Paid Advertisement: Introducing NEW Educents Marketplace

Introducing the NEW Educents Marketplace I just received an email from the founders of Educents, Kate and Kaitlyn, with some really exciting news. Until today, Educents was a website for parents and educators to take advantage of daily deals. But those deals expired... And there were only 50 deals available at once... I wanted saving money to be even EASIER. Kate and Kaitlyn agreed. So they created the new Educents Marketplace. It’s even easier to discover affordable educational resources that make learning FUN!

   

  Thousands of new products - Educents Sellers can now offer ALL of their bestsellers on the new Educents Marketplace. There's a wide variety of worksheets, lesson plans, educational apps and toys. Shop The Young Scientists Club, Scholastic, Workman Publishing, Alpha Omega Publishing, Life of Fred books, hundreds of printable units created by educators, and more! Offers that NEVER expire - Sellers can offer our favorite educational products year-round. Once a deeply discounted Daily Deal expires, you can still find that product available on Educents at the lowest price. Discovery - It's easier to search on Educents. Search for your kiddos' interests like Minecraft or Frozen-inspired resources, and then sort by grade level, subject, brand, and more!  

  Follow your favorite brands and Sellers - The “Follow Me” feature lets me add my favorite Sellers to a list. Click the heart on the Seller Storefront. You can also see which Sellers are the most popular with other shoppers!

   

 The Educents Marketplace is exactly what I want it to be -- the best place for parents and educators to find the resources I NEED at an affordable price.    

April Currently & April Fools

Happy April!

A new month has begun, which means it's time for a...Currently!

I think most of my Currently is pretty self-explanatory, but I do want to share my April Fools' prank! I found this awesome word search from Sweet Rhyme & Pure Reason. A word search with words that you will never be able to find! Classic.

PLC meetings were today. My grade-level's PLC meeting is 15 minutes after our morning recess, so I figured I would have just enough downtime to pull this prank. I told that kiddos that in the spirit of a new month, I had a new word search for them to complete while we wait for the substitute to arrive so I can go to my meeting. I told them that this word search was going to be more challenging that the ones they get to do during Daily Five time, but to work with partners and try their best. Watching the kids try to find a word was pretty hilarious, especially the commentary that came with it. 

"This is really hard!"

"I wish I had glasses so I can see the words!"

"This must be a trick!"

"I found the word fun! But fun isn't on the list!"

You would have to be there, but it was pretty funny to watch. Once the substitute arrived, I asked the class if anyone was able to find a word. No one raised their hand, of course. So right before I left, I was like "well everyone....APRIL FOOLS!!!" The classroom just erupted after that! The kids were especially excited when I told them to take the word search home to use as a trick at home. And then I left for my PLC meeting. :)

If you had school today, did you play any pranks at school today? What were they? Leave a comment and share! I would love to hear your April Fools story! :)

March Recap [PICTURE HEAVY POST]

Hi friends! I'mmmmm back! Did you miss me? :D

I also didn't make Five for Friday like I had said because date night got moved to Friday so didn't get home until late. Spent the rest of the night preparing for the job fair on Saturday (more on that in a future post) so just didn't have time for it. 

It is now Sunday and almost the end of the month. Since I haven't written a post this month I thought it would make sense to just do a recap of what's happened in my classroom this month. I will warn you though, this post is going to long and VERY picture heavy so I hope you're prepared!

Read Across America

The theme for this year's Read Across America was "Oh, the Places You Will Go". 

We also did some free reading time with Dr. Seuss books along with some sequencing practice with the cat in the hat!

Friendly Visit

My friend from Canada came for her annual visit to my classroom. She comes every year to take pictures of my students with our published book. (Check out her photography skills on her website!)

St. Patrick's Day Activities

We read The Luckiest Leprechaun: A Tail-Wagging Tale of Friendship and talked about who we thought was worth more than gold to us.

Writing & Craft from The Teacher Wife!

