Dear Friends....

I wanted to take a minute and thank you for following Kids Cog Works.  I am unsure what the future of this blog is.  I am trying to keep it going and author my other blog The Tutor House at the same time, but as you can imagine-it's difficult!

So my dear friends, I am going to leave Kids Cog Works for a little while.  I'll update you from time to time on what I am doing over at The Tutor House and when I make new freebies.  Thank you for following me and keeping in touch.

My facebook fan page will still be intact and have the latest updates from Classroom Freebies Too.  I'll still be on Pinterest too.  I'll see you around!  Thanks again-

Adrianne

Featured On...

I have done a lot of guest blogging in the past. Did you miss any of them? I thought I would put them all right here and you can scroll through them and read some. Guest blogging has been a wonderful opportunity.

The Art of Possibility:  Poetry Snap

A Modern Teacher:  Card Games

Innovative Connections:  Comic Book KA-POW

Teaching in Room 6:  Sunny Science

Think Wonder Teach:  Engineering Day

Sunny Days in Second Grade:  March Madness

Globicate: Brain Tower

I Can Teach My Child: Potty Training Tips

Teacher Garden:  Amazing Word Race

I would love to host my first guest bloggers here.  If you are interested, please email me at KidsCogWorks@hotmail.com.  Blog posts should be no longer than 500 words and aimed at 2-8 grades.  Thanks!
Adrianne

Ideas for File Folder Playing Cards

As you know, I make FREE file foler playing cards.  All of them are available over at my TpT store for download.  There are so many topics I could choose, but I want to know what would help you!  Please fill out my short form below. 



After a week, I'll look over the submissions and select 10 of them.  If one of them was yours, you'll receive a FREE file folder game board from me.  Thanks for participating and I can't wait to hear what you come up with.

Interested in Being a Blogger?

February 2011, I decided to launch a blog.  This very blog you are reading!  I wrote my first post and my second...crickets.  I invited my friends, they stopped by and said hi.  I was even told by others that an education blog would be boring (SO WRONG by the way).

I didn't understand that you need some tools to get your blog viewed by others.  I followed lots of other amazing bloggers like Teachers Wife, Moffat Girls, The Organized Classroom Blog and was introduced to Teaching Blog Traffic School.

CHANGED-MY-LIFE!  No seriously!!  It did.  I went from barely understanding how a blog works to being able to write HTML and actually have it work.  I went from sharing things and no one saw to having items downloaded over 5,000 times.  That is amazing! 

Charity Preston runs Teaching Blog Traffic School and has taught me mountains about getting the word out about your blog.  If your goal is to share teaching ideas and resources-you have to understand those things.  As I've gone through the videos and interacted with even more amazing bloggers like Laura Candler of Corkboard Connections and April McNair of A Modern Teacher, I learned that I needed to narrow my focus. 

That's why I started The Tutor House and it's doing really well because of the techniques I have applied right from the get go from Teaching Blog Traffic School.

If you've been on the fence about doing an education blog, it's time to hop down and come on over!  The grass is greener.  The camaraderie you feel from other teacher bloggers is immense and worthwhile.  Teaching skills improve and your blog will thrive.

Now that I am the author of two busy blogs, I've got to get me some help over here at Kids Cog Works.  Are you interested in blogging here with me?  Do you and I have similar styles?  I would love to hear from you if you would like to jump in and join up with me.  Just shoot me an email. 

If not, that's okay too!  I would love to see you over at Teaching Blog Traffic School. 

Card Games

Have you ever visited my Card Games page?  It's no secret that I L-O-V-E card games.  They are readily available and easy to use.  Come on over to my card page and see the games and links listed there.

Have a good one!
Adrianne

Looking for Freebies?

Finding free teaching resources are every where, but I've got a list of entire pages dedicated to free teaching resources!  It's quite the list and always being added to.  Come check out these amazing pages, you won't be sorry you did.  Get all stocked up and ready for next school year.  Click on the image to take you there.

School Sticks-As Seen On....

Have you seen my School Sticks yet?  If not, come on over to the Tutor House and take a look.  They are an amazing resource you could use this summer to keep your kids sharp or even use in the classroom next year for those early finishers.

