Accomplishment! Getting Things DONE! Delayed Gratification!

THRILLED! THRILLED! THRILLED! 

We've all made it through September. It's in the book! 

All of the effort of launching the new school year is now behind you. 

EXHALE! 

You did it!!

What a sense of accomplishment to have made it through the most energy intensive days and weeks of launching the new school year: the never-ending 'to-do' list of setting up your room, meeting your new students & their families, and getting off to a whole new adventure!

It's OCTOBER!

YOU MADE IT! 

Don't you just LUV having a map?

Doesn't having a map of your plans secure your arrival?

Are you a list maker? 

Don't you long for a map to get you where you want to go? 

I saw this 'music-mind-map' in the hallway of Concordia College in Chicago YEARS ago! 

I was immediately both fascinated and transfixed. 

What a brilliant shorthand *M*A*P* of the uses and benefits of music. 

LUV me a MUSIC-MAP! 

Truth be told: I took that picture years ago, blogged about it and then 'forgot' about both this image and my fascination with it. Then one day this summer I happened upon 'my' photo while investigating my own Pinterest feed. {I now have 165,000 followers on Pinterest!} Someone had repinned the image -- all of these years later. I was fascinated all over again. It was like a homecoming party. Luv'd it then! LUV it NOW! 

What with it being summer at the time and it being my season of rejuvenation, a few extra light bulbs lit! What if I could put my 18.3 years of experience as a 'music-lady' onto one piece of paper? What if I could expand and expound upon the simplicity of the original map with my own spin-on-it? What if? So I got out a drawing board and began! 

MUSIC is the heart of it all: the very center. 

Next? 

Let's take a look at singing within music. 

I got out my colored pencils and had myself a ball. 

SINGING is indeed within music. 

I blogged about it more extensively last month on my personal blog as I finally made progress and got it {my mind map} done! 

I think of the singing benefits as falling into two camps: 

Lyrics = Language [Reading]

The Beat = Patterns [Math]

In my mind-map all things 'language' are above the center point. 

All things beat/math are below. The bedrock. The foundation. 

Even after I had my map finished, it took a while to get into pdf format. 

Then it took another step to get the pdf uploaded as a FREEBIE at our EARLY EDUCATION EMPORIUM!

Patience, grasshopper. 

BANG THE DRUM! Mission accomplished!

Cross it off the list! 

It is *NOW* available for your download!

Want to see a dozen bulletin board type music ideas?

Go back to my blog for those!

While I was attempting to get this accomplished,

I searched my own blog's archive for some additional, earlier music support articles. 

Here's a dozen directions from my heart to yours.

***This article would be especially helpful if you feel you're out of your element when it comes to music and children. We're talkin' basics!   

Here's a different dozen. 

This time focused on "Music as Motivator." 

This next one is no doubt one of my widest-researched articles: 

"The importance of rhyme." 

If you are feeling like there's just not enough time in the day for 'sing-ing' 

then you need to read this article for reinforcement to combat the "Wolf at the Door" 

and get back to some basics! 

Speaking of delayed gratification..... 

Last winter began a whole new era of fun for me. We had a day of video filming in a professional studio on behalf of Zaner-Bloser, the handwriting company in Columbus, OH. Green screen fun with two of my WonderPeeps [grand-children] plus a few more! 

How I wanted to click my heels and have the videos finished...... 

PATIENCE!

THE DAY HAS ARRIVED! 

THE VIDEOS ARE FINISHED! 

THEY ARE UPloaded over to YouTUBE! 

THEY ARE FREE!!!! 

YOU WILL LIKE THEM!

*Here's a glimpse and an image you could pin for me! 

We shot two videos. 

The first in the set is called, "SKYWRITING" and is an upbeat, 

blast-off to using our imagination, our visualization as a tool for handwriting success. 

It features a rocket ship blasting off and an octopus. 

It would be great for a 'brain break' and getting some oxygen. 

The second video is "Top to Bottom" and I predict will be your favorite. 

You can use it EVERY day this month! 

The more you use it the more infectious the learning becomes!

It is a marching, getting faster, 'print directionality' master piece if I do say so myself. 

Plus there's a duck and a bear. 

And moi and my WonderPeeps! 

What more could you ask for? 

Here's the link to Zaner-Bloser and on to the videos!  

Did I mention that they're FREE FREE FREE!!!!

HURRY HURRY HURRY! 

In honor of all of this progress on my "To Do" list, I have a big celebration going on right now, 

where there will be a lucky winner of some amazing seasonal, downloadable goodies from some of my favorite bloggers. 

You still have three more days to get entered to win! 

Follow this link for those specifics!

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! :)

Butterflies for the Littles!

What's more fun to do in the spring than butterflies?  Nothing of course!  It's so engaging and so full of opportunities for reading and writing that it really makes for a favorite unit amongst teachers and students!

If you have never done butterflies before than this is the post for you because I am going to share my experiences with our butterfly garden this year and at the very end there is a really fun giveaway!

Let's start by them arriving.   If you use Insect Lore they will arrive in a white envelop and be wrapped in bubble wrap.  We checked the mail for DAYS and when they finally came we were so excited!  They looked dead when they arrived, but they were actually just dormant (which they go in and out of apparently.)

