I "heart" Columbus Day! lol

I made it through conference week last week!  All of my conferences went really well.  No problems at all and I have really nice families.  I was just wiped out from all of the planning of them and everything else going on.  It just seemed like it was one thing after another when it came to school stuff that I was trying to catch up, with no success.  Then came the blessed 4-day weekend after conferences!  I got all of my papers graded Friday.  I got some more of my math games laminated and cut Saturday and Sunday I finished up another unit for TPT and TN.  Not to mention I caught up on all of my tv I was so completely behind on too and my sleep!!!  Today the plan is to update my class webpage and make another unit or 2 for TPT and TN (I hope I can do it!).  I even had time to come on here and update!  I love long weekends!!!
This week will be busy (of course) because my teammate who I share my wall with and myself, will be opening the wall for the first time to get our classes used to it.  We do Daily 5 and guided reading book clubs together so this week we will get them used to it.  We are on a review week in our LA series so we won't be meeting with book clubs.  We will start them next week.  We have used these past 6 weeks to introduce and practice Daily 5 and get that routine going.  Now this week the wall will be open they will start learning how the Daily 5 structure will work and we'll be available to help out where needed and see where there is a need for re-practicing before starting book clubs next week.  It should be fun.  We're also starting this week differentiated math groups.  The same teammate and I along with 1 of our other teammates, got together to plan out how to split our classes up to better meet the needs of our students in math.  We're new to this so it's not perfect.  Any suggestions you have are always appreciated.  We're going to teach the whole group lesson to our class first for the first 20 minutes of math and then for the remaining 40 minutes, the students were divided up into approaching, on-level, and beyond groups and they will go to one of us to get instruction and games tailored to where they're at.  I got the on-level group, which is the biggest at 28 kiddos.  We wanted to keep the approaching group little so they could really get the assistance they needed.  That meant that the other 2 groups were bigger (the beyond has 24 kiddos).  My plan as of right now is to make groups out of the 28 and meet with some of them during our time together while the rest play games to practice the skills we're working on.  For this unit it's simple because it's fact power.  I have tons of games for that.  So I'm excited to see how this works.  Telling you about this made me remember some other things I have to add to my to-do list today to get ready for the week.  I'm just so glad that I have the time to think about and work on it!!
So to share my happiness and wish you a Happy Columbus Day I'm linking up with Manic Monday by Classroom Freebies (which I haven't been able to do in a while).
This week's freebie is one that I made as part of the review unit I posted Sunday.  If you click on the picture below it will take you to my TPT store where you can click the download preview button and get my Long Vowel Go Fish game for free!  Have a Marvelous Monday!!  :)

New Treasures Unit :)

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I have gotten such great feedback on my Treasures units I have made.  It's so great and makes me feel good that I'm helping out a lot of people.  It blows my mind!  I have another unit now ready to go.  This one goes with Unit 2, Week 5 (Staying Fit - There's Nothing Like Baseball).  If you're interested you can go to either my tpt or teacher's notebook shops to get any of my past unit packets.  For Manic Monday, I am letting you know about a game that I have that goes with this unit.  If you click on the picture below, it will take you to my tpt shop for this packet.  If you click on the download preview button, you will get a Long O uno type card game.  It goes with the spelling pattern for that week (o, oa, oe, ow).  You can have it for free!  Maybe it will work for your word work centers.  Happy Monday!  :)

I Made-it! again :)

     Woohoo!  It's time to post another entry for Monday Made-it with 4th Grade Frolics.  :)  I haven't been on my blog posting that much this week because I've been doing things to enjoy my summer before it's gone and working on school stuff too.  Last Monday I went into school to drop off my welcome letter and while I was there I picked up some things from my classroom that I needed to finish up some projects.  I didn't take pictures of them, but I got my 2 containers for the prize coupons that I will be doing this year instead of actual toy like prizes.  I got all the coupons printed, laminated, cut, sorted, and put into their section of the tackle box like container.  Previously the containers had been used to store my fun foam alphabet letters so I could easily grab the letters I needed, but last year I made letter bags for my word work station so those containers were sitting in my cabinet empty.  Yay for not having to buy something new!  I also brought home my craft sticks so I could make my brain break sticks to go in the container I had previously shown you guys.  So those were printed and taped and are now in the container as well.  

     I bought a basket for all of my stuffed animals for the kids to use as book buddies and I made a sign for it.  

Most of my stuffed animals are at school already (as I brought them back when I went in last Monday), so there were just a couple to put in the basket.  Here's my sign if you'd like.  I just used DJ Inkers clipart and the Howser font.  Last year if a kiddo picked Read to Someone and they couldn't find a buddy I used to give them a big Mickey to read to.  Then near the end I was thinking about all of the stuffed animals I have and I thought I could make the basket for them to choose from (it also works for one of my prize coupons "keep a stuffed animal on your desk for the day").  I know I have seen others of you who are doing the same thing as well.  

     Then for my other made it, I was inspired by Erica Bohrer and her Mr. Moo mascot pack.  Now since my classroom theme is the rainforest, the cow really wouldn't work for me, so I went to Build-A-Bear and got a monkey.  Then I used a canvas bag (from Michaels) and an iron on transfer and a binder to make the rest.  

