March into Spring Blog Hop, FREEBIES and a GIVEAWAY!

Hi! My name is Pam and this is my daughter and partner Brittany. I am a first grade teacher and I have been teaching elementary classes from K-3 for about 30 years! I know that is a long time! :) I am blessed to get to do a job that I love and that is working with children. Brittany is a singer/song writer and is a preschool administrator. We decided to combine both our loves of education and music. We create fun resources that include songs, games, books and no prep sheets. Our goal is to make learning fun and educational for all children!

We are so excited to be a part of this great team of teachers that make up "Ladies With Class!" We look forward  to working with them to bring y'all great ideas to your classes.

So what is your favorite thing about spring?

Now here are a couple of FREEBIES from our store: Just click on the pictures:

Hop on over to the Green Garden Club and check out her great FREEBIE:) Then remember to enter for the $40 TPT gift card at the end of the hop. 

We hope that you have a great spring break or had one!

Show Me the Money!

We were so happy to see so many of y'all stop by the book hop this past weekend! We hope that you got lots of good reading ideas. Thank you for all the kind comments on our Biscuit unit as well:)

Well, it is that time of the year where we start teaching money, so we wanted to share some of the activities that we do to teach money. We know this is a difficult concept for many children, so we hope these ideas will help them. 

I use coins every day, starting with the first day of school. Students put up a coin every day. They started with a penny and add a penny every day and then on day 5, I show the kiddos that we can change 5 pennies into a nickel, then we change 2 nickels into a dime on day 10, etc. My kiddos loved it when we put up a $1 for 100 days!

I have found that teaching math in small groups is very successful. I give my students a board, marker, coin chart that is included in our pack or you can use a hundreds chart, and a bag of coins.

Let me tell you a good time saver is to have the items I mentioned all in a gallon size freezer bag. That way you can give each student a bag with everything they need.

I will ask the students to place coins on their boards and write a line under each coin. I walk them through how to count and write the amount as they go. I also show them how they can use their number charts to help them count their money.  

I also show them how they can use their coin charts to help them count their money.  

Brittany and I have created a 70 page money unit that has fun games and activities with a daily lesson plan that lasts 4 weeks if the plan is followed. Just click on the picture below to purchase:

We use our coin books that are included in the unit in a math center with coins for the kiddos to match the pages. This is a great center for the students and easy to set up. 

 We have our fun games included with our class mascot, Quality Quentin. The kids love seeing him on some of our products! I always tell them that we are doing quality math with Quality Quentin.

 Here are just a few sheets from this large bundle of money activities! Over 70 pages and a daily lesson plan that will last you 4 weeks! There is also a fun money rap song with a puzzle that matches the song about the coins.

We also have a fun money scoot game. Y'all can also use these cards in a math center.

You can check out what people are saying about this fun game here:

We hope that these ideas will help your kiddos with counting money.

Please comment about some of the ideas that you may have found successful when teaching money:)

Thank you!

VA. is for Book Lovers Blog Hop

 I just love children's books, don't you? And I love to read them to my kiddos!  My students really enjoy it when I use different voices for the different characters. They would listen to me read "The Pigeon and the Hotdog." everyday. They just love it when I use a little squeaky voice for the chick.

I have to also tell y'all how important it is to read to your own children! I read to both my children and my daughter Brittany- who is my partner always enjoyed reading, however my son Brandon-not so much! He hated reading as a child and up until he went to college. Then something switched- He started enjoying it and he actually started going to the library because he wanted too:)
Now he is an avid reader and he appreciates being read to as a child. So, try to read to your children every day.

I also love to encourage my students to read to each other. It is great to observe them reading out loud:)

Another favorite book in my classroom is "Biscuit."As y'all can tell, it is a well-loved book:) They comment on how cute Biscuit is and they like how they can read the book themselves. I have also found that this is a good book to teach the kiddos about verbs.  We have provided a sample of a few pages of our Biscuit thematic unit. One of the pages is on verbs. We hope that y'all will enjoy them.

Just click on the picture below to grab your FREEBIE!

We also have the entire 75 page unit on sale during the hop for 50% off! Just click on the image below to purchase:

My kiddos loved making the puppy craft! I thought it was funny how this little guy put his google eyes on the face before he cut the pieces out. Kids love these google eyes!

Y'all can use brads to make the parts movable. My kiddos were walking their puppies around and saying "woof" as they moved the heads up and down:)

My students did a nice job writing about their puppies and it made a nice display for the hall. I copied our Pup poem on big paper and placed the puppies around it. This poem is in your FREE sample.

There are pocket chart cards of our poem in the paid pack that you can purchase 50% off during this hop. I gave my students a copy of the poem and they illustrated each line on the poem. The next day I gave out the cards of our poem to my students and they discussed the words with each other.

 Then they took turns building the poem in a pocket chart. We could not fit the entire poem in one chart so you will have to do it in parts or use two charts. You could also build it on a bulletin board if you have the space. You could also do half the poem one day and the second half another day.