We also did a directed drawing of a leprechaun from First Grade Blue Skies! Last year, I used educreations on my iPad to record myself teaching this to my class so that students who had been pulled out for resource during that time could learn the lesson when they returned. A year later, I just pull the video up, play it, and sit back and relax as I watch my new class create their leprechaun drawings. I need to do this more often!! 

We also read The Night Before St. Patrick's Day, which talks about setting out leprechaun traps. So I guess we needed to make some too!

From Second Grade Sweets

The kids couldn't wait to see if they caught any leprechauns. Unfortunately, their traps couldn't outsmart the leprechauns, who left quite a mess in the classroom.

But at least they left some pots of gold beads behind for each student to find!

Contractions
One of my favorite anchor charts that I've made so far (thank you pinterest for the idea)! We also made a flip book to help us practice our contractions.

Bombaloo
Our school is participating in Project Cornerstone and the character trait for March is self-discipline. We read Sometimes I'm Bombaloo which is a great book that talks about anger and dealing with it. In the story, a girl turns into Bombaloo when she gets angry after her brother knocks her castle down. As Bombaloo, she destroys everything around her. You'll have to read the book to find out how she turns herself back into her. :)

After reading the book, we talked about what we would we do when we turn into Bombaloo and how we can turn ourselves back to our normal self.  

I actually really love how we have read the book because now kids will come up to me during to tell me that someone has turned into a Bombaloo (displaying bad sportsmanship). Sometimes I will have students in the classroom who will get upset and I remind them that they need to turn Bombaloo back into themselves. It really works!

Math
Math has been all about place value this month. We talked about two-digit numbers, how they are composed of tens and ones. We then spent a week practicing different ways to find 1 more, 1 less, 10 more, and 10 less of a two-digit number. Using a math tool to figure it out was simple enough for the kids, but doing it mentally took a lot more practice.

Freebie Activity from K. Almaraz

Freebie Worksheet from Grella Monsters

Spring Birds
A directed drawing lesson on drawing a bird using oil pastels and then watercolors for coloring everything in. I was pleasantly surprised at the results! Thanks to Deep Space Sparkle for the idea!

And that concludes the March recap! Congrats to all who made it through the whole post! I will be back for the currently in April. See you then! :)

I'm Still Here!

Hi friends!

It's been so long since my last post (was that two months ago???), but I just wanted to drop by and say that I haven't disappeared! I'm still here! :D

These last two months have been crazy hectic with just so much stuff happening at work and personally that I haven't been able to gather up the energy to be doing my regular Five for Fridays postings! Springing forward last weekend most definitely didn't help either. Waking up and driving to work in the dark is totally not my forte! (I like to wake up to natural sunlight.)

I hope to get back into the blogging groove once report cards are over (due by the end of this week!). Thanks for not leaving me behind. Hope to be back in the blogging world soon! :)

Five for Friday: First Week Back!

It's finally Friday! To all those teachers who had to come back this week from their holiday break...we made it! Now it's time to celebrate with a Five for Friday!

On Monday, we read Squirrel's New Year's Resolution to learn what a resolution this.

[Click image above to see it on Amazon.]

Then we came up with some resolutions for the class as a whole...

...and also came up with

individual resolutions while completing a New Year's flipbook by Teaches Third in Georgia.

I got (well, requested) a bluetooth speaker from the boyfriend for Christmas! While messing around with trying to figure out how to upload music to my iPad without having to use iTunes, I also discovered iTunes radio. Did you know that there's a "Frozen" station which basically plays Disney songs only? No commercials too! (Probably being its a station for kids). So while we were working on a birthday book for a classmate, the class got to enjoy listening to different Disney songs on iTunes radio via my new bluetooth speakers!

This week was also snowman week! Snowman week included labeling a snowman, writing instructions on how to build a snowman, and creating a torn paper snowman masterpiece!

We also started our geometry unit this week. The kids always love it when the pattern blocks come out, especially when they are told to just use them to build whatever pictures they want!

We also started our new science unit on air and weather. Means we are adding some new Science vocabulary to our word bank!

You've read about my week. How was yours?? :)