Because I Said So!

Becky Bailey is the author of Conscious Discipline and she is amazing! She is also hysterical! One day I would love to go to a training led by her....especially, if it involves going to the beach with an adult beverage her Florida training center.

But there are some days, Becky Bailey has left my classroom...and heck, she went running out of the building! Yes, I might spit out a sarcastic remark, raise my voice, and sometimes give a silent cheer when someone cries realizes they need to start making better choices.

I am not perfect and I try very hard to remember to apologize to the kiddo that got a little taste of what they had coming for them the heart of patience that had been drained, irked, tested, and bucket dipped dry.

This is a part of Conscious Discipline that I struggle with. Have you ever watched videos for professional development that show this la la land classroom that has you going yeah right, if they only knew what some of my kiddos are like??!???!!! At times, I feel like the kiddos just need to obey me because I am the adult and that is life...you have to do things whether you like it or not or you have to be ready to face the consequences that may result if you do not obey. I could get them to obey with threats, loss of privileges, or other forms of control but in the end we want the children to trust us and submit their will to us because we care about them and hold their best interests in mind.

Here is the statement that sums up chapter 4: The only person you can make change is yourself. When you find yourself getting upset by what a child is doing or in any situation, you are giving your power away and setting yourself up to blame someone or something else. Once again Conscious Discipline takes me to the place where I listen to what I am saying....and realize how changing my words can make a significant difference.

Have you ever said statements like this?

When you are quiet, I will begin.
Don't make me have to ____________
You are ruining the story for everyone
You are driving me nuts.
Look what you made me do.
Look how you made her feel.
I should do these grades tonight. I have to have them in by Monday. I have not mastered this one! =)


These statements are blaming someone else for how you are feeling....they are statements of entitlement and we need to move to empowerment.

The biggie for me was Look how you made her feel. According to CD, we need to change that to Look at her face. Her face is saying I don't like it when you push me.


Honestly, I am still trying to wrap my brain around this and the book gives some great examples of how to change these statements.

Here is one more example that I am sure many of you have been saying too.

Change When you are quiet, I will begin to I am going to begin when you are quiet. That shifts the power from the child being in charge of you and when you will begin to you are in charge of choosing when to begin.

The next part of this chapter is choices and how to offer 2 positive choices. This is going to have to be part 1 because this is a HUGE part of CD and can make a world of difference....and my Type A, control freak mind set still battles with this because the reality of life does not always offer you 2 positive choices.

BIG IDEA:
How do I help the child most likely choose to ____________________________ instead of How can I get the child to ____________________________.


If you are thinking How can I get them to be quiet it is the same thing to your brain as How can I make them be quiet. If your brain is hearing make, it is going to come up with every manipulative, feared, forced, coercive strategy you have ever been taught. If you are thinking of how you can help the child make a positive choice, you answer will be more creative and might involve changing the structures of your classroom and reflecting on yourself and the needs of the children.


I am going to stop here because that is a lot to soak in and you might be getting a headache!


I am excited to share the next part about 2 positive choices because it helps me to revisit the ways I can help myself be a better teacher and in the end hopefully help my kiddos learn some powerful stuff! =)


I hope you come back to read more about choices.


I had a sweet follower ask if I had ever been to any training on CD. I have been to several workshops on CD  with presenters who have been trained by Becky Bailey. These were both through Early Childhood departments in nearby colleges. I am still no expert and don't have all of the answers. I still struggle with doing the things I share. I am more conscious of what I say and do now. But there are still days that Becky Bailey has left the building....and I wish she took me with her to go get an adult beverage or back to Florida and beach! =)


Moving on......

In word study this week, one of our centers is sorting words with a venn diagram. My kiddos are crazy about this!

Here they are sorting words with a ck ending, a blend, or both.

I just added it to my TpT store today. I would love for you to check it out here. =)

There are 4 activities:

*sorting compound words, words with blends and words with both.

