New Year's Flash Freebie!

Free for one day onl! Get it while you can! Thank you for rating this product. http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/New-Years-Acrostic-Poetry-Packet-1040660

Garden time!

Here are some good looking seedlings that we planted in our fall garden.  It's so much fun to play in the dirt at school! We are going to use the lettuce and greens in our school cafeteria. 

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Summertime is Here!

We are so excited for summer! We will be spending a lot of time with our baby - at the beach, going on walks, and just hanging out at the house.  It's so nice to have some time to recharge once the school year is done.

We will also both be teaching some summer school for a few weeks.  Many other teachers we know work as summer school teachers, camp counselors, and tutors during their summer months.  We have several resources that are very helpful for teaching during the summer.  Summer School Getting to Know You has lots of writing activities to help students adjust to summer school.  Summer School Games and Routines has suggestions for carpet time activities, as well as a couple art and Fourth of July resources. We also have a Summer School Bundle with both of these products.

Whatever you are doing this summer, we hope that you had a wonderful time!

Exploring 3-D Shapes

We started a new geometry unit in math and the kids love investigating these shapes. It has been interesting to see how their "math talk" has improved since the beginning of the year too. It was definitely helpful to let them play with the manipulatives for a couple of minutes so they could get it out of their systems. 

Happy Earth Day!

We are getting ready to celebrate Earth Day in our class. It's so important to teach children the importance of caring for the planet!

One of the fun resources that we like to use is our Earth Day Poetry Packet.  It has lots of fun acrostic poems for students to write and decorate.  How will you celebrate Earth Day?

Open House was a Success!!!

Another Open House has come and gone.  This year there were lots of visitors, including current students and their families, past students coming back to say hi, and potential future students for next year.  Everyone seemed to enjoy seeing all of the student work on display, such as Very Hungry Caterpillar art projects and writing, spring tree paintings, math about me posters, and more.

We love using our "Open House Survival Kit" to make Open House flow smoothly.  There are many different resources that help students reflect on their year and what they have accomplished. Students seem to really like creating their own maps of the classroom and planning out what parts of the classrooms they will show their visitors.  The activities in this resource are simple but practical, so check it out if you need help getting ready for your Open House.  Good luck!

Leprechauns!!!

Did any leprechauns visit your classroom for St. Patricks day? Our class made traps hoping that they would catch one.

There were so many creative leprechaun traps this year. Students used l kinds of different materials for making them, and they went all out with their decorating. They used shamrocks, rainbows, and of course, gold to draw in the leprechauns. 

Unfortunately, when it was all said and done, the leprechauns were just too sneaky. They managed to avoid getting caught by any of the traps. They also left a big mess and didn't clean any of it up! Pesky little buggers!

Writing Ideas

We have been using small notebooks to brainstorm different ideas for writing. It has been a really helpful for students to practice generating ideas, which is an important step in the writing process. In Writers Workshop, students need to filter through all of their possible ideas and choose one "small moment" to focus on. 

Some students seem to want to write about all of the ideas that they jot down in their notebooks, so it can take some practice for them to let go and just concentrate on one small moment. 

A great thing about keeping all of the ideas in one place is that they are very accessible to students. If they are stumped on what to write about a few months down the line, they can flip through their notebook and find a past idea that might conjure up some inspiration. How do you like to genera rate ideas with your young writers?

Teacher Pay Teachers 3 Million Strong Sale!

It's time for another TpT sale!  The 3 Million Strong Sale is on February 27th and 28th.  Our entire store will be 20% off, but by using the promo code: TPT3 you will get 28 % off altogether! Whether you want to buy a smaller item for dirt cheap, or get a great discount on a large item or bundle, this sale is a great way to save! Happy shopping!

All About Me Freebie!

We just added another resource to our TpT store - the "All About Me" poster.  Students love sharing about themselves, and these posters are great for letting them do that.  The poster has fun fonts and clip art frames, and you could even enlarge them on a copy machine if you would like them to be larger.

Of course, the best thing about this resource is the price...FREE!

Here is our new Winter Acrostic Poetry Bundle.  This bundle features three of our popular acrostic poem holiday products: Christmas Poetry Packet, New Year's Poetry Packet, and Valentine's Day Poetry Packet. Buying these products as a bundle is a great way to save some money on these products.

We recommend doing one or two acrostic poems with your class whole group so that students can see how to brainstorm words for their acrostic poems.  After that, students will probably get the hang of acrostic poems and be able to write more acrostic poems independently.  You might even like to put multiple poems together into packets for early finishers to work on.  Happy writing!