Five For Fri...Saturday :)

Happy Friday Saturday Friends!

I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching to share about my week.

I posted on my Facebook page ( follow me HERE) that I came home from dinner last night to NO power! It was just out in my neighborhood, so we went to my best friends house and played with her and her dog Henry until the power came back on.

We were making Henry be a circus dog. He was thrilled. :)

 

And just to brag a little bit about my awesome Hubby, we went to dinner last night to celebrate his passing his firefighter exam and officially becoming a firefighter for the township. YAY! He has been working SO hard this year and it has taken away SO much family time that we are ALL glad it is over. Ironically, after dinner, he got a call and had to go help with a fire.

On Tuesday, Peanut had an appointment at the allergist. So we had a mommy/daughter day. It was great.

 Here we are being silly before the doctor came to check her out. Look at those red allergy eyes. Poor kid. She should really live in a bubble.

Then we went to Frederik Meijer Gardens to see the butterflies. ( The same place 2nd grade went on a field trip to a couple of weeks ago.)  The gardens are literally across the road from her allergist so we go there after her check up every year.

 Last year a butterfly landed right on her! It was amazing. This year no such luck. She was kind of bummed as you can see by this picture.

 So instead she posed in the butterfly chair and SHE landed on the butterfly.

After that we went to Olive Garden for lunch. YUMMY! And then we got ice cream on the way home. It was an awesome, relaxing day.

 And then I came back to 2 new students AND intense NWEA MAP test prep....always a good time. My new students are absolute sweeties. Happy to have them. It's just a stressful time prepping for the test, without having to add in new peanuts who need to learn your rules and procedures.

We are taking the reading portion of the test next week so we have been doing some prep for that.

We practiced adding prefixes to a word and learned what they meant. ( Monday we will be working with suffixes.) I found a great prefix and suffix freebie from Amy Lemons. Check it out HERE.

First we sorted words by which prefix we would add to them.

 

 Then we made a flap book. We wrote the 4 prefixes on the outside and then wrote a word using that prefix and drew a picture.





One of my teaching partners found a power point to use to review for the reading and math portions of the MAP test. ( You can check it out HERE.) The questions are all aligned with the 180-200 RIT range. It has turned out to be a great resource.
 I put the questions up on our white board and the kiddos wrote their answer down on their mini white boards. Ones that a majority of them missed we went over as a class. I was pretty pleased by how well some of them were doing.

 
 
               

 

 

 

Well, that's all for me for this week. I am hurriedly trying to get my Earth Day pack done today. Check out my Facebook page this weekend for the giveaway when it is done.

 

Enjoy your weekend friends!

Dollar Deals!

Hi Friends and happy Monday!

I am stopping by today to link up with a Teacher Without a Class for her newest linky party.

 

 

On the 15th of every month she will be hosting a linky where we can share our dollar finds. It can be something we have created that costs $1 or something we have purchased for $1 ( either at a "real" store or on TPT.) I think this is a great idea. I plan on this being a regular link up for me. You should too. :)

I am going to share 3 dollar finds today.

The first one that I have is one of my best selling items. It is an I Have, Who Has: Numbers 1- 20 game. The kind of funny thing is, unlike most things in my store, I didn't make this for myself to use. I made it for the Kindergarten teachers at my school after we went to a conference. They were talking about wanting one ,so I whipped one up for them over the weekend.

                       

 

You can get it HERE.

 

My second one is a font that I purchased from Jenny at Suntans and Lesson Plans. Yes, I know we are past St. Patty's day but, you can always get it for next year. 

 You can get it HERE.

 

 

 My last one is something that I actually purchased at the Dollar Store and I could not be more excited about them.

 

 

 

 

Every year for Mothers Day my peanuts have painted a mini terra cotta pot and planted  impatiens as a gift for their mom's. Last year I searched EVERYWHERE for these babies. The closest I came were ones that were twice as big and about $1.50 a piece ( that's totally reasonable...just not when you need 20 of them...plus dirt and flowers.)

So I happened to be at the Dollar Store about a month ago and found these. A pack of 3 for just a buck! I HAD to snatch them up. ( I am tempted to go back and get a bunch of next year too!) They've been living in my garage, but in a few weeks I'll be sharing the finished product with you. 

 

Ok, that is it for me this evening. Link up and share your dollar finds.

 

Friday Linkys and Freebies! :)

Happy Friday Friends!  I am linking up with TEACHING MADDENESS and DOODLEBUGS TEACHING for their Friday linkys. ( Stick around to the end of this post for 2 freebies!)

