Eric Carle Bargain Books and Stuffed animals

I was shopping in Kohls the other day and ran across a really sweet deal. By the registers, there were HARDBACK Eric Carle books for just 5 dollars each. To make this an ever sweeter deal, they had stuff animals to match each book. I was kind of hesistant about getting the stuff animals because I thought the 2nd graders would think they were for babies. I was so wrong, the oldest student who is also a boy was cuddling the Brown Bear the whole entire independent reading time. He said I can't help Mrs. Hayes, its just so cute! Students are allowed to cuddle with them when they are doing independent reading. So far, no fussing over them and someone is always loving on them. Check out my pictures below!

I have two more that I will post soon! I absolutely love the books and stuffed animals to match them.

Word Study/Spelling Homework Made Easy

I can't believe it has been almost a week since my last post! This week has been so busy. Tuesday was one of the longest days I had this year! The first part of the morning was spent doing DEA THINK LINK testing and I had to read every problem(34 OMG) with a hoarse voice...and my solution to that was to use the mic in my classroom. The kids laughed at me but it was either the mic or many wrong answers! The last part of the day was filled with Valentine's Day activities and lots of goodies. The rest of the week was more testing and Jumprope for Heart on Friday.
This year I decided against the usual Word Study drill of having students write words 3 times each every Monday, Alphabetize on Tuesday, Write sentences on Wed and so on. I felt my students were capable of making their own choices when given good options to choose from. I decided to compile all the spelling activities I researched online and the Words Their Way series to create one document that students could chose from daily. Instead of collecting papers with no names and the pressure of completing activities daily, I made a homework assignment that was simple and easy. Students get to choose from 16 different activites daily and record their work on the back with the boxes provided. The sheet isn't due until Friday, which makes life easier on parents. Each activity shouldn't take more than 15-20 minutes to complete.
Here's a Snippet of it below! Click here to purchase it in my TPT store!
Please provide feedback on TPT if you liked this product!

Speller's Choice Weekly Homework Packet

A Warm Your Heart Mini Reading Packet Freebie!

Valentine's Day is just two days away and I've got a free mini reading packet available in my Teacher's Store just for you! It's 6 pages of fun activities. It has 4 graphic oraganizers, 1 Decorate your own card, and 1 Write your own book recommendation. This packet goes along with A Charlie Brown Valentine and Arthur's Valentine. If you click here it will take you directly to my store, click on download now and it's yours! Please leave feedback if you enjoyed this free mini packet.

Geometric Madness!

This has been a crazy week and I am just a bad blogger! Luckily I had my camera this week for  at least one thing I did. Doctoral classes on Monday and Tuesday every week is killing me! I am so ready to get my Ed.D. and to be finish with school(shooting for May 2013). Ten straight years of college is enough to make anybody want to scream! Instead of screaming, I just channeled all of that energy into my teaching. Now to the madness.....This week we started our Geometric unit. My kids were so excited about not doing regrouping with subtraction anymore and so was I. We still continue to do our spiral review daily on regrouping and other concepts but it was time for something new. Let's get to the madness(enough we get it)! I am known as the "Manipulative Queen" well at least to myself anyways but I didnt realize that I had only three sets of geometric shapes when I went to pull them out for my unit introduction. I was so sure that somebody had sticky fingers and they just accidentally left with them, then I remembered I never pressed pay now on Lakeshore! So guess what we made our own...and then the fun madness begun!

We used paper templates to create our own shapes(oops that's not what they call it on TCAP) Solid figures slash 3 dimensional figures. Take a look at these templates..

Cylinder Template

Cone template

Don't scractch your head just yet trying to imagine how you are suppose to glue these to make any types of "Solid Figures"...but after many sighs, a tear or two, and a unbelievable amount of hard work this is what good effort resulted in...

 Whew....minutes after this activity was completed, I went back and pressed PAY NOW AND SUBMIT ORDER about 3 times(not really) on Lakeshore! We also used items brought from home that had the same shape as the figures we are learning! It was a great experience for them and the students did take pride in having their own set of shapes Solid figures! Well worth the effort..certainly not worth the craziness! :)

My First Linky Party! Check out the things I love!

100th day of School Olympics and How to eat 100!

We celebrated our 100th day of school on February 2! This was also Groundhog Day, so we watched a quick video on watchnow.org and then it was a wrap. The 100th day of school was much more important to them!  My kids were so excited about the 100th day of school Olympics. There were several events going on in the classroom. Each student had five rotations to complete and they were in groups of 5. Each activity was timed and the students either had to complete something before 100 seconds or see how many things they could do in 100 seconds. Students just rotated clockwise through the designated areas in the classroom until everyone completed each activity. Before you take a look at our activities, I have to tell you about the mystery in my classroom all day. I told my kiddos that we would eat 100. Some thought it meant we were going to eat one hundred of something. Others were just puzzled and their guesses were far from what I meant. So if you are wondering what I meant when I said we were going to eat 100, this is what I meant.......

Eat 100! (1 large pretzel stick, 1 chocolate and 1 powder doughnut)

1st Activity: Can you do 100 jumping jacks in 100 seconds? Yes we did this in my classroom! 15 minutes of physical activity...no problem!

2nd Activity: How many words can you read in 100 seconds? Students had to read sight words and mark them as they said them aloud. This was a challenge but very funny!

3rd Activity: How many math problems can you solve in 100 seconds? Students were given a list of 100 addition facts. I had some that actually completed 95!

4th Activity: How many times can you chew a piece of gum in 100 seconds? Students had to write tally marks for each chew! This involved critical thinking.

5th Activity: How many times can you write your name in 100 seconds? Some actually forgot their name after the 15th time!

Here are some other activities!

What will you like when you're 100 years old?

What would buy with 100 dollars?

Complete the 100 chart before your classmates

100th Day Poster

         

Top Ten things you learned the first 100 days of
2nd grade!( She was interrupted on number 8!)

 100th day girls and collection!