TPT Awesome-ness!

Please tell me you all took advantage of the HUGE sale today on Teachers Pay Teachers?! What a great deal! I got A LOT of loot today for less than $20! Needless to say I am spending a good portion of my night tonight cutting out my laminated station pieces, while flipping back and forth between The Voice and Dancing With the Stars. :)

Check out what I purchased today: 

( You may note that they are mostly Christmas activities...what can I say? You need only read a post or two of this blog to know I LUH-HUV Christmas!!) 

The picture is a little fuzzy but the first one I bought is called How to Make Hot Chocolate. It was created by Jeannie Hunter. You can check it out HERE.  My grade level team has been really working at making sure we understand what is expected of us with the new common core standards. One of the writing pieces we are responsible for is informational, including how-to writing. So this piece will be perfect to assess that as well as make a cute craft. :) ( Oh! And drink some hot chocolate!) 

Next up I purchased Full of Cheer, which is 10 Literacy Centers. It's by Swimming into Second. ( Sidebar: One of my favorite blogs and TPT stores.) You can get yours HERE. This is the one I am working on cutting out the lamination for tonight. :) I love the different Christmas-y ways of practicing skills my kids need to work on. There are synonym activities, cause and effect, and ABC order among others. They will go along well with some of the fall stations we have been working on. Can't wait to start introducing those into our station rotation next week. 

And of course, what Christmas would be complete without The Polar Express? On the last day of school before break we have " The Night Before Christmas (Break)" at my school. Everyone come's in their pj's and we have comfy reading day. In 2nd grade we watch The Polar Express in the library. I thought this would be PERFECT to use that last week of school. So excited! This was by Christine Statzel and you can get your's HERE. 

I am REALLY excited to do this Secret Santa activity with my peanuts this year. It's such a fun idea and I think they will really have a good time with it. Every Friday we do a project and I think this will be this Friday's project. This was created by Across the Hall in 2nd Grade and you can get your copy HERE.

I pinned this Find, Tally, Graph activity and also a winter one a couple of weeks ago. So I KNEW this was going in the cart today. It's such a simple, but great, idea and will help my peanuts with their graphing skills. I printed off enough copies of this so they could have their own packets. I don't have much space in my classroom so I look for activities that will be fun, interesting, engaging, purposeful, and PORTABLE! :) This definitely fits the bill! You can find it HERE. It was created by Renee Dooly. 

Finally, I have the LONE non- Christmas item in my cart. Again, going back to the common core standards, one area that we need to do more of is opinion writing. This is perfect for that. It was created by Surfin' Into 2nd Grade ( another fave blogger) and you can get your own copy HERE. 

I don't know how to do a linky party ( YET anyway). Everything I have done on my blog is all my own trial and error. Someday I will sit down and figure out how to do one. In the meantime I would still love to hear from you if you also purchased a goodie today on TPT. 

Now, I am off to cut out piles and piles of lamination. :) It feels a little like the beginning of the school year again. 

A Special Visitor

For those of you not familiar with CCA ( the school I teach at), you should know that in terms of schools and districts it's very small. The middle/ high school is right across the street from our elementary building. So my mom, who teaches math at the high school, has come over to my classroom frequently in the time that I have taught 2nd grade. My dad has seen my classroom before ( when I first got hired) but that was 6 years ago! 

I mentioned before that I have a pre-student teacher in my room this year. One of her professors who came to observe her knows my dad. She told him he should volunteer in my classroom. ( She kind of gave him a hard time about it.) So he asked if he could come read to my kiddo's some Wednesday afternoon. ( His day off.)

Well, today was that day. He came in after lunch and read Arthur's Thanksgiving to them. ( We are studying Marc Brown this month for our author study.) The kiddo's loved it and I think he really got a kick out of meeting them. We invited him back next month to read us a Jan Brett story since we will be studying her then. I think he will come back! :)

( We wear uniform shirts at my school but these aren't it. This morning we went on our annual field trip to a local dentists office. He pays for the gas and bus driver so it is completely free. He and his staff show the kids around the office, show them how to take care of their teeth, give them a shirt and a tooth brush. They make molds of their fingers and he put's on a magic show. It's great!)

Election Day at CCA

I have worked at my school through 2 elections now. During the one four years ago, one of my grade level team members came up with the idea of having the school vote and then reporting the results in an assembly. He figured out how many electoral college votes each class would have based on number on students, and then explained about the popular vote and the electoral college. It was really cool. So this year we did it again. 

Before we voted, we read a Scholastic News magazine about the candidates and about the election process. Then one of our 5th grade teachers sent her students around with their essays on who they thought should be elected. The read their papers to our classes and gave the students some good information on each candidate. 

Our school is 3 stories. On the 2nd level is 2nd and 3rd grade ( plus our academic center, computer lab, and music room). So the 2nd floor was our precinct. The 3rd grade team made this uber cute voting booth for our floor

Outside of the booth

Inside of the booth

We sent our kid's out of room to this lovely lady here. This is Miss G. my pre-student teacher. She ran our precinct. Each class had a color assigned to them. She checked their voter identification cards to make sure they were who they said they were. :) Then she crossed their name off of the list and gave them their ballot. We had some that had Mitt Romney listed first and some that had Barack Obama listed first, just to be fair. :) She also gave them an " I VOTED" sticker afterwards. 

 Then they brought their ballot over to this box.  The big box behind it was so that Miss G. could dump the little box out because it filled up FAST! 

This is one of my peanuts putting her ballot in the box.

This is where the pictures end because I forgot to bring my phone with me to the assembly! After all the kiddo's had voted, my teaching partner tallied the votes and created a power point presentation. He pointed out some information from last time and compared it to the way the votes were going this year. ( For example, our kindergarten and first graders voted more for Obama both years than the person he was running again. However, our 4th, 5th, and 6th graders tended to vote for Obama's opponent. Interesting.) He taught them again about the popular vote and the electoral college and when it was all said and done CCA had elected Mitt Romney as president. However, just like last time, CCA did not predict the winner. So apparently, pollsters need to start checking out our school. LOL. 

The kids loved it and I think they, and I, learned quite a bit in the process. Sorry, this post was not the next day as I said it would be...busy, busy, busy. :) Hoping to get a few more posts in over the next couple of days. I take a bunch of pictures intending to post and it doesn't always happen. I'm clinging to the fact that I am posting WAY more than I did last year. Going to go enjoy the rest of The Voice and Dancing with The Stars. I get to attend a conference tomorrow so I get to sleep in a little! :) Enjoy your Monday night friends!

November: Currently

Happy Election Day friends! I don't care who you voted for so much as that you DID vote. We held a mock election at our school today. It was quite fun. I've got pictures and a post ready to go for that for tomorrow. But for tonight I am linking up with FARLEY to do November's currently. Next months currently goal is to be in the top 50. :)