The Top 14 of 2014!

I can NOT believe that 2014 is almost over! This year was so great and full of so many blessings! I'm linking up with Kristin, Traci, and Hadar for their fun linky party, 14 in 14. So here are 14 of my favorite memories of 2014!



{one}

In February, we went down to Folkston, Georgia to surprise the Mister's Grandmommy for her 85th birthday! It was the first time meeting my Mister's cousins and we just had a blast that weekend! We spent most of the weekend playing Shanghai Rummy until the middle of the night and just relaxing with each other! We are hoping to do it again this year!

 I just love these people!

 

{two}

The Mister and I got to go the UNC vs. Duke game this year and for those of you that live in North Carolina,  you know that this is probably the biggest sports event in the state! The Mister loves UNC and seeing how excited he was to be at the game, made it SO worth it!

 

BONUS! UNC won so I had a very happy husband! Go Heels!

{three}

So this year, we had a TON of snow days. In March, we had a big ice storm and knocked out a ton of electricity and damaged a lot of the school buildings. So we had several snow days while the damage was repaired. One of the snow days, the weather was gorgeous and so me and a few of my FAVE girlfriends went to a vineyard nearby and had the BEST SNOWDAY EVER!

 

We had so much fun that we went for my birthday too! I am so thankful for these ladies and their friendship!

{four}

My college besties and I got together for the first time in forevs this year and it was so wonderful! We now live in Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina so the fact that we got all of our schedules to line up is amazing!

{five}

Chalkboard Charm went live this summer! Megan Farve designed my blog for me and I am still so in love! I haven't been the most faithful blogger but I am loving this journey! I have met so many blogging friends and I am so excited to see where Chalkboard Charm goes in 2015!

{six}

I became an Aunt this year and it is totally the greatest! My nephew Jude lives in Portland so I don't get to see him too often but he is by far the cutest thing on the planet!

Be still my heart! My Mother-in-law made this smocked outfit for my husband when he was a baby and Jude got to try it out when he visited in September!

 

{seven}

Most of my family lives in Georgia or Texas but I am so blessed to have my cousin and his family living in Jacksonville, NC. I have gotten to see them several times this year and they are just my fave! Tanner is by far the most hilarious kid out there and Tatum is so precious!

 

{eight}

Two of my bridesmaids got married this year and they both had amazing weddings and of course I loved getting to see them marry the loves of their lives!

 

{nine}

The Mister and I went to Charleston with my in-laws during the summer and I just fell in love! In my dream life, I will live there and eat all the food, all the time.

 

{ten}

Our trip to Greenville, SC was one of my favorite trips this year too. We only spent one night there but it is such an amazing little city. I love to visit every chance I get!

 

{eleven}

We celebrated our 1 year anniversary this year! Blessed to be with this guy!

 

{twelve}

The Niharts took a beach trip to Emerald Isle this year and we had a blast! It was my last hoorah before school started so the Mister helped me prepare. Also any trip to the beach is an all round good idea!

 

{thirteen}

We bought a house this year which has been amazing! We've painted, we've got new carpet, and a new bedroom suite! Love our little house and cannot wait to make more memories in this home!

 

{fourteen}

Sappy for sure, but any memory I get to have with my Mister is my favorite. He is by far my favorite  and my best friend!

 

 

Wow, you made it through the incredibly long post!

Cheers to the memories that will be made in 2015!

Five for Friday (Freebie)

So thankful that it is the weekend! Time for Five for Friday!

 I posted a winter counting freebie this week! It is part of a pack that I have been working on. Pick it up, check it out, and let me know what you think!

 

I put my Christmas cards in the mail this week and wanted to share a few of the pictures from our photo session.

 

The amazing Amanda Castle took these photos and I love them! Check her out here!

I am such a proud teacher right about now! This is a sneak peek of how I keep track and manage all the sight words my kiddos learn. I created my product Sight Word Scoops at the end of last year. I teach a total of 124 sight words during the Kindergarten year. I divided these words into 8 lists. Each list is designated as a color. The first list has 12 words and all the others lists have 16 words. We have been working so hard this year on our sight word recognition and I am so excited to say that every single student knows at least 30 words! That is so huge being that the expectation from my district is that Kinders need to know 20 at the end of the year. I've never paid much attention to that expectation because I know that my kids can do so much more than that!

 

How many sight words do your kiddos have to know?

 

Sight Word Scoops will be coming to my store during Winter Break!

So I got off of work yesterday and there were two of the cutest golden puppies waiting for me in my garage.

