Two big Freebies for almost Friday!!

Hi blog friends! Today was a fabulous day! After two in-service days on Monday and Tuesday, being bogged down by curriculum changes, teacher stress and just pure exhaustion, today was exactly what I needed. My kiddos have been great all year, but today was just fantastic all around. On my high from a great day and because tomorrow is Friday :) I thought I would share a bunch of freebie of activities we have done this week. Get ready for a hod-podge of stuff, but take what you want and hopefully some or all will be useful for you :)

First up, an Awesome Alliteration Activity. My kids L-O-V-E-D alliterations today and spent the whole rest of the day finding examples in our classroom, other books and around the school. I had the kids pick an animal and the letter that it started with was their alliteration "sound" or letter. We used this brainstorming sheet to record words with the same letter sound before the kiddos wrote a funny paragraph/story with them. The sheet really helped them plan and was a great review of parts of speech (nouns, adjectives, verbs). Here is a {freebie} of the activity if your interested. The first sheet is the brainstorming sheet and the second one is the publishing page. The kids wrote their alliteration letter in the small circle and did a small illustration at the bottom of the page under their alliteration paragraph:

   

Next freebie is a math activity that I came up with to practice sampling and graphing with my class. I wanted them to see how sampling could be used in real life situations, so I put a circus scenario together that required them to solve a problem by making conclusions about a sample and population. You can grab it here if you want it. The only thing I don't have included in this freebie is the graphing paper, because I used a blank graphing sheet from our math curriculum and didn't want to post it for copyright issues. Here is a little peak at the activity and click {HERE} for a free download :)

   

One last questions for you. So last year I taught first grade and still have a TON of resources and freebies that I created for that grade that I would like to share this year now that I have a blog. I am currently teaching third grade, so I am also posting ideas from this year and resources for third grade. I would really like to keep ONE blog, but how should I present these freebies since my posts will be a mix of first and third grade resources? Anyone else in the same boat? Is there a way to categorize them on my blog? Lemme know! Have a fantastic Friday and weekend all!

Free Font to start off your week!

Just thought I would leave you with a quick free font to start off your week. This free font is called Walk in the Park and is very similar to another one of my fonts, but it doesn't have the dots on the letters. It is a bit more simple for worksheets or text heavy resources that you might make. It is {FREE} so check it out at my TpT store and download if you like!

Enjoy your Sunday evening!

"Expand" your students' writing with Descriptive Details {Freebie}

Hi all! We made it through another week! Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. My kiddos are troopers this year and I feel like we have started the year off with a bang. Although after getting 14 hours of sleep last night, I'm still tired!

We started state testing on Wednesday to get a benchmark for the year. Not fun. One of my littlest ones came into school in tears because he hadn't scored well on the test last year and was scared about the test. It broke my heart. Since I changed from first grade to third grade this year, it is my first year giving the state test. Thankfully we only have one more day of testing next week and then can focus on instruction and learning so that the kids will feel more ready in the spring. What do you do to help those kiddos with anxiety and nerves about testing? I'm thinking I will have a fun test prep theme in the spring like "Rock the Test" with a guitar and rock 'n roll theme or something like that.

Last year my team and I started this challenge called "Finding the fun in rigorous instruction." Okay, so I actually started it and was lucky that the rest of my awesome team humored me in the process :) My school has a huge push for "rigorous instruction" without the "fluff." I am all for purposeful learning and lessons, but I also became a teacher because I love the fun, creative aspect of teaching. I felt like rigorous instruction was getting misunderstood with intense worksheets, extensive writing and too many two-dimensional lessons. I call a "two-dimensional lesson" one that doesn't go beyond worksheets. It's flat. So when I was going to be teaching descriptive writing to my third graders this week, I knew I needed a little spunk.

We read the book, Crickwing, by Janell Cannon. I LOVE LOVE her books. Stellaluna is one of my absolute favorites, and although Crickwing is about a cockroach- I still love it!

The book has so much descriptive language, so I had the kiddos do a listening activity for really good adjectives and verbs. I was really impressed at how many they were able to write down just from listening to the story. We talked about "said" substitutes last week (other descriptive ways of saying  "said"), so they were really good at picking out those. I made up the quick recording sheet below- it can be used with any book though. Click on the picture if you want to download it for {Free}.

