This is my first blog hop and I am so excited to be doing it with some of my fellow Indiana bloggers. I am meeting so many new friends!
Thanks to Primary Inspired for having the idea and organizing this wonderful hop. If you click the graphic above you will go to the beginning of the hop so you can see all the teachers in it. Also thanks to Amy Alvis at Math, Science and Social Studies....Oh My for linking to my blog. She has some great ideas and I can't wait to check out her blog a little more.
I'm really not much into racing or the Indy 500 race even though I've lived my whole life in Indiana, but back in 2007 when my daughter was in 4th grade her class went to the time trials at the Indianapolis 500 and I was a chaperone. Of course kids weren't suppose to leave the stands to get autographs but some of the boys from her teacher's class left and she sent me to go find them. Where did I find them?...getting autographs just what they weren't suppose to be doing... so I decided I mind as well get an autograph for my daughter. The only autograph I ended up getting wasDarioFranchittiwho is married to actress Ashley Judd. He won the race that year and again in 2010 and 2012. It's the only autograph and close up picture I have of somebody famous. The other picts are of me and my daughter. (who is now a Sophmore in high school) She got her picture taken in the famous race car in the Indianapolis 500 museum and bought a race car necklace and some postcards.
I have a little freebie in honor of the Indianapolis 500 and this INDIANA BLOG HOP that will be on Memorial Weekend right here in Indiana!! So click this linkand head to my TPT store and get your math game freebie that can be used to review addition and subtraction with and without regrouping in the 10's and 100's.
Don't STOP HERE there are more teachers to go in this Start Your Engines! Indiana Bloggers Blog Hop.
Be sure to check out Mrs. Harris at Adventures of Room 129
I am not sure how she has time to be blogging and making wonderful
products for her store with 2 little twins. They are the cutest!! So
head on over and keep hopping...
It seems to be the season of LOVELY MUD. After the rains we've had lately we sure have a lot of the lovely stuff. I was so excited to be contacted by Hameray Publishing to review a new Mrs. Wishy Washy book. If you know Mrs. Wishy Washy you know she loves clean animals.
Wishy Washy Clothes by Joy Cowley is a wonderful book in which Mrs. Wishy Washy washes her clothes and hangs them out to dry and each of the animals puts on a piece of her clothing and pretends to become Mrs. Wishy Washy. When she comes back to get her clothes off the line she is shocked to find her clothes gone and then she laughs and laughs at the animals dressed in her clothes. As I was reading the book at home I loved the story, but I was thinking it an easy text for most of my 2nd grade students. My mind began to become filled with lots of ideas.
The next day I sent out an email to K-1 teachers at my school and asked to borrow any Mrs. Wishy Washy Books. I ended up with some great Wishy Washy Titles like: Mrs.Wishy-Washy and the Big Tub, Mrs. Wishy-Washy and the Big Farm Fair, Mrs. Wishy-Washy's Christmas, Wishy Washy Day, along with another book I was sent to preview from Hameray Publishing Mrs. Wishy-Washy and the Big Wash. In this story Mrs. Wishy Washy runs out of water so she takes the animals into town and runs them through the car wash.
Check out the video of Mrs. Wishy Washy and the Big Wash read by the author Joy Cowley of this book.
One student even brought in Mr. Wishy Washy from home and I was also able to borrow 11 Mrs. Wishy Washy Books. Our comprehension skill of the week was summarizing so I read each Wishy Washy book to my students and had them summarize the stories. They absolutely loved the Wishy Washy books and laughed so much. I really fell in love with them myself and ended up creating a freebie unit for TPT.
After having tons of fun with Mrs. Wishy Washy Books. I shared my idea of pairing up with the kindergarten classes with my students and they were so excited. They even came up with the idea to write their own versions of Mrs. Wishy Washy.
