Cross My Heart!

So I went to Wal-Mart yesterday, as I typically do each weekend. I made the mistake of going down the Valentine's Day aisle and ended up spending nearly 10 minutes there! There were SOO many great things that I needed wanted! Well, while I was perusing through all of the items, I was struck with inspiration to put together a little math/literacy pack for my class! I spent all late night/early morning creating this:

I am in loooooove. ;) Check out a few of my activities that you can use with some of the items on the Wal-Mart Valentine's Day aisle:

 Found these heart plates for $1 each--perfect for sorting.

 Building figures.

 Put the hundreds puzzle back together! Also comes as a 120 chart.

 Making tens and ones with these ADORABLE conversation heart erasers and valentine cups.

More conversation heart love.

And more.

These tubs are also great for sorts.

The pack includes the above activities and MORE:

• Valentine's Day word list for writing center
• writing paper
• 4 sight word games
• contractions game
• 6 phonics sorting games
• 9 roll and read games
• scrambled sentences
• addition game
• time to hour/half hour matching game
• part-part-whole mat and game
• odd and even game
• ordinal numbers game
• counting with ten-frames game
• hundreds chart puzzle (100 chart and 120 chart)
• tens and ones game
• 2 pattern blocks games

Head over to check it out! Cross my heart--your kids will love it! ;)

I'm Baaaack! + Making Inferences

So, for a number of reasons, I took a two-week social media hiatus exactly two weeks ago--best two weeks of my life!! Well, not the best actually, haha, but I did learn a lot:

• It is possible to let go of social media.
• Not checking Facebook and Instagram every five minutes actually WON'T kill me.
• However, if you abandon social media, you WILL find something else to fill the void...like online shopping. :/ :P :) (not a good idea!)
• And along the same lines, no FB or IG = MORE texting. That counts as building relationships, right???
• My phone battery lasts WAY longer when it isn't dinging with notifications all day long! I left school one day last week with 96% battery--what!!! :O
• The Bible has much more interesting stories than Facebook.
• Planning a four-year-old's birthday party is LESS stressful when you have more time to focus on it!

As you can see, I had a lot of realizations! ;) I am grateful for the experience and will be definitely be doing it again every now and then!

Now, on to my classroom happenings--

Yesterday, I introduced our month-long penguins unit with a little inferencing activity. After that activity, we filled up this little guy with schema about penguins:

The aforementioned inferencing activity went pretty well, but most just weren't exactly sure what making an inference meant! They were having a hard time communicating their conclusions. Thankfully, I already had another inferencing activity for science lined up...

Tuesday afternoon for my class means computer lab time--yay! This means that I get a solid 30 minutes of alone time in my classroom right before the last hour of the school day. :) This time was PERFECT for setting up Case #235B: The Mystery Visitor.

Right before I brought my students back into the classroom after computer lab, I told them that someone came by to visit while they were gone. The person that came by had to hurry out and forgot to put his materials away! In order to figure out WHO came by, the students had to study the clues and make an inference about who the mystery visitor was.

He left his very stylish IKEA umbrella open on the floor. Tsk tsk.

Weather books strewn all over the floor. Clearly, this person is not a teacher.

Some tools on the back table.....

And this map was left up on the Promethean board.

Who could it be??!! My Super Sleuths got right to work studying the clues and recorded the clues and inferences made on this sheet.

They ate up this activity. As you can see, they did a FAB job! Now, as they understand making inferences more and more, we will write more in our sentences. For now, this is super.

Grab a copy of this recording sheet to use in your classroom by clicking below! You will also see one without "Who has been in our classroom?" so you are able to use it for other inferencing activities.

Thanks for coming by! Enjoy your freebie!! :)

I've Got Double Vision!

I've got double vision??! Why, you ask? Because we have been learning about DOUBLES!!

We are now ready to move on to the next unit, so to help us remember/further understand those doubles we worked so hard to learn, I made some station games and other activities to help out! Introducing...

This 80-page pack includes anchor charts,

10 games,

foldables,

and a craftivity!

And, yes, that is silly me modeling the craftivity. ;)

It also includes a differentiation menu for average or advanced learners/GT--something that is near and dear to my heart. ***Takes half-leap onto soapbox*** I am absolutely ALL FOR giving our low babies the extra support they need, BUT I am also an advocate for giving our advanced/GT students what they need. Just because they understand does not mean their needs are being met!! That being said, I created a menu of activities for students to complete to demonstrate understanding and further learning about doubles.