This would be a super easy independent activity during centers, too. Students can fill out the sheet as they are reading silently or with a buddy. 

After the kiddos had a chance to identify descriptive examples in books, I gave them a chance to edit a sample paragraph and insert better descriptive words.  I just typed up a short paragraph with very basic language. But the fun part about this lesson is this little guy (there were ants in the Crickwing story, so that is kind of how it tied in, too):

This little ant is one of those toys from the dollar store that grows 600% when you put him in water. I used him to demonstrate how descriptive details EXPAND our writing. When the students were editing the sample paragraph I gave them with descriptive language I gave them these little sheets:

Click here if you want to snatch up this page for {Free}

I thought this would be a good visual for them to see how many more detail they needed to add. When they came to me with their fixed-up paragraph, I would tell them how full their cup of details was. If they only added a few descriptive examples, they were "Almost Empty." If they added many details and substituted overused words with better language, they were "Filled to the Brim." When they got to that point, they got to add a cup of water to our little critter.

The whole class really rallied together to get everyone's cups "Filled to the Brim" so we would have enough water to cover our little ant. I forgot to take a picture of how big he was after he grew, but the kids ran into the classroom the next day and were so excited to see how their "Cups of Descriptive Details" made our ant expand.

Last thing, I did an interview for Teacher Certification Degrees.com if you want to check it out {HERE}

I really enjoyed reading the other teacher's interviews on the website, so definitely check them out, too!

Okay, I lied, one more last thing: I am 50 followers away from 700 over at my little TpT store!! Once I reach 700 I am going to have a HUGE giveaway on my blog, so if you haven't become a follower of my shop, click {HERE}!

Can I get a "Whoop, Whoop" for FREE FONTS?

Oh blog friends! This has been a whirlwind of a start to the school year- but my kiddos are AMAZING! I have such a great group of students and they are already working so hard. Last night was our Parent Information Night, so that also busied up my week, too.

There are so many activities and lesson we have done that I want to blog about but I'm going to have to save them for the weekend when I can catch up on my posts! We have two teacher inservice days next week, so I'm thinking that planning for only three instructional days will give me some time to nurture my neglected little blog.

For now, I wanted to finally post two free fonts that I have had done for a while. Snatch up these little {FREE} goodies at my TpT store :) Hope you are having a wonderful week! Happy hump day!

Click on the images below if you want the fonts :)

Guest Bloggin' Freebies!

Hi! I just wanted to let you all know that I am guest blogging over at a fantastic blog that I'm sure many of you have already discovered...Teaching in High Heels! Gladys was so sweet to let me guest and share some freebies and ideas with her followers, but I don't want you to miss out! Hop over and check out her blog for {TWO} freebies that I'm offering {Psst....One of them is a 30-page Back to School Unit, but only for two days, so hurry!}.

Make sure you check out the rest of her blog because there are TONS of great ideas that I know you will love!

Mystery Bags {Freebie}

Last night I set my alarm for an ambitious 7:30am so I could get into school and work all day in my classroom.....I woke up at 10:00. Oi {my goodness} vey! My internal clock is going to have a very rude awakening in a couple weeks. So... after my late morning, I could have gone into school a little later....but that didn't happen either. I have no excuse except for being lazy, and maybe a slight case of denial about school starting. I WILL be going in to school early tomorrow and working all day, though.

I ran a TON of errands today getting stuff for my classroom- which always turns out to be a more expensive trip than I had planned. I got a lot of organizational stuff. I get a small "high" at the thought of organization with a color-scheme. I think this is true of many teachers :) I will post some pictures of my goodies tomorrow when I get them into the classroom.

Enough about my procrastination! I have an easy back-to-school ice breaker activity for pretty much any grade level to share with you. They are called Mystery Bags and are quick and easy as pie. There are so many back to school activities and "get to you know you" or "all about me" projects (which I love, don't get me wrong), but sometimes I need an activity that will just get my kiddos TALKING to each other and working with a variety of partners during those first few days.