They come in a cup.  Within the cup is everything they need and so there is no need to touch or open the cup.  On the bottom is the food and on the lid is a piece of white paper.  This white paper is where they will attach to when they become chrysalises.  It's very nice that it's on paper because it makes transferring them to your garden super easy!

That's pretty much it.  So we wait for 7-10 days.  With us it took the full 10 this year!  A caterpillar's job is to eat.  He will eat, and eat, and eat just like the book says (except it eats caterpillar food.)  Here is a picture of about 6 days.  You can see just from the picture above they are getting fatter and fatter! 

Once they are super fat they will make their way to the top of the cup.  This is where they will become chrysalises.  They will hang here for about 7-10 days again.  This one was about 8 days for us this year.    At this point you will want to take them off the lid of the cup and transfer them to the butterfly garden.  You just take that white piece of paper and attach it to the lid of the garden.  I like to use velcro with the sticky backs because I am afraid that tape won't hold the weight but Insect Lore suggests tape.  

One might think watching chrysalises is boring but it can actually be very exciting. One of their defense mechanisms is to shake.  Here is a little video I took of our chrysalises!  

So 7-10 days later your butterflies hatch!  It's very exciting!  It can be a little messy though, don't be alarmed if there is blood that appears on your net as they open their wings.  (You can see it on some of the floral print.)  To care for your butterflies you can put in water and I like to put a piece of fruit or flowers.  I like to put a plate at the bottom or a lit to put the water in. Something shallow for them be able to reach.  

That's pretty much it!  Literally anyone can do it because there is not a whole lot of touching things involved.  (Last year I ordered the frog kit... read that you had to give them live crickets after the purchase.  Needless to say I was happy they came dead (but a little sad for them and my own kinder who was looking forward to it.)

I made this Butterfly Lifecycle Interactive Learning Journal to go along with it.  It takes the kids through the process with activities and then has a journal at the end to record what exactly is happening day by day.  Click here to check it out.  

I also made a fun freebie to go along with it for you.  So download the preview for your Parts of a Butterfly activity!

And now for the Giveaway!  I am going to giveaway one Insect Lore Butterfly Garden so you can do this with your little learners!  

Please head on over to enter to win your very own Butterfly Garden!   Click here!

Snap Cube and Lego Centers!

It's so hard to find good, engaging centers to keep the kids moving and working!  So I wanted to share with you some fun centers I created that involve developmentally appropriate practice and the academic rigor your administrators require!

Snap Cube Centers

These are fun centers using those snap cubes that sit in a bin in the corner of your room!  You know... those blocks that every time they get brought out get turned into snap cube guns.. I HATE that sound - kids playing guns!  

So how it works is the kids get a card with an image on it.  They have to count how many blocks it took to make the pieces to those images to recreate it.  You are given several recording options for the kids to be held accountable!  I have them in all sorts of topics - sight words, letters, numbers, and even a monthly set with themes to make what's going on! 

Here is a little freebie for you to try them out! 

Lego Centers

Now that we have those snap cubes working let's get the Lego's out!  These fun and engaging centers get kids creating sight words with Legos and counting how many it took to make them.  They can even record the colors they used if you give them their own print out of the word.  

These are done to scale and you have two options to differentiate for the time of year or for students.  

These are currently only available in PrePrimer and Primer lists!  So not as many options but SUPER fun!  I get lots of comments that the boys will love them BUT my entire class really loves going to the Lego center!  

What centers do you love?  I have found that I put the MOST work into prepping and planning my centers each week!  Am I alone here?  

My Two Favorite Things This Time of Year!

Knee deep in school... that's just how I feel lately!  Who has time to relax these days?  Not me that's for sure!  So this time I year I tend to focus on two things... field trips and the end of the year!   Am I alone here?

So here are two fun freebies to keep you going, click the image or here to get them for free!

I also have some great freebies on my blog right now (click here to see them all!)  

My newest and most useful for instruction is these Literacy Posters!  Easy definitions with simple and connectible pictures to help understand stories better!  Click the images to stop by and grab yours for free (more than shown!)

Hoppy Easter Everyone!  

from

Penguin ABC and 123 Fun

Free Valentine and Penguin Matching Games

Baby Penguin Slips and Slides by Michael Teitelbaum may be read in several different ways, which is wonderful considering how many times parents and teachers reread books to children. Throughout this book beginning reader words are large and bold, such as in this sentence on page six:

"Baby Penguin and his friends climb up the hill."

This text feature allows teacher or parent to read with the children.  This book would be great to project using a document camera in a classroom.  The book has fact stops on many pages, and the book could just be read as nonfiction by only reading the facts.  The story is multi-genre with some fiction that is never far from the truth, such as "They warm up in the sunshine."

The story could be read without mentioning the facts, or even in its entirety.  

The generic matching games could be used with any penguin story, or even without a story.  

There are four games in this FREE 52 page PDF, available in the Early Education Emporium online store:  

1. ABC Upper and Lower Case Letter Match 

2. Match Numbers 1-12 with Number Words

3. Easy Addition Match

4. Valentine Penguin Game

Also, click on these words for a separate PDF of words in bold in the story for pocket chart use. (7 more pages)

 Have fun reading and working with your students and children!