*ck endings, blends, and words with both

*magic e words, blends, and words with both

*bossy r words, digraphs, and words with both

It is on sale right now for only $4....that is a dollar a game! =)

You can use it without the sorting loops and still have your kiddos record the words in the venn diagram.

Moving on......

I think I have shared how much I love Laura Story's song "Blessings". In case you are not familiar with it, here are the lyrics that always touch my heart:

'Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops,

What if Your healing comes through tears,

What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You're near

What if the trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise.

One of my other favorite songs talks about how sometimes God calms the storm and other times He calms His child. When ever I hear it I think of rainbows. I love rainbows because they are a promise from God...I like to think of them as God's smile from Heaven. Each one of you that stops and takes a few minutes to leave me a heart note are blessing me in so many ways. I think of each one of you as I share this poem.

This poem is also a reminder to myself about being a rainbow's promise for my kiddos.

Blessings to each one of you!

From My Heart to Yours,

Guess Who? Christmas Riddle Fun

My kiddos love riddles and they are great for helping my ELL kiddos develop vocabulary by using descriptive language. We play this game with blends and compound words so I quickly made one with Christmas words...and my kiddos LOVED it! We played today and they were very excited to then write their own Christmas Riddle.

Here is a picture of the trail game.

This game has no beginning or ending starting point. The player (or team) that has the most pairs at the end is the winner. A player draws a card and reads the word and moves to that picture or the player draws a riddle card and reads the riddle THEN moves to that picture. The players are trying to match the word card to the riddle card that describes that word. There are also special cards to take another player's card or one to trade a card. This really brings in the problem solving in deciding which card they should trade or take.

After we played, they wrote there own Christmas riddles. Here are a picture of 2 of them. We were still working when it was time to go so I was only able to get a few pictures. They are turning out really CUTE!

Click on the picture to grab your copy!

Please let me know if you have any questions about how to play. I would also love to know if you would like me to share my compound word riddle game and the one for blends. You know how much I LOVE your heart notes!

Remember, my awesome giveaway ends this Friday. If you want to read more about it click here.

You could win one of these ADORABLE shirts!

Remember if you blog about my giveaway leave me a heart note and let me know you did. That will be one more chance for you to win! =)

You bring a smile to my face and my heart with each heart note you leave me...THANK YOU for blessing me. =)

Crabs, Blenders, and Smiles

Meet Cranky Crab and Flora Flamingo.

Part 1:

Aren't they cute??!!!??? Before Christmas, they came to visit us and brought us the Blend Friends Song. We learned how a blend is made of two consonant friends that are seen and heard together. After seeing this blender on Pinterest, I knew Flora and Cranky would need to bring us a real blender!

Click here to check it out!

One day when we returned from lunch we had a package at the door.....inside was a blender and we started talking about What is this thing? Remember, I teach children of poverty so only 4 had EVER seen a blender! One kiddo did say, "My mom makes margaritas with that, giggles a lot, and then falls asleep on the couch! Ha! Yeppers, I said "Thank you for sharing that." and we moved on. I asked them what else could we make in the blender and 1 friend guessed a smoothie...yes, only 1 of my sweet darlings had ever drank a smoothie. That is also why I love the kiddos I teach because EVERYTHING is new and wonderful to them! =)

We talked about what we could put in a smoothie that would taste yummy Cranky and Flora had left us some blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, cranberries, and pomegranates. We used frozen water (ice) and white stuff from cows (milk). They LOVED it!

Part 2:



On Friday, we made blenders to help us remember all we have learned and worked on the past few weeks. Nikki from Melonheadz Illustrating helped me out by making me an ADORABLE blender. I made a template based on her cute blender and the kiddos were all smiles as they made one of their own (This was a big deal because I have 2 that always cry when we do art!)

Here is a glimpse of what we did!

After this, we wrote all of the blend beginnings inside the blender...no close-up of that....sorry!

I made a blend sort using Nikki's super duper cute blender. We wrote some of those blend words on the recording sheet and colored the blends with a crayon.