These are cards that the kiddos match the verbs to the pictures of the puppies. There is also a recording sheet if you want them to record their answers. We also included the words without -ing if your kiddos are not ready for them. There is also black and white cards with the answers for the kiddos who just want to match them or use the cards to read the words.  

 We have a fun game called "Woof" that is included in this pack. The words from the book "Biscuit" are on bone shapes and the kiddos loved playing it! One of my little girls asked me if they could play it when they finished their work. I love when they want to play games that teach vocabulary:)

And now for the fun part! You can enter to win your own copy of Biscuit and the 75 page thematic unit we created to go with it! If you decide to go ahead and purchase it at 50% off during the hop and you happen to win our rafflecopter,  then we will let you choose another item for $10 or less.


a Rafflecopter giveaway




We hope y'all enjoy the rest of the HOP as you go through and get some great book ideas! Remember to hop all the way to the end so you can enter to win all the books that you have seen throughout this HOP!

A New Baby and a New Store!

First of all, I have to introduce y'all to my new beautiful grand daughter! We are so blessed and so thankful that she is here and healthy.

 Grandpa and Uncle Brandon are pretty smitten as well!

We are also thankful that Momma Brittany is doing well. 

Thank you for letting me have my proud Grandma moment:)

I am so sorry for those of y'all that are coming here from our FB post on April 12! I posted the wrong coin picture and it leads to this page, and because I boosted it, I couldn't edit it. Anyway here is the link for the Giveaway and the FREEBIES:

http://soltrainlearning.blogspot.com/2015/04/launching-off-with-educents.html

We are also excited to tell y'all that we have just opened a store at Educents and y'all can get our units for 50% off for a limited time to celebrate our new baby girl and our opening ! 

We have been very busy trying to upload our products there. We still have a lot more to put up, but as you can see, we have been busy with our sweet bundle of joy! We wanted to show you what is there-all at a discount for a limited time!  Y'all can also get a $10 credit to shop with just for opening a free account there!  http://www.educents.com/signup-bonus.html?r=84002 

Just click on this link to check out our new store:) 

http://www.educents.com/sol-train-learning

Click on the heart at the top of our store so you will see all our Deals and Freebies that we will be posting. We appreciate the support!:)

Here are a few pictures that will show you what is included in some of these products:

Our best selling Money Unit includes:

You can also just click on the pictures of the products to purchase:)

We use our coin books in a math center with coins for the kiddos to match the pages with.

 We have our fun games included with our class mascot, Quality Quentin. The kids love seeing him on some of our products!

 Here are just a few sheets from this large bundle of money activities! Over 70 pages and a daily lesson plan that will last you 4 weeks! There is also a fun money rap song.

This is our Plant Unit that has lots of ELA and math activities for your kiddos to do as they learn about plants, including a fun and upbeat song about the plant cycle.

There is a book that has the words from the song in it. I glued the colored pages on sheets of construction paper to make a big book to read to the students.

There is also a black and white coloring book that the kiddos could color and use to answer the fill in the blank sheet.

There are read around the room cards or y'all can use them in a center. The cards have our classroom mascot, Quality Quentin on them. Our kiddos love Quentin!

There are 20 word family cards to sort on leaf shaped words.

 You can use these cards in a center or as a scoot game.

These are just a few sheets that are included. There are also sheets on other vowel sounds.

We have also included 2 math scoot games  or y'all can use them in a center with the manipulatives we have included. They can use both sets and find fact families.

 There are math sheets as well.

 This is our newest science unit that goes with our fun and catchy song on Five Senses.

 There are science experiments.

 There  are colored pages that can be put together as a big book.

 There is also a coloring book for the kiddos.

 There are puppets that they can make to act out the 5 senses.

 There is a fill in the blank sheet to complete. The students can use their coloring book to help them fill it in.

There are real photographs to sort .

We have Scoot games that can  also be used in math centers. Our most popular one is our Monkey Money Scoot.

There is also one for March on addition and we have one on subtraction as well. We have included cute pot of gold manipulatives.

There is one for missing numbers on cute puppy cards.  We also have manipulatives included.

Another best seller is our Word of the Day products:)

We start with our calendar that has a March word on each piece. There is also a math pattern that builds. We have a teacher guide with ideas on how to use these words. It has been said by an ELL teacher that these word of the day products have really helped her students with basic vocabulary in a fun way. We have found these words to help our students with writing. They help them to stay focused on a topic.

Students will find word chunks in these word of the day words. We add little magnifying glasses to make the kiddos feel like real word detectives:)

This is a fun game that will help assess the knowledge of the words. You can also use them in a center or read around the room cards.

These are cut and glue sentences that the kiddos build using words on clover shaped cards. There are words from the calendar that they construct, copy, and illustrate. There is also a bonus question.

We hope that y'all will take a look at our new store and take advantage of our 50% off Units!