SUNSHINE Award!

A BIG thank you to those of you that have given me a sunshine award: Liz over at Stickers, Scissors, and Smiles, Sarah over at Sarah's First Grade Snippets, and Sara over at Smiling in Second Grade!

The Sunshine Award rules are:
1. Thank the person who gave this award and write a post about it.
2. Answer the following questions below.
3. Pass the award to 10~12 fabulous bloggers, link their blogs and let them know you awarded them.

* Favorite Color? green
* Favorite day? Hmmm...that's tough. I'll go with Christmas, but Halloween is great too! And so is Christmas Eve. :)
* Favorite Animal? a seal
* Favorite Number? 7

* Favorite Drink? coffee!
* Facebook or Twitter? Facebook. Don't really understand Twitter...
* Your Passion? Teaching!!!
* Giving or Getting Presents? I am horrible at picking gifts, so I'll say getting. BUT, I do love to give presents too (when I have an idea in mind). :)

* Favorite flowers? Sunflowers

And here are my recipients for the award:

Barbara at Grade Onederful
Holly at Crisscross Applesauce in First Grade
Debbie at Sailing Through 1st Grade
Rebecca at Teaching First
Kelli at Castles and Crayons
Christie at First Grade Fever

This was hard as there are sooo many more blogs I follow regularly!

GIVEAWAY WINNERS!

It may only be 6:30 in the morning, but I've got the winners picked! (And yes, I have a big cup of coffee in hand) Thanks to the Random Number Generator, our winners are....

Sorry it's so light and small! I'm certainly not an expert at this. Jen, pick 3 products you would like off my TpT page and let me know what you want! I'll head over to your blog and let you know you've won!

Kelly, pick 2 products off my TpT page and let me know what you want! I'll head on over to your blog to let you know you've won!

Jennifer, pick 1 product off my TpT page and let me know what you want! I'll shoot you an email letting you know you've won!

Congrats to the winners!!! Thank you to those of you that participated!! YOU ROCK!

*Last Chance to Enter GIVEAWAY*

Tonight is the last chance to enter my giveaway! If you are a follower and want to enter, all you have to do is leave a comment on the post here! I'll be back on tomorrow to blog about the SUNSHINE awards I have received. Thank you to those of you who have given me one! AND, I'll post the WINNERS of the giveaway bright and early tomorrow morning.

*Giveaway Reminder* and a Freebie!

I just returned from San Diego...and what's the first thing I do??? Catch up on my blog reading!! Haha!!! But I'm making this a fast post as I should unpack and decorate for Christmas. And of course do a little shopping! :)

Don't forget to enter my GIVEAWAY! Directions are in the previous post. Don't worry, it's SUPER easy to enter! You have until Wednesday and then I am picking 3 WINNERS!

Also, here's another freebie for you. I love having writing activities for my kiddos to complete when they finish an assignment, so I developed these four winter themed ones. You can get them on my TpT page or by clicking HERE. Enjoy!

GIVEAWAY, SALE, AND FREEBIE!!

Yippyyyyyy! I finally reached the magic number: 100! 100 followers that is! To celebrate, I am having a SALE on ALL of my products over at TpT. They are all 20% off now through Cyber Monday! Check out my store here! I am also having a GIVEAWAY! There will be 3 lucky winners....

First place will get to choose any 3 of my products on TpT for FREE! This can include my newly posted Winter Centers!!! They are sooo cool! Get it?! Yeah, I'm a dork.

Second place will get to choose any 2 of my products!

And third place will get to choose one product!

You have 3 ways to enter! All you have to do is...

1. Tell me you are a follower in my comments.

2. Blog about this giveaway on your blog and tell me in my comments. Please help me out by doing this! :)

3. Follow me on TpT and tell me in my comments.

I'll pick the winners through the Random Number Generator on Wednesday, November 30th. Winners will be announced that day! And if you ARE a lucky duck (ie: winner) all you have to do is send me your email and the name of the item(s) you want. SUUUPER EASY!

I sure hope you guys enter! That would be kinda embarrassing if I only had one or two people enter... haha!

Oh but WAAAAAAAIT, THERE'S MORE! Of course, I have to have a FREEBIE to celebrate as well. This is a packet of 23 write the room activities for many different sounds. It can be used as center activities!
Write the Room

What I'm Up To This Week!

Are you as crazy busy as I am this week?! We're squeezing in Thanksgiving activities in between our testing and normal lessons. Here's what we working on:

We are studying adjectives and completing our adjective books! See more about the books here.

It's really bugging me now that I didn't capitalize the "m" in many.... Haha!

We are studying nutrition by building the food pyramid with felt. I also found great materials at http://www.nourishinteractive.com/kids/kidsarea.html. Check it out!

We are completing our Thanksgiving centers this week! The kids are loving them, but I forgot to take pictures of them at work...

We also are writing about how to cook a turkey, but again, I didn't take pictures of this. :( BUT, you can get this wonderful activity for FREE from What the Teacher Wants!

