Let's Celebrate Earty Day

I think many teachers feel like they don't have the time to really celebrate and learn about Earth Day because of the pressures of testing. The state test is a week after Earth Day this year so I feel like I don't really have time either! But, it is so important to take that time to talk about this holiday because many students seem to be unaware of the things that are happening to our planet. Even if it's just having kids read an article for morning work or reading aloud a book to help get across the message. 

To help those of you who may not have enough time to spend teaching and learning about Earth Day, you can use these printables and activities!

There are reading, writing, and math activities included! 

To purchase your set, click my blog button below!

St. Patricks Day Writing

So I used to love Lucky Charms as a kid. As I was laying in bed the other night, I was thinking how perfectly that little treat goes along with St. Patrick's Day and how fun it would be to use Lucky Charms for some fun writing! So this little pack was born!

I came up with two different writing activities. First, students can write about their favorite Lucky Charms marshmallow. I even included a fun little class graphing activity! The second writing activity is for for students to persuade someone to eat or not eat Lucky Charms!

Just a little preview from the pack!

Click on my blog button below to head to my shop and grab your copy!

Halloween Freebie!

I am soooooo close to being ready to pop out this baby. I'm 12 days away from my due date and I couldn't be more ready for it to happen! I cannot wait to meet her!

I've walked and walked. Spicy food? Check. Pressure points? Yep. Did that too. Annnd some other things...lol 

Alas, she isn't ready to make her way into the world yet. She's too cozy up in there! I've decided to put my energy to work and finish a little freebie I've been working on for about two weeks. 

I thought it would be fun to have the kids read about the History of Halloween since most kids don't realize that it started as a harvest festival. I might have learned a thing or two also!

Included in the pack are two different levels of the same passage and three supplemental activity pages. I hope you can you use them this Halloween.

Just click the image above to head over to my TPT shop and grab your free copy!

Happy Halloween! Good luck to all you teachers this week! It's probably going to be crazy! Especially for me, since I'm 9 months pregnant! HAHA Pray for me!

Changes

It has literally been months since I last posted on my blog. I know it's been here all this time just sitting here, waiting for me to pay a visit. It's been hanging over me like a dark cloud. Honestly, I've been scared. I've been through so much this past school year and I feel like I've lost my mojo. The one project I had started and gotten really excited about, I lost when my hard drive crashed earlier this year. Since then, I was just kind of....well....done. I gave up.

And then there have been so many major changes in my personal and professional life. Shortly after I became engaged...I found out I was pregnant. Because of my past medical history (with my stroke), doctors have put me on Lovenox shots twice a day to safely thin my blood without causing harm to the baby. We are excited for her November 8th arrival even though it's come a little out of our timeline. =)

It's been crazy paying for those shots every month and trying to get our wedding planned and paid for. This past Saturday, our wedding finally happened and by some miracle, it went fabulous! I told myself I would not worry about blogging or teaching things until this stressful time was over! Here are few pictures from our big day!

Now that the stress fo wedding planning is done, I can focus on a new school year. Which brings me to another pretty big change. I will be moving from 3rd to 2nd grade! I have mixed emotions about the big move, but ultimately I think it will be for the better. I am excited and scared all at the same time. I think maybe I had become a little burnt out after last year, so change in this case is probably a good thing!

My goal from here on out is to blog at least once a week and share something teaching related! When I started this blogging journey, I shared all kinds of things I was doing in my classroom including units and worksheets and just ideas of things. I want to get back to my original goal....to just be here as a resource for teachers who need ideas. I will still probably create new things for TPT, but I don't want that to be my main focus. I think I burnt myself out on that as well! 

So here's to getting back to the original plan. And you can expect to continue to see life updates from me as well!

The Trouble with Turkeys

I finally finished my Turkey Trouble Persuasive Writing Mini Unit! 

And as promised, here is the winner!

Lisa, please send me an e-mail at glauren4556@gmail.com and I will send you the unit! 

Head on over to my shop and grab yourself a copy by clicking my store button below!

Technology Website You Don't Want to Miss and a giveaway....

So, there I was just pinning away on Pinterest when I came upon the coolest website!

You can create fake text messages to help get your point across about an idea or concept.

 Is that cool, or what?! Just click the image above to go to the actual website.

I am sure a ton of you already know about this cool website, but I thought just maybe, some of you didn't!

The pin linked back to Tammy's Technology Tips for Teachers. You can view some more examples and ideas  by clicking HERE!

I would love to use this for teaching Social Studies. I think you could do a lot with dialogue in writing and even having students create their own fake text messages for back to school getting to know you activities and so much more. 

I would love to hear your ideas for how you could use this in your classroom. I will choose one random idea tomorrow to win an item of their choice from my store! Please only comment once and leave your email in the comment!

Annnnnd GO!

4th of July Flash Sale!

I haven't thrown a sale in FOREVER, so I thought I would jump on the bandwagon!

Just click the image below to visit my shop!

Fonts from KG and Miss Tiina. Star from Krista Wallden!

Hope everyone has a fabulous Fourth of July!! =) 

**Fingers crossed it doesn't rain!**

A little of this and that...

I promised I would be back to share some things we have been working on, so here I am!

In Math, we have been doing some serious geometry. We have been learning about kinds of lines, pairs of lines, the parts of a circle, and angles!

