TGIF! Friday Linky!

Can I get an AMEN for the weekend!? We actually had a 5 day week this week and it felt foreeeeeevvvveerrr long! We have not had a 5 day week since the first week in December...I am not even kidding! 3 months of 4, mostly 3, day weeks. And in just 3 weeks we have Spring Break! I cannot even believe how fast this year is going by!

I am doing my usual double linky with Teaching Maddeness and Doodle Bugs Teaching and sharing about our week in Room 29.

Monday was our 100th Day of School. You can see what we did HERE. Had to share my pic again, 'cause it's adorable. :)

Monday was also the start of our March is Reading Month activities. This year our theme is Story Laboratory: Experiment with a Good Book. We had a kick off assembly led by our Principal. He was trying to design the perfect book. Each grade level team had to tell 3 clues as to what their book was and the kids tried to guess.

Can you tell what 2nd grade's was?

Clue 1: Hola Dudes! Our book is about a kitty boy with a sassy mommy and 3 equally sassy sisters.

Clue 2: This kitty boy likes to bounce, Bounce, BOUNCE on his big boy bed... and once or 6 times he lands on his head.

Clue 3: His ears are to beeeg for heeees head. And heees head eees to big for heees body. He is not a Siamese Cat. He is a Chihuahua!

If you guessed Skippy Jon Jones then you are correct....and if you didn't then you must not teach a younger grade. LOL!

This is our principal as his alter ego Dr. Schroederstein. They had dry ice going in the bowl in the middle of the table and we added colored potions to the bowl when we read our clues. There were sound effects as we added them too. It was SO cool!

 

We are working on finishing up our research report writing unit. And I am working on putting the  finishing touches on the organizers we used/ are using for sale on TPT. Fingers crossed I can get it done this weekend!

 

 

I changed this page a little and got rid of the bubble strips in the middle. They were cute but kind of cluttered up the page.

 

 

Today we started working on our fraction sundaes for the work we love board. I love, love, love this project and always will. It is one of the first things I purchased on TPT when I started using that site last year. I cant wait until they are all done and put on the "Whale Done Work" board. If you love it you can purchase a copy from Amy Lemons ( LOVE HER!) HERE.



 

The last thing I am going to leave you with is a picture of one of my peanuts reading to the class. This year they started something that makes me kick myself for not starting myself and that I want to keep going for years to come. One day one of them brought in a book from home and asked if she could read it out loud to the class. I said sure. (I mean how do you say no to a request like that?!) And suddenly I had 5 or 6 kiddo's asking if they could do the same.

I LOVE it! I love that they want to read to each other and that this is something they started all on their own. We may not always have time for it the day they ask ,but I try to get to it within a day or two. I think next year I will do it on a rotation, so that whoever is my right hand for the week will have the option of bringing in a book from home to read to the class.

                                           

         I love these guys. :)

Well, that is all from me. Link up and have a FABULOUS weekend!







Non Fiction Text Features Freebie and Tech Questions

I feel like we have been working on our research report projects forever now and that is probably because we have! Snow days and mini lessons have stretched this unit out for over a month now! And we are not even close to being done!

When we do our research report projects I use this as a time to really focus on non fiction text features. We talk about them every time we read a Scholastic newspaper ,but that is only a couple of times a month and our reading series does not have much non fiction. We started out by choosing a Science Vocabulary reader about an animal for their topic.

 This is one of the peanuts choosing her book.

I usually give them 2 days of our scheduled writing time to just read their books and share fun facts with each other. This time it was more like 4 because I didn't think that with the snow day interruptions they were really being given enough time. Then we started working on a non fiction text features search that I created.

We did a section at a time so we could really focus on each one. I had them search on their own for each topic. Then they partner shared and finally shared out with the whole class.

I promised to have this for you on Sunday and I could not load it because I have compatibility issues between my home and school computer. Gotta love not having the same version of Windows...GR! But I did upload it to Teachers Pay Teachers and it is available there. You can get a copy of it HERE!!!!! 

These are a few pictures I snapped today of the kiddo's working on the very end of it.

Ok, so there is the freebie part. Now the questions part. All of my thumbnails on TPT are SUPER blurry. Does anyone know how I can save a copy of my document that is small enough to put as a thumbnail on TPT. So that it actually  can be recognizable as something other than a blob?

My second question is how do I make sure that no one can edit my work? I created a Creative Commons license for this one but that doesn't seem like it is enough. Specifically, I don't want someone to take something that someone else made ( a border or font) and change it and then I get in trouble for it!