Well, I am home today....on snow day #13...yes, you read that right...13!! Thankfully anything after April 1st doesn't count against us, so we won't have to make today up. We had a ton of freezing rain and lots of wind last night. I snapped this pic of my backyard this morning when I got up. I'm not sure you get the full effect of the sheet of ice on our sidewalk in this pic. But still...this is April people! Gotta love living in Michigan.

Really we have had AWFUL weather all week...I am talking rain EVERY DAY. So you know what that means? Inside recess. EVERY. DAY. THIS. WEEK.  Those poor kids are so squirrely. They just NEED to get out. So we did some inside recess activities during their recess times a couple of those days...not the same as getting to choose what they do. But at least they got to move.

 

We've been working on our research report projects for FOREVER. Well this week we FINALLY finished our first copy of our report. I told them that when they were done writing and editing their first copy we would check out the mobile lap top lab and type on the laptops. You would have thought I said that when they finished writing they would get a million dollars. They were so excited!

 

 

 

This peanut worked SO hard on her editing. She was one of the first ones to start it, but was in the middle of the pack to get started on typing. I was SO proud of her.

 

I went to a conference for writing a couple of weeks ago. One of the things that the speaker talked about doing was cutting the writing organizer apart and pasting it onto a larger piece of construction paper for easier editing and revising. We did that with ours and it was SO much easier to read and find areas to focus on. Plus, by breaking it up, it was so much more visual for the peanuts on where to indent paragraphs. This little peanut is demonstrating how to cut and paste the organizer onto the construction paper. 

                            












This week we used my School Store packet during Math Stations. I made it to practice rounding 2 and 3 digit numbers to the nearest 10 and 100. I really love how it came out. You can check it out HERE.

This is on my mini pocket chart ( that I scored at the Dollar Store! Holla!) .



Sunday I went bridesmaids dress shopping for my soon to be S.I.L.'s wedding to my brother in September. This is the dress I picked out. I love it. Buuuuut, I am definitely going to be working on my arms before then. Gotta tone those babies up! :)

 And now TWO freebies for you. We were supposed to watch The Lorax this afternoon and compare and contrast the movie and the book...that will be postponed now until next week. But this is the activity that I made to go with it.

You can get it HERE in my TPT store.

The other one that I have for you is part of my Earth Day packet that I am working on.

 You can get that HERE in my TPT store.

The packet that it is a part of *should* be done by Sunday and of course I will be giving copies away. Usually I give more away on my Facebook page. If you aren't following me on Facebook you can go HERE to do that. :)

Well, I am off to link up. Have a lovely Friday and a great weekend friends.
 

Winners and Linkys

Well, since I am feeling generous ( and I only had 3 people who left email addresses) I am going to send out 3 copies of my School Store. So ladies that commented, check your email. :)

Tonight I am linking up with Latoya from Flying Into First Grade for her Sunday Get To Know You linky party.

Todays theme is what 3 things you would take with if you were stranded on a desert island.

1. I would for sure bring my family with me. Peanut would look SO cute in a little grass skirt running around on the beach. And my husband is like MacGyver, so that man would be able to figure out a way off the beach using only a log, a coconut, and a hair tie! :)

 

2. Assuming this desert island gets electricity and has Wi-Fi I would bring my Kindle. I could check Pinterest, email, Facebook, AND read books. It doesn't get much better than that!

 

 

3. Fresh Drinking Water.

I am sure that on an island that has electricity and Wi-Fi I can find some fresh water somewhere. ;) HOWEVER! Just to be on the safe side that would be important. I drink A L.O.T. of water throughout the day and I don't enjoy the headache I get when I don't have enough. :)

 

One more linky tonight. This one is from First Grade Smiles. Her linky is opinions on blogging, what we like and why.

 

Hope you can read all of those answers. If you click on the picture it gets bigger.

 

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday night friends!

 

 

 

 

 

 



Friday...er, I Mean, SATURDAY Linky and A Giveaway!

Happy Friday Saturday Friends! I am linking up with Doodlebugs Teaching and Teaching Maddeness for their Friday linky's.
                                    
I really planned on posting last night. But my mom, my daughter, and I went to visit my brother and his family yesterday. They live 3 hours away and we did the trip in 1 day. So we spent 6 hours total in the car and I was not in the mood to then sit down to the computer. :)
 
This week was my Spring Break so I don't have many educational things to share with you from this week. The Peanut and I have certainly had fun this week....and been just as busy. I am not sure why I do that every time...overschedule our breaks... One of these days I will learn.
 
