The winner of Taking Care of Ourselves: Part Three was Suzy Q!  My favorite food is chicken fingers (I'm a 5 year old at heart) : )  Although, I do love the other foods you all came up with, even the salmon!   This week in math we are reviewing/introducing time!  Time is such a hard concept, I find that either my kiddos get it or they just don't.  We broke out the Judy clocks and have been reviewing time to the hour and half hour today and yesterday, this has proven to be more difficult than I anticipated.  I'm a little late finishing this up, since we are already a few days into time but today's lesson made me realize I needed to get busy!  I just posted a big pack of centers, games and activities to practice telling time!  It is aligned to the 2nd grade CCSS which means all activities focus on telling time to 5 minute intervals.  I do have a few hour/half hour things in there but most goes all the way to 5 minutes.  Click on either image to check it out on TPT. ...
I'm linking up again with Doodlebugs for Five for Friday!  I think this might be turning out to be my favorite linky, and I have been trying to take more pictures each week so it has really helped!  This week was full and it's not over.  Our school Spring Fling is tomorrow, so I will be spending Saturday at school! : )  Here's a peek at my week! 1. Field Day! We had a beautiful day on Thursday for Field Day (I only got a little sunburned).  I tie-dyed T-shirts for the big day and they came out great! 2. Firehouse Subs!  I don't live in what I would call a small town but Firehouse Subs is one of my favorite places to eat when we are in Myrtle Beach so I was very excited when I heard they were coming to town.  They opened last Saturday and we were there for opening day!  3. Plants!  We have been studying plants in Science this week, we made these flip books in our Science journals to record the parts of a plant. We have also playing Plant Bingo and worked o...
UPDATE:  Sorry for not posting a winner last night but the winner is....Jenna!  Congratulations Jenna!!  An e-mail is coming your way!!  Thanks again to everyone who commented, I am so thankful to have such awesome followers!!! This post is going to be short and sweet, I have some major grad. school finals to study for that I have been neglecting!  One reason is because of my newest pack, Read Like a Champion ! I was up late last night finishing up some centers and games all about Suffixes and Prefixes.  This pack is aligned to the 2nd, 3rd and 4th grade CCSS.  There are three games/activities for each grade level, I added all three grade levels because I have some smarties this year that really need a boost, so I figured a range would offer some great differentiation possibilities!  You can check it out by clicking on either image below. If you leave a comment below, I'll pick a winner to get a FREE copy by tomorrow night! In class we have been busy working on our ...
I am on time this week to link up for Five for Friday!!  Before we get to my five pictures, the winner of the Folktales pack was Mrs. Giles!  Congratulations, an e-mail is coming your way! 1. We had awards this week in the classroom.  We alternate every other nine weeks in the classroom and in the auditorium.  We had six different awards to give, they are Blue & Gold (honor roll), Perfect Attendance, Terrific Kid (character), Writer's Showcase, Extra Effort and Reading (A.R.).  The dog tags are also an incentive for meeting their AR goals, they get a dog tag for getting half way and one for meeting their goal.  2. It was inventory week at school, this means that I have to find everything that has a barcode on it in the room, our library clerk comes to scan all my items and I hope that I don't have anything missing.  This pile looks small, but it is over 70 barcoded items that I have to keep track of.  Does anyone else have to go through this?  3. Habitats...
About a week ago I updated my Folktales pack , I know sometimes it's hard to get notification of updates so I wanted to make sure those who already purchased knew about the update (it now has over a 100 pages!). I added three new card games (one for each genre) and spruced up the pack in general.  If you already own it, be sure to go back and download the updated pack for FREE!! If you don't already own it, leave a comment below for a chance to win a FREE copy!!  I hope everyone had a terrific Thursday!!  ...
It's that time of the year, when teachers are thinking about what they're going to do next year.  Some are staying put and many are switching grade levels or subjects.  Schools are running out of time to spend money and are asking teachers what they want to buy and fast!  I have seen a lot teachers asking these types of questions lately.  I have taught 1st and 2nd grade (3 years in 1st and 3 years in 2nd) for the past 6 years and thought maybe a list of my must-haves would help out those who are looking to spend some money on furniture/materials or are looking to get an idea of what they will want for next year.  This is by no means a comprehensive list but I do use all of these things EVERY day while teaching 2nd  grade (I also used them everyday when I taught 1st too).  I chose small group instruction because honestly, the majority of my day is spent teaching small group instruction.  I teach small groups in literacy everyday for an hour and occasionally in math and writing....
We began learning about arrays in math today!  Arrays are a foreign concept for us, they were added to our math curriculum this year due to switching over to the CCSS.  For my very first lesson ever teaching arrays, I thought it went great!  Here's how our lesson went down.  1. We started off with a great Brain Pop Jr. Video to gain some knowledge of what exactly an array is and what it is used for. (Gotta love Moby and Annie!) 2. Then we made a colorful anchor chart to put on our math wall which will help us remember arrays for the rest of the week. 3. Next, we had some guided practice using white boards and pattern blocks under the Elmo. They had to make an addition equation but they figured out pretty quickly how to make multiplication equations, so I let them do both.  They thought they were so cool because they could understand multiplication. 4.  Lastly, we had some independent practice using an Array Match-Up center from my End-Of-Year Extravaganza Math ...
I am doing a happy dance over here because I just posted Taking Care of Ourselves: Part Two, which means I only have ONE more ELA unit to make for this school year!! Here's a peek at Taking Care of Ourselves: Part Two!  It focuses on nutrition and the human body, it's a little larger than some of the others, I kinda got carried away. I blame it on the clipart.  In case you missed them, here's Taking Care of Ourselves: Part One and Nutrition !   As always, leave a comment below for a chance to win a FREE copy!!  ...
We have begun a new writing unit for the 4th nine weeks and it's all about non-fiction.  Informative writing apparently has many names, I have heard it called expository, informative and informational.  Whatever you chose to call it, we have been working on it this week.  To make it a little bit more fun, we have been creating mini-books! All you need to make a mini-book is 5 index cards and one rubber band.  I cut little slits to make the rubber band hold it tightly (pictures of the books are a little further down).  Before we get to the mini-books, first we talked about how writers do research before they write.  We broke out a lot of non-fiction text so they could research some topics and choose one to write about.  A few years ago I had a grandparent/former teacher donate a whole set of these books.  We have used them for many things this year in ELA and writing.   Sorry for the glare, but lamination does not like the camera!  I have saved extra copies of Weekly Reade...