I'm excited to try this this year.  The last 2 years I did themed family literacy bags, where I put in 4 or 5 books of a certain theme and games, activities, and other things to go with it in a canvas bag and families could check it out for some fun family literacy time.  However, this year I'm not doing it because I've had problems with them not coming back on time and then things being missing or damaged.  I just didn't want to deal with that this year, even though the kids loved them.  I thought this might be better to try.  You can go here to get the iron on transfer for the bag and here to get all of the items for the binder.  I left them in Word so you could edit them to fit you if you wanted them.  So just like Erica suggested, the students get to take Morty home for the weekend, they can read the 2 books I will put in there to him and do other fun things with him and write about it in the binder.  

     I also got another packet done for my tpt and teacher's notebook stores.  Click on the picture to go to my tpt store.  If you click on "download preview" you get a free uno type game for the spelling pattern ai/ay.  

     So today my lovely niece Lizzie will be coming with me to my classroom today to start getting it ready.  It will be more of a mess when we leave, but I'm using her to help me bring everything back to school and to get everything down from the top of the shelves and move furniture.  lol  She's a tall 15 year old girl and she likes to help me.  I'll treat her to a movie and feed her.  lol  I'm also hoping to get my class list today so I can see who I have in my class and start working on name stuff for that.  Happy Monday!  Can't wait to look at everyone's awesome made-its!  

Just a few things...

So we finally got rain, which was fantastic.  It rained for over an hour and then rained again during the night.  It's pretty cloudy today too, so we might get more rain!  The grass and trees would surely love that!  Another thing that got me excited was that I got my first sale on tpt!  I made the packs for my team and me to use and I thought I'd post them on there to see if anyone would be interested and to use any extra money to put towards my classroom.  So I was pretty excited to see that someone else was interested in them!  So with that and the weather, I'm motivated to start my packs for unit 2!  Don't really have anything else to report on today, so I'm going to leave you with another pic of another of my units I made and I'm going to get started on unit 2.  Have a great day!!!  :)

Score!

So today I went to Walmart to restock my fridge and freezer now that we have a new one.  On no school days I'll brave Walmart because it's not crowded during the day, but usually during the school year, when I'm only able to go after work or on the weekends like everyone else, I stay far away because it's always a madhouse.  Then I'm a Target and Jewel girl.  Well Walmart had some good back-to-school deals going on AND they had an amazing 88 cent aisle.  I picked up a TON of stuff.  I got some stickers and reward incentive charts (I used these near the end of last year during Daily 5.  Near the end of the year the students were losing stamina, so I gave them each an incentive chart and if they did Daily 5 correctly they earned a sticker, when they filled their chart, they earned a coin for the the prize box.), bookmarks, birthday certificates and stickers, and 4 packs of the jumbo paper clips to turn into bookmarks.  I was very excited.  Spent too much money, but oh well!  Had to stock the fridge and freezer and couldn't pass up the deals!
Today I'm leaving you with a picture of my 2nd grade Treasures Unit 1, Week 1.  The way I did the Treasures packs is that it has extra activities to do during the week with the main story and then there are also activities to go along with the small group resources for guided reading. I have them posted on both TPT and Teachers Notebook, so you can choose which store you prefer if interested.

Come back tomorrow to get a freebie I will be posting.  :)

New Shops Up

It's been a little crazy here for me.  My fridge died so my roommate and I had to get rid of all of the food and get a new one but it's not being delivered until tomorrow, so there has been a lot of eating out.  Then my co-teacher got back to me on all of the stuff I've been making and it's all set to go up for sale on Teachers Pay Teachers and Teachers Notebook.  So I figured out how to do that and uploaded all 8 items to both shops, which took a while as I learned the ropes.  Now I've spent a ton of time trying to figure out how to add buttons of my shops to this blog for easy access.   I'm not sure if I succeeded or not.  I also haven't figured out how to comment directly to the person who comments.  I don't have a reply button to click under the name and all of the settings it tells me to check on are correct, so I guess I'll just keep trying to figure it out.  Luckily Google is my friend.  I use it all of the time, so I'm sure eventually I'll find the correct answer!  Also, I was excited to see that I have 4 followers.  Wow!  Thanks for trying me out!
Today I took a little break out of my day and treated my niece and me to the movie Brave.  It doesn't matter that she's almost 16 and I'm 32, we had a great time!  I think she needed to see this movie as she doesn't always treat her mom (my sis) the best.  lol  So that was a fun thing to do during summer break. I'm also working on more school stuff, but I ran out of ink so I'm waiting for my order from amazon to come in, which will bring me ink and laminating pouches.  Then I can get back to work.  I'm also trying my hand at making other things that I get inspired from, which had me create a freebie I will be posting at a later date, probably for Freebie Friday.  So be on the look out for that.
I'm going to leave you with a pic of my first unit I created.  It goes with the Macmillian/McGraw-Hill Treasures reading series for 2nd grade Start Smart Unit.  I always feel like when I'm teaching that unit, it needs a little more, so I added in some extra things I do and more.  Most of the activities (since it's a review) could be used at younger grade levels as it's almost all making words and words sorts for the short vowel sounds.  If it's anything you'd be interested in, trying clicking one of the buttons on the side to go to whichever shop you prefer to download it.  :)  Also I THINK if you do the download preview on tpt the short a making words is in the preview that you can download for free to use.  So bonus!  :)