apologies....

This is how I feel...and possibly even how I look right now!

Good evening. I must apologize for not blogging. It turned out that my daughter had croup...not very fun at all! Now I sit here with a MASSIVE head cold. The doctor said as long as I don't lose my voice I only caught the cold side of it all. UGH! And to top it off the timing stinks...I have everything ready for a great guest post (aside from my part of it), AND my husband and I are headed out of town for our FIRST over night trip without my daughter, since having my daughter! Yes...it's been almost THREE years! This is not because I am too scared or nervous to leave her, it's just timing has been horrible. So my bag is packed, with NyQuil and DayQuil...and we head out in the morning. I hope that I can have the guest post and such ready for Monday, since I will be up with the trick or treaters. Thanks for hanging in there with me and understanding. Have a wonderful weekend!

Quick Post

Still have a sick little one, currently sleeping in my arms...but thought I would share my decorated pumpkin for United Way fundraiser. Not exactly how I thought it would turn out but pretty good.

 

Stay tuned...

Well this weekend has already flown by. My plans were to have a guest post by an AMAZING person and a wonderful give-a-way to celebrate reaching 200 followers, and do this by today. Well now I am thinking it's not going to happen so quickly. My daughter woke up from her nap yesterday with a "barking" cough and sore throat because of the cough. She was up at 5AM asking for juice and cough medicine. So I am thinking my day will be spent taking care of and loving on her. I will share a few new pictures of some things I added around my classroom, pretty excited to get all of my reader's and math workshops started...you may think I am a little behind, which I am, but with testing this week and starting a new school a month and a half into the school year... I pretty much had to have the "first 20 days in a nutshell" with my "new" class (we have had two weeks together now)...they are pretty excited to start too!

My word work station, I am going to write the two things (a week) they can do on the white board, and use the are to store materials they will need for those activities for the week.

On the what do I do paper, I plan to write the different things they can write when they are "working on writing" during Reader's Workshop/Daily 5/Guided Reading (whatever you want to call it).

When we were talking about our workshop rules the kids wanted a place they could leave me sticky notes if they had questions and I was working with a group, so they wouldn't interrupt me...what a great idea!

Instead of doing an anchor chart for EVERY workshop we do in our classroom, we made a general list of rules and consequences.

My prefix/suffix/root/base word trees are finally starting to "bloom"...I have more to put up, but with testing this past week, I didn't want to have yet another thing to cover!

Close up for you!

Now going to cuddle with my little one, hopefully I will have more fabulous stuff for you all soon! Have a great weekend!

As promised...

I got my laptop back today, so as promised I have the Response to Literature packet for you! I introduced each part of a great response seperately first: summary, connections, and opinions. I used the headers and connections organizers to do this. I then put it all together and used the response story map! I hope you enjoy.

On another note, get ready for a guest blogger AND an awesome GIVE-A-WAY when I reach 200 followers!!!!!!! So excited!!!!!!!!!! Click below for the packet:

It's been a day...

Well I had a pretty great packet of Response to Literature maps/organizers/headers to share with you all, but my school laptop (containing majority of these items) was taken today to be re-imaged. During the rush to save my fonts, any files on my hard drive, and back it up...I completely forgot to put my Response documents on my flash drive. I guess that will give you something to look forward to. To add to the anticipation a little more I keep forgetting to take my camera to school (nope this techie girl does not have nor do I want a phone with these capabilities). So I guess I am leaving you with something to look forward to, as I take my handful of Reeces Pieces and try not to think of my LONG list of "to dos". 

On another note, please check out my FB "store"! We hit 200 "likes" and are having a fun give-a-way! 

Front Porch

I am slowly getting my front porch just the way I want it for the Fall, and it will be winter and time to change it just when I am done! For now, because I LOVE the way these turned out...I must share my cute little pumpkins with you. I hope you all had a restful weekend...we hit the ground running with ITBS testing all next week!!! Keep an eye out for a few things I am working on, will post soon.

Perfect Place

Happy FRIDAY ya'll! To kick off the weekend, I hit up the dollar store on my way home...JACKPOT! I can't wait to share all the amazing finds, but one at a time...I'm such a tease. I was so excited to come across these cute little dominoes! 