Lastly, we are learning about the tens and ones place.

AND, on a random side note, I found Starbucks K-Cups! Now they just need to make gingerbread latte flavored ones...

Off to the gym now!

I'm Thankful For...

There is a linky party going on over at What the Teacher Wants and I thought I would join in! Boy do I love linky parties!!

1.  What are you thankful for in your classroom?

My students. LOVE them!!! They make me laugh and smile all day looooong. I truly have the best job ever! I'm also thankful for my Elmo and my Keurig in my classroom. :)

2. What person are you most thankful for?

I can't pick one person. I am most thankful for my family. They all mean so much to me and I wouldn't be where I am today without them. Christy (my twin sister), if you are reading this, I love you!

3. What 3 blogs are you most thankful for?

This is hard because I love so many blogs out there! But here are the three that I stalk the most:




 

4. What guilty pleasure are you most thankful for?

COFFEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

5. What are you most thankful for?

My wonderful life!

Have a FABULOUS Thanksgiving!!!!

Winter Literacy Centers!

I am sooo excited for winter! Cold weather, gingerbread lattes, possible snow (in Las Vegas), hot cocoa, crockpot meals, and coats! Woohoo!

AND, I just finished (after weeks of work...and many frustrations) my winter centers! I was debating whether to make Christmas or winter themed centers and after much thought, I decided to go with the winter theme. This way the activities can be used for 3 WHOLE MONTHS! :) Don't worry, I won't actually use them for 3 months. Haha! The packet includes 82 pages with 12 different literacy centers. You can pick up your copy over at my TpT store. Or just click HERE!

And here's a sneak preview:

Enjoy!!

Last Minute Thanksgiving Freebie

What a crazy busy week I had!!! Soooo thankful for the weekend! I made a write the room center activity to go along with my Thanksgiving centers. See more about those here. This write the room activity will be used by my early finishers! Enjoy!
Thanksgiving Write the Room

Scarecrow Summaries

We just finished reading one of my favorite fall books, The Little Scarecrow Boy.

After reading, we discussed what happened in the book and then wrote our own summaries! THEN, we colored and cut our own scarecrows and used brads to put them together. Here are our little scarecrows:

Sorry the pics are blurry. My iPhone wasn't happy with me today. Nonetheless, my kiddos loved this activity! It's definitely going in the files for next year.

Thanksgiving Writing Prompts- Freebie!

Do you need some FREE Thanksgiving writing prompts?! I just created these for my kiddos who are early finishers. They are half page writing prompts with sentence starters. There are four different prompts included. Just cut in half and they are ready to go!! Take a look... And then get it here.

Enjoy! Don't forget to become a follower if you are not already!

Adjective Books!

I just uploaded adjective books to TpT. Here's a preview for you all!

Head on over to TpT to check it out! And if you haven't seen the verb books or noun books, don't forget to check those out too! Have a great 3-day weekend!

Rating Writing and Wanted Posters in Math

I always ask my kiddos to try their personal best on writing assignments. However, sometimes I don't feel like they turn in their best work.. SO, to help them understand what their writing should look like I developed this rating chart. I had seen something similar on Pinterest and thought it was a great idea! This one is for personal narratives. As we study opinion writing and informational text (per the Common Core) these pieces will change.

I wrote the paper with a score of 1 with my right hand (I''m left handed). :)

Moving on....our math lesson today focused on ways to make numbers. To challenge my kiddos that already understood the concept, we made "Wanted" Posters! I found this idea in an old math teaching book and came up with this poster to go along with it. The students were supposed to come up with several different ways to make their target number in the box.

Wanted Poster

Here are some student examples.

We have Staff Development Day tomorrow so I'm done teaching for the week. I wish I could say this is going to give me time to catch up on all my work...but no, I get to sit through meetings all day tomorrow....

Verbs and Place Value

Happy Monday!! Today we began talking about verbs in writing and place value in math.

 Here is a chart we used to start our discussion on verbs:

Verb Poster

And here's our chart after our discussion. The poster maker ran out of paper so that's why the bubble isn't centered on the page. This drove the perfectionist in me crazy, but I managed to get through it. Haha!

We also started page one of our books and decorated the cover. You can find more about the books here.

Moving on to math, I wanted to share this awesome "I Have, Who Has" game I found through Pinterest. It's for place value through the tens place. You can get your own from Melissa's site at F is For First Grade.

 My kiddos LOVED the activity, though we still need lots of practice with this. Guess we will be playing it often! :) Enjoy your short week!

Five Finger Rule Bookmarks - FREEBIE

Do your students have trouble picking books at their level from your class library? Mine do. I don't have all my books labeled for reading levels (that's my goal for NEXT summer), so sometimes it's hard for the kiddos to tell which books they should be reading. To help with this, I am going to try using the five finger rule for reading. Here's the rule:

I made these bookmarks to go with it as a reminder to my students. If you would like them, click here.

Happy Sunday! Hope you get to do something fun with your extra hour!