I found 2 freebies on TPT of Wishy Washy Books that Kindergarten students could read to us and we assembled books for them to read and then take home. We practiced reading Mrs. Wishy Washy to each other so we could read it to the k students. Freebie OneFreebie Two
Then we rehearsed a Reader's Theater skit of Wishy-Washy Clothes. We planned about 20 minutes in each classroom. We read Mrs. Wishy Washy to them and did a character and setting sheet with them. Then had them read the books we assembled to us, preformed the Reader's Theater Skit, and read some new versions of Mrs. Wishy Washy we came up with. We left them writing paper and a coloring page to do later. We also left them a Mrs. Wishy Washy Reader's Theater with a set of stick puppets we made so they could have their own play. All these items are here in my Mrs. Wishy Washy Freebie on TPT.
The exciting thing is Hameray is having a giveaway with $400.00 worth of Wishy Washy Fun. There are books, puppets and CD's. Head on over to the link to sign up.
My students had so much fun with the books I would like to sign up and win the set for my classroom. Also check out some Mrs. Wishy Washy and other Activities on www.Pinterest.com/Hameray www.HamerayPublishing.com and www.Facebook.com/Hameray If you would like to order any Hameray products you can use ZJCC13 to get 20% off anything at the Hameray site now through 6/30/13.
Another way to win a free Mrs. Wishy Washy Big Book is to comment on this post and I will pick one winner on April 27th to win a copy.
We also rounded up some finger puppets to borrow and made some little Wishy Washy Videos using the app Vid Rhythm. See if you can hear the Wishy Washy anywhere in them.
I hope you can see we had lots of fun with Mrs. Wishy Washy in our Second Grade Classroom.The opinions in this post are all my own and I was not compensated for this post.
While looking for ideas to do with my class before Spring Break, one of those down weeks where we weren't doing a basal story I was reading blog posts and came across Hope King's post about using Knuffle Bunny books. Pronounced with a hard K! I had never paid much attention to Mo Willems books before because I was thinking they were for much younger kids, but boy was I wrong. I am in love with Knuffle Bunny! I am into photography so of course those illustrations popped out at me right away. The book series is Adorable (with a capital A) and if you have never read them I suggest getting all three and reading them all together. I was so excited when I found out our library had all three I went right away to check them out and read them and bought her unit. It is jammed packed with activities to go along with the books.
What a great story about a little girl growing up with her favorite little to. She is always losing it. Then in the last story she gives the bunny away to someone else who needs it. My student loved making their own bunnies. This was perfect to do right before Spring Break with Easter being over ours, but I would recommend this for any other time too. Of course we didn't have time to do all the activities in the unit because it is so jam packed with goodies. I did shrink one of her bunny patterns so we could put a little bunny on the page with Trixie. It makes a great bulletin board in the hall and our other bunnies are hanging under our whiteboard. Check out Hope King's Knuffle Bunny A Book Series pack if you haven't had a chance already. My students absolutely loved the books.
We've got mail! Of course it came after the students left today. Last fall we sent our Paper Monarchs above to Mexico. Then today we received a package in the mail with our new Monarchs. This is to symbol the real Monarch Migration that happens every year. The kids usually forget all about it until we get our package so they are so excited when it comes. I can't wait to show them tomorrow.
Our envelope included a special butterfly from Mexico this year. We can send questions to Mexico students soon and get answers from them. This is new and I am very excited about it.
If you have not participated I highly encourage you to join next fall. Look for it updates on their website. The butterflies usually need to be sent out in early October.
In honor of our returning butterflies I will give my Monarch Butterfly Fact Find to 3 random people who comment. If you are interested leave a comment below.
LOVE making movies with my students. My students always LOVE making movies too. The best part watching the final product on the BIG SCREEN. (whiteboard in our classroom) While learning about Space two years ago my students made this video with Green Screen using the book Star Sailor by George Ivan off. (This leveled reader goes along with the McMillan McGraw-Hill Reading Series) Students wrote their own script and we made props for the interview. This was a very involved project that was made to challenge my highest readers who did an excellent job.