1. Easter was at my house again this year. We have a very large dining room, which is good because we typically host Easter and Thanksgiving with 18-20 people on average.
 
This is my peanut and I on Easter and a 4 generation picture of my mom, my Mormor ( Swedish for grandma), me, and my peanut. We take these every time we are together, so I should have know better than to get comfy in my new Tigers shirt. I look like a schlub next to those beautiful ladies....  
Side note on my Tigers: We WON yesterday. Take that Yankees! Sorry to any Yankees fans out there...not really. :)




















#2 My Peanut LOVES to make cookies. " The kind you cut out". So Monday we mixed up a batch of dough and made sugar cookies with strawberry frosting. Then I let her play with the extra dough...She was occupied and happy for well over an HOUR playing with that dough. It was great!

 

 

#3 One of my spring break bucket list items was to update my station boards. Well, I can cross that off and that makes me SUPER happy. I did a post on my station boards on Wednesday. You can read about that HERE. 

 
#4 Yesterday we stopped and did some shopping on the way down to visit my brother. I mean are you really just supposed to drive past the gigantic outlet mall without stopping...I don't think so. :)
There are actually more things from Bath and Body works and Target shoved inside these bags so I could carry them in easier.

 

Weeeeellllll, I think some of my love of shopping has worn off onto my daughter. She likes to bring me some toys and ask me to "beep" them. ( Which is her version of a check out line.) She played that yesterday with my brother, who was enjoying himself so much he got her some shopping bags and BAGGED HER ITEMS FOR HER. ( Thanks Uncle Danny. Mommy will have to do this every time now too. ) This is her haul. Slightly larger than mine. :)

#5 Finally the giveaway. On Monday I made a math station activity for my kiddos to work on this week called Shopping at the School Store. You can check it out HERE on Teachers Pay Teachers.

 



 

 ( Side note: Does anyone have ,or know of someone who has, a good tutorial on how to make a preview file and thumbnails for TPT? I make my things in Word and then if I want to put a preview picture on here I have to remake the pages in Power Point because the thumbnail images on TPT show up all blurry. That is time consuming and I am sure unnecessary. )

 

We have been working on adding and subtracting money amounts and now we are learning how to estimate a sum. In my unit I made 2 sets of pocket chart sized cards that have items you might find for sale in a school store. One set has two digit numbers using a cent sign and the other has 3 digit numbers using the dollar sign and decimal point. The ones pictured here are the ones I made with two digits numbers.  





 

I made 6 different activity pages using these cards: Two are for adding and 4 are for estimating. These are an example of one of the instruction sheets and the recording sheet that goes with it. This is what my peanuts will be doing during math stations this week.  

 

 

 

I gave away two copies for free on Facebook on Monday and I would like to give one away today. All you need to do in order to win a copy is leave me a comment with your email address. I will do a random number generator and post tomorrow morning who is the winner.  :)

 

Well, I am off to enjoy yet another busy day...heading to school for a little bit, grocery shopping, and that never ending joy called laundry. Enjoy your Saturday Friends!



 

Literacy Work Stations: Station Rotation

Happy Wednesday Friends.
Spring Break is half over for me. :( I suppose I should look on the bright side though....for some of you Spring Break is COMPLETELY over.

Today I thought I would share with you how I rotate students through my Literacy Work Stations.

First off, I use Debbie Diller's model of stations from her book Literacy Work Stations: Making Centers Work. It sells at Amazon for about $18. ( 3-6 teachers there is also a book for your grade level too if you are interested.)

 

A few summers ago, I went in search of something that would help me during our ELA block. I did not like how I utilized that time and I didn't feel like the center time I had inside my head was actually being done in practice. At the time we split our three 2nd grade classes by Tiers for reading. I always had the lowest tier of kids. But we began talking about changing that and keeping our homeroom groups regardless of reading ability. I knew I needed to do something different.

 

Enter Debbie's book. ( I refer to her as Debbie as IF I had the good fortune to know her personally. Haha!) I borrowed a copy from the library first because I wasn't sure I would like it. 2 chapters in, I ordered my own copy. I shared it with the other K-2 teachers in my building and now most of us use stations at some point during our ELA block. This book is my teaching bible.

 

 

Our ELA chunk of time is from 8:45- 10:50. During this time we do comprehension, writing, spelling, and stations. Stations take up about 50 minutes of that time. And I do two rotations during that 25 minute period of time. This is the time I meet with small groups. I also have a Title 1 Para pro who works with small groups during that time. ( I also have other times that Title 1 works with some of my students. We are very blessed at my school.)

