Thursday, November 28, 2013

Black Friday Sale!

In honor of all my American friends - Happy Thanksgiving!  I wanted to show my appreciation to all of you who have supported me during this year by throwing a Black Friday Surprise Sale!  Everything in my TPT store will be 20% all day tomorrow (Fri, Nov. 29)!
I hope your turkey is yummy!
Bye for now,
Natalie

Monday, November 18, 2013

Author's Purpose

For the past two weeks we have been working on Author's Purpose and let me tell you we've been getting our craftiness on!



This unit was so much fun because we got to visit so many of our favourite books.
Obviously we started with persuade.  We read two of my favs ~ "I Wanna Iguana" and "Pigeon Wants A Hotdog."  I completely forgot to take pictures of our activity for "I Wanna Iguana" but here is a pic from our Pigeon activity.  In the speech bubble they had to beg persuade me to get a puppy.  They were really cute!
We moved on to inform and we complete two different activities.  For the first we read "Fantastic Bats" and then the kids had to record 3 facts they learned.



Then we read a nonfiction book about turkeys and again we recorded three facts that we learned.  I didn't know that turkey sleep in trees!


We finished off with entertain and used Pete the Cat and Froggy books to hit this one home.  I only got pictures of Pete but I loved why they find these books entertaining!

This unit was a lot of fun!  I uploaded the finished unit last night on TpT so if you are looking for some Author's Purpose activities pop over and take a peek:)



I hope everyone is having "fun" doing parent/teacher conferences..lol!

Bye for now,
Natalie

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Measurement in the Land of Oz and Some Updates!

This week we have been all about measurement!  My little kiddos are doing a fantastic job of measuring accurately with a centimeter ruler and they are loving the Wizard of Oz theme!  Here are some pics of them in action!

This little guy is practicing drawing lines of a given length.
It takes a lot of practice to be able to hold the rule
and actually draw a straight line.

This activity has been a HUGE hit!
I made an interactive reader about the Wizard of Oz
and on each page the kids have to measure different objects!
LOVE!



And of course we had to do some measuring

These little fellas are measuring different
characters from the Wizard of Oz.

Since the Wicked Witch got pinned under the house
hey had to hire some new witches
We did some measuring to see which witch
was shortest to tallest.

Since we were "off to see the wizard" we thought it would
be a good idea to see how tall some of the
wizards in training were.

My grade ones are working on nonstandard units of measure
so we have been measuring with all kinds of things found
 in a magical kingdom!

Here the kids are measuring with magical frogs:)

And these little ones are measuring with magical shields!


I also wanted to let you know that I have updated two of my products.
This first one just needed a little MelonHeadz update!  When Nikki posted her new pirate graphics I just knew I had to put them to good use!

If you already own this unit you can go to "My Purchases" on TpT and
download the unit again to get the new graphics.
If you are looking for a unit that will actually teach your kiddos how to do 2-digit addition with regrouping this unit will take your students step-by-step.  Guaranteed success! click HERE.

The second unit that got some updating was my Classroom Door Decor bundle.

I had some requests so I spent yesterday adding 31 pages to this pack.
You just have to download it again to get the new pages.
Click HERE.

And totally not school related ~ I just had to share with you my beautiful baby girl's teeth!
She got her braces off on Thursday after 2 years and 6 days (but who's counting!) and they are PER-FECT (line from a One Direction video ~ I'm so hip!)!
She took some selfies so I stole a couple of them:)


Talk about a million dollar smile!
Man - I love this girl young lady!  Such a proud mama!

Make sure you pop in again this week because I will be sharing some author's purpose ideas!
Enjoy the rest of your Sunday!

Natalie

Friday, November 1, 2013

Five for Friday!

I could not be happier that this week is FINALLY over!  I think there are certain weeks that we should be paid more and this is one of them!   I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching to share some randomness from the past week.



To kick off our measurement unit we made a cute bulletin board display!  The grade twos theme is "Measurement In the Land of Oz" so we made measurement rainbows.  I gave the kids certain lengths they needed to measure each paper strip and then we glued them to the bottom of our rainbows.  The grade ones did a similar activity by they only need to cover nonstandard units of measurement so they measured in beans!

 This is a picture of our Halloween door.  In keeping with our spider them we called it "Welcome To Our Web."  Seriously glitter makes everything look better!  I have my finger over the name in the circle.  It had the student's name in it and was supposed to be a spiderling!

Today I put up our November door - simple but fallish! (I don't think that's a word!)


This was just so cool that I had to share it!  This is a picture of my daughter's science project - a plant cell! Who knew Fimo, jello, craft foam, and beads could look so interesting together:)



I love my daughter more than anything so I had to share her excitement with you!  She is getting her braces off next Thursday!  She is beyond excited!  I will share the "after" shot with you next week:)





We started our Halloween writing a tad bit late but my kids are loving it none the less!  I totally forgot to take pictures of the kids writing in all the Halloween mayhem but here's a picture of the preview so you get a look:)

Thanks for stopping by!
~Natalie