There Was An Old Lady-Valentine's Day and A FREEBIE

Holy Moly! Another week of craziness and it is only Tuesday! What is a teacher, mother, wife to do??? I have one really sick kiddo at home and another one on the mend. My husband and I jokingly have an over under bet as to how many days until one of us gets it also. Yuck! Fingers crossed it will leave our house soon.

At work, I have spent the last two days completing the middle of the year Dibels testing for all of second grade. I love seeing the results because 99.9% of the time it reaffirms what is already known in class. The results help guide our instruction and re-evaluate our in class intervention lessons.  I print out the individual results and send them home to the parents. It acts as a mini report card update for them. How do you use your school assessment results?

On a much more exciting note, I have spent the last few days working on completing activities for a mini unit to compliment the book There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Rose by Lucille Colandro.
                                           
My mom stopped by my classroom the other day and brought me a copy of the book. I was so excited and she said, "What are you going to make to go along with it?" (She knows me so well). I told her I didn't know at the moment, but something good. So I bought some new clip art and a few day later a mini unit was born!

An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Rose-Supplemental Activities

This packet includes literacy and math activities to go along with the book. My students will sequence the book by cutting and pasting the story details in order.

Then they will choose one story detail and write and illustrate it.

The packet also includes ABC Order and Making Words. They are going to review their measuring skills by using their centimeter rulers to measure objects that were swallowed in the book. For some more math fun, they will solve math problems I SPY style! 

I am so excited to have this unit ready, I also created a couple FREEBIES (graphing and sequencing) that go with the story as well. You can grab your copy by clicking on the picture below. 

If you download a copy, I would really appreciate it if you left some "love" and let me know what you think of it. Thanks so much! Enjoy!

Product Swap Time!

I am so excited to be participating in my first Product Swap hosted by Jessica Stanford. I saw all the posts from the last Product Swap and I felt like I had missed out on something fun and magical! This time around, I was lucky enough to join in the fun. I have been super fortunate to be paired up with an amazing lady-Aimee Salazar from Primarily Speaking.

Aimee has an incredible blog with incredible ideas! I had a really difficult time picking a product from her TpT store. She has so many wonderful products and she has spent so much time making sure they are Common Core aligned! I ended up choosing Aimee's Three Digit Addition and Subtraction Fun Pack- LOVE IT!

This product is jam packed with activities to help reinforce three-digit addition and subtraction skills. It has something for every type of learner in your class, which makes differentiating for each student SO much easier.

Here is an overview picture of the activities included: Roll A Number Sentence, Spin A Number Sentence, Sort It Out, Match Up, 5 in a Row and Pick A Card. 

My students really loved the HUGE dice they got to use for this activity. I printed the number dice, cut them out and laminated them for durability. I need to make a few more copies of the dice so several students can do the same activity at the same time.

Here are the centers ready to go for my students. I printed and laminated all the pieces so they would last.

The kids loved this activity because they got to make their own problems with the cards they drew. They were in charge! I had the kids work in partners to check each others' work too! So everyone got to be the "student" and then the "teacher". 

Here are my kiddos working in pairs to complete some of the activities. This activity (Spin A Number Sentence) was a HIT with the kids because they made their own spinners and then checked each others' work.

I was so impressed with the clarity of the directions. It made all the activities incredibly easy to prepare and explain to the kids. The other great thing about these activities is that the kids can be independent to complete them. Once it is modeled for them, off they go! This gave me the ability to check on each of the groups and informally assess how they were doing with the skills. 

Since I was so impressed with Aimee's math packet, I decided to purchase her Valentine's Day Fun Variety Pack. I can't wait to use this with my kids for the holiday. 

This packet has it all: Friendly Letter Craftivity, Conversation Heart Banner, Valentine Bingo, Writing Prompts, Center Work and MUCH MORE! 

Look how darn cute those craftivities are! You must check it out if you are looking for some Valentine Fun for your kiddos! I have mine printed out and ready to go!

Now, if you can't already tell, I am so glad I was paired up with Aimee for this Product Swap! She has put both of these products on sale for 20% off in her TpT store through Monday! That means you can get both these products, for your classroom, at a discounted price, right now! Hurry over to her store and put them in your cart! You will be thrilled that you did!

Three Digit Addition And Subtraction Fun Pack

Valentine's Day Fun! Variety Pack

Make sure to stop by Aimee's blog and TpT store and become a follower if you aren't already! Also, check out all the other amazing bloggers that have linked up for the Product Swap and give them some of your love too!

An Awesome Week-Snowman Style! AND Five For Friday

                      I am linking up with Kacey at Doodle Bug Teaching for Five for Friday!