Here they are! They make me smile too!

I am sorry the pictures are not real clear....I am using my phone. =(



Later in the day we got another package (and letter) from Flora and Cranky (Flora and Cranky are in our room too...watching for friends being helpful!). First, we read the letter and highlighted all of the blends we found. Next, we opened the package. Inside were the ingredients to make a Cranky Crab snack: pretzels, bread, strawberries, whipping cream, twizzlers, craisins, and blueberries...all blend foods of course! =)

Here is our Cranky Crab snack! He is too cute!

As always, I would LOVE a heart note! I truly treasure each of you and am blessed by each visit you make...you make my heart smile!

Question of the day:

What is the funniest thing a child has ever told you their mom or dad does?

It is those stories that make some of the things we go through more bearable AND help us understand our kiddos so much more...the apple doesn't fall far from the tree does it?!!??? =)

Check back soon to learn about Our Heart Buddies. =)

From My Heart to Yours,

Snow Much Fun

Lots of my Texas friends have seen a white Christmas this year. I love snow but I am more of a beach kind of gal. Cold weather makes me want to hibernate inside with my mug of spiced tea, a book, and my boys...the furry ones. =)

My mom and I went to see Les Miserables this afternoon. The theater was **FREEZING***!!!! Even though I was turning into a human popsicle, I LOVED the movie.

Awesome movie...bring the Kleenex.

To help you welcome winter, here are some *freebies* to warm you up. =)

Click on the picture above to grab the snowy contractions *freebie*.

Click here to grab all of these activities and more!

Here are some of the skills included in this *freebie*:

short vowels

blends

adding and subtracting

tally marks

problem solving

I hope you and your kiddos enjoy these activities. If you grab these *freebies*, please leave me a heart note (comment).

I am working on some Conscious Discipline posts. Let me know what questions you might have so I can try and answer them the CD way. What classroom management areas/concerns do you have?

I hope you had a very Merry Christmas. I'll be back before the New Year...now saying that is cray cray!!! Where did the year of  2012 go??!!???

From My Heart to Yours,

Letter Detectives

If you want to get your kiddos excited about words, all you need is a visit from the Letter Snatcher! OMGosh do my kiddos LOVE when he leaves us "mail". This is such a great way to work on ANY word study skill. The Letter Snatcher is a person who sneaks in our classroom and snatches letters from our words. He even gets in activities we have on our SmartBoard!

The Letter Snatcher writes us "mail" and in the letters from him there are always missing letters. It might be the initial, medial or final sound and sometimes it is an entire word. Later on in the year, he might snatch blends and digraphs or whatever skill we are working on. The "mail" is a great way to practice word wall reviews and cloze sentences. He will also leave us a package with the letter detective cards and magnifying glasses so we can hunt for the letters he took. The cards are put in a literacy center and the children use magnetic letters to finish spelling the word. I have also put the letters for the cards we are using in a pillowcase that we happen to "find" in the room like the Letter Snatcher lost those letters when he was snatching them.

If you are interested in helping your kiddos become letter detectives, check it out!

letter detectives

Here is a copy of the letter detective song.
letter detective song

Check out the pictures of our "mail"!

March *Freebie* Fun...and Sound Racers =)

I love Spring. Here in East Texas we are already seeing the signs of Spring:  tulips trees, dogwoods, azaleas, and many other flowers are all starting to bloom. March also brings Spring Break, my birthday and my niece's birthday. But, I also start freaking out a bit....

3 months of school left???!!!???!!! Holy Moly...I need to see how much more I can cram into my kiddos heads. There are times I am feeling good about all of the progress my kiddos are making then....BAM!!! They say or do something that makes me want to go bang my head against the wall. Seriously, where have you been the last 7 months ????!!!!!????

One of my kiddos last week could not remember what this sign meant -....and this happened right after she just successfully finished a math sort that was mixed addition and subtraction. I had a 5 minute conversation with her that made me think I needed either an adult beverage or medicine for the migraine headache that was coming on. I felt exactly like this...

