Category: Writing

May 05

Long time, no post! I know this is long overdue!

Well I think the title says it all! I do have a TON to share but I promise I make it worth your while at the end of the post! Wink! Wink!

Since we (Mark and I) went on our house buying adventure, my spare time has been nonexistent. Between packing, moving, unpacking, and kinda decorating, there has been no time for creating units or blogging. Also, as all of you know, there is still the family birthday’s, holidays and planned activities that still pop up when life seems to be out of control. So, I thought I would share some pictures of our home with you all of you. I hope this helps make you all feel not so abandoned! =)

Here is our kitchen and family room area. This was the weekend before our walk through, so Mark was inspecting EVERYTHING! I had to go to our walk through without him so he was making sure I knew the house like the back of my hand. =)

This was our home Easter morning the day after we moved in. I Know….it was a mess! Also I don’t recommend moving during a holiday. The only thing that is were it needed to be was our new sectional! lol! Those are the dinning room chairs to the left! AAHHHH…. I cringe when I look at this photo.This is the most updated photo I have of our family room! All the boxes are finally unpacked in this room. We still have to hang photos and things. Overall, I am just excited to have a clear walkway!

Here is our kitchen! I am very proud of our teamwork here! Mark and I put up the back splash ourselves! I still need things for the top of the cabinets but I have to say, this room is coming along!

Last here is a look at our front porch and sidewalk! I am really excited about our little lights that lead up to the door!

Now onto school things! We have been knee deep in all things superhero and super villain! This unit has been a blast and a much needed distraction for me! The kids got so into this year and their stories came out really great. I have a few pictures to show you of the things we have been working on.

This is the superhero party. I got little red table decorations from the dollar store as well as superhero gummies for each student. They also had a label to color for either their “Drink of Doom” or “Justice Juice”!

Then we set up the different cereal for the students to make their “super” mix! I have to say that this was sooo cheep and the kids ATE IT UP!

I found black and white boxes for the kids to put their super mix in and then I printed signs that I tapped over each cereal so they had a superhero or super villain name! They thought this was awesome and I have to admit it did look pretty cute! This cereal is Mind Control POPS!

The cereal you see here is Rings of Power and Good Vs. Evil Pieces. I had to make a cereal that had something to do with good vs. evil. They were OBSESSED with it. When we began writing our stories I had to post all the villain’s names as well as the superhero’s names so that they could put each other in their stories! I am telling you they took this very serious! lol! I loved every minute of it too.

The cereals you see here are Superpower Crunch and Cocoa Kryptonite! All the bowls and scoops were from the Dollar Store as well! It was such a cheap party! I don’t think I spent more then $20 on everything. Now time to show off some of their finished master pieces!

Here is a few pictures of their projects! I didn’t realize how many super villain pictures I took! I will have to go back and take some more of my students who chose to be superheroes! I do have to let you know that it didn’t matter if they were a villain or a hero, they were just super excited to do this unit! They could not wait to write their stories.

If you are interested in this unit you can get it here! I have made a Superhero unit as well as the Superhero craftivity. The unit offers clarifying strategies and tools that are not pictured in the photos above. If you are looking for what is pictured above then click on the second image. If you want all things to do with superheroes then click on the first image! However, I will let you know that I have updated the unit with 38 new pages of materials! So if you have already purchased the unit or just the craftivity you need to download a new version! Just click on the product covers to head over to my TpT store.

This one is for the Superhero unit.

This one is for the Superhero craftivity.

Also keep in mind that there is awesome text for a read aloud that goes along with this unit. You don’t have to have it, but it really helps make their stories come alive and start the unit off with lots of excitement! You can click on the book covers below and they will take you to the Amazon listing! I know I have said this before but both books were written by a child author named Rachel Yu! Just another way to reinforce writing in the classroom!

