Shopping Spree!

Okay... this is the time where I tell you how broke I am after all my SHOPPING!

First, I had a just a *few* shopping sprees at The GAP, Victoria's Secret, Banana Republic, and Francesca's! Thank god for that GAP credit card....

After that was all said and done, I hit up TPT to stock up and I bought lots!

From left to right, top to bottom:
 Michelle - Common Core Reading Response
Abby - First Grade RTI
Lindsey - Merry & Bright Christmas Centers
Kelley - Bakin' Up Adjectives
Katie - The Busy Teacher's Best Friend
Cheryl - Sub Tub - Cold Lady Who Swallowed Snow
Squirrels - Super Facts
DeAnne - Baking for Santa
Reagan - Techy Santa
Kristen - Christmas Literacy Centers
Bubbly Blonde - Rockin' Reindeer Craftivity
Jen - Tis the Season Math Centers
Stephanie - Christmas Around the World

I have finally gotten a chance to download and dissect all of these amazing packets and I can't wait to get my kids started on them! I have 3.5 more weeks until Christmas break and I plan on using all of these packs... so be prepared for pictures in the upcoming weeks! Lots and lots of pictures!

First, I need to finish these darn report card comments (and by finish... I mean I have to start them)!

Link up with Stephanie over at Falling into First and Blog Hoppin' so I can see what you bought!

Happy hump day!!

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Yeaaaaaa, buddy - with PAULY D!

I am FINALLY home. I love traveling for the holidays and seeing everyone, but there is no other feeling like the one of being back in your own house and your own bed.

Coming home to Vegas, after a longgggg and sleepy plane flight, I ran into PAULY D!

We were on a 20-person shuttle together to get our parked cars and I HAD to ask for a picture! Some of my fave blogging pals basically said they would disown me if I didn't. So, ignore the blurriness and NON-cuteness of the picture on my part, but you can see that it is him!!

Other than that fun stuff above, I am sending out 2 emails to Cherie and Karyn for remembering that my favorite part of Thanksgiving is the mashed potatoes!!!!!! You both win my new {Sleigh Bells Ring} packet!

Now, I need to try to get back to business and write some lesson plans for the week.

DON'T FORGET:

(Button by: Ashley Hughes)

I also wanted to let everyone know that I started my sale TODAY, in case there are some teachers who need to get some shopping done before the school-week starts. You won't get the extra 10% discount from TPT, but my whole shop will still be 20% off! 

[MY STORE]

So much shopping, so little time! Ahh!

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CYBER MONDAY PLUS TUESDAY SALE!!

I hope everyone had a family and fun filled Thanksgiving holiday!!

Now that it is over it is time to SHOP! I don't know about you, but I will be running around Las Vegas filling up my shopping cart like a crazy person.

As far as online shopping goes, I will have to wait until Monday to do my shopping because TPT is having a cyber Monday plus Tuesday sale!!

{Major thanks to Ashley Hughes for the button}

I have asked a few of my favorite bloggers to link up with me so you can easily hop from store to store and see what we've got going on! All of our stores will be 20% off both Monday and Tuesday. Also, TPT is offering an additional 10% off at checkout if you enter the code, CMT12!

Do you have your own TPT store? Link up so I can check out the goods!!

Happy shopping!!

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Sleigh Bells Ring!

Deep breath. . .

I can finally relax and enjoy my Thanksgiving mini-vacation in Chattanooga!

My holiday centers are up:

{Sleigh Bells Ring}

There are 4 math and 4 literacy centers to help your little ones through the holiday season! Here are a few highlights:

(Place Value Penguins)

I use these adorable little place value penguins for many games in the winter time! Student can simply match and record,  or play many partner or whole-group games like Quiz-Quiz trade, mix-n-match, memory, Go Fish!, you name it! Cards like these are a must for place value practice in my classroom. Once we dive into place value (usually in late December), I have themed cards like these for each month. My kids always need as much practice as possible when it comes to tens n' ones!

(Rockin' Reindeer Writing Prompts)

 Students can make this EZ-PZ reindeer and answer one of three writing prompts. I included a narrative prompt, an informative prompt, and an opinion prompt for you or your kids to choose from! I didn't have any light brown construction paper, but I think if I did I would've made the reindeer's head the light brown to help differentiate from the antlers - but you get the idea!

Here is a preview of the rest of the activities in my pack:

 Two last things for you...

(1)

Teacher's Notebook is throwing a ginormous 3-day sale this weekend (Saturday - Monday) and everything in my store will be 25% off and TN is giving you an additional discount at checkout!!

[My TN Store]

(2)

I am giving away my new pack to the first 2 people who can remember what my favorite Thanksgiving food is!! Leave your emails!! I will email the winner's by Friday :)

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

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A little bit of this... and a little bit of that...