I mean really, how much cuter can you get?! I was so excited because I have a TON of math games that require dominoes, and I think I had maybe one large set. So I purchased these AND the little plastic containers (4pk for $1). I put two packs of the dominoes in each container (only used two of the containers), one pack didn't seem like enough (maybe because they were so small). I think I may go back and get more! 

So here is my FREEBIE for Friday! A math domino game called Perfect Place. It is used to review place value, it can also be used to review four digit subtraction. I have more games, but I couldn't remember them so will have to share with you all after I find them at school 

I hope you enjoy and have a GREAT weekend! (click on the picture to retrieve the game)

Do you know your multiplication facts?

Well my class is working on it! So to help out, one of my Daily Math centers will be this game called RIO. It is so much fun! You can get a copy of it from my TPT store.

Click the picture to go to my store:

What are you looking for?

Just wondering what you as a teacher look for the most? I know I am constantly checking blogs, worksheet websites, and "doing" multiple Google and Pinterest searches to find new organizers, ideas, picture books, cute clipart, fonts, and anything I can use or make "my own" for my class. Which brings me to the question, "What are you looking for?". I LOVE making organizers and pretty much anything...but don't always have the ideas, this is your chance to get what you are looking for and for me to make them or share with you if I already have them. Let me know!

On another note two GREAT picture books that I have/will use this week for reviewing Response to Literature and Types of Fiction (Realistic Fiction). Add them to your MUST read list.

Story Element Bookmarks

Check out my TPT (Teachers Pay Teachers) "shop". This is my first item for sale.

Story Element Bookmarks (click the picture to purchase) 

Easy as PIE

Now that I am settling into my new school and getting to know all of my students, I decided to spend a few days just reviewing some of the skills from the first nine weeks. I really wanted to see what they remembered and had learned from their previous teachers, but I didn't want to just give them another worksheet or heaven forbid yet another test. When it came to reading I spent a day or so on each skill, one of which was Author's Purpose.

I decided they were all going to make their own PIE. After some trial and error. This is what I came up with:

I used two paper plates. One of which we cut into four pieces (for younger students you may want to have this already done). Each piece of the PIE represented Author's Purpose (Persuade, Inform, Entertain). I had them color the pieces of PIE (they turned out really cute, we had some blueberry, cherry, and rainbow PIE). After coloring and writing on each piece you then staple (found it was MUCH easier to staple than glue) all the pieces on to the second paper plate. Then the students were given the handout below and had to match the definition and example with the correct Author's Purpose. It was pretty simple, but a much better way to review!

Click here for the printable (there are six to a page)

Enjoy!

Welcome!

Just wanted to take a minute to welcome all of my new followers! I have some great things to share with you this weekend, as well as some freebies. My Saturday was filled with our garage sale, a birthday party, and of course a football cookout...so needless to say I did not get to blogging today. Keep an eye out though!

FOUND it!

I knew I had seen it on Pinterest. Click here for the link to her blog if I have sparked your interest. I might just give it a whirl!

Where did it go?

Okay so yes, it's 2AM and I am up. See my daughter was sick for four days, she would wake up around 3 and couldn't stop coughing...well four days is all it took to reschedule my sleep pattern! I will end up paying for this tomorrow. 

But as a teacher, and most of you know, you lay in bed and just start thinking about everything you need to do, everything you want to do, and of course everything you forgot to do. Well, my train of thought went toward the Math Common Assessment I forgot to give yesterday...therefore I have to give it today, on top of my County Benchmark Test (for those of you not familiar, it's much like a common assessment...but county wide, and formatted like a standardized test that they have to use a scantron for). So I am thinking, my poor students. I have had them for three days (again if you are new here, I was displaced and moved schools after a month into the year) and they are going to get slammed with tests in the morning. Then I remembered I had seen this fabulous idea to break up the "boringness" and routine of long class segments or in our case testing segments. 

A teacher had written or maybe even printed some simple activities/exercises for the students to do on Popsicle sticks. Things such as...10 jumping jacks, 10 cherry pickers...and so on. Well I was all excited thinking of how I would make my Popsicle sticks cute and of course which bucket I would use to store them in, then of course how I would blog about them! So when I finally gave into my sleeplessness and got on the computer I could not find the original idea! I checked my Pinterest, flipped through a few blogs, and NADA! Has anyone out there seen this? I don't really NEED to find it, because I have the general idea...but I do need more ideas of things the students can quietly do at their desks, yet get "the blood flowing" again.

Is there anyone out there in blog world that can help me???