Learning Randomness & Did You Hear.....????

Yes, I'm still alive. Yes, I still blog. Yes, I seem to fall asleep for a quick nap when I get home and then I blog stalk and then I crash again. Yes, I'm back. What a whirlwind the past two weeks have been. With this whole snow thing, it's really caused me to fall behind in a lot of areas because I'm so busy trying to play catch up in other places!



So I'll catch you up on a couple of projects we completed for Valentine's Day (totally missed due to bad weather---so it happened the day AFTER President's day!), President's Day and Dental Health.

Ugh---I'm struggling with Picasa tonight!!!

So we decorated our Valentine's boxes. Unfortunately, with all of the days off and everything, we had very little to put in them, but the kiddos still had fun!
 

Then we played catch up on President's Day. I did not hit on it as much as I wanted but we read a Weekly Reader and used a Mimio activity that I found discussing President's and the White House.

We also made George and Abe. I have had this project for YEARS! And not exactly sure where it came from because I've had it for so long (probably a great retired teacher passed it down!)

One side is George and then you flip and the other is Abe.

How cute!!!
 

 

Then we worked on some Dental health activities. I hate that everything I did the past two weeks was so quick but I wanted to make sure I didn't skip anything!

We talked about how to keep our teeth healthy and what we needed to do to fight away those "sugar bugs". As a whole group, we came up with ideas to keep our teeth clean. After, I partnered the students up and they created their own cavity fighting shield. 

 Idea came from Pinterest (Source)

So that's a quick wrap up of what happened last week! I will be back later this week with some fun Black History activities we have done!


Oh---did you hear??? I'm so excited that I'm going to be an author over at Teaching Blog Round Up!!! There are some incredible bloggers already over there, so I'm honored that I get to participate as well!

If you haven't heard of it, stop on by!!

 

Oh and in case you haven't heard this either...TPT has reached 3 million users!!!!! Whew what an amazing milestone. So of course, there's a HUGE sale that will be happening on Thursday and Friday!!

  My store will be 20% and you can get an extra 8% when you use the promo code: TPT3

 

I've added a couple of new things and revamped some old stuff. So go by and stock up your cart for Thursday and Friday!

Happy Valentine's Day Sale!

It's another black ice/snow day for us here so no school today! Working on day 4 of this week. So no Valentine's Day fun at school. One friend put it this way, "We'll have our Valentine day celebration along with the July 4th cookout...!" LOL Let's hope not! Have no idea how and when we will be making up all these days. 
  
In honor of Valentine's Day---let's have some sales!
I want to share the love and offer 20% off everything over at my TPT store this weekend!

Graphics by Graphics From the Pond & Creative Clips

Fonts by CK Fonts 

I'm also running a 25% off sale over at my TN shop as well if you are members there.

It's for this weekend only!! My new Beginning Sounds Bundle will be on sale as well!

 Along with my best sellers....

 

Or grab both of them in ONE bundle for extra savings!

 

 

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

Are You Lucky In Love? & Giveaways! {Linky}

Two posts in one day. Call the blogging police or guards or who ever is in charge of all the rules! ;)

Molly over at Lucky to Be in First is having a cute linky party for showing what you love so I thought I'd join in! 

 

FIrst and foremost---love God and my family and friends and an awesome church family!! I couldn't even begin to name all of those who are such an amazing influence in my life.

But these two guys are my faves!! (Pay no mind to the pink Nerf gun the hubs has---his best friend's daughter got that for Christmas so he decided to play with it too!) Boys....

 

I live in Eastern NC---not far from the beach! Day trip anyone!!?? And all I can think about is the sand and salt and ocean....and the SUN and the WARM weather. Can you tell I'm OVA' the snow!?

 Chocolate and PB...need I say more?

I have "met" so many amazing friends through this crazy adventure of blogging. I can't name any one person b/c I would HATE to leave anyone out but you know who you are! Emails, giveaways, commenting, and just providing great support and feedback---you rock!

 Love you ladies!! Hugs!

I love DIY projects. Crafting, knitting, attempting to sew.....I've had so much fun creating burlap door hangers. Here's my new one for my front door!!

 

 

There are so many other things that I love but I don't think this post should be TOOOOO long, do you? 

I HEART creating, sharing, collaborating for TPT and TN. What an amazing blessing it has been....I get discouraged sometimes but I know that it's for my students OR your students. Those that need it the most--the kids. That's who it's for. 

I LOVE Teaching---as discouraging as it may be, especially with all the stuff NC teachers are going through. But I do love it. I'm not even sure I would know what else I would do.

So what do you love? Make sure you head over to Molly's linky party and link up!!

And don't forget about my friend Colleen's 200 follower giveaway!! I'm giving away my Beginning Sound Bundle and I hear that there is a TPT gift card in the mix as well!!  Click on the picture to take you over!

 

And I heard that the Mystery Box is BAAACCKKKK!!!!! I hope I can win this one day!! It's such an amazing giveaway from some even more amazing bloggers!!

 

Common Core Assessment Workbook

With the Common Core everywhere now and each school district in different areas of implementation, sometimes we need some extra resources in our tool belt. 

These common core assessment workbooks provide various assessment strategies that you can use for review, interventions, or a quick informal assessment to use for parent conferences.

 

I think printing some of these and laminating them to use as a quick assessment at the beginning of literacy groups and math groups would be helpful. 