I've got freebies for grades PK-K, 1-2, and 3-6.  There's enough for two weeks worth.  If you want enough for the entire summer, then you can buy School Sticks for 1-2 and 3-6.  All of these are available to download through my TpT store.

File Folder Games

Have you seen all of my file folder games lately?  There are so many fun themes to be had.  The best part about my file folder games is that you can download any of my FREE file folder playing cards and they will work with my game boards.

Some of the FREE file folder titles available to download:
Long O
Long A
Long E
Combining Integers
Addition

Check out these game boards!  Visit my Kids Cog Works TpT shop to download them.  This is a great way to play and learn along with your kids this summer.

Thankful Thursday

For my family, school has wrapped up for the year.  My boys finished up second grade and kindergarten.  It was a good year with warm memories. 

Every year I send my children off for school and I long to be there with them.  I want to see what they're doing in class.  What do they behave like when I am not there?  What interesting things did they do all day?  I really want to be that pesky fly on the wall, but I resist the urge to be there too much.

I will admit there have been times that my boys are leary of going to school.  It just gets long and tedious.  I often wonder if their complaints are based in reality or just the fact that they just want to be at home with me. 

This week I spent the afternoon in my oldest son's bedroom cleaning out his things.  He hangs onto everything!  He happened to have two backpacks full of items from school that needed my attention the most. 

The piles of paper as you can imagine were huge!  There is so much paper floating around at school.  I pulled out Mastering Math Facts work, doodles, spelling papers, more doodles, and then I came upon his math journal.

As I flipped through the pages, I enjoyed seeing my sons ability to put mathmatical equations into real world sentences.  But what I enjoyed the most were the little notes exhanged between him and his teacher.  They were affirming to me how much she cared about his learning and all of her students.  She went through them and commented on so many things!

She would write him notes reminding him of concepts about even and odd numbers.  My personal favorite was a note that he wrote to her asking her is she was serious (spelled sereus) about homework.  Apparently she had told him for spring break she was sending home 50 pages of homework.  Her reply was sweet and humorus!  On many pages, he would continue writing,"Stop giving me homework"  to which she would reply, "Not until May 25th (the last day of school)."

Today, I am thankful  for teachers (again) and their genuine care!  I send my boys wondering what they do each day, but really I know the answer.  They are being taught, cared for, worried about, and enjoyed, much like their mother does for them.  Teachers are every day heroes to children.  Their class a second home and family.

To my boys teachers this year, a giant thank you!  My boys have learned so much because of you.  Thank you for showing up to work each day even when you feel like you make no difference.  Thank you for coming when it may feel like someone on the staff is out to get you!  My gratitude to teachers who put in countless hours when no one sees-all for the benefit of teaching my children.

My cup runneth over.  Thank  you.
Adrianne

Blogger Helps: Pictures Side by Side

It's amazing how much you can learn about blogging when you fiddle around and do some research.  A few months ago, I finally learned how to make pictures go side by side with clickable links!  This feature is so handy.  There are times that I don't want my pictures to take up a ton of room and now I have a way of setting it up to where they go across.

What you need to do is build a table!  It's super simple.  First, you'll want to upload the pictures you want to use to an image hosting site like Image Shack or Photo Bucket.  When you load them, pay attention to the size you are making them. 

Do you want them to be thumnail size?  50% of the image size?  Thumbnails work best if you are going to be placing 3 or more pictures side by side.

Because I like Image Shack, I'll show you how using this image host.

Click on Browse.  Then select the image you want to upload.

Choose what size of image you want.  Thumbnails work well for side by side images.  Notice that it has numbers next to your choices.  Those are the pixel sizes.  So if you blog post space is only 400 pixels wide, you'll want to choose a size that will work with how many images you want side by side.

After you've clicked on upload, this screen shows up next.  You want the direct link for working with HTML for side by side images.

When working with HTML, you need to be using a program like Notepad. This keeps all the formatting out so you can work with the code easily. The code is in the picture below. Just replace the parts that say "YOUR IMAGE" and "YOUR LINK" with the correct direct links to images and their destination that you want them to end up at.

To get the code without any formatting, please click here to grab it.  The code written here is for three images side by side.

Here are the results when you work with this code.  These images are 100 pixels wide.  I have three images side by side and they each go somewhere different (check them out for a little fun).  It's a beautiful thing!