Two Truths and A Lie: Tell All Tuesday

Updated Information is in TEAL!

We hope you are enjoying your summer thus far.  We have been enjoying taking a few weeks off (from working on school-related stuff) to refresh and breathe.

Today, we are super thrilled to be linking up with our friends at Teach.Talk.Inspire and A Day in K to bring you "Two Truths and A Lie: Tell All Tuesday."

We've met some really creative people through the blogging world and we are linking up to tell you about ourselves.

We are two teachers from Birmingham, AL.  We currently teach Kindergarten in a K-2 primary school.  We have 14 kindergarten units!  Can you imagine?!?!  We joined the blogging world a little over a year ago and have LOVED every minute of it.  We have met some of the sweetest people and have learned so much from so many inspiring educators.

Something else that you may not know about us is that we are POLAR OPPOSITES!  We love each other fiercely, but have only a few things in common.   We have different tastes in clothes, music, movies, outdoor activities…basically we bonded solely on our passion for education.  Over the years, we have become very fond of each others' differences and even celebrate them!  (Cue Paula Abdul's "Opposites Attract") HA!

Now, let's play a little game…

Below are three "facts" about ourselves.  Two are true statements and one is a lie.

If you are the FIRST person to comment with the correct lie, you will get to pick one of our products (under $5.00) for free!

Congrats to Tiffani Humphries for being the FIRST commenter to guess correctly!  If you also guessed that Number 1 was our lie, we'd like to give you a free product, as well!  To claim your "prize", please email us at markersandmascara@gmail.com and let us know which product you would like for FREE (under $5.00)!  And, thank you for stopping by!  Congratulations!

#1: Both, Ashley and Brooklynn, graduated from the same university. 
THIS IS THE LIE!  
Ashley graduated from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Brooklynn graduated from Auburn University.  *We did graduate from the same high school….one year apart.  However, we did not know each other in high school.  Ashley is a die-hard University of Alabama fan and Brooklynn bleeds orange and blue.  In case you aren't aware, by living in the great state of Alabama- you are required to pick of the two universities: Auburn or Alabama!  You must devote yourself wholly to all things related to that university and you cannot waiver.  There is no in between…it's a FULL commitment!

#2: Both, Ashley and Brooklynn, are pregnant.
Surprise!  Yes, we both ARE pregnant!  The good Lord works in the most AMAZING ways!  Brooklynn and Chad's little girl is due in mid-August and Ashley and Nick's bundle of joy is due in early December.  We are incredibly excited about starting this new journey together.  We just know they will love each other as much as we do!  We've already found them matching shirts…

#3: Both, Ashley and Brooklynn, have only ever taught Kindergarten.
This, too, is true!  Ashley and Brooklynn both interned/student taught in several other grades, but have only had kindergarten classrooms of our own.  We fully believe that kindergarten is the place for us!  

Can you guess which "fact" is the lie???  Leave your guess in the comments.  We'd love for you to play along with us.  You can write your own "Two Truths and A Lie" with your guess and we will try to pick the lie.  

Come back on Friday to find out the lie!

We hope you all have a wonderful week.  Thank you for stopping by!

Again, thank you so much for coming back to read more about us! Thank you to Teach.Talk.Inspire and A Day in K for hosting such a fun linky party.  We can't wait to link up again next week.  If you are interested in linking up- stop by their blogs to find out how!

WINNER WEDNESDAY: Kitty's Colorful Centers

Winner, winner, chicken dinner!!!

Welcome to the second installment of Winner Wednesday! 
We are linking up with A Dab of Glue Will Do on the first Wednesday of each month to give something fun to one lucky winner!

It could be you!

 Our kiddos love, love, love Pete!!!! We are so excited to be giving this unit away!  It is full of great beginning of the year activities!

 Pete loves colors, and so do we!  Early in Kindergarten, we push students to use "resources" for everything!  Here, they are able to use a color word resource to decide what color Pete's shoes should be.

We spend a great amount of time at the beginning of the year, with visual discrimination of letters. These two activities give students opportunities to practice deciphering between, and tracing letters.

 Every mommy letter has a baby letter. (Ha)  Students pull a pair of Pete's sneakers and record the "baby" letter.  (We don't actually call them Mommy and Baby letters in our classrooms.  Our kids try, but we prefer Capital and Lowercase.)

 One of our absolute favorite activities are mirrored letters/words.  Early in the year, we practice with letters, but will eventually transition into sight words.

 Text is so vital to a Kindergarten classroom.  Our students receive an emergent reader or two each week.  They love taking ownership of these books and taking them home to read with their family.  These are seriously the highlight of each week with our Kinders! In this pack, students practice basic literacy skills such as tracking, fluency, sight words, and color words.