In the book it gives you some examples of other teachers station boards. When I made mine I wanted something that I could use year to year and that I could easily rearrange students during the year if I needed to.

What I came up with were 5 pieces of poster board ( I happened to use different colors, but the colors don't really mean anything specific). Each poster board represents a different day of the week. We do stations every day.

( Please ignore the glare and the fact that Monday is blank. I'll get to that in a minute.)

Each side has all of our stations listed out and then with a number for which station it is ( either station #1 or #2 since we do 2 stations.) 


This is what it used to look like. ( If you recall, one of my Spring Break goals was to update these since I haven't in over 2 years!) This is for the 2nd set of Stations because there is a number 2 by every one.

This is what it looks like now that I updated the board. Next to each station I put the students pictures so they know which station to go to. Everything is held on with tape so I can easily rearrange the pictures if I need to. ( This is the 4th time this year I have moved them around.)

So that is how I manage who goes to which station and when. The kids know to check that the station board is out in the morning. They flip it over when the bell signals for Station 2. It has worked out really well for me for 3 years now, so I am pretty sure I will keep this system as long as I do stations in my room. In the future I will share a little about how the kiddos are grouped and I will share more about each station and what they do at it.

Enjoy your evening friends. I will be back on Friday for the linky parties. :)

April Currently

 

Happy ( SUPER EARLY) Monday Friends! I can be up this late because I am student-less this week as we are on spring break. Even so, it is super late and I need to get to bed. But before I do I wanted to link up with Farley for Currently. 

 

 

Listening:  I don't really like reality television that doesn't involve some level of talent, like The Voice and DWTS. But this gypsy show really sucked me in over the summer and now I am hooked! The things they wear and the way they talk....oh boy!

Loving: That's just an obvious given. Who doesn't love and welcome Spring Break? :)

Thinking: The estimation packet should be ready to go later on today. So check out my Facebook page later on for a giveaway! :)

Wanting: It has definitely warmed up from the crazy winter. Most of the snow is gone. But I was hoping for at least 50- 60 degrees all week. Mama needs to spray paint! :)

(PS: So I woke up this morning to SNOW ON THE GROUND! GRRR! Looks like mother nature is playing a little April Fools joke on us here in Central Michigan.)

Needing: Checked out my TPT wish list over the weekend....it used to be full of activities...now its full of things to make those activities myself. It's exciting and overwhelming all at once. :)

Advice: My BBF ( best bloggy friend) Angela over at Hippo Hooray For 2nd Grade was featured on Amanda Maddens blog Teaching Maddeness  this past week for her budding bloggers showcase. Angela said something that really resonated with me and that was, to be true to yourself. She said something about writing the way that you talk...so she doesn't use y'all in her posts because she is a cheese head and we just don't use that kind of language up north. It made me laugh because I want to use y'all so bad ,but anytime I write it I just feel like I am trying too hard.

I wanted to include Angela's advice because I think it is so important and it has really helped me this week. But I also wanted to add my own. It is hard for me sometimes to not get down on myself or think I have nothing to offer just because I only have 168 followers and someone else has thousands. It is hard for to not get down on myself when I put something on TPT and it doesn't sell like I thought it would. It is hard for me when I read peoples blogs and they seem to really have a niche in the blogging community, like "oh they are the go to person for math", or "they really seem to have 2nd grade nailed."

Sometimes I think I should give up on Diving Into 2nd Grade.

But, I think about the reason why I started blogging in the first place...it is because Pinterest opened this door to a whole teaching community I didn't even know existed. I saw all of these cool ideas and projects and products and I thought " Hey, I want to join in on the fun!" I had, what I thought, was a cute classroom with fun, engaging activities and other teachers blogs have just taken it to the next level. Teacher bloggers have really changed my classroom and my teaching for the better and I want to be a part of that.

Really, my advice is for me. But I hope, if you are struggling with some of the same thoughts as me, that it helps you too.

(Ok, so I woke up this morning to some really awesome comments that made me feel great. So I just had to add to the positive end of my paragraph about remembering why I started a blog. Teacher bloggers are SO helpful and kind to one another. We are so willing to help each other out and I think that is awesome. I think those doubts that I was talking about above plague everyone from time to time. But, like I was reminded this morning, we have to focus on the things we HAVE going for us and give ourselves a little credit. )