To help us review the different kinds of lines, I gave the students some sequins and cardstock and they created each kind of line. See pictures below! 

We have also been studying the branches of our state government. After learning about them, they had to make a branches of government tree as a project grade.

(Aren't they super cute!?)

And then we FINALLY finished up our animal research papers and students were asked to create a poster to display their research. I gave them two sheets they were required to use to show what they learned. 

As our Valentine's Day Party craft, I asked students to make Valentine people on their bags! They came out so cute!

This is just a little bit of what we have been doing! I will be back soon with some actual free downloads for some our Geometry activities and the Branches of Government tree template so you can do them too!

And don't forget about my Brag Tag giveaway! It is going on until midnight Saturday! Click HERE to view the post and enter to win yourself 100 brag tags!

Happy Hump Day!!

Animal Research Note Sheet

We are starting animal research reports this week and the kids are so stinkin' excited! We decided this year to partner kids up based on their interests and since I have such a low class this year, I thought this would work out really well! 

Anyway, last week, they met with their partner and brainstormed some things they already knew about their animals and then wrote down questions they had. 

Starting tomorrow and all of next week, we will be doing our actual research! We ask that students gather information based on these four main areas: Interesting Facts, Life Cycle, Habitat, and Adpatations and Defenses. These four areas align perfectly with our SC science standards so it's always a five paragraph research paper when we are all done! 

Here is the note sheet we are using next week! Feel free to download! Just click on the image!

Happy MLK Day everyone! 

I certainly enjoyed my day off! Got to have lunch and then a pedicure with a friend! 

Resolutions and the Revolutionary War

We've been up to a few different things this week.

We wrote some New Years Resolutions and we've been learning about the Revolutionary War. 

I made a little New Year's Resolution sheet for students to write out their thoughts and you can display them on your bulletin board! Just click to download!

In Social Studies, we have been learning about the perspectives of the different colonists during the Revolutionary War. After learning about the Patriots and Loyalists point of view, I asked students to brainstorm different things each group might say.

I took some of the better answer and asked those students to share their perspectives as a Patriot or Loyalist. Here is a video of that!

And here is a little graphic organizer you can use for the end of the lesson or as a project! Just click to download! 

Happy Thursday! One more day til the weekend!!

A little late on my holiday pack!

Hey friends! I hope you all had a SUPER Merry Christmas! Things have been different all around! 

I worked on this before Christmas and meant to post before, but you now how life goes! ;) 

Anyway, you could use it next year! I made a holiday pack with some fun activity sheets to use around the holidays!

I hope to be back with some more fun stuff soon! You can get this in my shops! 

Christmas Persausive Writing

I know many of you may already be on Christmas break but I still wanted to share my new writing mini unit.

There are four different writing prompts with graphic organizers and publishing papers on both primary and upper elementary writing lines.

It is available in both my shops! Just click the buttons below.

Happy Monday! 

Boo in the Zoo Halloween Unit and Habitat Posters

I have FINALLY finished my Halloween themed animal unit: Boo in the Zoo!! I can't wait to use some of this cuteness at school with my students! Yes, I just called my stuff cute...Don't hate!

You can get them at either of my shops by click the store buttons below!

And because I knew many people would want the habitat posters instead of the whole Halloween unit, I have separated the Habitat Posters and descriptions into another file. =) 

You can get those by click the store buttons below!

I wanted to share some funny writing that my students did while I was at the South Carolina Social Studies conference a while back! They had to write about what they think happened to their teacher! 

That just cracks me up!! HAHA It was kind of true...

I mean, REALLY!?? lol I hope he doesn't think that because I LOOK pregnant! HAHA

Man, I am exhausted after this week! We did our annual region cookies!

P.S. I Love that kid! He's so stinkin' cute!

We also did our first book buddies with a kindergarten class! It was sooooo cute seeing my kids read to those little ones!

How sweet are they!?

And finally, people were asking me about where I got my dice containers pictured below...

I found them at Publix oddly enough! 

Oh, and the first person to comment with my favorite COLLEGE football team will both of my new products. =) Annnnnd go!

Properties of Addition Foldable

I feel like a BAD blogger! I have just been so busy and then trying to work on my new unit on top of school and life! Here is a preview of my progress! I only have the animal research part complete so far, but I hope to more time tomorrow to work on it!

In other news, my friend Jeannie just started a new blog called The 2nd Grade Surprise and so she is having a giveaway to celebrate her newness! I'd love for you to go check her out and follow her! =) 

Click HERE to enter her giveaway!

And finally, we began our addition and subtraction unit this week so I made this foldable to help teach the properties of addition!  Just click the picture to download!

Just print the pages separately and place the first one on top and staple them together. Just cut along the lines where you see scissors! I always use this great flipchart from promethean planet to accompany the lesson! Click HERE to head over and download it free!

And as for a spur of the moment math game, I purchased some dice containers similar to this earlier this year (I keep forgetting to post them!) and just decided to make up a new game! 

(Note this picture is from Liz's Speech Therapy Ideas)

I called it Shake It Up to 20 Addition! Put students with a partner. Then, they shake twice and set it down on the table. The first student to call out the math fact gives theirself a point. The first to reach 20 wins! Nothing all that new. I just used the containers for fun and to cut down on flying dice! 

Tomorrow is HUMPDAY! Woo hoo!! It's gonna be a crazy day tomorrow! I can't share why yet. Check back later for news!!!