Shopping Is My Cardio...

 ...except when it is on-line!  

I'm SO excited for the TPT super sale Thursday and Friday!  These sales don't come along very often, so when they do I break the bank!  My wishlist is overloaded already!  :)  


I'm thrilled to be participating in the sale this week, in celebration of TeachersPayTeachers reaching 3,000,000 teachers!!!!  
My little store will be on sale, so you will be able to get 28% off when you use the promo code: TPT3. 

 Here are some of my favorite products.
Click on the image to see it in my store.

The ever popular Handprint Calendars!!  These make awesome parent gifts.  I will be updating them every year, so you only need to purchase it once.  Also, I will be updating them next month in preparation for Mother's Day.  Any mother would be delighted to have them as a gift!  :)  

Counting with Cookies!  
This is a great way to practice identifying, reading, and writing those numbers.  There are student practice books, worksheets, and a game.  

All About GRAPHS!
I created this unit to align better with the 2nd Grade CCSS for graphing.  It covers everything 2nd graders need to know when it comes to graphs....and more!  

Ancient Civilizations: CHINA
This has been one of my favorite units to teach!  We just finished, and the kids had a blast!  It is chocked full of resources and activities for an entire unit.  

Going on a WHALE Hunt!
This is my newest product.  It's a mini-unit for whales.  I have 14 small fact cards that my students "hunted" around the room for.  While hunting, they answered questions on their recording sheet.  I also included narrative, informative, and opinion writing activities to accompany any whale unit.  :)  

Check back this weekend to see all my purchases!  
Happy shopping, everyone!  :) 
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Instagram Dump & New Unit Posted

Happy Sunday, everyone!  
I decided to do another Instagram dump for you this evening. 
Here are some of my recent/favorite instagram pictures.
Enjoy!

We've played a lot of my favorite game to practice fluency - Roll 6.  I put them in groups of three.  One person is trying to roll a 6, while one person is trying to read all the words in the pile.  I also have a third person whose job is to check and make sure the reader is reading the right words.  I've used this with fry phrases, sight words, vocabulary words, and may try it with math facts flash cards.  The possibilities are endless!  

I dressed up the same as one of my favorite girls!  She was so excited!  :)

Nothing like redoing your classroom mid year.  
My co-worker went to a Grammar Camp workshop and inspired me to put up a Grammar Wall.  It's still a work in progress, but I absolutely love it!  This set came from Sandra at Sweet Times in First.  It's perfect!  

Three of my second graders play on a 2nd Grade basketball team in our school district.  I've gone to a few of their games.  It is so much fun to watch!

It provided some much needed practice for our subtraction skills.  

Last week we wrote stories about our best friends.  This little girl wrote about me!  This is her planning page. {Melts my heart!}

We practiced contractions using macaroni and flip books.  I took one sheet of the long construction paper, showed them how to fold it in half, hot dog style.  Then they folded the outsides to the center.  We reviewed measurement by cutting the flaps every 3 inches.  That created 6 flaps, for our 6 contractions.

I got to meet up with one of my blogger buddies, Mandy!  We teach in the same school district now, and we finally met up for dinner.  It was a blast!  She had twins last year, and is quite the super momma AND super teacher!!! :)  

We finished our China unit on Friday with fortune cookies.  
This is one of my absolute favorite units to teach and I am SO happy to announce.....  


It is finally posted on tpt!  
It is jam packed with activities and resources to help teach about China.  
I added more to the packet than I used, which makes me even more excited to teach it again next year!  

It covers:
-Geography of China
-Flag of China
-Rivers of China
-Confucius
-Great Wall of China
-Chinese Writing
-Inventions
-Silk Road
-Chinese New Year

I also included three writing activities - narrative, informative, and opinion.  

It is half off until tomorrow night!  
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Feelin' the LOVE

Valentine's Day is my FAVORITE holiday to celebrate at school.  I love the hearts, pink, love, friendship, and all that fun stuff!  We didn't do as many Valentine activities during February as I usually do, so I tried to cram in all my favorite activities on Friday.  


We started with Be Mine ABC Order and Fix It Up Sentences from Amy's Valentine's Day Pack.  



Then we watched a short video explaining the history of Valentine's Day.  While they watched the video, they recorded facts in these heart shaped books from Rachelle's Non-fiction Valentine's Unit.  They absolutely LOVED learning about how Valentine's Day came to be.  I also typed up the story of St. Valentine from Rachelle's unit and wrote some Text Dependent Questions to go with it.  It was great practice at going back into the text to find answers.  







Of course, we did the usual conversation heart activities for math.  
My co-worker found the pages we used this year, and I don't know which blog she got them from.  Sorry!  




We were lucky enough to go to the computer lab and have Valentine Free Time!  
I let them play any of the Valentine's Day activities on ABCya! and Starfall.  


In the afternoon, we wrote stories/sentences using the conversation hearts. 
 I got this great idea from Natalie.  
They loved it, and I cracked up reading what they came up with!  








We made Love Monsters from The Teacher Wife for our Valentine Bags this year.  
They turned out so cute!  


Finally, the end of the day arrived and we were finally able to look in our treat bags!  I don't remember where I first got the idea, but I have always had them glue their valentines into a book to keep.  I did get the idea for the poem on this cute cover page from Rachelle, though.  ;)  

Click the picture to download the cover. 
I stapled it to 4-5 blank pages.




This year I gave Glow Sticks to my kiddos.  They LOVE them, and I love giving something non-sugary and cheap!  The printable is from The Teacher Wife.  Next year I'm definitely going to try one of Rachelle's awesome ideas for a change!  :)


I sure felt the love this Valentine's Day!  
These kiddos are the sweetest!  
I loved reading all the sweet cards and notes this weekend.  


 

  
hahaha, this cracked me up!

Loved this healthy choice I found in my bag this year.  :)

And of course, my class got hit with a BAD case of LOVE POX!  
I LOVE this cute idea from The Teacher Wife! 
 Can you tell I absolutely love her ideas???  
This post is full of great ideas from The Teacher Wife and What the Teacher Wants!

 

PS - How cute is this little craft my friend's daughter made in her Kindergarten class!  Precious!!!


I hope you all had a LOVE-ly Valentine's Day!  
Enjoy this LOVE-ly three day weekend!  :)
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Penguin Pals

We had THE BEST time learning about penguins over the last couple weeks.  We read The Emperor's Egg as part of our reading series, and I added some of Amy's activities from her super cute penguin unit.  

To finish our unit, I put everyone in groups to research specific types of penguins.  I had gathered information on six different types of penguins.  They worked together filling out a graphic organizer with facts.  Then, they wrote their own four paragraph informational essay.  I am so impressed with how their writing is coming...  Still working on indenting, though.  :)  Several of them even wrote two full pages worth of information.  

We've talked a lot about plagiarizing when writing informational pieces.  
One boy was reading his penguin piece to me.  After he read me a sentence (that was obviously plagiarized) he yelled out, "I am NOT PLAGIARISM!!!"  It was hysterical!     

When their writing was finished, they made these adorable penguins!








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