Diving Into Some Books!

So, I'm all set up and ready to go for our school's very first Buy One, Get One Scholastic Book Fair!  Since I have my first one from the Fall under my belt, I feel a lot more confident with this one!  Our past week of practicing matching the money amounts went so great!  My K and 1 students were more or less matching numbers, while my older ones were having fun running around the library on a scavenger hunt to find those same numbers to match up!  All in all, it was a success on all levels, and as I told my older ones (when I got the "do we have to do it?" comments), it was good practice for the coming week.  As soon as they started it, they had a lot of fun and I got a lot of "awws"  when I told them they had to stop for checkout. (You can see my earlier post about the "matching" game).

So, after my things were delivered on Tuesday, and I felt I had the utmost strength in NOT going through every box like it was Christmas, I had the idea to set up on Thursday afternoon to do a preview day on Friday.  The flyers that are sent home for the BOGO fair are small and not very detailed, and this way I figured the students could see what was here to buy.  After getting the blessing of my resource team, our Preview Day went really well (and I might do it for the Fall fair from now on) as each class got a "walking preview" of the Fair ("looking with our eyes, not our hands") either at the beginning of Resource or the end of their Resource time.  It also helped build excitement for the Fair with the kids.  My students, after their walk thru, were in our Story Room where we did our lesson on "fractured fairy tales" (Mo Willems style) to keep them engaged.

I wanted to do a theme this time and decided on "Diving Into Reading", where students created different sea creature crafts.  Fortunately for me, our Spring Break was at the perfect time so I could come in and decorate.  This past week, the kids really had some positive comments about how the library was decorated with their artwork!  I'm glad they got to see it before the cases and things were put up.

So, today, the Fair officially starts and I have a feeling I'll have kids outside the door for "Open Library Time" with eyes wide and money in hand!  Good thing I have my library helpers this time around (and I will definitely start that program earlier next year!).  My helpers (4th and 5th graders) are helping with little ones finding books as well as working "security" to make sure nothing gets pocketed without getting paid for!  They are most excited!

I also created gift certificates with an ocean theme for those of our students (nominated by staff) who might not have money to come to the fair and purchase a book.  These are ready to go and in envelopes in the teachers' mailboxes!

So of course I took pictures of the grand display today (before little hands start scavenging thru!) that I thought I'd share!  My fingers are crossed that this fair will go smoothly and each child will end up with at least one book to take home!

Snow, St. Pats, and a FREEBIE

Oh my.  I'm at school and check out the weather outside!

So, this post will be brief!

I wanted to share with you some of the preparations we've made for St. Pat's Day tomorrow...or whenever we come back!

First, I updated my St. Pat's Scavenger Hunt!  My kiddos will come in the morning and see a clue at the back of our book we'll read first thing, which will lead them on a hunt for clues and solving math problems!

This past week, we wrote about what we'd do if we found a pot of gold.  We did A Cupcake for the Teacher's cute craftivity!

It inspired me to make one of my own!  I've always wanted to do one, but honestly, what is in my mind never seems to come out right on paper.  However, this one turned out pretty well!

In celebration of it being my first attempt at a craftivity (don't you love that word?) I declared it a FREEBIE!  Click on the picture to take you to TpT to download it (it's also available at Teacher's Notebook as well).

Can't believe it's snowing in mid-March...booo!  Better head off home before I'm stuck at school!  Yikes! :)

Time and Money Review

If there's one thing Math Investigations does NOT cover well, it's time and money.  Last year, I did a whole separate unit on those two subjects, because I was worried about waiting until the end of the year to combine it with Unit 9 Measurement. 

Well, with our snow days this year (we're out again on Wednesday), I'm worried that we may not even have time for that!  So, I created two centers that dealt with time and money. 

I have a mix of students in my class, from students with special needs, ESL students, students who are on grade level, and advanced students.  Everything I make, I try to create a variety so that a student isn't frustrated nor bored.

So, today, I decided to create "clip cards" after seeing something similar on Pinterest that was definitely higher than 2nd grade!  If I'm not too busy copying and laminating everything tomorrow :) I might create one for sentences and punctuation!  (Also, I have "homophones" on the to do list since some of my students still think these are rhyming words!).

I thought they turned out pretty well.  I mean, I have to do something to support my clip art habit, right? ;)

Click on the pics below to take you to Teachers Pay Teachers or if you're a Teachers Notebook kinda person, click {here} for Time and {here} for Money.

