Magical Product Swap #4 ~ Two Fun Products!

This is one of my favorite times of the year ~ the Magical Product Swap!  I love being able try out new products and review them and allow someone else to do the same!  But most of all, I love the friendships I have made through them!

This time is no different!  I was so excited to find that I would be swapping with Storie from Stories by Storie!  I love reading her blog and browsing her store was so much fun too!  If you have not been to her blog, head on over there for some fun stories and ideas!

Storie and I both had a hard time choosing one item from each others' stores, so we each chose two products.

My second graders have been spending a lot of time working on various parts of stories with fiction and main idea/details with nonfiction.  Storie's Comprehension Cube Craft was perfect for my second graders!  They really had fun thinking about the parts of the book and writing about them.  Here is how easy it was to make them:

First they filled out the story parts.

Then, they glued the parts onto the square papers.

Finished nonfiction cubes

Finished fiction cubes.

These were super easy and super fun to make!  Storie gives great instructions on how to put the cube together, but once I got the hang of it, I didn't even need to use them.  This could actually be set out for the students to complete at a center with some guidance on putting them together.  With her instructions, students could even do it all on their own.

Another product I got to have fun with was Storie's Roll and Cover Gameboards.  These were super easy to make AND super fun to play!  I was able to actually make these within minutes during the last five minutes of my planning period.  I simply copied them onto colored paper, laminated them, and voila ~ there they were!  Here we are playing them!

First we read the words to make sure we knew them.

Love this dice roller!

As I rolled, the students followed the code to cover words.

Winner!!

The set comes with six game boards for each word feature.  The word features are:  short vowels, long vowels, bossy r,  l-blends, and r-blends.  I used the short vowels with my first graders and the long vowels with my third graders.  Everyone had fun!  I did change the "6" to free play to make the game a little more exciting.  Children love that choice!

I had so much fun with both of these products that they are going into my repertoire to use year after year!

Now head on over the Storie's blog to see what two products she reviewed! 

And a huge thank you to Jessica Stanford for setting all of this up!  I know it could not be easy to do it all! 

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Magical Product Swap # 3 ~ Reindeer Reading

It is that time again ~ time for the Magical Product Swap with Jessica Stanford.  I love this for so many reasons!

1.  I get to meet a new blogger and make a new friend!  That has been the best part of blogging!
2.  I get to try out a new product that enhances my instruction.
3.  I get to see my product in action, something that always intrigues me!

So, once you find out about Reindeer Reading from Lauren at Teacher Mom of 3, click on the button below to see what everyone else has reviewed.

Again, I was paired with another wonderful partner ~ Lauren from Teacher Mom of 3!!  She is a reading specialist as well, so we share a common bond.  She has been so much fun to get to know, and that makes it all the more fun!

Now, onto the product!  I had the opportunity to use and review Lauren's Reindeer Reading! Informative Reading and Writing.  She has it labeled for 1st and 2nd grade, but I work with students who struggle in reading.  This was perfect for my third graders who read on a second grade level.  Just before Christmas we spent a week working on this unit.  It was a lot of fun!

First I copied all of the pages, which go to a community copier in our school.  One of the other teachers picked it up as I was walking to the copier and said, "I wonder whose this is because it is adorable!"  What a compliment!

We started off with the KWL chart that had such cute little reindeer on it.  The students had fun filling these in before we read.  I told them to write down what they knew about reindeer.  Several of them put that reindeer can fly.  I had to remind them that we were focusing on the reindeer in the wild who did not make "Santa's cut". 

We then went over the vocabulary words for the articles.  They are perfect because they can match the words to the definitions.  These came in handy for learning those Tier 3 words.  I used them throughout the week to review the words as we read the passages.  We also predicted which words would be used in each section of the passage.

We then read the articles, one each day, and discussed them together.  There were three articles about reindeer:  Where Reindeer Live, What Reindeer Eat, and What Reindeer Look Like.  Each day the students filled in what they learned from each section in their books.  They also drew pictures to show what they learned.  On the last two pages, the students drew pictures of real reindeer and Santa's reindeer (what reindeer can't do) and wrote a sentence for each.