At times like this, all I can say is Help Me Jesus.

With Easter being in March this year, we will be doing a few of our leprechaun and St. Patrick's Day activities this week. Here are some of the *freebies* I shared last year.

Click on the picture above to grab your *freebies*.

My kiddos LOVE dice games. =)

Here is a subtraction sort....

And some ABC order fun.

***************************************************

I finished this packet several weeks ago and just never got around to sharing with you about it. My kiddos love this and I am able to use it with all of my Guided Reading groups. The packet has around 300 words that focus on:

*short vowels and CVC words
*blends
*digraphs
*CVCC and CCVC words
*magic e
*r controlled vowels
*the 2 sounds of ow
*ou words like in mouse
*oo words like in boot
*vowel teams like ai, ee, oa, ay, etc

This is wonderful for RtI and is amazing at helping children blend sounds together to help decode words. The kiddos LOVE using little cars to drive over the sounds and then race and blend the sounds faster to read the word.

It is on sale this weekend. Click here to go check it out. =)

I hope you enjoy the *freebies*. I would love for you to leave me a heart note if you grab them. 

From My to Yours,

Vowel Munchers

I cannot believe it has almost been a week since my last post and I am not really sure where that week went! My kiddos really had a pretty good week...no Potty Police incidents to report, no one eating anything like pencils, paper, crayons or their toenails. Yes, several years ago one of my Firsties pulled off his shoe and then his sock and then bit his toenails off and ate them! I think I was too horrified to throw up!

We did a really cute lesson on Friday to celebrate blends and I am really excited to share about it ....especially because we did a craft that I made a template for! That is like off the charts HUGE!!! I LOVE crafts but cannot draw a straight line with a ruler and rely on my teaching buddy to do it for me because SHE ROCKS! I hope to share it with you this week! =)

I had a brain pop today for something that we are going to do daily until Valentine's Day. We are going to start on Monday so be looking for that post...it will be all about encouraging, helping and noticing the kind acts of others in Our School Family! If you are new to my blog, please go read the post about Building Your School Family. I share all about how we use helpful hearts to fill our bucket. This would be a great thing for your class to start this February if you are ready to take your first step to putting some Conscious Discipline into your classroom. Click here to go to that post. Here are some pictures from that post.

We have been working hard since before Christmas with magic e. I made this little *freebie* that you can use as a Read the Room or Pocket Chart sort or however it floats your boat! =) These Love Monsters are some of my favorite clip art because they are just so stinkin' cute. I hope your kiddos can use this short or long vowel sort!

graphics by DJ Inkers

I had a wonderful surprise on Thursday! I was pulling out some baby wipes for the Table Washers to use after we eat our Breakfast in the Classroom and under what I thought was a crate full of wipes were TONS of glue sticks!!! Wahoo! It was like Christmas all over again! I am not sure about your kiddos but we go through glue sticks very quickly because we use them daily. I buy them all summer long and buy lots of my kiddos' school supplies like folders because:  1. I am anal and all of my blue folders must be the exact same shade of blue and 2. I can put more glue sticks on my School Supply List for the beginning of the year.

So, my Question of the Day is this:

How much are you allowed to put on your School Supply List?

I also want to send a big Heart Hug to Holly at Crisscross Applesauce in First Grade. She left me a comment to just check up on my since I had not been posting lately. Thank you sweet friend!

Thank you to each follower who comes by my little blog....I am still not sure why you do but my heart is blessed because of you! I love and treasure each one of your heart notes!

From My Heart to Yours,

Dive into Endings

I LOVE clip art and fonts! I have been restraining myself from all of the CUTE Christmas clip art on Scrappin Doodles. I have a serious addiction to fonts too. Ummm, I might be beyond addiction....I have downloaded 1,222 fonts. Yes, my name is Heather and I am a FONT FREAK!!!!

I am a beach freak too. The beach is one place I can totally relax. I love the sound of the waves as I read a great book. So, this beach clip art makes me VERY, VERY happy!