Money, White-Tailed Deer, and Contractions - Quite a Combination!

Been burning the midnight oil lately trying to get the units done. I don't know where the weekend or these snow days go - you'd think I'd be more together!

Ah well.

Wanted to show off my latest efforts. If you teach in Virginia (and possibly other places), one of our lovely standards is that we have to teach the white-tailed deer as part of our life cycle standard. Yep, must be a hunter there in the capital!

 Anywho, there's not much out there kid-friendly or even activity-wise about white tailed deer (unless I've been looking in all the wrong places!). For my VA friends, I've created a packet to help you out! Also, be sure to check out my wiki page on life cycles - I've uploaded a video from the VDGIF that they created just for this standard! (You can also find it on their website).

 The packet includes the are/have/live charts I've really grown to love using! Whether we're completing them cooperatively, or the students are doing it independently, they are wonderful! Not sure who came up with the idea, but thanks! It also includes a diagram (cut/paste) of the deer and a life cycle chart (3 different versions). Click on the picture to go check it out! ;) 
 

 

Next up, Contractions.  Had a brainstorm while planning with my collab teacher....trying to think of some sort of game the kids could play with contractions that was similar to the ones we did for abbreviations (they LOVED "Abbreviation Call Out").  So, after racking my brain, I came up with "Building Contractions."

I focused on not, is/am, will, and have contractions. This set comes with letter cards to "build" the two words that form a contraction (such as can and not).  "Bossy apostrophe" comes along, tells certain letters to sit down, takes their cards, and puts him/herself in the place of the letters.

It really helped my students understand about the contraction and where the apostrophe goes!  We made a list of the contractions as we "built" them, and students were able to see a pattern of which letters were replaced.  It was another big hit with my students and the understanding has shown in their work! :)  Click on the picture above to check it out further!

The last activity I have to share with you is the what I created for  my money unit.  I have to confess - I am using some ideas from Investigations, but my kiddos this year just can't get the "abstract" part of the series, so I have been branching out on my own.  I am completing a 5 day unit on money and will begin a 5 day unit on time (to the nearest five minutes).  My kiddos lack the basic skills to "build on" to where Investigations say they should be, and though we've been practicing money all year long...well, time is another story. 

I went shopping for a lot of time things over the "super sale" weekend.  I will be going through these and will share some of the units/activities I bought in another post.

Until then, I'm pretty proud of the money activities I created.  Some of them are old ideas "refreshed," but my favorite is my "money mat."  My kids in the past have had skills with counting, but when it comes to writing money - well, let's just say seeing the cents mark at the end of a dollar amount gets old after awhile, right?  Almost makes me want to teach decimals to the kids before writing money!  But that's a whole other concept and not exactly in our standards for second! :)

So, I am posting my money unit that I wrote on Google Drive for you to access {here}.  However, please check out some of the activities that go with the unit by clicking on the picture below!

 Hope you were able to see something you could use! :)  Have a great week!

It Was a Math Kinda Weekend....

Yes, it was.  I spent most of Saturday working on my Geometry unit.  Investigations just isn't cutting it for my little learners right now, so I backtracked, evaluated (gave a pretest even tho we had started the unit), split my kids into groups according to what they knew.....and Monday starts the "new and improved" unit!  Ten days of learning about cubes, spheres, rectangular prisms, vertices, angles, faces, and edges.  Whew!  It's going to be good though.  I have LOTS of games, including a SCOOT, I Have/Who Has, Bingo, assessment checklists, activity sheets....47 pages worth!  I was so excited to put it up on TpT today and bam....wouldn't take my images :(  So I thought I'd post them here!

Then, the rest of the time, I was working on my read aloud for the week - it's a double-whammy.  We're doing Lemonade for Sale from Harcourt, so I thought I'd throw some money/economics books in there.  I have at least 2 activities for each book, including comprehension and money sense.  You can also pick this up at my store, (and again the darn images wouldn't upload!!!).  Not sure if its the Internet connection or what.

Well, hope you enjoy and check it out!  MY natives are restless (we don't have internet at the house and I'm currently sitting in a hotel lobby near my husband's work to use their wifi!!!) and I fear that we're going to get eyeballed here in a moment!  Ah, the joys of parenting! Enjoy the rest of your weekend! :)