Winner, Winner!

Thank you to everyone for entering on both my Facebook and here on my blog!  It is so much fun to see what everyone will use this for if they win it!  I have chosen a winner, and here are the results!

Comment #9 ~ Sarah!  Check your email soon for the bundle!  I will keep it on sale for half price through ten tonight, and then it will be a part of the big Cyber Monday and Tuesday sale! 

Grab it before it is too late!

I am going to go do some more shopping online for my kids right now! 

Until next time!

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A Few of My Favorite Things...

I know, I know!  It's not Christmas yet, but we had two almost full workdays yesterday and today that I took total advantage of getting ready for the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving.  Despite feeling horrible with this "whatever I have",  {My husband thinks it is walking pneumonia.}  I did work on creating some games for the weeks coming up.  I did finish one.  But, I will get to that later! 

I found this great linky from The Hands-On Teacher.

Here are some of my "favorite things".

My favorite holiday TPT product is my brand new Gingerbread Beginning Sounds Match Game. It is my favorite because it is my only holiday product.  And it will not be my last!

It is a simple matching game to match beginning sounds using pictures.  I am working on the ending sounds game as well.  Right now it is on sale through Black Friday for half price, so got check it out!  Here are some pictures.

As a reading specialist, I LOVE books, and I will probably spend the week before Christmas break doing read-alouds with each of my small groups.  Here are some of my favorites.

This first book is fun to read with students and listen to them as they read with me.  I like to make a Christmas mouse craft with it.

This one I read with my family every year, and we laugh, laugh, laugh!  Being from Louisiana, it is a must read!

 

This year I am going to read this one to my son.  It is my favorite Christmas book and teaches about acceptance no matter what!

I love Christmas time and can never wait for it to begin!  How about you?  Go link up with Marie at The Hands on Teacher and find out what other love this time of year!

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving in case I don't get back to this blog before then!

Until next time!

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What I Am Thankful For

Thanksgiving is right around the corner, literally!  I cannot believe it is almost here!  I found this great linky from Storie at Stories By Storie.  Go check it out and link up!

Here are my Top 10 Things I am thankful for

I feel like I have not been around much. This week was a blur!  My husband was out of town, so I thought I would be able to blog without feeling guilty.  BUT, illness took over, along with basketball and such!  I started getting a little cold on Wednesday, which went away.  By Friday, I was so sick I had to leave work early, something I have never done in my 16 years teaching.  I came home and stayed on the couch with a mystery fever and aching legs.  I woke up this morning feeling fine.  Crazy!  Now I am frazzled because I got none of my stuff ready for Monday morning.  Oh my!  I will survive, even if I have to improvise!

I hope all of you are well!  

Until next time!

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New Number Words Pack and Fun Finds

Whew!  I finally finished my Numbers Word Pack today while I had the day off.  It was a lot of work!  I have used part of it already with one of my groups of students, and they have enjoyed it.  I can't wait to use the rest of it with them.  I have found that my students really struggled with those specific sight words, so I knew I had to do something to help them learn these words!

Plus I did something super new today!  I merged two PDF's, so I could have both landscape and portrait slides!  Check out this blog post by Jessica at A Turn to Learn to learn how to do this with your own products!

This pack includes:
number and word flash cards
chant cards to help with spelling the words
number and word cards to use for playing games
a board game
a number spelling activity sheet

You can get it from my TPT store here or by clicking the picture above.   It will be on sale for half price through Friday, so grab it while it's hot!

Since I had the day off, I ventured out to Target.  What a mistake gold mine!  They had marked down all of the Halloween stuff to 90% off!  That's right, I paid 10% of full price for some fun goodies for my little classroom!  Check them out!

Fifty cents for these cool spider webs.  I am thinking of some fun games!!

These cocktail stirrers will make great pointers for only thirty cents!  The kids won't know!!

Googly eyes for twenty cents!

So, for a dollar, I got some great stuff!!

Heading back to work tomorrow for some fun with my students!
Until next time!

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Sight Word Poem Freebie

I spent the week of our Benchmark testing assessing students' sight word knowledge.  All of the teachers in our school use the same list that the kids have memorized.  Last year when I used it, I found that the kids whizzed through the lists and then couldn't read the words in context.  How frustrating!  This year, I took a different approach.  I downloaded the Dolch Sight Word Assessment and Progress Monitoring Pack from Julie Van Alst at Make, Take, and Teach.  Oh my!  This was so easy to put together and so easy to use.  The kids don't know the order of the words and have loved watching the progress they have made by graphing it.  The list also goes from easier to harder words, giving the older students a lot of confidence from the get-go.  If you don't have this, go grab it!  It is FREE!!

 

What I found out was amazing!  The students in second and third grades do NOT know their number words!  No wonder they struggle in math!!!  "Three" came out as "there.  "One" comes out as "on".  And they couldn't even figure out seven and eight!  Right now I am working on some activities with to help with number words.  I plan to have that pack up by the end of the week, so watch for it!

Also, "her came out as "here".  And "were" became "where".  Not only does this happen in the assessment, but in their reading as well.  So, I added them to the word ring to practice each day and then decided we needed to really work on these words.  I created a poem because I just could not find what I wanted!  It focuses on the words "her" and "here".  (I will probably end up writing poems for some of the other words too.)  It is called "A Silly Crow" and was inspired by the Crow With a Bow Graphics from Michelle at The 3AM Teacher.  You can grab it here or by clicking the picture below.

I will leave you with some pictures of my weekend and what I found my kids doing! 

Zack lost his TV this weekend, so reading was key.  Ginny Beth followed suit!

Ginny Beth got a hold of my laptop today.  She was "typing" away!

 
Until next time!

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November Currently Already??

Oh my!  This year has flown by!  I cannot believe we are already at November and talking about what we will do for Thanksgiving this year!  We have not a full week of school in the past two weeks with conferences and hurricanes.  Next week we have Tuesday off of Election Day, so that leaves the  following week as a full week and then Thanksgiving.  The kids are out all week, and we have professional development days the Monday and Tuesday. 

So, with that, here is my November Currently! 

Tonight Zack's school had their annual Monter-Son Amazing Race.  It is high-energy fun!  We go from station to station doing odd little tasks to get our next clue.  At the end everyone gets funnel cakes!  That makes the running all worth it!

Hopefully this week will be calmer than the last two.  With soccer season ending and basketball season starting, there is no rest in our household.  I keep telling myself that it will get better!  Because of the craziness, I need a serious massage!

I really don't listen to music all the time in my room because we are so high energy.  I do play a lot of ABC songs for the kindergarteners.  We do a lot of rhyming songs too.  I used to just play classical music all day in my classroom, but I don't really do it much now!  Maybe I should!!

Go over to Farley's blog Oh Boy Fourth Grade to find out what everyone else is "currently" doing!  Then tell us what you are doing and link up! 

Until next time!

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