Sight words, sight words, sight words! (Marsha, Marsha, Marsha)

For Pete's sake, these words are SO important to emerging readers! Early in the year, we spend a lot of time practicing our sight words by spinning and tracing, rolling and tracing, pulling and tracing... a lot of tracing! You know as well as we do that Kinders need lots of letter formation practice and practice with their sight words to be successful readers and writers.

For whatever reason, this is the only Math activity we took!  I mean, we weren't preoccupied with a class of kids or anything. Haha!  This Pete unit has math activities that focus on numbers, one to one correspondence, and writing numerals.  To check out the entire pack, click below!

Enter to WIN Kitty's Colorful Centers! 



a Rafflecopter giveaway

Winner will be announced on Thursday morning!

Go visit A Dab of Glue Will Do to enter for your chance to win other amazing products!

Hope you are enjoying a GROOVY summer so far!



Ah... Summer

One week in, and we are taking FULL advantage of the joys of summer!!!

How funny that both of our anniversaries are within a week of each other! So, we have been busy celebrating!!!

 

Ashley and Nick chose to celebrate 5 years at the happiest place on Earth, Hogwarts!

 

Brooklynn and Chad celebrated 6 years in Key West! 

 

Check back tomorrow for WINNER WEDNESDAY!!! We are giving away a great back to school unit! Here is a sneak peek...

 

 

WINNER WEDNESDAY: KinderFarm

Winner, winner, chicken dinner! 

Welcome to Winner Wednesday!

We are so excited to be linking up with A Dab of Glue Will Do for these giveaways!
Stop by on the FIRST WEDNESDAY of every month for your chance to win!



This month, we are thrilled to be giving away our "KinderFarm" unit!  For us, this is a class favorite!  These simple centers are perfect for the first of the year, with lots of easy, traceable activities!

Check out the preview on TPT!

Enter to win!
 

The winner will be chosen and announced tomorrow morning!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

*Congratulations, Tiffany!!!! We just sent you the prize!  Thank you so much to everyone who entered!!!!

Head over to A Dab of Glue Will Do to enter to win other amazing products!

 

 

 

Teacher Appreciation Blog Hop

In honor of Teacher Appreciation Week, we wanted to share an Emergent Reader Freebie!  We hope this "Hodge Podge" of readers is useful to you and your students.  Thank you for the hard job you do, and the sacrifices you make every day for your kiddos!

If you like these, be sure to check out our other Emergent Readers!

Be sure to head over to LiveLoveServeTeach to grab the next freebie!

Also, we will be celebrating Teacher Appreciation Week, by holding a sale in our TPT store.  Our entire store will be 20% off, on May 5th and 6th!  Stop by and shop around.

Again, Happy Teacher Appreciation Week.  We hope you know the incredible impact you make by choosing to be an educator.  Here's a little "funny" to kick off your celebration week. 

Research Doesn't BUG Us!

 Learning about bugs doesn't BUG us.  We are having an absolute blast learning all about bugs and insects.



Our Kinders just LOVE to research on the internet.  However, we were uncomfortable allowing them on the internet without us sitting right next to them (and let's be honest, who can do that?)  That is, until we discovered the wonderful world of Symbaloo!!  It is an amazing website where you can gather your websites!  Kind of like a Pinterest board for websites!  We got right to work, and put a little insect Symbaloo page together for our kiddos to research!

If you are interested in having your students collect research in a similar way, head over to our TPT store to pick up this "buggy writing pack"!  *Click on the picture to take you there!

One of the greatest things about teaching kindergarten is our freedom to theme-teach.  Our students enjoy connecting with our theme, through math and literacy centers designed around it!  Our newest favorite activity is "This OR That?".  We needed a new way to check their learning, and a sweet friend suggested we create something where they have to read the word and identify it in pictures.  Our students have LOVED this new way of reading CVC words.  

If you are looking for supplemental math and reading activities, check out our "Don't BUG Me…" pack!  It's packed with fun, engaging activities.

This freebie has become an instant class favorite!  Maybe it's the slapping (with a fly swatter) the cards in a pocket chart, or maybe- the challenging their partner…either way, our students are loving this.  Stop by and pick up this freebie.  Let us know how you use it, if you grab it!

These readers are a fun, age-appropriate way to challenge students.  In this set, there are varied levels of readers; as well as, variations in the sight words to be practiced.  If you haven't checked out our Emergent Readers, take a minute to read the reviews to see if you think they may beneficial to you and your students.  

Thank you so much for stopping by our little blog!  Leave us a comment and share, with us, your favorite "bug" activity!