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!

Cyber Monday Sale!

It's that time of year!  Thanksgiving has ended, and the countdown to Christmas has started.  We are celebrating by having HUGE sales on all of our items.  Check out our TpT store or TN store for big savings from now until Tuesday.  Happy Holidays!

Plant Time

So today I set up this light system and showed it to my students when they walked in the door. "What do you think that this is?" I asked them.  Then I had them write down their responses in their journals.  You never know what first graders are going to say, and somehow a lot of my kids decided that we were going to keep a guinea pig underneath the light. 

Later, I had to break the news to them that we were not going to have a guinea pig (sad faces), but we would have a new place to grow plants indoors (happy faces).  We had a great time prepping the growing medium and planting the seeds. We have 18 different plants that we will be growing, from Easter Egg radishes to Chinese cabbage. After the seedlings germinate and outgrow their plugs, we will take them to the greenhouse to "harden off."  Finally, we will transplant them into our garden planter box and eat some tasty veggies when it's all said and done.  It should be a fun winter and fall! Maybe we will get a guinea pig in the spring