Alright on to the next SUPER activity! So after our stories we learned about alliteration! Words that start with he same letter, a lot like tongue twisters! So keeping with our super theme I read a book by Bob McLeod. If you are interested in this one too, just click on the image of the book cover! It’s great, he has made up his very own superheroes and has alliteration for go with each letter of the alphabet! This was another great read aloud!

Here are some pictures of the pages my students are creating! Yep, we are making our own ABC Superhero/Villain Alliteration class book!

Dinatickus-Man destroys dinosaurs with his dynamite and dangerous claws!

The Highflying Hockey Heroine hits hockey pucks high and has a hot pink hat to hide her horrible hair!

The Lucky Liar loves to lie while laughing loudly and likes to launch lots of liquid from lemons!

The Marvelos Mega Muncher, munches everything in his marvelous path and he has mysterious magnets on his mind while munching a marvelous mega muffin and marshmallows! His sidekick: Mischievous Monkey! I love this one!

S-Hero has spider sidekicks to search in sewers with his super silver shield! His thought bubble says, “soup, spaghetti, sandwiches….lunch!”

Didn’t they turn out so cute?? I haven’t put the book together yet, so I will post a finished book when it is all laminated and together! If you are interested in this unit you can pick up a copy by click the image below!

Okay, I know this is a ~~kinda~~ very long post but I have one more thing to share with you! In math we have been working on estimation! One of my teammates shared this idea with me about nice and naughty numbers. So I made some cute little number characters to help teach our lesson.

Here is how it works! Nice numbers are the numbers one through four. Their job is to let the first number rest or stay the same. Let’s try one! Take the number 54. The 4 in the one’s place is a nice number so that means the first number can rest while he changes to zero. Now the number becomes 50! He was nice and he did all the changing!

Well you are probably wondering about the rest of the numbers…. five through nine, well they are all naughty numbers! Let’s try one more! This time say the number is 68. Well you are in trouble now because the number in the one’s place is an eight and that is a naughty number! He doesn’t like being the only one changing so he makes the first number change too! That means the first number has to change up one to become a seven and he changes into a zero! Now you have the number 70!

Now you do still have to teach your students about the different rounding rules when deciding if the number rounds to the nearest 10, 100 or 1,000! But after that, estimating the sums and differences is a snap! Say the question wants the best estimate for the sum of 54 and 68! Well now all they have to do is add 50 + 70 = 120!

Since I have been MIA for such a long time….. I posted this as a little freebie in my TpT store! You can click on the product cover below! I hope you enjoy this! My kids loved it!! There are teaching posters, small and larger number character cards as well as response sheets for you to assess your students! I included everything for free!!

I hope everyone is enjoying school as much as I have been! Again I feel really bad about not posting for such a long time, so before I go, I wanted to let you know that I will be putting all of my superhero themed lessons on sale for 20% off until MIDNIGHT tonight! So if you haven’t picked up a copy of these units you can today! Have a super week!

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Posted in Classroom Celebrations, Superhero, Writing

Dec 29

Some much needed R&R, Holiday Rewind, and Sale!

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and got to celebrate with their loved ones! I had all intentions of posting threw the holiday season but once break set in, I just could not bring myself to doing anything school related. Instead I took some much needed time to give myself some R&R.

To be honest my husband was over the moon excited that I was not talking school for a good two weeks. Don't get me wrong, he is definitely my biggest supporter but I turned the tables on him and took the time to do things he enjoyed the most. I felt it was definitely needed since we are always doing this with school in mind. If you haven't taken some time to really put school on hold…. I mean no pinning school, no reading teacher blogs, no buying school items, no creating school items, you should. It gives you time to focus on things that sometimes get the back burner. Take a look at some of the fun things we did during my 2 weeks of R&R!