Check out my doubles pack by clicking on the cloud(s) below. ANNNNNNNDDDD when you do, you will see that it is 20% off!!! For the entire day (Thursday 1/2), you can purchase this product for 20% off, so take advantage!

Have a great day/rest of your vacation!

Five for SNOW DAY: Our Week in Review

We studied soil samples to determine what it is made out of.

Aaaannnnd I unknowingly wore two different earrings all day! :D

Also did our first word sort!!

We have been using and reading poetry since week 2 of school; we started a study on some poetry elements this week, including rhyme, rhythm, and alliteration.

A die, a mirror, counters, and a pencil can only mean DOUBLES! I will share our doubles activities next week.

We spent the week studying magic e, specifically i consonant e. We did word sorts, made words, spelled words, read stories, read poetry--here we are using the pattern to spell some i consonant e words!

And this is just b-a-n-a-n-a-s, right???!

I got a Grumpy Cat book in the mail from a friend in Germany--wahhhooo!!!!

And Thursday was quite the day, so this turned out to be my lunch: peanut butter sandwich, graham crackers and frosting. Yum! ;)

And this is TODAY:

NO SCHOOL!!!!! :D :D :D

Don't forget to enter my brag tag giveaway! The giveaway ends Saturday night!! Click below for more details and to enter:

Brag Tags Review and GIVEAWAY!

A few months ago, Denise from Boost Promotions contacted me about doing a Brag Tag review/giveaway. I happily agreed, because not only did I get 100 brag tags for free BUT I also get to give one of YOU 100 free tags!!

I knew right away that I wanted to use these tags for homework/academic achievements (biggie at my school), behavior, and AR (another biggie at my school). Here are the ones I choose:

Homework Star 

Honor Roll

"Toad"ally Awesome

AR Star

Denise gave me 25 of each, for a total of 100 tags, along with little chains to put the tags on. So here is how I set it up for my classroom:

AR STAR TAG
Remember this AR chart?

When a student earns 10 points, he/she receives the AR brag tag. I had one reach that a few weeks ago and MANNNN was he excited about his brag tag! I have a few more kids that are about halfway there and will receive their tags very soon!

HOMEWORK STAR TAG
I set up a little homework chart in my classroom to keep track of those who are doing their homework each night. I used a cookie sheet and put a magnet with each kids' name on it:

I check homework folders each morning. Students can stay in the Homework Club if their homework is complete each day--if not, then they remove their name from the HC board and put it in the multi-colored box. At the end of each week, I make a HC note in each students' folder (so I can remember who is in the HC each week) and give the Clubbers a little prize (extra tickets, pencil, eraser, snack, etc.). The prize is always random to keep interest high. At the end of the six-weeks grading period, those students who had been in the Homework Club at least 5 of the 6 weeks received the Homework Star brag tag! More excitement there!

HONOR ROLL TAG
This is pretty self-explanatory, haha. Those students with A and A/B Honor Roll received a tag.

"TOAD"ALLY AWESOME TAG
My school is a PBIS school, so that helped me select the "Toad"ally Awesome kids really easily. Every six-weeks grading period, we plan a school-wide incentive trip for all students to earn. The trip may be to a park, museum, or could even be a movie and popcorn at school. Each grade level has criteria that must be met by students in order to participate. In my grade level, students had to have fewer than 4 absences or tardies (teacher discretion, of course), have no referrals, and have earned 10 or more purples, pinks, or "off-the-chart" on our clip chart:

At the end of the six-weeks, those students who earned the trip earned a "Toad"ally Awesome brag tag!

I LOVE the idea of giving brag tags to my students! Certificates are great to pass out, but students can really show off and be proud of their achievements when they get to WEAR their accomplishments. As previously stated, my students were thrilled about earning them. The tags themselves are very durable and well-made. I love all of the design options--tons of choices--and you can even customize them. I plan on ordering some more tags to use in my classroom for the remainder of the school year.

So how would YOU use brag tags in your classroom?? You may get a chance to use some super brag tags from Boost Promotions by entering my Rafflecopter giveaway!

What do you have to do?

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The giveaway runs from today until Saturday night!!

Good luck to you! :)