2 more days until Thanksgiving break!

I am hearing that some of you lucky ladies and gents got this WHOLE week off... whaaaat?!

I've never heard of such a thing! (JEALOUS)

We are still trucking through Wednesday - but it's all good because we are jam-packed with fun activities!!

Here are a few snapshots of the past couple school days:

My power-hour group is full swing into all the different spelling patterns for long a! Here we are reading, tracking, and counting the long a words in the passage. The boys are on a word hunt to distinguish long a words from short a words. Both of these activities are from my {Long Vowel Games and Centers} pack.

 

I have been a horrible photographer this holiday season because I swear we've done LOADS of fun Thanksgiving activities!! Above is one of my littles working on some verbs from Katie's {The Busy Teacher's Best Friend - Thanksgiving Edition}. Her busy teacher packets are amazing - I used tons from her Halloween one, as well as Thanksgiving and seriously, they are a teacher's best friend... NO PREP NECESSARY! Next to her verb page is a little Venn diagram we made this morning comparing our lives to that of Pilgrim children.

 Math practice! These short, busy weeks are perfect for some reviewing of essential math skills! On the left, my kids are playing 5-in-a-row using 3 addend addition. I snuck in a challenge dice (with just the numerals 1-6 on them) that way they could move past just counting up the dots. That game is one of many from my {Addition with 3 Addends} pack. On the right, is a fun number line game from The Teacher Wife. It is part of her new {Number Line} pack and really.... you can never go wrong with one of her items!

Okee doke... I am off to plan and finish the packet below! I am sooo close to finishing! I hope to get it uploaded by tomorrow night at the latest... but we shall see!

 Have a happy, happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!!

:)

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Pick-a-Present: FREEBIE!

Happy Thursday!

The hubs-to-be was home sick today and all I wanted to do was stay home and take care of him... but alas.... I trudged off to work with my kiddos. We have report cards due soon and I have a gazillion assessments I still need to give... EEEEKKK!

I did come home early a finish a little project I had been working on.

My Pick-a-Present freebie:

Graphics: Ashley Hughes

Some fonts: A Cupcake for the Teacher

This is a quick n' easy board game in which students have to pick a card, read it aloud, and determine if the word has a short vowel sound or a long vowel sound. Your kiddos will race to the finish line and try to avoid being stuffed by the stocking card!!! Mwuahahaha.... when a student picks the stocking card, they can move their partner all the way back to the beginning!

Before I go (the boy is whining...)

DeAnne over at First Grade and Fabulous is having a linky that is making me salivate for a midnight snack! I had to link up with one of my FAVE holiday recipes:

PUMPKIN CHEESECAKE!!!!!

The first cheesecake I ever made was for Thanksgiving 2 years ago... and I was hooked! I was already hooked on eating cheesecake, but after baking that deliciousness in a spring-form pan, I was hooked on baking cheesecakes. A cheesecake is not easy to make, buttttt... it is oh so worth the time when you get to take your first bite!

You can't go wrong with a little Paula Dean in your life!

Here is her creamy, fall-flavored Pumpkin Cheesecake!

Nomnomnom

{recipe}

Go link up with DeAnne and share your favorite holiday recipe!!

Night!

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Writing Through the Seasons {Fall & Winter}

Happy Veteran's Day!!

I am so excited to share my 2 latest and greatest packs with you. Let me just dive write in!

I love teaching writing. If you have read previous posts, you know that back in the day, I was horrible at teaching writing. HO-RRI-BLE. Now, I love it! I have just made two common core aligned writing packets to help your students become better writers through the seasons Fall and Winter!

 In each packet, there are fun narrative, informative, and opinion prompts with graphic organizers and writing templates! 

Here are a few of my fave parts from my Fall unit:

 {Roll-a-Story}

Characters and setting version:

This is such a fun, easy writing center, where students roll a character and a setting (page not shown) and write a silly narrative using the two. The students' stories get pretty darn creative!

These are just a few of many different writing prompts & activities!

Some favorites from my Winter pack:

 {Roll-a-Story}

Problem and solution version:

Step 2 - even more creativity involved! Students roll either a problem and come up with a narrative with a fitting solution, or students can roll a solution and come up with the problem. Another great writing center!

Some more prompts and a fun how-to craft!

I send home a packet of hot cocoa and the brainstorming sheet for homework the night before my students complete this activity!

You can snag both my Fall and Winter packs for 20% off all day today and tomorrow! They are available in both my TPT store and my TN store!

{TPT STORE}
{TN STORE}

Now, I am off to enjoy the rest of my day off!

P.S.

Check out my new Writing Through the Seasons {Spring} pack!

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Friday Photos!

