Last Friday Freebie of October!

 

This has been a fun linky/freebie/hop to be part of!  So, here we are, at the end of October (yikes! Where did the time go???).

So, this week, I'm putting up for a freebie a Scarecrow Study I just completed Tuesday night!  It's for sale at my TpT store, but for this weekend, it's FREE!  Be sure to grab it and please - leave feedback! :)

I have several students who do not celebrate Halloween.  So, I've been very careful to avoid faces on pumpkins and other things that could be construed Halloweenish.....I've done it before, no biggie.  You just go seasonal. :)  As in, we're going to be having some week-long studies of bats, spiders, pumpkins, and of course, scarecrows!  

Between teaching grammar and writing skills, it's hard for me to find time to just let my kids WRITE and respond to a prompt!  I mean, my poor seed notebooks I created this summer are just sitting there :(  I keep telling myself - seeds, as in second semester (once we have the sentence structure, etc. down).  So, my solution was to make it "Fun Fridays" in writing and do a craftivity/activity each Friday that the kids respond to in writing.  Hence, the themes.  So far, we've done fall trees, clouds (review for weather), apples, and a few others I just can't think of right now (past my bedtime as I'm writing this!).  Oh yes - Otis - how can I forget "Read for the Record" and our cute tractors???  

Anywho, I found this GREAT book about Scarecrows that is actually NONFICTION.  (We're in our nonfiction stage of study right now with our 2nd nine weeks).  How perfect is that?

 

Soooo.....with a few old (and I mean, have that brownish tinge to them) mailbox pages from days gone by, a craftivity from "All Students Can Shine", and this packet, we're gonna learn about scarecrows!

So, pick it up now, leave me some love feedback, and enjoy!  Be sure to hop on to the next blogger!

 

October Friday Fall Freebie Round 3

It's Friday again! :)

This week, I'm adding on to my earlier post this week about sight words. 

I created a sight word Bingo to use with my PrePrimer and Primer reading groups using Dolch words.  There are six different boards, as well as a blank board to program your own words.  Hope you can use it!  It'll only be free until next Friday in my store!  Click on the pic below to access the freebie! :)

Be sure to hop on along to Teaching With Hope the next stop on the hop!  
 

Do You Know It By Sight?

This year, my group is all over the place, from a 6th grade reader to readiness level to an ESL/ELL student (I have no idea what the proper term is nowadays).  Teaching third and fourth for 10 years, I feel I have a handle on the "challenging" the higher students.  However, I have never been as low as readiness and my "preprimer" experience has usually been a student who is on the cusp of moving up to Primer level!

So, I find myself creating a lot of sight word activities this year, geared towards my 5 lowest students, trying to make things interesting and challenging.  

Recently, I published on TpT (and soon on Teacher's Notebook and Resources 4 Teaching as soon as I can get the Internet to cooperate!) several activities that were probably some of the quickest I've ever created.  It's amazing what you can do when you have the need! :)

The first I'd like to share is an Uno-style game called "Vowel Sound-O Card Game".  It's something that at first, I created for my lower readers, then realized I could use it up to at least my third grade readers and those on Within Word for their Word Study Level.  Players are dealt 7 cards and the rest are put in a stack face down on the table.  The players then try to match vowel sounds (short a to short a, long o to long o) of the card face up on the stack.  There are also WILD cards in the mix to change color and vowel sound!

Next, I wanted ALL my students to benefit, from the lowest to the highest, and thought out Word Building.  My highest groups have "Independent time" during our Guided Reading Rotation (the lower groups have Reading Lab or Title I for 30 min each in addition to the 30 min with the teacher for group; we also have an intervention program this year called "Read Well") and this will be great for their Literacy Center time (I also plan on using the Vowel Sound-O card game as well).

So, students will play "Deal A Word Card Game" (notice a theme with the card games?  I began to create one and kept getting ideas for more!).

This is a great game you can differentiate.  It's got vowels, consonants, digraphs, blends - I tried to throw a little of everything in there to make it a valued resource in my classroom!

The last creation I wanted to share isn't quite along the reading WORDS line, but in preparation for our next unit in Math Investigations for Place Value.  I hate the fact that Investigations for 2nd grade doesn't go above tens and ones, but our standards go to "999"...soooo....lots of games and instructional material are used to supplement the curriculum.  I also decided to give it a Fall flair!