Mystery Bags can be a partner, small group or whole group activity, and honestly it's not anything ground breaking or new, but I'll share how I have done it in my class. I start with a large brown bag with some sort of prize for the kiddos. They have to guess what is in the bag and we make a list. As I give them clues, they decide if they need to cross out any of the ideas from their original list. The list gets pretty narrowed down after they get some clues, or I shake the bag and they can hear it. If I see them getting stumped, I will let them ask me a yes or no question about it. Sometimes I have fun pencils inside for them to use during the following activity with partners.

The whole group activity is pretty much just an example of what they will do with partners. After you reveal what's in the bag, students will make their own Mini Mystery Bags with a lunch-size paper bag and one of the little poem labels shown below glued on the front.

With a partner, they will choose a mystery item to put in the bag either from the classroom, or I usually have an assortment of more unique objects for them to use that might not be typical to a classroom to make it more challenging {apple, deck of cards, dice, mini pumpkins, candy cane- anything that will fit in the bag basically!} A lot of times I also just have my kids ask their partner questions about the mystery object- instead of one giving clues. This gets them thinking up their own questions, and they soon realize the better questions they ask, but faster they can figure out what's inside!

After the kiddos have partnered with a few different people and done a few different objects, we do a quick wrap up discussion about what types of objects were the hardest to guess, why they were hard, what types of clues were the most helpful, yada yada.

Like I said, this idea is nothing elaborate, but it's an activity that helps when you are trying to get your class to mesh and work with each other. It's also easy to plug in during short periods of downtime during the first couple days when schedules are a bit more jumbled than usual. If you want to make some Mystery Bags for your kiddos, you can grab the little poem that I made up for the front of them by clicking {HERE}. I am also thinking of making some kind of activity sheet to go with it- so if I come up with that, I'll put if up in a later post.

Alrighty, this girl is going out to dinner! My mom is visiting and helping me all week with school stuff!! She made the most adorable outfit for my jumbo monkey that I can't wait to put on him tomorrow. Get ready for a load of pictures tomorrow :)

I've caught zebra fever and I'm seeing stripes!

Oi vey, it's kind of late and I have a nice 8:30 am professional development tomorrow- BUT- I have caught the zebra fever and I just had to share! Last year I had quite the "monkey" theme in my classroom when I taught first grade. It all started with a tree I created in my reading jungle and an enormous furry monkey that my parents found at BJ's :)

From there, the monkey theme just grew! The kiddos loved it and I did too, but I was looking for a little something else to add this year with my move to third grade. The answer my friends, is zebra print. I know you must think I have been living in a bubble to have missed ALL the zebra-patterned classroom materials, but honestly with "monkey on my mind" I really hadn't paid attention. Now that it is almost August, I'm in full blown classroom planning mode (yes, I managed to push that outta my mind until August!) and I've got zebra fever! 

Next year I am going to have a lime green, blue and zebra-print theme in my room. But don't worry, that monkey fellow isn't going anywhere! He's a well-known stuffed animal throughout the school, so he will be a permanent fixture :) Not to mention that he has monthly themed hats and accessories, thanks to a very crafty and creative mother of mine! 

Here is a little peek at my zebra print stash so far, but it is sure to grow...

To make sure I can achieve my full "zebra vision," I created some quick zebra borders that I can use in my classroom to label materials and book bins. There are so many free zebra-themed resources on TpT that I also snatched up, but I needed something basic, too. 

 

If you are loving zebra print for your classroom this year, you can grab these borders for {FREE} from my Creative Clips Digital Clipart at my TpT store. Click {HERE} if you want them!

Last thing! I am doing my very FIRST guest blog post over at The Hands On Teacher tomorrow (MONDAY). I am so excited that Marie invited me to make an appearance on her awesome blog! I am giving away two big freebies- one math and one literacy! One is a {Flash Freebie} so be quick! Hop over to Marie's blog to collect the goods!

Night blog friends, my bed and The Big Bang Theory are calling my name. 

Holy Moly Guacamole....and {Free} Writing Papers

Today I woke up in a panic. It was already 8:00 and I thought it was Monday, which would have meant that I was  late for an exciting day of professional development. It took me about 30 seconds to get my head together and realize that it was in fact Sunday. This was further confirmed with the TpT weekly email of 10 free downloads waiting in my inbox :) Oi vey- my body is completely freaking out at the idea of waking up for any kind of work!

