It's Summertime!

Wow, I just realized I hadn't posted since the last blog hop.  Things have been a bit crazy towards the end of the school year, but as of this past Monday, I am a "free woman."  Yeah, right.  If you're anything like me, you have your "summer to do list" ready to go, not to mention being a stay-at-home Mom for the summer!

So, a few things I've been working on the past few weeks that I wanted "student tested" before I posted them.  My original plan was to get pictures to go with each of these, but that didn't seem to happen.  However, I can say that my students had a blast, especially with our Planet Unit.

We had our rescheduled field trip to the Science Museum in Richmond, VA on May 20.  One of the things we did was to see one of their new constellation shows in the IMAX.  While some of it was over the kids' heads, they LOVED it.  It's what inspired me to do a star-based unit.  Not exactly one of our standards here in Virginia in second grade, except for matter, but hey - it was great to use the last week of school!  While other teachers were grumbling about behavior, my kiddos actually stayed pretty focused and interested in what we were doing.  It didn't hurt we did plenty of experiments and got to see some pretty cool pictures via our wiki page and NASA, either!  However, I had some kiddos this past year that I needed to keep that structure until the last day, so this unit was finished over the 3-day weekend.  Click on the picture below to check it out on TpT.  The preview is my unit plans I created (a 6-day unit).

The next thing we completed before the end of the year was a review on pronouns.  My kiddos are always begging for I Have/Who Has games with grammar, so I created one (and trust me, it was not easy, so I wanted it "tested" before I posted it) as well as other games to play.  Anything to keep us active!  I ended up creating a Pronoun Packet, but the individual games are sold separately as well (but it's cheaper in the packet if you want several activities!).

Monster trucks - who doesn't love them?  My boys, especially, were thrilled and made a great review with math, writing, and reading!  

Last, but not least, was my Introduction to Multiplication packet.  I had a small handful of students who were ready for this so their group was introduced to multiplication and division with these activities and they loved them!  Arrays, dice, fact families, skip counting...it's all there.

I hope you find something useful, and if you missed the last couple of freebie hops, please see my earlier posts! :)

Things to Come, Pronouns, and a Freebie!

Soooo.....little hint of things to come.  Please stop by on the 14th and 18th for special blog hops!

We're getting ready to start our last unit for the year, which is pronouns.  Obviously, we've done this around Christmastime, since everything in my folder seems to be holiday-related!  So, I felt that although kids love reindeer and Santa, it might be best to go with another theme.  

I've recently fell in love with task cards and the unlimited possibilities you could do with these - write the room, SCOOT, centers, small groups, to mention a few.  

So, knowing I needed something a little less seasonal for pronouns, I created task cards where students have to apply what they know about task cards, as well as have a cute little story about going to camp!

Click on the pictures below to see more.

Annnndddd....here is the other thing I created this weekend.  I always have my class do a "top 10" that I can post for next year's kiddos at Open House.  It's an old template from Mailbox that frankly, was kind of plain looking.  The last few years, my kids also had trouble either clarifying what they were saying, using complete sentences, or coming up with ideas.  So, why not hit several birds at once, so to speak?  I went ahead and themed it to my room (safari) and revamped the "top 10" so that they had to say one thing about 10 given subjects.  

So, please click on the picture to download from Google Drive.  I've also included a blank template so you can fill in your own subjects, or have your students fill in their own with pictures for the younger kiddos or leave it open ended!