Dear Santa

This week my kinders & I will be adventuring in Gingerbread Land--a post to come dedicated to that!

We will also be talking about the difference between our wants and our needs. Something tells me the Shopkins I keep hearing about won't quite make the cut for something that just absolutely need! ;)

To end our week-long unit on wants/needs (and to practice our sight word "and"), I created this letter to Santa for my kinders to complete. This printable, will allow my kinders the opportunity to draw and write about the things that they both want (Shopkins, Legos, XBox One, etc.)...and need (because darn it, we always get those underwear we need at Christmastime!).

Click on the image to be taken to my TpT store for your freebie! :)

November TpT Freebies

I have compiled a post dedicated to my freebies currently available in my TpT store, "Miss Dove's Owl-stars."

Be sure to follow my store there (and follow along here, of course!) for all my future freebies.

Hello there! :)

It only makes sense that my very first blog post should be dedicated to why we are all here (or at least why I am here in this little corner of the universe!): teaching/education. So this post is all about me, Miss Dove, and my life as a second-year kindergarten teacher! 

Let's get started, shall we? :)

Having student-taught in first grade, I thought that I was well-prepared for the world of kinders. Boy was I wrong! My first year was a constant struggle of trying to stay afloat and ahead of the next curve ball (rarely happened), teaching and advocating for my babies to the best of my abilities, and trying to maintain some sort of healthy sleep pattern. The whole experience was almost disenchanting...nothing was as I thought it would be.

But after spending the summer soul-searching and r-e-l-a-x-i-n-g, I set forth into my second year with a more optimistic outlook on the year to come. I had restructured my classroom management (goodbye behavior chart; more to come on this!), organized every thing that I possibly could, and started to plan ahead--a feat that I never thought would be possible! 

And oh what aa difference it made. One of my administrators once told me, in the middle of a particularly rough day during my first year, that I would have this moment, during my second year, when I would just sigh and say "Oh, this is how it's supposed to be" and I'll be darned if she wasn't right! I finally feel like I can breathe. I feel like I'm a teacher!

Part of this new me is also due, in large part, to Teachers Pay Teachers. I have always been a creative person; in high school and college I juggled a blog along with my school work and even dabbled a bit in graphic design. During my first year of teaching, I had zero time for that--and I had yet to learn how to have any sort of social life; I'm still in search of that ;). 

But now, with some sort of routine and structure to my life, I decided it was time to throw another crazy, chaotic wrench into the mix: blogging and graphic design--this time in the avenue of TpT products. I was already creating things for my classroom; with a TpT store I had an excuse to spend a little "Me Time" making my products pretty and trying to earn an extra penny or two. A win-win :) 

So now I'm back to blogging, only this time it isn't about my life as a student/teenager, but rather my life as the teacher. (I cannot say adult because I just can't with being an adult some days!) I hope to share with you tidbits from my classroom, lesson ideas, teaching philosophy, TpT products, and some other odds and ends thrown it for spice! 

I hope that you'll join my Owl-stars and me! :)

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