14 Days of Freebies - Day 13

Grab this writing freebie {HERE}.  I love making writing meaningful to students and sometimes that means making it more like a quick write.  I understand the importance of writing to a text and all of that, but we also need to let students know that while writing helps us learn, it can still be done for pleasure.  This freebie lets students describe their perfect cookie.  I love reading these because students get really creative with what they would make.  I have included lines for younger kids and lines for older kids.

Planning for February

I love the month of February!  There is Groundhog Day, Valentine's Day, and President's Day!  It is a great month to review kindness and being a great classmate.  Grab these free kindness coupons for your classroom.

Many classrooms across the country will focus on Valentine's Day, and likely have a classroom party.  We will be too!  But, the educator in me has to make it more than passing out valentines and eating candy.

Need some No Prep writing?

Writing About February is for younger writers.  You can grab it {HERE}.

Daily Quick Writes are for older writers.  You can grab it {HERE}.

Don't forget to check back on February 1st for my 14 Days of Valentine's Freebies.  I have finished making them and, while they are not ALL specific to Valentine's Day, I am sure you will love them!

Join the event here to get updates and links!  Invite all of your teacher friends!

Happy Planning!

January Resources

Are you back at school?  Need some Print and Go resources?  I've got you covered!

{Grab It Here}

Includes 13 math pages that you can simply print and go. Use them as review or to support your core lessons.

{Grab It Here}

Quick writes help students increase their ability to write. I use these as a warm-up and have students complete 2 or 3 a week.

Winter Activity

We did this awesome craft from A Cupcake for the Teacher!  If you have not checked out her crafts, you need to!  I have used several of her crafts in my classroom, both in my 3rd grade classroom and in my special education classroom!

This year, we did this craft.  You can grab the craft here.

Then came the week before break door decorating contest.  Which by the way, I was totally not into this year.  Which is very unlike me, since I usually team up with all of the third grade teachers and we win it.  But I digress.  This year, I was just feeling off.  I am not sure what it was, but getting into the holiday activities was hard this year.

The kids had so much fun with the writing and the craft, so of course we had to go big.  Then this happened.

And then more doors turned into polar bears (the third grade hallway).  It was crazy!  The kids loved it even more and when they saw how many doors matched their writing, they were so excited.  When I saw them get excited, I was able to get back into the spirit.

Today was the first day back, and I had not taken pictures for you.  I love that I can leave the writing up for a little longer because it is still winter (or at least as much as we get in Arizona).  It is funny to have conversations with the kiddos about winter because many of them have never experienced snow.  Keep in mind, I grew up in Chicago, so all I knew was snow in the winter.  

I hope you first day back was as fun as mine!

Product Update

Ok teacher friends!  I know that everyone is super busy being awesome teachers.  I wanted to share some things I have made that have been working well in my classroom.  You can see them at my TPT site.

Quick writes help students increase their ability to write. I use these as a warm-up and have students complete 2 or 3 a week.

This is a growing pack. There are currently 10 writing prompts.            

Happy November!

You will find four reading passages for November. Each passage has the lexiles labeled. Each passage also has an emphasis on citing evidence from the text.

Check out a FREE SAMPLE here.

This pack includes 24 NO PREP worksheets and task cards for students. These are great for extra practice, guest teachers, homework, and more!              

The kinder math pack is a growing bundle as I make stuff to meet the needs of my students. Please check back often.

Currently, there are 8 pages of no prep worksheets that cover the following:

*Count and Write Numbers
*Tracing Numbers
*Identify and Color Numbers
*Drawing Models
*Word Problems
*Color by Number            

Includes 16 math pages that you can simply print and go. Use them as review or to support your core lessons.

This is a growing bundle.            

I made these anchor charts to use with my small groups. I glued them on a file folder and laminated them. My students use them as a resource when they do their work.

In this file, you will get my decoding strategies anchor chart, blends and digraphs anchor chart, and the decoding strategies for the wall.

I will update with more anchor charts as I find them useful for my students.            

TPT Sale and Updates

I have been putting blogging on the back burner lately, but I am still here and busy as ever.  Here is a quick update to some things I have been posting on TPT.  Also, I will be holding a sale at the end of the month!  20% off everything!

This is a follow-up to may fall word problem pack.  Each pack contains 32 word problems.

SPRING Pack Here

FALL Pack Here

Simply print the included pages, place on a magnetic cookie sheet (I got mine at the dollar store), and have students use magnetic letters to complete the activities.

Click the picture for the link to my TPT store!

Brush up on those basic math skills with the 6 pages of football themed math. Skills include basic addition, basic subtraction, skip counting, base tens, and number identification.           

Includes picture word dictionary for spring words, 6 writing prompts, word wall cards that can be used for writing the room, and a spring word search!

       

There is so much more, but you have to visit my store to see!  Happy teaching!

It's Almost Here!

I am not sure if I am referring to Thanksgiving or Black Friday.  Here are a few pictures of some things we have been working on this week and last.

Here is what my kindergarteners did for number recognition practice.  You can get a copy of it here!

I was getting tired of the kids focusing on spelling all the time and not getting their ideas on the paper.  So, I put a prompt on the paper and we brainstormed words we might need for our writing.   drew a picture next to each word so that students could easily find it.  To give them some ideas, we read the book Thanks for Thanksgiving.

Last week, or was it two weeks ago already, we made a general chart of words we might need for the whole month.  I really like this idea for each month because I find the kids using it and not asking me how to spell everything.  With it, I have noticed their writing improve.

Happy writing!

Love You More Than Gold

I know you can't believe that I am posting two days in a row, but here it is.  Today in class we did a writing activity about someone that is worth more than gold to us.  Here is how it turned out.  You can get this great activity here.

In a Giving Mood

I am in a giving mood on this November 1st evening. I have been creating things to use this month and thought I would share some of them for FREE!

Thanksgiving Writing Paper

Describe a Turkey

Compare and Contrast Thanksgiving

This is my favorite one of this post.  I have a book about the first Thanksgiving, so I thought we could identify the similarities and differences about how the first Thanksgiving was and how it is now.

Please let me know what you think and invite your blogger friends to use these as well.  Happy November!

Bat Writing

Last week we worked on bats.  Here are some of the pictures of our writing activity.

Students were given numbered envolopes and asked to use what they know to make the words into a sentence.  We talked about how we knew that a sentence started with a capital letter and ended with a punctuation mark.  They used that knowledge to find the first and last word of the sentence.  Then thay used the words that were left and put them in the correct order.

Once they figured out what the sentence was supposed to be, they glued it down.

Then they wrote the sentence on the line.

To finish our bat writing activity, we made bats.

Our finished product!

Project Updates

As promised, here are pictures of our ghost writing that we finished up this week.

I also wanted to show you some of the things I have been doing with the handwriting notebook that I made.  This is the result after the student worked with me.  I used a highlighter to help the student trace and fit the words in the proper spacing.  When I made the shapes, the student understood the spacing.

A little more practice with this student.  We circled our favorites.

In the next few weeks, I will be making monsters with the kids.  I found this idea on Pinterest and it was super easy to do.  The best part...

It can be used as a bookmark too!  How cute!?

Next week, we are talking about bats.  This is the project we are going to make when we are done with our writing activity.  It will hang with our ghosts in time for conferences!