The Mister and I are dog sitting for my in-laws while they go and visit my nephew! We are seriously in love with these two! Their names are Scotty and Sherlock and they are the sweetest things! They have been so fun to watch, play, and snuggle with! The Mister and I would love to get a puppy for ourselves but with the new house, dog sitting is definitely letting us get our fill of puppy love!

 

I'm so glad that the Christmas season is here! We just started really getting into it in the classroom and the kids are loving it! I recorded Elf the other day and I am watching it now! I love that movie! It is one of my Christmas favorites for sure!

 

 

Have a happy weekend! 



Hello, DECEMBER!

I am seriously in shock that it is December already. I know that I am definitely getting ahead of myself but, we are almost halfway through the school year! UNREAL! Discussions are being made about the 100th day of school already! Well, I don't think there is anything I can really do about it so let's link up with Farley from Oh Boy 4th Grade for December Currently!

 

 

{listening}

My dad always watched Andy Griffith growing up. I didn't love it too much back then but, I can't get enough of it now! I {heart} Barney Fife big time!  It comes on every day here right around the time I get home and it is the perfect background noise to working on school stuff!

 

{loving}

We moved into our house two weeks ago! We have spent that time unpacking, organizing, and decorating and I am absolutely loving it! I do not miss apartment living one little bit. We have painted everything, arranged and rearranged furniture, and set up our Christmas tree. Things are starting to feel more like a home and I am so very thankful.

 

{thinking}

I know I just had four days off from school last week but it was just so nice that I am now on the countdown to winter break. The Mister and I were thrilled to spend so much quality time together and with a gazillion things to do, winter break can't come soon enough. I don't really have too much to complain about because my Kinders have been super awesome the past two days after the break. Bless them!

 

{wanting}

Pinterest, although a wonderful thing, makes me want all things home décor these days. I am loving the process of decorating the house but MAN! Who wouldn't want their house to look like one of those Pinterest houses instantly.

 

PLUS my clip art addiction is well known. My name is Lindsey Nihart and I am a Creative Clips addict. I am halfway sure that Krista Wallden puts some sort of magic spell on me and makes me buy all of her memberships. I HAVE NO CONTROL.

 

{needing}
Y'all. I seriously love creating products. I told the Mister the other day that I was going to become a stay-at-home wife and keep our house clean and create TPT products all day long because I am positive that both of those things cannot be done while being a full time teacher. I am working on it.

{giving}
One of my latest creations has been a pack called Count On It! I am -thisclose- to posting it on TPT but I just keep adding things to it. So as a little preview I will share one of the counting mats and one of the recording sheets! If we are keeping it real, counting sets is something my kiddos need help on the whole year long so these have been so helpful and I hope you think so too!

Check it out here!

Happy December!

Five for Friday {November 8}

I'm linking up with Kacey at Doodle Bugs teaching for Five for Friday.

 

 

I am fortunate to have several parents this year who currently serve in the millitary or have at some point in the past. I definitely wanted to do something to honor their service and thank them for the sacrifices they made for our country. I remembered saving Simply Kinder's Military freebie and knew that I just had to make a display with that this year.

Here is the finished product. I seriously love the way it turned out! It pulls at my heart strings to see how blessed my classroom is to know and love so many veterans.

 

We also read the book Hero Dad and a few exerpts from Letters to a Soldier.

Please don't forget to thank a veteran not just Tuesday but everyday! They deserve every bit of honor and gratitude!

This week, I dipped into how I teach phonics and some resources I use when teaching letters and letter sounds. To check out that post, click here.

The Mister and I closed on our first house Thursday and we are so excited to make that house a home! We aren't moving in until next weekend so we are spending this weekend cleaning, painting and dreaming of all we can do to make this house ours! Pictures will come soon but here is a quick pic of us Thursday night!

 

 

This is SO me right now. I'm tempted to set up all of my Christmas stuff before we even move our furniture in the new house! I have never had a real Christmas Tree and the Mister thinks that is ridiculous so we are going to have two trees this year! How many trees do you put up? 

 The Mister and I got pictures done a week and a half ago with my sweet photographer friend Amanda Castle. She was our photographer for our wedding and she is seriously amazing! Check her site here. She posted a little sneak peek on Facebook the other day and I love it! Absolutely cannot wait to see the rest!

 



Phonics Fun

In Kindergarten, how letters are taught or introduced can be a touchy topic to discuss! I have seen everything from people swearing by the letter of the week philosophy to teaching multiple letters in a week to not teaching letters individually but doing more of an approach where all the letters are taught.

