TpT Sale!

I'm Thankful for...

One of my favorite blogs, What the Teacher Wants, (see number 3!) is putting on a linky party about what you are thankful for so I decided to join the fun!

1. What are you most thankful for in your classroom?

I am so thankful for my students, parent volunteers and my school, but I am the MOST thankful for my wonderful teammates. Not only are they fabulous teachers, but I consider them my close friends. They constantly support me and provide me with awesome ideas for my classroom.

2. What person are you most thankful for?

I can't pick just one! Too hard! I am so thankful for my wonderful family and friends, but if I had to narrow it down, I would choose my two best friends from college, Sarah and Allison. They have been with me through ups and downs and they have seen me at my lowest (and they STILL love me unconditionally). We laugh together, pray together and play together! I am so thankful they both live in Austin (well, Sarah lives in Round Rock, but I choose to ignore that haha) right now so we can hang out every once in a while. I love them both so much!

3. What three blogs are you most thankful for?

Once again...a hard question! There are so many wonderful blogs out there and I am CONSTANTLY getting new ideas for my classroom. My top three would have to be these three ladies (Rachelle, Deanna and Abby) because I visit their sites most frequently and have purchased most of their units on TpT! Thank you ladies for inspiring me!

4. What guilty pleasure are you thankful for?

Fantasy books! I love books that transport you to another world. Especially those involving vampires....yes, I admit, I love me some Twilight! I am greatly looking forward to the next movie, which I will be seeing with my teammates RIGHT after school gets out on Tuesday. It looks wonderfully bad! The only thing I like more than watching/reading Twilight is making fun of it! :)

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5. What are you most thankful for?

I get to wake up every morning to a job that I adore! I have friends and family that love me unconditionally! AND I live in a country that gives me the freedom to achieve my dreams and worship my God. I am most thankful for my Savior Jesus Christ who has blessed me with all this.

If you want to join the linky party fun, click the picture below!

Inventors!

Well, I'm a little behind in my posting of units, but I'm just about caught up!

After our Halloween unit, we jumped right into inventors and inventions! We first talked about what inventions are and made a T-chart of inventors we already knew and some we learned about using an inventor puzzle game.

We dug deeper into Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell's lives by reading books about them and watching United Streaming videos about their discoveries. My wonderful teammate Sam made a Venn diagram with facts about each inventor.

We also talked about Benjamin Franklin and his many inventions by reading this wonderful book! I learned a lot from it too!

Finally, I had the kids draw their favorite inventions we had learned about that week.

The second week of the unit focused more on them as inventors. We talked about how inventors invent things in order to solve a problem or make life easier or better. We used several activities from One Extra Degree's Inventor Unit. We talked about patents and why they are important. I posed several problems from the unit and asked the kids to draw in their science journals inventions that would solve that problem.

Our final project was creating their own invention. The kids brought in items from home to create something with and on Friday I just let them loose!

It was hilarious to watch them work and talk to each other. We had some very interesting creations when time was up. I had them fill out a sheet from the unit where they drew and labeled their invention with the materials they used. I then displayed them on my reading table (first time all year its been cleared off! hah!) for a little project show. The kids got to walk around the table and look at each other's creations.

Here are a couple examples up close!

Toy UFO

Cloud Sucker : for when you want a sunny day with no clouds

Chin rest: you can rest your chin in the cup when you get tired of holding your head up

And my all-time favorite: The Laugh-n-shine! Whenever your friend is sad, just swing this in front of them and the smiley face will cheer them right up!

Hope you enjoyed my kiddos fun inventions! The next units I will post about will be immigration/cultures and of course, Thanksgiving! Check out my previous post to see examples of my kids' work from my own Thanksgiving unit!

Thanksgiving Unit - on sale!

Since there is one week (YES! ONE WEEK) until Thanksgiving, I put my new unit on sale. Please click on the picture below to check it out!

My kids did the activities today and I wanted to show you how they turned out! :) SO CUTE!

Thanksgiving Unit on TpT!

Just posted my second unit on TpT just in time for Thanksgiving! It has several writing activities centered around what we are thankful for. I also included a few activities about why the Pilgrims were thankful and how the Native Americans helped them. Click on the picture below to go check it out!

I was inspired by the amazing clip art of KPM Doodles. To quote my happy heart teacher/blogger friend Sam....LOVE IT!

Don't forget to get my freebie Thanksgiving activity also! Where would you hide on Thanksgiving if you were a turkey?? :) Click on the picture below to download it.

If I was a Turkey....

Still working on my holiday unit, but I posted another free activity on TpT! This one is for Thanksgiving so you can use it this week! :)

Click here for my Free Activity!

I'm on TpT! :)

I'm officially a seller on Teachers Pay Teachers! Right now I just have one free download, but I'm working on a holiday unit that I will put up soon! :) Please check out my store by clicking my button or the link below!

Pumpkins and Halloween!

The week before Halloween was all about pumpkins! :) We went to a Pumpkin Patch for a study trip, and the kids had a blast! The kids got to pick out a pumpkin to take home so we used that pumpkin for fun measurement with their book buddies. They weighed it, measured its circumference and counted the lines on it.

We started off talking about pumpkins by coming up with words to describe them (reviewing adjectives. I used a few activities from Deanna Jump's Halloween unit for this. We made a web of adjectives to describe pumpkins and then we used these adjectives to make our own pumpkin poems.

We also did a cute class book from Deanna's unit about what we will be for Halloween. It turned out ADORABLE! :)

We did a fun pumpkin writing activity where the kids got to create their own pumpkin characters and write about what they would do. I got it from Made For First Grade's Pumpkin unit.

In math, we did a simple pumpkin seed book activity, but added in number sentences to show how many pumpkin seeds were in the pumpkin. (Honestly can't remember who I downloaded this from so if it is your book, let me know so I can credit you. I follow too many blogs!! )

Since we were working on addition and subtraction, we also did a fun Halloween Doubles book to practice our doubles facts. (Once again, forgot who I downloaded this from. Let me know if it's yours! The kids loved it!!)

We also did fun pumpkin and halloween word problems. Here are a few examples:

We read a lot of fun pumpkin books including Sixteen Runaway Pumpkins by Diane Ochiltree and my all-time favorite The Ugly Pumpkin by Dave Horowitz. We then wrote about the book in our reading journals focusing on the problem and solution in the story. The Inspired Apple blog has a post on other fun activities to do with this great book! :)

On Halloween (I think Halloween on a Monday should be illegal by the way! haha) we did lots of fun Halloween activities, most of which I got from Rachelle's Halloween unit.

From her unit we read her adorable, Green Witch Green Witch book and the kids got to color and fill in their own book. They also did a Halloween word search, solved secret Halloween messages and drew themselves trick-or-treating.

We also did several fun art projects. The kids got to paint pumpkins and then use black construction paper to create the face. They turned out ADORABLE! :)

We did a writing/art project where we read Where's My Mummy? and wrote about what our moms do for us when we are scared. The kids also made their own mummy masks out of paper plates. SO ADORABLE! :)

Our final art project was also from Rachelle's unit. We made skeletons out of q-tips!

Hope you enjoyed our Halloween fun! Coming soon...Inventors! :)