Hello from HeidiSongs- and a Pete the Cat Freebie!

Hello, everyone!  I am so happy to be here and a part of this wonderful group!  Please allow me to introduce myself:  My name is Heidi Butkus, and I am the founder and owner of HeidiSongs.com.  I have spent the last 25 years teaching K/1, and I that's where my heart is!  I just love teaching young children; they are absolutely delightful!

My own blog is called HeidiSongs Classroom Resources.

I will be posting here on PreK and K Sharing on the 29th day of each month, which I suppose means that I will be getting most Februaries off, ha ha!  My own personal blog is called HeidiSongs Classroom Resources, and I this is my current posting schedule:

• Monday, Monday, First Grade Fun Day!  (That means that I am posting ideas for first graders on Mondays!
• Wednesday:  On Wednesdays, I post ideas for parents to help their children at home.  I think I still need a clever title for my Wednesday posts.  Any ideas out there?
• Friday:  On Fridays, I post ideas for Kindergarten and PreK, which is what I have been mostly blogging on since 2008!

AND... I very often include a free download in my blog posts, so I am including one here for you today!  It is a free download of a patterning worksheet to go along with Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons!  Just remember to work with your children with real objects on patterning FIRST!  And THEN- when they are ready to transfer the skill to paper- then they can do the worksheet if there is still time. You will find lots of other posts on my blog with other Pete the Cat freebies, too!

Click here for Heidi's free download of the Pete the Cat Patterning worksheet.

I am most well known for my CD's and DVD's, and especially for my Sing and Spell the Sight Word titles.  I have written, produced, and self-published fourteen original CD's and DVD's for teaching beginning reading and math skills, three musical plays designed especially for young performers, and has written some picture books and many other teaching resources.  This is a picture of a HeidiSongs complete set, but this picture doesn't even include the books I've written!

This is a complete set of HeidiSongs CD's, DVD's workbooks, and flash cards.

Below is a video clip from one of my DVD's.  You can see a LOT of clips from them on our YouTube channel!  Parents and teachers love to use them because they get the kids UP and ACTIVELY LEARNING to the music!

 We are currently "re-styling" our DVD's with animated children's artwork and some young new actors to take over my role in the spotlight, so watch my blog, Pinterest, and Facebook pages for more info on that!  Here is the Yellow Song in our new DVD style, featuring my own daughter, Kimmie!

Here's a little bit more about me, on a personal level:

I am a self-proclaimed dog nut!  I love dogs, and I have two rescued chihuahua mixes named Jasper and Ruby.  I take them on walks every single morning, (almost) without fail!  I just can't let them down!

Jasper is on top and Ruby is on the bottom. 

 I am married, and my husband's name is Greg.  Greg runs our family business, HeidiSongs, so that means we now work together every day, and so far are doing it without driving each other crazy!  Not bad, huh?  (I am on a leave of absence from teaching school this year in order to try to grow our business.)

This is me and my husband!  We love to travel!

We have three daughters who are all grown up now!  One of them still lives at home with us, but the other two are off on their own.  Two down, one to go!  The youngest two are TWINS (the two on the center and right!), but they are fraternal.  They didn't look anything alike when they were born, and they still don't.

We had the wonderful blessing of celebrating our daughter Kimmie's wedding in June, 2012.

I also do presentations for teachers with SDE and any other group that cares to hire me!  To view my upcoming presentations, please click here.  Below, you will see a picture of me presenting at I Teach K!, which is a super-duper fun Kindergarten teacher conference put on each summer in Las Vegas by SDE.  I am so excited- I get to go next year and present again!  Yeah!

 

That's all for now!  Be sure to come visit me on my blog and website on HeidiSongs.com, on Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube! :)