Following my little morning mix up, I whipped up this delish dish for breakfast to celebrate my wonderful, lazy morning:

Holy moly guacamole. That, my friends, is an egg beater omelette with caramelized onions, mozzarella and the star of the show: guacamole. I know avocados weird some people out, but they are pretty much at the top of my favorite foods list these days... right after all the unhealthy stuff like DQ blizzards and ravioli :) If you are a fan of guacamole tho, you should definitely try it for breakfast! I use a mozzarella cheese stick for the cheese because it keeps me from dumping on large amounts like Paula Dean adds stick butter. Side that little tasty baby with a Tazo iced green tea in my Starbucks tumbler and I'm a happy camper. 

This is NOTHING like what I eat for breakfast during the school year! My 5:15 breakfast is usually bran flakes and coffee at my computer desk as I check email and weather. 

Anyway, I do have a quick freebie for you! I've been trying to stock up on miscellaneous lesson materials for next year to save myself the time later on. I whipped up some quick themed-writing pages that I can use for pretty much anything, but many of them have a "back-to-school" kinda feel with some school supplies borders. Here's a few preview pictures, but there are more pages in the whole pack:

Some page borders from Scrappin Doodles License #45285

Clip art from Creative Clips Digital Clipart

 If you wanna grab these paper (and more) to stash them away for quick go-to's during the hectic school year, they are yours for {FREE} if you {CLICK HERE}.

Alright, this girl needs to get moving. I'm on a hunt for all things zebra, lime green and blue today for my classroom decor- so stay tuned for classroom updates and pictures. Also, tomorrow (Monday) I am so excited to be guest blogging over at Marie's fabulous blog: The Hands On Teacher in First! I will post a link and reminder tomorrow because I have some great freebies and a {FLASH} giveaway that you won't want to miss out on!

Enjoy your Sunday!

Free Fonts from Creative Clips {FONTS}

Hey blog friends! Since I am new to the blog world, I'm not sure if you get updates when I make changes to my "Pages" on here. Just in case you don't, I want to tell you that I have started making my own fonts! I'm a bit of a font collector, font addict, font enthusiast.... I'm sure many of you can relate. There's something about a cute font that makes typing lesson plans, newsletters, or classroom materials just a little sweeter, dontcha think?

I have posted my first {FREE} font to my TpT store called "Kidding Around Too." Here's a little preview. Click on the picture below to hop over to my store and start building up that font collection for {FREE}.

Kidding Around Too

Make sure you check out the Creative Clips {FONTS} tab at the top of my blog to stay updated on new freebie fonts and new fonts to my TpT store. I will be offering a lot of them for free, but any fonts that I do put up for sale will always be $1.00. You can use them for personal or commercial use without any additional licenses. My only Terms of Use is that you please give my TpT shop a little shout out in the credits page of your products for sale with a link back to my store and my button :)

Stay tuned for more fonts to come! I also have some exciting things in the works including a new JUMBO math packet for my TpT store, being a guest blogger and a new endeavor for Creative Clips Digital Clipart on an amazing resource website for teachers! Hang around for the ride and I'll fill you in soon!

Back to School and Author's Purpose Swap

Does anyone remember the commercial for back-to-school shopping (I saw it last year, and maybe even the year before that) where a woman is skating around on a shopping cart with a huge smile plastered on her face as "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" plays in the background? I forget which store the commercial was for.... but I do know that the woman in the commercial is DEFINITELY NOT a teacher :)

Back-to-school supplies have popped up EVERYWHERE and although I have been tempted to dig elbow deep into the waist-high bins of crayons and glue sticks, I haven't quite brought myself to the reality that my summer is slipping away (although all the classroom planning and lessons have been a pretty good reality check already!). I did notice that Walmart has a "teacher section" of supplies where everything is 88 cents, so I'm pretty sure I'm going to give in to temptation next time I'm there and check it out. I'll post some pics if I find any "hafta-have-ums" for you. 

