Check out my purchases!!

I totally racked up during TpT's teacher appreciation sale!  Here are some of my favorite purchases:

 I have to admit that I bought much more than these....I'm super excited about them all!  

There are so many fabulous products out there!

What did you buy?

Who Doesn't LOVE a good SALE?

This has to be my favorite sale of the year because my brain is already busy planning for the beginning of next year!  There are SO many fabulous things created by teachers for teachers....it is a total win-win.

My entire store is 20% off + enter TAD13 at checkout to receive an addition 10% off of everything.  That comes out to a total of 28% off your purchases.  Awesome savings for something you can use over and over again! :)

Here are a few of my favorites:

Of course EVERYTHING in my store is on sale this weekend!

Happy shopping!
I can't wait to hear what everyone has purchased!

It's raining...again. {Freebie!}

Is it really May???  I feel like we can not escape from the rain showers in my neck of the woods!  We did a little onomatopoeia activity a few days ago that made us feel a little better about all that drip, drop outside.  We began by brainstorming about what the rain sounds like.  Then, we combined all of our sounds into an original poetic masterpiece.  :)  Take a look:

My friend introduced me to this book.  My kids really made some great connections with this story and it brought about a little cultural awareness lesson too!

Maybe now that we have learned so much about rain....

the sun will come out. 

Don't forget to grab your umbrella paper for FREE {here}!  :)

A Collection of Poems for the Whole Year (FREE!)

One of my favorite things to teach is poetry.  I love connecting it to our units- especially science and math!  One of the first things I ever created was a pack of poems that can be used throughout the year.  I originally created it for my very first 1st grade class but have used the poems in kindergarten and 2nd grade as well.  I did not write any of these poems but I did create the simple activities to go with them.  :)
I've included 41 poems in the collection.  Here are images of 4 of the poems:

 

Nothing fancy!  All 41 poems are simple but fun to learn!
Click on one of the images above or {here} to download the collection for free!

I hope you enjoy these as much as I have!

Writing Prompt Freebie (The Little Engine That Could)

Hi there! Just a quick post tonight.  This week we will be reading Watty Piper's The Little Engine That Could.  If you are familiar with the story (and I'm sure that you probably are...) then you are aware of the "never give up" theme throughout the book.  I plan to have my kids reflect for a few minutes tomorrow about a time when they were persistent about something or about something they want to do but aren't sure they actually can.  We will probably "think, pair, share" for a bit and then I whipped up this prompt page for them to work on at writing station as an extension.  If you think you can use it then you can click on the image or {here} to download a copy.

By the way, have you seen the movie that came out a few years ago?  It is very different from the book.  We are going to watch it later this week and compare and contrast the two versions!

The Little Engine That Could
Amazon even has the movie for rent on instant download here:

Have a great week!

Ready for Spring Cleaning? {Sale Time!}

Anyone else's TpT wishlist FULL again?  

I'm stoked about this weekend's sale so I can move all of those wonderful things from my wishlist to my cart! :)  Don't you love Spring Cleaning???

My store will be 20% off for Saturday and Sunday!

Here are a few of my favorites:

Of course EVERYTHING in my store is on sale this weekend!

Here are some other fabulous stores to visit too!  Happy shopping! :)

Got teeth?

We've had some fun over the last few weeks learning about our teeth.  There are SO many great activities to do for dental health.  I wish we had more time to squeeze them all in!

I saw the idea of a "guess who? with smiles last year from Fall Into First and knew I would have to do it this year.  I think ours turned out pretty cute.  We've had it hanging outside our door since the beginning of February and I still see crowds of kids outside the door checking out our toothy grins. :)


I was able to get multiple copies of this book because it was one of the highlighted books for $1 in one of the Scholastic Book Flyers a few months back.  Good thing because my kids absolutely loved this story!

{By the way, Deanna Jump has some cute activities to go along with the book in her Arctic Animals pack.}


This is one of my favorite activities with marshmallows!  There are many variations of this floating around the web.  Here is one from The Lesson Plan Diva where she incorporates flossing.  Cute!

The tooth template is from Primary Graffiti's Monthly Writing Paper Freebie! {love it....and her!}

Also, if you know me...or read my blog....then you are aware that I definitely have an obsession with edible snacks to go along with my themes and units.  Well, we tried to recreate these mouths that I found on Pinterest from family.go.com:

Ours did not turn out quite so neat and pretty but they sure were good!

We did some great hands-on things too like the playdoh flossing and brushing our eggs clean.  You can check out pictures of those activities and more in last year's dental health post here.

Smiles :)

A Little Belated Leprechaun Love

I realize that all of the excitement of St. Patty's Day is over for this year... I am just now getting the chance to post about it.  Sorry about that!  With St. Patrick's Day falling on a Sunday this year, we had to have a little leprechaun fun right before spring break and when we returned to school on the 18th.  Here's a recap for you.

Before the break we spent a few days planning and creating our traps.  I let my kids run this completely on their own.  I gave them access to recycled materials we had been collecting as well as all of the usual art supplies and told them to have at it.  I am always amazed at the strategic thinking that goes on!  I should also tell you that during our leprechaun making my room was so stinkin' quiet! It was a little eery.  Eery but enjoyable!

They really got into designing traps with twists and turns.  A few of them even decided to entice the leprechauns with gold coins and cozy interiors.  :)

When we returned to school we found that some of our traps were missing (what???) but we think that is because the leprechauns liked them so much they took the traps with them.  We did find the rest of the traps in one huge heap.  It looked as if those pesky leprechauns created their own amusement park ride with all of those tunnels in the remaining traps.  We even found footprints on the traps along with green and gold leprechaun dust!

We used gold coins as manipulatives to help us play a couple of math games that I created last year.  Click {here} to read that post and grab both games for free.

Last year's leprechauns with my 2nd graders turned out so cute I decided to make them again with this year's kinders.  We combined A Cupcake for the Teacher's leapin leprechaun craft with The Teacher Wife's free Worth More Than Gold writing prompt.

And look what this sweet pea wrote!  Melt my heart.

{I think that Mrs. Lirette is "specialer" than a pot of gold.}