We started off by going to the midnight premiere of the Hobbit. I am not sure if I have confessed my husbands ~~love~~ obsession with Peter Jackson, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and now the Hobbit. Leading up the the release, we had to watch every video update of the Hobbit in the making as soon as they were posted. I will have you know that I definitely had to watch each video more than once. So naturally I expected to be going to the midnight premiere of the Hobbit. Since then we have went back to see it AGAIN in HFR (High Frame Rate). I think I earned myself tones of brownie points for all of this. But really it was nice to return all the support that my husband gives me every time I post or create a new unit! He definitely deserved all this and probably more.

We went to dinner before the movie to celebrate my sister in law's birthday! It was a great start to the long night ahead. It was a beautiful night!

I listened to the Hobbit on tape whenever we drove in the car! LOL that is the only way he could get me to read it. =) Then the night before the showing, I surprised him with the original Hobbit move when it was first released. It is in cartoon… I can't believe kids watched this, Gandalf in this movie was kind of scary! So after I listened to the book on tape and we watched the original movie, I can honestly say we were ready to see the first of three movies for the Hobbit!

Here we are right before we left for the Hobbit! It was 11:15 at night! Looking a little tired but ready to go! I know what your thinking, we are just a little bit nerdy! I agree, we are! =) We didn't get home until 3:30 am!!!

Another great night out I had recently is when I went with my sister in law, Megan to see Mary Poppins the Musical. It was a lot of fun but definitely different from the original. I will admit that I found myself thinking this is not supposed to happen, or why didn't they do the part when…

All in all it was a great show and if you like Mary Poppins you should go see it.

We are waiting for the show to start so what better to do that take pictures of well, us! =) We had to use the flash because of the lighting but it is a tad bright. So I made it black and white! It really fixes all bad pictures!

In mist on all the fun I still had to decorate the house for Christmas and wrap all of the presents we bought for all of our family and friends! First I will show you some pictures of our Christmas tree. This year we purchased an artificial tree! Usually mark is nothing but against this but having to clean it all up made him want to try something different this year! Mark's Grandma (she did all the painting) and Grandpa (he did all the wood cutting) made us the same elf on a ladder that Mark grew up with! Isn't it so adorable! He climbs up a step for every day that passes until he reaches the top step, which means Christmas is here!

Our little elf is making his way to the top!

I also bought this Santa at a local craft show to add some Christmas spirit to our tree area! One of my best purchases I think! =)

I thought this was a fun picture that I took of the tree! I laid down and then looked up the tree! =)

So i think we bought too many presents! They are over flowing our tree area! My poor Santa was forced out so the presents could fit under the tree. These are not just presents for each other. I think we enjoy giving gifts the most. =)

I almost forgot about this one. After we finished putting all the ornaments on the tree, we started to take pictures. My sweet little puppy decided she needed to be in the photos and laid down right under the tree! Isn't she too cute?!

So I did manage to take some photos of some activities I did with my students the past few weeks. We really had some gingerbread fun!

The first thing we did is make gingerbread ornaments for our students! I forgot to take pictures of them decorated but we used mini buttons, puffy paint, ribbon, and mini bows to make them look like gingerbread. Each student could choose to make a girl or boy. Then we rolled out the "special" dough and placed their cutout on to wax paper. We wrote their names at the bottom on the wax paper so we kept track of who the gingerbread belonged to. Then we let the dry. The room smelled so delicious, full of fresh cinnamon! We even put on our gingerbread aprons!

Here are my lovely teammates all dressed up! Can you tell that we love our gingerbread unit? =) You can get these aprons from here!

In writing my students we working on creating their very on gingerbread stories! They turned out soo cute! They created final drafts that were complete with a house cover, character inside and story that had been edited and written on nice paper. They also had to create gingerbread sayings for their stories and some of them were really adorable and creative! Here are some pictures of a few!

I am almost done putting together my gingerbread unit! I know its a little late but better late than never right? It will have all the resources for creating your own gingerbread stories as well as reading materials and some little extras. I promise to post about it all when it is done. Then we watched the Polar Express before we went to Winter Break! The day was tons of fun. Since Diana and I teach together we used my room as the "train" room and hers as the movie room. I wrote a cute little saying on the board for them and moved their desks to kind of resemble a train!