Sooo, although this has NO connection to back to school shopping, I wanted to do a post about author's purpose because it was one of the last skills I worked on last year with my firsties. Can I just say that my kiddos L-O-V-E-D learning this! I made a few resources to help me kiddos out with the idea of author's purpose, but I also found some awesome products on TpT that helped me keep my sanity towards the end of the year when I didn't have time make up everything myself. I used the resources in some different ways than they were described in the products, so lemme fill you in.

First up, I purchased Tiffany Gannon's Author's Purpose Activity Packet for $3.00 which has some *awesome* anchor charts that I used in my classroom. I decided to print out small cover pictures of books that I read to my class and stick them below the three different anchor charts to help students start making connections between books. It also helped my kiddos see similar characteristics of books with the same purpose.  Here's a picture of how I set it up- although it is nothing too fancy:

I laminated the blue pieces of paper and the mini book covers so that I could reuse them. We started author's purpose around Earth Day, so there were A TON of great books for persuade that also worked into our Earth Day activities.  Also in Tiffany's packet is a questioning sheet that helps students determine the author's purpose for a specific book. I don't want to post any pictures of that to respect her work- the anchor charts shown above are shown in her product preview, so I feel comfortable sharing those. Lemme tell you- the questioning sheet is FABULOUS! We used it as a guide for our discussions whole group and then for when students were ready to tackle the concept independently. 

Another product I used was Rachel Lynnette's Author's Purpose Task Cards for $2.25 Even though this product is labeled for the older grades, I modified it to use with my firsties. The set has 24 cards with a paragraph or two on each with examples for each author's purpose. I decided to use these cards as part of our morning warm-up, whole group. I put one card up on the Doc Camera and I would either read it aloud, or have a student read it. We would use the question sheet from Tiffany's pack to guide our think-aloud and determine the purpose of the card. Again- my kiddos LOVED THIS! There was one morning where an early assembly kept us from doing one and my gosh, they were disappointed until I promised to work it into the afternoon :) The cards are great because it exposed my kiddos to many text examples without taking up a lot of time reading each one. 

After seeing how much my students loved author's purpose activities, I made up an Author's Swap Mini Book that took author's purpose to the next level. When my kiddos had mastered determining the author's purpose, I had them give evidence for their choice and also evaluate whether or not they thought the author was successful in their purpose: Did they persuade you? Did they do a good job of entertaining you? 

I set up the activity as a swap so that I could use it as a literacy center throughout the week, or as a cooperative activity with partners and have different books rotating among them (since I never seem to have enough copies of a single book!). Just pop copies of the Author's Purpose Mini Book in a Manila envelope with copies of any book and voila! Instant center.

Here are a few pictures the Author's Swap Mini Book. Click *{HERE}*  if you wanna snatch it up for your own use- for free! I call it a "mini-book" but it is really just a single paper copied front-to-back and folded down the  middle. There is something about making a simple paper fold that changes students' ideas about an activity- so this format took this activity from a WORKSHEET, to a much more exciting MINI BOOK :) 

Graphics by Just So Scrappy Too License #0066 and Scrappin Doodles License #45285

Fonts by www.kevinandamanda.com 

That's all for today folks! I have a few TpT products that I'm working on and a balcony makeover at my apartment that is in the works- gotta finish them up while I have the time! I'll post pictures after, even though it's not a teacher topic :) 

Save yourself some work with a Word Work Freebie!

If there's one thing I always am on the look out for, its some good "go-to's" for my Word Work center. Last year, my kiddos got into a good routine for their daily Word Work centers, but I always liked to mix it up- Lord knows I get bored doing the same thing all the time, let alone my little firsties. Throughout the year, I ended up making a bunch of activity sheets (some ideas borrowed and changed, some ideas new) for word work and decided to offer one HUGE freebie from my TpT store. The result: a 26-paged freebie, packed with reproducibles and materials to add to your existing Word Work activities. I have been BLOWN AWAY by the response I have gotten for this packet, so I wanted to share a link for it on my blog, too. So far it has over 17,000 downloads and over 22,000 pins on Pinterest. I'm so excited that other people are able to use these resources in their own classrooms- so if you are looking for some more variety to spice up your Word Work center, click on the link below and grab a copy for yourself!

Word Work Freebie!

Here are a few pictures of SOME of the pages in the packet. Most activities can be used over and over, or I have included blank templates for you to modify them for a specific skill focus :)