Today we created this fun movie with Puppet Pals HD. I have purchased the directors pass to have access to all the characters and background. My favorite part of the directors pass is that you can add your own backgrounds and characters from any photo you have taken. Easy way to have kids make puppets of themselves or book characters. The students loved making it and the rest of the class enjoyed their final product!! Can't wait to use Puppet Pals in more areas in the classroom. Maybe you will be inspired to make your own movie too.
HOT, HOT, HOT... Thinkin' hot to get rid of the Cold Winter Blues. We have been studying
all about the desert in our Second Grade classroom.
Maybe NOT...My sister lives in Arizona and I have visited her twice and just in love with the wonderful scenes of the desert. The funny thing is she sent me a bunch of pictures this week from the desert and there was snow!! LOTS OF SNOW. It was so exciting to share these picts with my students and what a beautiful scene to see snow on the Saguaros.
I've been working
on some activities today to prepare for this week and one is the fun gum chewing rattler. Stay
tuned later this week for the cute rattle snake picts. (I think we are going to add some rice to the tail in a little paper pouch so it will have a rattle sound.) If you haven't read the story before I included a video of the author telling the story. It's really cute and the kids just love it every year when I read it. I'm in Need of Your Great Wisdom...
Needing some input before I finish this desert mini unit up. If you can help me out and comment below I will randomly pick one of the people who comments to get the unit for free when it is complete.
This unit has some fact cards and I was wondering if your students would like a scavenger hunt type activity with the cards where you hang them around the room and they search for answers? Would your students prefer a booklet to use as a non-fiction Guided Reading with questions to answer as they read?
Would you as a teacher like both options in the unit so you could choose which way to use it?
Do you like using QR codes? The fact cards have QR codes that link to videos. Schools that don't have ipods and ipads could still use the packet without searching the codes. The research pages also have QR codes that link right to the webpage to find the facts.
Does your school allow students to link a QR code to you tube on ipods/ipads? I used my iphone to have students scan them because we don't have any ipod/ipads with cameras. The students absolutely loved the videos! They are mostly around a minute or two in length and just to help build background on the topic of the card and also help them learn some more things about the desert.
Just found out some great news at my school on Thursday. All classroom teachers are getting one ipad for use in the classroom starting in April so I will definitely be making more of these activities to use in my classroom.
Hope you have time to give me a little input it is much appreciated!! Have a great week!
I'm launching some new products on my TPT store. Money Posters, Mini Posters and 80 practice problems. This is a great add on to any unit on Money in the classroom. The posters have the cute rhyme commonly seen online. Each coin has it's own large poster in color and black and white. The mini posters come in color and black and white also and can be cut apart and glued in math notebooks or kept as a complete 81/2 by 11 sheet for reference. My students referred to these quite often while we were practicing money counting. There are 80 different money problems to solve on 8 different sheets with answer keys for each. Great for centers or seat work. 40 of the problems are word problems-30 are word problems using dimes, nickesl, and pennies, 10 are word problems using quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies. These word problems are fun with number tiles where students put the tiles on the paper to fill in the missing numbers 0-9. (You can use one inch tiles number tiles you already have or print and make your own from the packet.) The other 40 problems are coin counting-20 are counting coins problems using dime, nickel and penny, the other 20 problems use quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies.
I also have a new borders pack called Dot, Circles and Squares with 56 different black and white borders to use in all your TPT or TN product. Great for worksheets or newsletters too!!
I am also launching 20 fonts in my new iNEETA good CLIP Font Collection which I will continue to add to frequently. I am offering a license for an introductory price of $10.00 until I complete the next 10 fonts and then the price will raise to $20.00 and stay there. This is a lifetime license and you will get all the updated fonts as they are released. The license lets you use any of the fonts in my collection without taking the time to site my store or blog.
The good news you can comment below and get one of my three new products for FREE. Just comment and tell me what product you like and why you would like to have it. I willpick three winners on Friday. Each winner will receive one of the 3 new products. Good Luck and Happy Day off of school for me!!!