I hope you can find something useful for your classroom as well!  Be sure to tune in on Friday for our October Friday Fall Freebie hop!  I'll have another sight word activity I just finished tonight to share!  Click on any of the pics to take you to them!

Friday Fall Freebies (Second Week!)

It's another week of Friday freebies! :)  I'm hopping along with several bloggy friends to bring you some much needed freebies at the end of a looong week (and I know it will just get worse until we hit the 31st!).

 

My freebie this week is something I created for my struggling readers.  I have a small group of Readiness and PrePrimers (6 of them), and one of them JUST moved to our country from Puerto Rico this summer!  I realized as we were doing our first Fall writing, he had no clue about what Fall looked like!  (Of course, after all this rain, he now does!  It changed our leaves and they have definitely "fallen").

So, my freebie to you is this book I wrote for my low readers on Fall.  It's a printable book and has repeated text.  My kiddos loved it, especially the fact that they got to take it home and practice it after we read it in class!  (We keep our books at school and text copies go in their binders...also at school).  I hope you'll enjoy it as well!

Click on the picture to take you to the freebie.

Don't forget to keep hopping along with our next blogger! 

      I'm also linking up with Freebie Fridays!  Check them out!  

Friday Fall Freebie Blog Hop! Jump On In!

 

I am so excited to be part of another blog hop - this time, it's for "freebies" every Friday!  They may not necessarily be fall ones, but I am excited to share some of my new things I've created for the classroom and get your feedback!  My class this year goes from low to high, so I've been trying to find that happy medium, so to speak.

This Friday's freebie is a writing prompt/craftivity about Fall. 

I was inspired by a Pinterest picture (of course) using "q-tip" painting of Fall trees.  I am not the biggest fan of paint and the mess it makes, but thought the q-tips might change my mind (and it did!).  I only had one student who seemed to get it all over him, but as for the rest, the desks, clothes, etc. stayed clean!  Woo hoo! :)

 

 Well, I paired up the activity with a writing prompt (with a 4 square type plan), so here is our version!  (I had the kiddos plan and write BEFORE we painted to help keep them motivated!)

 

 I feel that sometimes, we just don't get enough time to just enjoy creating and writing (we tend to get bogged down in grammar lessons, etc), so I have now planned every Friday a "Fun Friday" for Writing, where we'll do a craft and writing activity.

So, what does your freebie include?
*notes on "q-tip" painting and how we did it
*4-square planner
*faint tree outline so students can "organize" their tree

Click on the picture below to download your freebie!  Be sure to visit the next stop on the hop at

Best Selling Math LInky and Giveaway!

Why not end the month with two times the fun?  Over at Table Talk with C and C, they are hosting not one, but TWO Math Best Sellers Giveaway.  Be sure to visit and link up!

I've donated my best-seller "Basic Faction SCOOT."  It's a great active game for students to get up and move around while having fun and reviewing!  Please see my previous post for more details!

Here's the info:

Here's how it's going to work.  

1. Take a look through your TpT Store and sort your products by "Best Sellers."  

2. Find the product that is your best selling "math " related product.

3. Link up your "BEST SELLING MATH ACTIVITY" below.  

4. Enter the giveaway for a chance to win a *FREE* best selling math activity!

5. Spread the word about the linky and giveaway through all your social media!!

 (grab the button from above!!)

*The linky and giveaway will be up for one week!  

 

Happy Linking!

The Busy Life of a Teacher Mom

Hah - that needs no explanation, right?  

I had promised myself to blog at least once/week during the school year, because there's tons of time on the weekends, right?  I have to confess, that is NOT what I'm thinking Sunday night or getting up Monday morning!  It usually is more along the lines of "Where did that weekend go?  One more day!  One more day!"