The articles were super informative!  I learned a lot about reindeer from these.  Our area is really big into deer hunting, so the students had to understand that we were not talking about deer like we see. Here are some of the students' books.

After reading all of the articles and filling in our books, we filled in the Reindeer Can, Have, Are chart.  The students did this first and then I filled mine in with their answers.

We also labeled a reindeer after reading "What Reindeer Look Like".

One other activity we enjoyed was the Write and Draw.  The students chose four the vocabulary words to write and then draw a picture of.  It is funny how much third graders still love to draw and color.  They did a wonderful job with it!

We also filled in the included web to describe reindeer.

There was one activity we did not have time to get to.  We did not complete the writing activities.  In this activity, the students write a story telling what it would be like to be a reindeer.  The students have to include many details about reindeer to really show what their lives would be like as a reindeer.  Wow!  That really digs deep into that analytical brain of theirs!!  We just ran out of time!

Below is a preview of everything you get in the packet.  Click on it to head to Lauren's TPT store and grab it!  Christmas may be over, but reindeer are interesting no matter when you learn about them!

We are giving away copies of our products that we have reviewed!  Enter the Rafflecopter below to enter to win a copy of each of our products!

a Rafflecopter giveaway
Now, head on over to her blog to see what she has to say about my emergent reader, Little Pig Goes to the Zoo.  And enter again for a second chance to win both!   All of my emergent readers are 10% off through Monday in my TPT store!

Until next time!

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Magical Product Swap Featuring "Magic E"

How appropriate is that?!

I want to thank Jessica Stanford at Mrs. Stanford's Class for hosting this wonderful linky!  I always have so much fun making and using the products we swap.  I also LOVE reading the reviews from other bloggers who have swapped as well.  Thank you, Jessica, for coordinating this fun linky!  While you are there, enter her giveaway for products from her store!

For the second Magical Product Swap, I was lucky enough to swap with the wonderful Amy from Adventures in Teaching.  She was so gracious to let me create and use her "Magic E:  Word Work Center Activities".  These came in handy with my group of third graders who are working on long vowel with "magic e".

 

It includes five different activities, which I will show you in pictures.  Since I don't have a classroom, I used them with my small group intervention.  My group of students REALLY enjoyed using these! 

First, we worked together to complete the word sort.  This sort is great because it includes the word without the "magic e" and then the word with the "magic e".  The students matched the words up and began to see connections.  The students had to find their "Magic Match" to come to the board and sort.

Then we moved on to the word flaps.  I love these because the students were able to actually form the words and then write them.  I used some of that fun paper from Dollar Tree to make these.  That made the flap into a fun design!

The next activity is one of my favorites:  Picture Pairs.  I actually used these in two different ways.  The first day we just wrote the words and drew pictures of them, showing how adding the "e" makes it into a totally different word.

On our "Fantastic Friday", we used these to play Pictionary.  The students had to draw a picture of one of the two words, and the other team had to guess the picture and the other word on the card.  They had to spell BOTH words correctly move on my "old school" gameboard.  Here they are playing Pictionary.

The set also includes fun star letter tiles.  We spent part of one of our sessions building words with partners.

The students' favorite was the game we played:  Magic Show.  The students read the word on the card and then said the "partner" word with or without the "magic e".

Look at that awesome Dollar Tree cardstock!  10 pieces for a dollar!!

 The final activity included is one that I have not used yet.  With only 5 students in my group, I always find it hard to play an "I Have, Who Has" game.  The students end up with too many cards to keep up with.  But, if I had an entire class of students, this would be a great game for reviewing "magic e".  Here is a picture of one set of cards.

These activities were so much fun and so easy to implement.  The students stayed engaged and were not completing worksheets.  It is super hands-on, which is perfect for helping students learn and understand how words work.  If you are going to be working with "magic e", this would be a perfect resource for you and your students!  Go here to purchase and download it.

Now that you know all about Amy's wonderful product, head on over to her blog to see how she used my Letters and Fonts for Sorting.  I am also having a 20% off sale in my TPT store through Monday in honor of the Product Swap.  Go see what else I have in store for you!

And make sure you look at all of the other products people are raving about in Jessica Stanford's Magical Product Swap.

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