This is a game that can be used any time of the year....and I like that. My different reading groups have been working on word endings: s, ing, ed, and magic e plus blends and digraphs. This group of kiddos are going NUTS over word reading games we play during reading groups. You can mix and match these cards depending on the skills your kiddos need. There are s, magic e with s and ing endings. The cards with the ed endings are a mixture of the 3 different sounds ed can make (ed, d, and t). All they do is read the word. We also play it where they have to say the word in a sentence. This is great for your ESL kiddos and a great way to develop vocabulary. =)

If they get the shark card, the game is over. =(

clip art by Scrappin Doodles

I would LOVE for you to take the time and leave me a heart note. :)

Label Love: Interactive Learning Fun

Are you ready to discover some awesome Bright Ideas? 

Here is just one of them. :)

I am so excited to share with y'all some fun ways to use labels for Word Study, Math, Science, and more. I love labels and we have been using them to get us up and moving around. PLUS they can often give us the opportunity for some great discussions...OR they give us a chance to practice skills without talking. :)

Here are a few examples of the different ways we have recently used labels. I buy the address ones that are 30 to a page.

For Word Study, I typed (You can also just write them) one part of a compound word on each label. They kiddos had to get up and get moving to find the other half to their compound word.

For Math, I typed random numbers from 1-120. I called on about 8-10 kiddos to come to the front of the room. My other kiddos had their marker boards. They had to write the numbers in order from least to greatest. I then had the kiddos with the labels put their number and themselves in order from least to greatest by making a human number line. We were then able to check our answers.

We then sorted ours numbers and ourselves by numbers greater than 25 but less than 75.

I also called out number clues to help each child identify the Mystery Number I was talking about. For example, I am 10 more than 42 and I am the same as 5 dimes and 2 pennies. I also let the kiddos make up the clues about another person's number.

For Science, we sorted ourselves by living and non-living. To extend that activity, we then used some of our inferring skills to determine what object I was talking about using riddle clues. I forgot to take the picture of this.

Here are some others ways you can use labels:

*short and long vowels
*even and odd numbers
*needs and wants
*solids, liquids, or gases
*shapes- by 2d or 3d, vertices, edges, etc.
*digraphs or blends
*true or false math equations
*balanced or not balanced number sentences
*animal coverings
*syllables
*beginning or ending sounds
*rhyming pairs
*characteristics of different genres
*contractions
*characteristics of fiction and non-fiction
*nouns, verbs, and adjectives

You can even have students create the labels for another group to sort and solve. :)

For more bright ideas from 150 different bloggers, please browse through the link up below and choose a topic that interests you. Thank you so much for stopping by Heather's Heart.

An InLinkz Link-up

Hop over to my TPT store or my Pinterest boards if you get the chance. :)

From My Heart to Yours,

Sound Box Hop and Stretchy Snake

Today we met Stretchy Snake. Stretchy Snake is one of the Beanie Baby Decoding Strategies. He helps us to s-t-r-e-t-ch out our sounds and then blend them back together. We have been working on sound boxes during Word Study time and today we made our sound boxes for the learning rug. For some reason, they LOVE watching you do this. We then practice stretching out cvc words as we hop into the sound boxes. This is great for your kinesthetic learners (plus those kiddos who can never sit still like to use ALL of the energy God gives them (hahaha). This is hard for some kiddos who want to put all the sounds in one box but they soon realize they have to hop one sound for each box. They then hop "out" of the boxes and say the word. Later, after lots and lots of practice, this activity will be one they can choose from during Word Study centers. They even come and use the sound boxes during Writing Workshop. Later on in the year, we will add another box when we do words with blends. When you do sounds like sh or ck, those are 2 letters working together to make one sound so you only hop into one box for that sound.

Meet Stretchy Snake

Our Sound Boxes

Sound Box Hop

I hope your kiddos are happy to hop! I love heart notes because they encourage me to share more so please one! I would LOVE for you to follow me too!