I've signed up to do several blog hops/freebies that are coming up that I wanted to highlight before I get to share what we've been up to this week in our classroom. :)

Be looking for "Friday Fall Freebie" starting October 4!  Several bloggers, including myself, are sponsoring a freebie each Friday (I think there's 13 of us?).  So be sure to hit the blogs Friday/Saturday AM to check it out!  The theme won't necessarily be fall for all of us, but I know my first one is a cute Fall writing prompt that my class did on Thursday that I can't wait to show you pictures of!  Think 4-square and q-tips! :)

The second is less of a hop and more of a giveaway and linky!  I'm linking up my best-selling "Basic Fraction SCOOT" as a prize with Table Talk with C and C's linky, "Best Selling Math Activity Giveaway and Linky!".

We all love those SCOOT games!  It's a fantastic way to get your class up and in motion while reviewing a concept.  This is one of my early SCOOT creations, but a goodie.  I named it "basic" because it follows our second grade standards where students need to identify the fraction and are just starting comparing.  So, it's good for end of unit first and second graders, and a refresher at the beginning of unit for 3rd and up!  

I'm currently having an issue with Publisher to load up my original (and I have no idea how to pull pics from PDFs), so I'm sending you my link to go check it out (sorry!).  Click {here} to check it out in my store!

Okey dokey....what have we been up to lately?  These are some of the activities we've been up to in September, since I just realized I submit more on Instagram than blog!  Whoops!

Our Eric Carle Unit - our Harcourt Trophies has the story of  The Mixed-Up Chameleon, so last year I wanted to take it a step farther and make it into an author study with the books I had available, as well as some borrowed from a teacher-friend.  I plan this year on binding the projects together in a book for my students to take home!  Because of pre-testing for our district, it's been lasting over a couple of weeks....we have not painted nor read The Little Cloud, but it's on for next week!

Our school participated on September 18th in the United Way Day of Caring and each child, during resource time, got to put their handprint on the wall in the front hallway of our school!  Our walls were a drab gray before.  I know there's plans to decorate the whole school (we have colored tile scattered throughout the school which is what made up the colors of each square).  Doesn't it look cute?  Teachers and staff got to put their handprints on later in the day!  We had UW workers that are (somehow) connected to UVA (which is 30 min from us) to help out for the day!

Constitution Day - got to read my favorite We the Kids and we made our own class Preamble, which now hangs outside in our hallway! If you've never read or heard of that book before, it breaks the Preamble down to kid-language. 

Matter Ice Cream....every year at the end of our Matter unit, our 2nd graders create ice cream (liquid to a solid!).  Can you tell my kiddos were excited?  

Story Problems - we use Investigations series at school....if you've read my earlier posts, you know I am NOT exactly a fan.  In Unit 1, it has students adding 2 digit numbers with the strategy of drawing pictures, which is FINE except for my struggling lil' ones.  So, in order to assess their learning, but using smaller numbers, I created "From Apples to Bananas" which tests the same skill of understanding story problems but in smaller chunks!  Always a fan of clipart to make items more visually appealing, the kids really liked these and loved the variety that matched their interests.  I even have some "challenge" ones since my class ranges from below to above.  It's at my TpT store, if you want to check it out {here}

Finally, I wanted to share with you a Whole Brain Teaching strategy that has gone over so well in my class - the "Genius Ladder"!  As you can see below, you start with a "blah" sentence and add details, extend it, and make it into a story.  After doing this many times with my students whole group, I made one for my students' writing journals and we've done it together, so far.  My goal is to give them the "blah sentence" and have them do it independently.  To learn more about Whole Brain Teaching, their website is www.wholebrainteaching.com.  They have a ton of free stuff, but if you're interested in doing it in your room, I highly recommend buying the book.  I'm leading a PLC in our school about it (we are a very small group), so I'll let you know how it goes!  Since I'm a newbie at it, but have implemented it the last 32 days, I get to lead it!  Hopefully, I'll be able to post some information on here as I go.  You should definitely check it out!

 

So, that's been September in my room (or at least what I've taken pictures of!).  I fear I've been more loyal to my classroom blog than this one :( except for one Friday, so be sure to take a peek there as well at Youel Soar High in Second Grade.

One more plug - Limeades for Learning!  Sonic sponsors this along with Donors Choose, so if you have a moment, head over there and check out the great projects that are posted.  I hope you'll consider voting for one of my 2 projects.  I am VERY easy to find - type in "Youel" as keyword (I'm the only one in there!).  Thanks! :)

Adios for now - hasta luego!