And the Winner's Are...

Were you a winner?  We had such an amazing turnout with the blog hop and giveaway.  I truly hope that you ALL were winners and able to pick up some great freebies!

Unfortunately there were only 7 winners to the giveaways.

DRUM ROLL PLEASE!!

Giveaway 1 - Free choice of any 10 items from my TPT store.......

  LAURA C!

Giveaway 2 - Pack 1 for K-2.......

MELISSA S!

Giveaway 3 - Pack 2 for K-2

KAYLA R!

 

Giveaway 4 - Pack 3 for K-2

LANESSA H!

Giveaway 5 - Pack 1 for 3-5

JOANNA G!

Giveaway 6 - Pack 1 for 3-5

AMY M!

Giveaway 7 - 6 and up Pack

SUZY!

Congratulations to ALL of our winners!!  I will be emailing you tomorrow morning.  I apologize that I cannot do it tonight (sick little guy at home).  Check your emails in the morning!

Thank you all for participating and making this a fantastic hop and giveaway.  Be sure to stick around.  I am sure there will be more to come!!

I'm So Thankful Blog Hop!

We are celebrating all that we are thankful for and that includes teachers!  We want to show all of you how much we appreciate you.  Teachers do so much and this is our time to give back and say thank you!  Thank you for following!  Thank you for participating!  Thank you for collaborating!  Thank you for sharing!  Thank you, thank you, thank you!!

Join us by hopping through each blog and gathering lots of Thanksgiving and autumn freebies.  In each freebie you will find a picture of a pie with a word on it. That word will tell you something that teacher is thankful for.  Record all of the words on your recording sheet and follow each blog along the way so that you can enter the amazing giveaway at the end!

You may start anywhere along the hop, but you have found your way to the beginning!  This is also where you will go in the end, for the giveaway!!

You have made it to blog stop number 1.

The product that I am sharing with you is a fun center that my firsties love!  This center includes three different pictures (2 math and one holiday ELA).  In each picture are tiny math problems (or words for the ELA one!).  Students should use a magnifying glass to SPOT the equations and then JOT them down on their recording sheet!  It is a fun SPOT AND JOT center!!  I hope that you enjoy!

Now hop over to the next stop on your journey:

Love Teaching Kids

Don't forget to come back and enter the giveaways!!  We have so many!

I'm So Thankful Giveaway!!

The first giveaway winner will win their choice of ANY 10 ITEMS from my TPT store!!  You are going to want to get your recording sheet handy with all of those thankful words!!


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Giveaway Pack 1 for K-2

 
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Giveaway Pack 2 for K-2

a Rafflecopter giveaway
 

Giveaway Pack 3 for K-2

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Giveaway Pack 1 for 3-5

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Here is the second 3-5 pack giveaway!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

And the Giveaway for Grades 6 and up!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Fall Craftivities!

Just wanted to show off some fun fall craftivities!

I found this fun idea on Pinterest. The kids loved it!  We made one picture showing all four of the seasons.  I cut small pieces of construction paper for students to glue onto their tree. Orange and yellow for fall, pink for spring, green for summer.  Winter was supposed to be left bare (some of my kids are still trying to get this concept).  It was a great visual for students to see it all together!

Here is another one that we did for Columbus Day.  I know it is way past Columbus Day, but it is better late than never, right?  I honestly can't remember where I picked up this great freebie (sorry), but it is so cute. The students get to write as if they were Columbus and they had discovered America.

Look at the little one with the red hair and freckles!  Love it!

 

Silly Gravestone Epitaphs

Every year for Halloween, I have my students create their own gravestones to hang in the hallway.  It is a fun mini writing project.  Rather than making a gravestone for themselves, we make silly gravestones.  Students have to pick one thing that is not actually alive.  It should be something that they can lose or break.  Then we write our epitaph for that item.  Students are encouraged to be creative and silly. Check out some of our work from this year:

Here lies my lost cupcake!! It got eaten at a party!! Boo!

Here lies my lost sock. It is lost in my mom's dryer.

Here lies my sock.  I washed it then I had to use my Daddy's big sock.