 

The county that I teach in adopted Fundations which is a phonics curriculum created by Wilson. Last year was the first year of implementation and like the first year of any curriculum, I was definitely overwhelmed. Fundations is a strict program that lays out 30 minutes of phonics instruction daily. This was the first encounter I had with a script-like program and honestly, it rubbed me the wrong way. The "Fundations gods" told me exactly what to say and when to say it. That's SO not how I do things. However, I followed the curriculum and noticed that the kids were really picking up the letters and their sounds so I couldn't really complain too much. :)

 

Each letter in the alphabet has a keyword and as we review the letters during Fundations time, we say the letter-keyword-sound all the time. For example, we would say "a-apple-/a/." Here is an example of what one of our posters looks like so you can see the keywords.

 

 

 Fundations teaches the lowercase letters first and then uppercase later on. When I realized that, my mind was blown. Why in the world would you separate uppercase and lowercase letters? It was a big mystery. Thankfully, after some additional training, that mystery was explained. Did you know that uppercase letters make up only 10% of print? I had no idea! So Fundations focuses on lowercase first and then teachers uppercase at a quicker pace. Also, if a child knows any letters when they enter Kindergarten, typically they know uppercase letters.

(Just so you know, my kids are still very aware of the uppercase letters. We typically sort uppercase and lowercase letters and practice writing uppercase letters as well. Don't tell those "Fundations gods!")

 

Fundations also teaches two letters a week most of the time. The first week of school there is only one letter taught and last week there were three letters in one week. We all made it out alive! ;) Before Fundations, my grade level taught one letter a week. One letter a week sounds nice because you can revolve all your centers, crafts, poems and all sorts of thing around that letter. In reality though, if you teach one letter a week students won't be introduced to all of the letters until 3/4 of the way through the year. That is way too long in my opinion! I am loving teaching two letters in a week now! The kids can totally handle it!

 

Outside of our Fundations time, we do a lot of things to reinforce the letters that we are learning. I have an ABC center like the one below. Kids get to sort the letters and pictures based on the first sound.

 

I use Cara Carroll's Interactive Alphabet Notebook and seriously love it! Check it out!

 

As a class we come up with a list of words that begin with the letter sounds and I obviously work with the letters in small groups too!

 

A few weeks ago, I searched for some fun videos about the letters that we were learning about because honestly, Fundations isn't always very fun. I found ABC Mouse's letter videos on Youtube and I just love them! I think we have watched the video for every letter we have learned since then! The kids are totally engaged and get so excited when one of those videos come on. Here is one that we watched today!

During the video, every single one of my kiddos said "ewwwww" in unison when the word kiss was mention. I love me some kinders.

 

Do you do Fundations? I would love to hear how you teach the letters in your class!

November Currently

It's November already?! Seriously? Where did October go?

 

Although I am in utter amazement at how fast this year is going, I am thrilled to link up with Farley at Oh Boy Fourth Grade for November Currently!

 

 

Listening:

The Mister and I are about to close on our first house this Thursday so I am listening to him pack up our guest room while he is listening to Pandora! Don't worry, I am going to help as soon as I am done with this post! We aren't moving in completely until the following weekend so we have some time before everything has to be packed up! Completely excited and amazed to start this fun new journey in life with him!

 

Loving:

Y'all, North Carolina fall is no joke. It is seriously beautiful here! On the way home from church, the color of all the leaves were practically screaming to be adored! The cooler weather has added to all the fun too! Bring on the fleece lined leggings and caramel apples!

 

Thinking:

I need some more blogging in my life! I was going to not even mention how long it has been since I posted on Chalkboard Charm but I am hoping that calling myself out will somehow motivate myself to find some time to share what I have been up to lately with my Kinders. The past month has been a whirlwind of parent teacher conferences, Open House Night, report cards, creating, and house searching!

 

Wanting:

Since our new house has a fenced in backyard, we have started to look at possibly getting a dog. It is so exciting to think about having a furry friend at home but obviously it is a huge responsibility so we are taking our sweet time before getting one of our own!

 

Needing:

With the move right around the corner, I have to start getting myself and our apartment organized! Organization is not a quality that I bring to the table! Ha! I am hoping I will be a little more motivated to keep our new home organized and cute since it will be ours!

 

Reading:

Y'all, I'm just going to keep it real. I am not reading absolutely anything currently. I'll be honest and say that summer is the time that I spend the most time reading. I can't hardly find any time to read during the school year. Well, that is unless reading teacher blogs count! :) I do somehow find a way to do that!

 

I hope you guys have an awesome week! I promise you will be hearing from me more soon!