100th Day Fun & a Giveaway

We celebrated our 100th day today. It was pushed back a week because of all that white stuff that fell from the sky and stayed around for 4 days---I'm NOT going to say the name b/c they are calling for MORE tomorrow and Wednesday!!!! :/ (Maybe not calling it what it is will make it go away!) 

We had fun though. Mondays are normally our block of specials (I don't usually have the kiddos on Monday mornings until lunch and then they have Guidance after lunch--so I "finally" get them around 1:15! But today was our Valentine festival at school so we stayed in the gym all morning have stations and fun games for Valentine's day. 

So the 100th day festivities began after 1:15. Which left little time to do a lot but we still had a blast!

I created this shirt this weekend (my awesome IA gave me the idea b/c she made a cute one for her daughter!) See those lovely buttons in the bag? I had planned on sewing 100 of them on the shirt. But I decided that if I did that---I couldn't wear the shirt but once a year!

 

This is just an iron-on transfer from Michaels. It's a chalkboard sheet so it can be reused again and again! :)

Enough of me...onto the kiddos. 

Gotta love munchies! My IA sat with the kiddos at the kidney table and they were able to use the 100th day mat (found here) to sort out the food. We had the following:

• M&M's
• Cheez-its
• Goldfish
• Gummi Bears
• Pretzel Sticks
• Chex cereal
• Froot Loops
• Popcorn
• Marshmallows

We didn't get in all that we asked for so we used the BIG marshmallows that we had on hand and they could get some of those to make it add up to 100. 

We also worked on our 100 day hats and writing 100 words!

 

 

And to the end of the day....we counted and danced to 100.

And danced the Macarena!

 

My buddy Colleen has reached 200 followers! She's letting me in on the fun and I'm giving away my new bundle pack!!

Hop on over to her blog and enter to win some awesome prizes!!

A Look At Last Week --freebie included!

We had fun last week catching up on Groundhog's Day and making Valentine crafts. I wasn't able to link up for Five For Friday so I thought I'd just share a bit of what we did last week and maybe include a freebie for you! 

We started our week of with Groundhog's day. Unfortunately due to the crazy weather the week before, it was only a short, quick lesson. We made Groundhog's hats and read weekly readers and even watched a video. That was about it. Short and sweet. 

During math, we are working on addition and subtraction and I wanted my kiddos to understand what those terms mean. We've done this quite a bit with cubes or counters but this time I wanted them to use a "mat" to help them "see" that adding means to put together and subtraction means to take away. We also use these boxes to help "decompose" numbers.
 

As you can see in the pictures, I gave each student a work mat. Simple to make, just draw a line down one side and divide it up. 

In the top picture, students were told to put two counters in ONE box and then put two counters in the other box. 

Once I saw that each student did that, then they were to bring the counters in both boxes down, which put them all together in the large rectangle. So we talked about how 2 and 2 make 4 in all. 

We continued with a few more problems.

 We continued with more problems in this picture.


Once we were ready to "break" or decompose numbers. So I had them turn the paper upside down, so the large rectangle was at the top and the two boxes were at the bottom.

They were told to put a certain amount of cubes in the large rectangle...such as 5. Then they had to "break" that 5 apart and put so many cubes in one of the boxes and the rest of the cubes in the other box. So one student might have put 2 in one box and 3 in the other. So 5 can be 2 and 3.

Does this make sense?

I didn't have pictures of them doing this part. 


During the week we also worked in our new small groups. After DIBELS testing was complete, I rearranged my students by their TRC levels. My lowest group is still working on beginning sounds and print concepts. So we had fun practicing beginning sounds with a set of puzzles from my Beginning Sounds Bundle pack.  

And we had fun creating some Valentine crafts. You can grab this freebie over on my FB page under Fan Freebies.

We've been also working on sequencing/retelling stories but this post is long enough so I'll be back this week with our activity using a flow map and Goldilocks and the Three Bears!

Currently February

February? Love teaching during this month! What's one of your most favorite things this month to teach?

It's time to link up----well past time---like I'm a couple of days late but betta late than neva right? :)

 

Listening---Bath Crashers. I have like two baths they can crash. Anytime. Send them my way you if know them! :) Totally wish I could have this done!

Loving---The snow is GONE! Here in eastern NC we are hardly equipped to deal with ice and snow. So last week shut.us.down.quickly. I was able to finally go back to work today after only going ONE day last week....

Thinking---I could totally take a quick nap right now. But probably not a good idea at almost 9 pm. Right??

Wanting---What do they put in Girl Scout cookies that make it where you HAVE to eat more than one? Like at a time. In one sitting. Like 2-3 peanut butter patties are gone. Likethat.

Needing---To finish paperwork. It never ends does it? Oh, well. It can wait. Again. 

2 Truths & 1 Fib---I get up at 5 am every day to work out. NOT HARDLY. I'm up at 6 every day (b/c the dog wakes me up rightontime!) And then I get ready for work. I WISH I did that.

Yes I've hit two deer with the same car. I drove what we affectionately called "the tank" senior year of HS and most of college. Hit two deer. It was tough.

And I did just read an entire book earlier. Granted it wasn't that long. But I started and finished it tonight.

If you haven't heard---a group of us are having blog hop. Great freebies and you can enter to win an item from EACH of our stores.

   

a Rafflecopter giveaway