We put a Polar Express word search and crossword puzzle for them to do when they boarded the train! They thought this was tons of fun and they were pretty excited when they walked in the room. If you click on the words Polar Express at the beginning of the paragraph, you can check out some freebies I found!

We set up hot chocolate buffet and served it throughout the movie! They got to pick marshmallows to drop in as well as a candy cane. They were stirring, slurping and sipping down the hot chocolate. Then we also made a cupcake buffet where they iced and decorated a red and green Funfetti cupcake.

They loved getting to decorate their own cupcake! They turned out pretty cute! The little gingerbread men came from Target! I was really excited when I found them! At they end of the day we filled their bags with treats and sent them off to break in their PJ's!

With all this gingerbread fun my team and I just could help but create some gingerbread t-shirts! We were even able to recruit a few other teacher friends to make the shirts with us! Check out our shirts!

The best part is the saying we put on the back! Check it out… it makes me laugh every time I read it!

I hope you enjoy this as much as I do! It definitely had the kids giving me that little grin of laughter!

Okay, so two more things to share and then I wanted to link up with Hope King! I promise I will make it QuIcK! I gave all my teacher friends cute little gingerbread gift boxes! I just wanted to show you all since they looked too festive to not share!

Then my adorable little girl painted her nails again! So of course I had to share them. I just don't see how it is possible to get these details so small and still look so good! It just amazes me every time! That little foot is from one of my boys coming in to take a closer look! I mean it is something when even the boys are amazed. =)

Alright, well since I started visiting blogs again, I could not pass up the opportunity to link up with Hope King! Her blog is seriously addicting and I was definitely having withdraws, I am pretty sure of it! So here is her cute little sign which you can click on and check out her post.

Well I am just in love with scarves! I think my obsession started last year and since then I have accumulated quite a few. I really didn't have any way to store them all until my mom gave me this amazing Christmas gift.

These are great because they don't take up a lot of space in the closet. They can hang under each other using that nifty little hook in the middle of the hanger. They are also felt so the scarves don't fall off the hanger. No more scarves all over the closet!

As far as for my classroom I have been on the lookout for a way to organize my guided reading lessons. I have found and love the current way I organize my materials for each group! I use chair pockets from Really Good Stuff. However, I have wanted a way to organize my lessons. So here is a few ideas I have found. If you have any ideas or can point me in the direction of a great teacher that has a great way of doing it, I would love you forever!

So this teacher has a bin for each book from her curriculum. Inside each drawer there is the lesson as well as the materials she uses for the guided reading group (I think this picture came from the Scholastic website but I am not sure). I love this for two reasons:

1. It is separated by book so you can grab and go.

2. I can put multiple resources in the bin that belong with the book.

Okay I have one more reason 3. She labels the bin with the book title, comprehension skill, phonics focus, and level! Talk about at a glance.

I have also found this idea from none other than Jessica Meacham. She types out her lessons and then laminates them and stores them in a index card box. I don't think I am going to store them in index card boxes but I think laminating them would ensure they are not lost and last a long time.

Instead I think I am going to use this easy label idea. The label goes on the outside of the folder and it simply says everything that the lesson will focus on. It has all the elements of the lesson on the label. I do however think I am going to use two pocket folder instead of file folders. They seem to make me get messy, so I am leaning towards two pocket folders. You can check this idea out here.

Again if you have any suggestions I would love to hear them! I think this is going to be my goal for the year! It is a big job but I think I am ready to take it on!

Also Just a little FYI

That's right you read it correctly! I am having an End of The Year Sale until the 31st of December! Everything in my store is

20% off!

Also if you click on the image above you can visit Khrys's Keeping it Kool In Kinderland to see other teachers that are having a sale right now too! Thanks Khrys for the cute image! Have a great weekend!