1. I must say, for the first week back from an extended break- WE HAD AN AWESOME WEEK! My kids were focused, worked hard and we accomplished many of our goals we had set for the week. I was really proud of them! Today we were finally able to finish our Let It Snow! Snowman Glyphs and Writing Activities.

We started the activity by answering questions about our opinion of winter on our white boards.

I was shocked by how many of the kids loved the snow, wanted to play in the snow and winter was their favorite season! Then I realized, snow is a novelty to my students. They hardly ever see it where we live, unless their parents take them to the mountains. I am curious how other students, who live in other parts of the country, would answer these questions about winter. Would they hate the snow? Love it? Do all kids generally love it? Just wondering....

Here are the kids putting their glyphs together based on how they answered the glyph questions.

These are a couple finished products:

I love how some of the students glued their nose to the side and others glued it straight down. It shows their creativity and different ways of thinking and interpreting information. After they assembled their snowmen, we read the story Snowmen At Night by Caralyn Buehner. 

Then the kids wrote what they would do if they were a snowman at night. The kids came up with the cutest stories. One of my students wanted to open a snow hair salon and all the snowmen and snow girls would get their hair cut under a disco ball! I loved reading about all their creative ideas. Here is a picture of our stories on display:

2. We completed our New Year Resolutions and wrote about things to improve at school and at home this year.

3. I came home from work today and this little box was on my doorstep.

Can you see what is inside????

Yep, my fabulous new pencil sharpener that I won from Classroom Friendly Supplies and Tania from My Second Sense! How awesome is that???? I'd say, that's a great way to start the weekend.

4. I am in the process of finishing up and putting the finishing touches on a linear measurement unit- Measuring Up! We are going to start this unit next week in class. I really dislike the way it is taught in our math series, so I really needed some fun activities to grab the kids attention. These centers, craftivity and hands-on activities will definitely do the trick. It should be up by the end of the weekend.

5. I am also looking forward to catching up with all my favorite reality Housewives shows. Especially:

                                                  

I can't wait to see what drama unfolds next!

Head on over and link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching and share your Five for Friday. Have a great Friday night!

New Year Resolutions, Pen Pals and MORE!

Day 2 back to work is complete and I have to say- we are having a great week so far! Today we were able to complete our New Year Resolution Writing and Craftivity. 

The kids had a great time with this activity. First we discussed what a resolution was. Then we made a chart of resolution ideas for school AND for home.

Nothing fancy this time around. My on-the-spot drawings have a lot to be desired-BLAH. But, you get the idea. 

After our class discussion, my kiddos completed their own bubble maps of their resolution ideas.

Then, they wrote about one school and one home resolution they wanted to achieve this year.They had to include details about how they were going to accomplish their resolution too. Here is our finished New Year Board:

After I take down this bulletin board, I am going to bind all the kids' resolution writings together into a class book. At the end of school year, we will revisit their writings and see if any of them were able to achieve their goals. I guess you could think of it as a mini time capsule project. 

Today we also got a very exciting delivery to our classroom. Right before school was out, an awesome package arrived from our pen pals!!! The kids were so happy to hear from them. Look what was inside the box....

Halloween ghost letters, Thanksgiving letters and turkey lollipops and holiday mail!!! The kids were thrilled!

And finally, I want to give a shout out to my own kid. I am so proud of my third grader. He started school yesterday and was given a book report mobile project to be completed by next week. Over winter break, he read a biography of Jackie Robinson. He came home from school and wanted to get started on the mobile right away. The teacher's directions for the project were to have parents help their child complete the mobile. However, I have to say, my son did this on his own. The ideas are all his! I helped him draw the shapes and we had fun picking out different fonts for his facts! I think he did an incredible job!

I just needed to brag a little about my own kid! I would be thrilled as a teacher to have one of my students turn in a project like this. 

Five for Friday on Saturday

I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five For Friday on Saturday. Yes, I know I am a day late. But as usual, better late than never.

1. I just spent the last 4+ hours in the car coming home from this beautiful place. I was sad to leave Mammoth but we had a wonderful week there skiing and playing in the snow.
                                          

2. While I was on vacation I found out I won one of these bad boys from Classroom Friendly Supplies from my awesome friend Tania at My Second Sense. I can't wait to get it into my classroom!
                                                
3. Now that I am home, I am doing A LOT of this:

                                                 
4. I can't wait to meet up with our friends tonight for a little of this:
                                               
5. I also am looking forward to using my new Winter Writing Prompt packet as soon as I get back to work on Monday. I just finished it up over vacation and I can't wait to get my kids writing!

Also, my friend Renee at Fantastic First Grade Froggies is hosting a Mega 100 follower giveaway. She has tons of fantastic bloggers who have donated prizes you can win. If you are a lucky winner, you may even get my Let It Snow! Snowman Glyph! Head on over and check it out!