[Note to readers]:
I was writing this last night, hence the title, and somehow fell asleep at my computer. Woops! So let's all just rewind a little bit back to Friday night. Sound good?

TGIF!

It is a three day weekend for this gal and I am SO excited to just relax and hang out with the babe. We had a jam-packed week and I thought I would leave you with a few highlights from our week.

{Listen-Sketch-Draft}

This is a Kagan strategy that helps students identify the main topic of a text. We have been working on non-fiction and this little activity is perfect! The kids love doing it too! 

  How it works:

Students listen to me orally read a paragraph aloud. Students get about 1 minute to sketch (draw) what they think the main topic is. When time is up they will turn to a partner and share what they drew and why they thought it was the main topic. Students will formulate one sentence to write in their draft section. Students and teacher repeat process for the other two paragraphs. When complete, students will try to come up with a 1 sentence summary of the entire passage.

**The papers I used above are from a Kagan training which I cannot distribute, but I am sure you could search online and find something similar!

 {Fire Safety}
Earlier in the year, the firefighters had to reschedule their visit with us, so our official fire safety day was today! Here is one of my littles practicing his stop, drop, and roll.

When we got back, I had my students write down some of the things they learned using a paper from Teri's fire safety pack!

{Adjective Pumpkins}
I am sure you have seen Kelley's adjective pumpkins all over the blog-world lately, but man, oh, man... I LOVE these! They make me so happy :) Here are a few of my faves:

 

 

I wish I could show you that first little guy's face - it is PRICELESS! He is trying to make the same angry face as his pumpkin. :)

Okay... so I started this post on Friday, finished it Saturday morning. Now I am off for some Dunkin' Donuts bagels and coffee!

Enjoy your long weekend!

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All Things Turkey!

2 more days this week.

4 days next week.

2 days the week after... and then IT'S HERE!

I don't know how it happens, but year after year I am always surprised by the holidays!

This year, I am tryinnggggg to be more prepared. We are starting our turkey talk early!

We just started reading our new Magic Tree House book, Thanksgiving on Thursday, and my kiddos love themselves some Jack & Annie. Then we jumped into my Who's Talking Turkey? Thanksgiving math centers this week and created our number of the day turkeys:

 

I kinda let my students roll with it by themselves when they were creating them because I wanted to see how they were doing anddd I must say we need some work on 10s frames, yikes! They had to draw their own, which was difficult for them, but all in all I think they came out pretty darn cute!

In the upcoming weeks we will be completing lots of turkey and Thanksgiving themed activities and I thought I would show you the goods:

First, Ashley, at {The School Supply Addict} has just come out with these fabulous Thanksgiving vocabulary cards that are SO cute. I think I will be using them as a center - I see loads of sorts and spelling/vocabulary games in our future :)

Next, Lori, at {Teaching With Love and Laughter}, has some fun language activities in her Thanksgiving pack. We will be doing som of these games next week! I am especially loving the parts of speech sort because we are just finishing up our nouns, verbs, and adjectives units right now!

This last one is not turkey themed, but it is so great I had to do it! Sandra, at {Sweet Times in First}, has just come out with these word family word wall books and activities and this is just perfect for my students to review before the holidays! There are so many fun activities for centers or homework and she even included the adorable word wall cards. 

I am nosy and I like knowing what everyone else is doing, so I figured some other nosy people out there might want to know what I'm up to as well!

Happy hump day!

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Feeling Very Thankful

As the holiday season creeps closer and closer I am feeling all warm and fuzzy inside! I am oh, so thankful for oh, so many things and I thought I would just take a little minute to share them:

(1) My future hubs to be!

 This guy makes me so incredibly happy and he somehow always knows exactly how to cheer me up :) I simply cannot wait to marry my best friend and become Mrs. Jones! 318 days and counting!

 
(2) Siblings

I love and need them all for so many different reasons!

Little sisters and I being goofs :) 

Smiles and laughs and always a good time with Tina and Weezy!

Brotherly love with Hova. Miss ya bro!

Lookin' pretty with my sis-in-law, Romy :) I don't even think she knows how much of an inspiration she is to me! I just love her to pieces. Plus... I've always wanted a big sister!
 

(3) My students

My class... ohhh my class... This is just one of those years...ya know... where the balance  of personalities is just off... 

 it has been a rough, rough start to the year, but as the holidays come around, I am beginning to reflect on the growth they have made in both academics and behavior and I am one happy teacher. They make me SO happy and some days all I want is to be locked in the classroom with my little sweeties - even if I swear they will drive me mental!

I wish I could show you pictures of my munchkins' smiling faces, but just imagine 21 wild n' crazy 7 year olds hugging you, singing "Gangnam style," telling jokes, and showing you their latest and greatest karate moves. That about sums them up!
 

Link up with Lyndsey to share what you are thankful for!

Night!

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