Here lies my ball. It bounced away when I was changing my shoe and it went in my mom's cat's litter box.

Here lies my crayon. It broke. It was in my box. It fell out and someone stepped on it.

And my favorite!

Here lies recess. It is lost. I had to do my work.

My new FAV Halloween Craft!!

Every year, our school hosts a huge Halloween even the Friday before Halloween.  We open the school up at night, the kids get decked out in their costumes, and they come to school and play games and win candy.  So in order to prepare, we spend nearly an entire week creating and hanging decorations throughout the entire school!  Each year, I like to find a new craft for my kids to make (although, I always use some of my old favorites too!).  This year, you have to see my new Halloween craft!  I am not going to lie, the idea came to me in the shower before school one morning.  Does that happen to you?  I get the best ideas in the strangest times! =)

We started by making glittery spider webs.
The kids used a ruler to trace out their spider webs in pencil.  (This one is mine!)

 
We outlined our pencil lines in glue

 and added LOTS of glitter!!

Then I took pictures of each of my students.  I had them stand against a wall as if they were stuck to it.  I printed the pictures, cut them out, and glued them to our spider webs! They are adorable!  The kids look like they are stuck to their spider web.  When parents came to our Halloween event, I saw some of them taking pictures of our creations!!

It's a FRENZY!

Are you read for the Frenzy?  It is coming this weekend!  There will be 3 different hops going on, K-1, 2-3, 4-5.  All three will be full of autumn and Halloween themed freebies.  I am participating in the K-1 hop, but you can go to my page on Friday and pick up a map of all three so that you can start wherever you like!

Here is a little sneak peek of my freebie:

Be sure to check it out this weekend, Friday - Monday!

It's FRIDAAAAYY!!.... errr, Saturday

This is one Friday....err, Saturday, that I am glad has arrived!  Whew, what a week!  We have been so busy and I have so much to share with you!  I started writing this post last night and FELL ASLEEP right there at my computer! haha

It's Five for Friday time!


1.  I spent all of last week with my little sister.  I have not seen her in about 3 years as she lives in Houston and I live in Virginia.  She is now a mommy and I have a chunky little nephew that I got to adore and spoil for the entire week.  We went to the pumpkin patch and celebrated my grandmother's 80th birthday!!  It was perfect.

2. I have a ton of new and exciting things coming up for you guys!  You are NOT going to want to miss this.  Next weekend kicks off our October Facebook Frenzy hosted by Creation Castle.  The weekend after that is a Super Sleuth blog hop, hosted by Comprehension Connection.  And soon after that will be an AMAZING giveaway and blog hop weekend hosted by none other than....me!  YAY!  It will be my first big giveaway and blog hop.  Lots of more details to come.

 

 

3.  I have been working on phoneme segmentation with a group of students and I came up with this crazy, fun game today.  Do you ever have those spur of the moment ideas that you just have to try?  I had to scrap my planned lesson for the day, because this was just too good not to do.

So here is what we did.  We have tiled hallways so when we walk in the hall we teach our kids to follow the track of tiles like a train.  I took the kids into the hallway and had 5 of them each stand in a square on the floor.  Then I had 5 other students stand on their path several tiles away.  The students should be facing each other.  The game became a version of red light, green light.  I would call a word for the first student and they had to segment the word, stepping into a tile for every sound (their own physical push and say boxes). We would go through each student having a turn.  The students would be moving toward each other.  The first set of students to meet in the middle were the winners!

After playing our game several times, we lined up into our "train" on our "track" to go back to the classroom.  Since we were in line on a tiled floor, I had the students continue to segment words as they walked back to the classroom.  We went all the way back to the classroom, by segmenting sounds for every tile on the floor!

 4. I have a student in my class that just moved here from Mexico and does not understand any English.  We have been working for about two weeks on some English words and she now knows how to say hello, good morning, bye, bus, thank you, drink, cat, dog, and nearly all of her colors!  What a success!  So proud!

5. I am putting together some new fluency folders for my kiddos.  I am really excited about it.  I will be posting about it soon!!