. 

Those can also need to be cut in half. 

Be sure to separate these before you staple the books together!

  Then pass these out to your students. They love to color the cute pictures!

Keep reading for your chance to win this!

 Cutting these letters up was a great practice for my kids. Plus when they glued them down they had to check with the cover to see that they were spelling the word correctly AND that they didn't have any letters pasted on upside down.

 Here's a trick that might save your sanity. We have "trash caddies" that we put on each table. This is where the students put the scraps instead of letting them fall where ever. (They still do fall on the floor, but more of them end up here!) When you are done with this project, you can ask someone from each table to empty the trash caddies.

Keep reading for your chance to win this!

And finally when the book is done, they can proudly read it to someone in the room. They take them home and practice reading them at home. At our conference time, many parents told me they save these books and go back and read them over and over again.

Now, Would YOU like to have a set of all these books? 

Maria has given me the opportunity to give one to you!

If you're a kinder or firstie teacher (or even special ed or home school teacher!) you'll love them.

YOU COULD WIN THIS!
All you have to do is enter the rafflecopter. It's easy, and soon we'll have one winner. I hope it's you!

I will pick a 2nd winner to win a set of any 3 things from my store. You have to enter to win. And if you want to share with friends, that's perfectly ok with me too!
Here's your chance to win!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Extra Lotion for Dry Little Hands

We are in the heart of the winter here in Michigan. Last week we missed 2 days of school due to sub zero temperatures. This week they are calling for record lows again. Geesh! 

Do you have some left over bottles of lotion? You know the kind where you don't like the scent any more. Or there's not very much left? Or you got some new flavors for Christmas and just don't know what to do with the leftovers in those bottles? I have a solution for you. 

You know how when it's this cold outside, our kiddo's hands get real red and chapped? Well, you can use those left over bottles in your classroom so they can keep their hands soft and unchapped. (is that a real word?)

Grab a plastic bowl that you were going to throw away anyway 

(see this is also a way to recycle things!)

and put all those lotions in one place.

Then grab my label that I made and slap it on the front and the back of this container.

This is the back of the container.

It's very important that you take some time to teach your kids HOW to use lotion. I had problems with my 2nd graders so I know that Kinders and firsties will also need directions! 

Some of my kids were squirting a huge puddle on their hands. (I suspect that they have never squirted lotion before!)   Some kids wanted to put one squirt of EACH kind in their hands at one time! And then I had kids whose hands  were filthy and they are smearing lotion on top of all that dirt! So I made this list of directions to help you have more success than I did!

If you'd like a copy of the sign you can grab it here! 

If you do get it, I would love to know! So leave me a comment or two. I thought about putting it on TPT so I could keep track of how many do pick it up, but this might be easier for this little bitty thing! 

I hope your kids love this!

P.S. They just cancelled my school for tomorrow due to predicted cold temperatures! (Cancelling this early helps parents find daycare for tomorrow.)

Hump Day Linky

Yup, uh huh! It's Hump Day! 

So let's have some fun with it! In this bitter cold winter it's time to warm up each other by sharing what we are doing in our own classrooms right now.

 Today I was working with my students and using one of my own products. I made this story problem set last year. But as I worked with it today, it really bugged me! I no longer loved it. I found that it was hard to read and may have been hard for the kids to read too.

So I spent the afternoon fixing this. I'm so much happier with it. I hope you agree! If you already own this, you're going to want to redownload this updated version.

Don't you agree that this is easier to read?

If you want to pick up a set of these, just click HERE.

Thanks for checking in with me, now go back to Mrs. Stanford's Class to see who else has joined the Hump Day Highlight!