Kindergarten Teachers are My HEROS! OH and a Freebie for Safety Week!

My lack of blogging both on my personal blog and here, are pretty much due to the amount of craziness going on this school year.  So many things are happening at once and I am trying to stay above water. Kindergarten is a different beast than any other grade level.  In the past six years of me teaching first grade, Kindergarten has really changed.  It's so fast paced and full of "rigor" {I now hate that word}.  The only thing that has not changed is the way kiddos are coming into Kindergarten.  There is such a wide spectrum of children: some that cannot spell their name, some that can already read, some that do not know their letters or sounds, some that can write sentences, some that do not even know colors.  They are just all over the place... BUT, by the time they leave Kinder, they will be {almost} all on the same level playing field.  It truly is an amazing grade to teach.

In my frantic search for age or grade level appropriate things to do with these babies, I come across a lot of stuff on Pinterest and TeacherPayTeachers.  What great resources.  But often I come to them and I see a price tag.  Sometimes I buy the product that was worked so hard on by another professional as my self and other times I hear my husband's voice in my head going "can't you make that yourself?  Why are you not getting paid?"

I do create things but I honestly come down to, where will I find time?!  So this morning I sat down before my own children got up and started planning out my week.  I made a couple of items for our safety week.  I made a tree map and a thank you note for the firefighters that are coming to visit us this week.  They are FREE too!  I don't have fancy programs to create items, I just try to make them look cute and enough to capture the attention of my kiddos.

Here is my firefighter tree map.

Here is my thank you note to send to our local firefighters after they come see us.

I hope you like them.