Fall In Love With Teaching

Since making the move from 2nd Grade up to 3rd Grade this year, I've been fortunate enough to meet some incredible 3rd Grade Teachers.  They have been so patient and helpful as I ask a million questions on a regular basis!  I am thrilled to be part of a wonderful fall blog hop with some of these amazing 3rd Grade Teachers!  I can't wait to hop along and learn more from these fabulous teachers.

I'm a summer girl by heart, but I absolutely LOVE fall in Arizona.  It's about 80 degrees and absolutely heavenly!  I do miss the beautiful colors of fall and the sound of the crunchy leaves, so I still like to pretend it's fall with plenty of fall themed activities.  

When I was in 2nd Grade, I made Shades of Spring - a packet to help teach the standard distinguishing shades of meaning among closely related adjectives and verbs.  I thought it was a tricky standard to teach, with minimal resources available.  But since using this packet, it quickly became one of my favorite units to teach.  I love all the possibilities and crafts and hands-on activities it provides.  And, of course, anything involving paint chips is my favorite!  :)

This year, I decided to combine my love for fall and my love for shades of meaning and create a brand new product!

Introducing...

This packet is packed FULL of fall-themed activities to help teach this 2nd and 3rd Grade standard.  I've come up with centers, worksheets, craftivities, bulletin board displays, and assessments for all the fun fall themes!  I've included apples, leaves, pumpkins, and candy corn.  

One of my favorite things about teaching shades of meaning is all the opportunities for students to practice working in groups and using non-fiction text features.  For most of the activities students work in groups to use a thesaurus to look up synonyms.  Once they compile a list of words, they write them in order of their intensity on paint chips, or other fun craftivities!  I don't have enough time in my day to do art projects just for fun, so I try to incorporate our curriculum into our bulletin board displays.  I've learned pretty much anything can be turned into a cute display!  ;)  

Tell me this isn't the cutest candy corn you've ever seen???  

I just love this little craftivity!  

This is just one example of all the fun you'll find in my Shades of Fall packet.  

I'm giving away this 80 page packet to one lucky reader!  

Just enter the Rafflecopter below.  

Or, if you'd rather buy the packet, it's on sale through the weekend!  :)

a Rafflecopter giveaway 

Now hop on over to Pam at Hedgehog Reader and see what Fall fun she has in store for you!  

In addition to our own giveaways, we have a GRAND PRIZE for you!!  We are giving away TWO gift cards to Teachers Pay Teachers!  This giveaway will run from September 26 - 30, so make sure you enter!  Good luck!  :)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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All you need is LOVE

Valentine's Day is, hands down, my favorite holiday to celebrate at school!  I love all the hearts, flowers, chocolates, and colors.  And I LOVE all the LOVE!  It's such a positive holiday!

 

This week we practice writing a written response using evidence from the text to support our answers.  I gave them a nonfiction piece on Valentine's Day.  They had to decide if they did or did not like to celebrate Valentine's Day.  It turned out to be an awesome writing activity.  They did a phenomenal job following the outline, and supporting their opinions. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Download the FREE writing template (with a few more line options) here. 

 

Next week will be FILLED with Valentine's fun!  To prepare, I made two fun activities.  We've been learning a lot about Graphs and Prefixes/Suffixes, so I wanted to review those while still having a bit of fun.  :) 

 

Valentine's Day Graphs

 

 

This packet s full of activities to practice graphing with conversation hearts.  It also includes some no prep, Valentine's themed graphing activities.  This packet covers tally charts, picture graphs, bar graphs, and line plots.  Students practice making and analyzing each type. 

 

Prefixes & Suffixes

 

 

 This little packet includes posters to explain prefix, suffix, root or base word, and a variety of prefixes/suffixes.  I also included a scoot to review it all. 

 

Enjoy!  :)

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Shades of Spring!

I am SO excited to share with you my latest product!  

During the past few weeks, we have been working on identifying shades of meaning among adjectives and verbs.  Last year I just did this kite activity.  But this year, I raised the bar and made an entire unit of this topic.  It is FULL of fun activities to teach shades of meaning with your kiddos.  Many of the activities could be used to simply teach synonyms with younger ones.  

Here's a sneak peek of what's include in this unit.

Paint chips work really well to teach shades of meaning.  

I use them to introduce the unit, and to make some adorable suns!

Shades of Adjective Flowers

An updated kite for Shades of Verbs 

I also included: two posters, two scoots, four independent worksheets, and ten lists of adjectives and verbs all ready to go!  

Not all pictured.  

Here are some pictures of my class enjoying a couple of these activities.  

My kiddos had a BLAST working on these activities.  I love the bright colors and the educational crafts it provided us to decorate with!  I know you and your class will have a blast with this unit!  :)  

It is half off until tonight.  But I would love for THREE lucky readers to win a copy!  Enter using the rafflecopter below.  

(This is my first time using rafflecopter.... here's hoping it works as well as everyone says it does!)  

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Instagram Overload

Do you follow me on Instagram?  If not, click here!  I decided to do a little Instgram dump for you this evening.  Here are some of my recent/most favorite instagram pictures.  Enjoy!  :)

Dressing up in winter clothes on a 90 degree day to introduce our weather unit. 

They all thought I was cRaZy!

How Big is a Foot?

Measurement Activity 

The correct way for children to read in groups of four.  

Partner Reading & Retell

Retell Ring from FCRR

My new shirt!  

I tried so hard to look happy, but it was an early Friday morning and I was exhausted!

Shirt from Spread Shirt

I'm *officially* DIBELS trained!  

Two looooooong nights, but on the bright side, I got to meet one of my blogging buddies - Mandy!

She was just as sweet and cute in person!  :)

{We still need to do lunch sometime soon!}

Our Funny Pumpkins

We earned over 5,000 points with our last Scholastic Book order and every student was able to pick out a free book!

Happy kiddos!

I bought this clock with my Scholastic points.  It was a HIT!

Ribbons for Red Ribbon Week

The class signs them and we hang them outside our door.  

We don't decorate doors at our school, but we do decorate the pillars.  

Crazy Sock Day- ZUMBA style!

Hedgehog Bakes a Cake

We read this story as part of our reading series, so naturally we had to try out his recipe.
It was DELICIOUS!!! 

We are in the middle of our economics unit and lovin' the resources from One Extra Degree!

Economy 101

Lemonade Economics

Place Value Scavenger Hunt from Step Into Second Grade!

Number Knowledge

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Karma Karma Karma Karma Karma Chameleon!

This week our focus story was The Mixed Up Chameleon by Eric Carle.  We practiced identifying the main idea and details with this story throughout the week.  On Friday, as a culminating activity, we read a few nonfiction books about chameleons and used the website Pebble Go to write facts about chameleons.  

I was inspired by this packet and recreated it so it could all fit in one file.  

I posted a packet here for you to download.  

Enjoy!

 

 

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