I have so many ideas of things that I want to make but using the computer sometimes proves to be a downfall for me. Just when I think I have really figured something out technology knocks me down a few pegs...Last night I was having a heck of a time formatting a border. I wound up sobbing to my husband about how stupid I felt...and I quote " Other people can make their own fonts and clip art and I can't even add a border!". * Sob, Sob, SOb* I felt super pathetic. To be honest I still feel that way a little bit today but I'm coping much better! LOL!

So any advice on my above questions would be much appreciated. Can't wait until Friday's linky. I have some SUPER fun pics to share this week!

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UPDATE! ONE MORE THING!

There are two hundred follower giveaways I wanted to share with you! One is from WHERE THE WILD THINGS LEARN


AND! The other is from CLOSING THE GAP IN A FASHIONABLE OUTFIT



Ok, now for real. I am done with this post. :)

Happy 100th Day of School!

Seems odd to be saying that in March but yes, today was our 100th day of school....12 snow days plus scheduled breaks will do that to ya!

I was planning on linking up for Monday Made It today but Tara is doing that next week so I'll have to link to this post in that. 

This was hanging up to greet the kiddo's when they came in this morning. I thought it might be annoying to walk through but it was actually kind of fun. The kids did a good job of not being too rough with the streamers....it actually looked pretty much the same when I took it down today as when I put it up.


The font is KB STRIPED PAJAMAS. It is one of my faves. I actually really love all of her fonts. I need to just bite the bullet and get the package that has all of them!

 
I made this cute picture frame for them to hold so I could get their picture. I am going to put them on our door to jazz it up a little. I got the idea from all of the first day of school frames that are all over Pinterest.

These are some of the activities that we did. The first idea I got from WHAT THE TEACHER WANTS. It's an estimation activity where kids have to first estimate the amount in each bag and then they count the items to find out how many is in each bag. Then they have to say whether each bag was more or less than 100.

Please ignore the MESSY mailboxes behind this pic. The kiddo's are not always as neat as I would like them to be. :)

You will notice in this picture that my estimation page looks different than the one in 100th day packet on What The Teacher Wants. I wanted to be able to use it for more than 100th day so I whipped up my own.

 

This group worked together SO well. I loved how they made groups of 10 and then counted.

During Math we did this cute find and graph activity that I found on Pinterest but you can get HERE.

They colored the toppings according to the code and then counted them. When we added them all up there were 100. On the back of the page is the graph.

 

 

Then for snack we made our 100th Day Trail Mix. I had students bring in a bag of 100 food items that we mixed together to make one big snack. It was quite tasty!

 

 

There you have it, the 100th Day of School...FINALLY! We had an awesome time and it was a great way to start our week!

Winner, Winner, Sunday Dinner! :)

Well, I was just so darn excited I had to see who won each of the items. :)

And the winners are...

results powered by Random.org

Entry #87Crystal S.

Entry #82Lori R.

Entry #177Cherie M.

Entry #312Julia S.

Entry #215Carly W.

Entry #244Rachael S.

Entry #365Jessica L.

Entry #288Jessica A.

 

The items will be given away in corresponding order to the names. For example, my $10 gift card is listed first and will go to Crystal, the second thing listed is 2 items from Suntan and Lesson plans and that will go to Lori and on down etc.

 

Thanks to all who entered!

 

As a thank you, I have a non-fiction text features freebie for everyone that I will be adding to this post this afternoon :) I'd stay up and add it but I have a 3 year old who awakens at 8 on the weekends like clockwork.

 

Thanks again friends. I am just so tickled by the generosity of the bloggers who donated and thankful that 139 of you think I'm cool enough to click the follow button. :)

 

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Update: Guess what? Can't get the freebie from my home computer because I deleted the email I sent to myself!!!! It will be on here TOMORROW along with my Monday Made It link up about our 100th day. I will be emailing my generous donors with email address for the awesome winners, so be expecting an email soon. :)

CURRENTLY it's Saturday ,but I am linking up like it's a FIVE FOR FRIDAY!

Happy Friday Saturday, Friends! ( WARNING: THIS POST IS LONG! My apologies, but stick around to the end for my giveaway! )

Today I am linking up with:



For Currently and the Friday Link Ups!

First up,


You know that saying " If you want to make God laugh, start making plans." Yeaaaahhhh, I lived that yesterday.

Fridays are my busiest day at school. I send home my newsletter, the school newsletter, and graded work folder ( I call it a FISH folder- Friday Information Sent Home- gotta keep up the theme) on Friday's. Plus we usually have our comprehension assessment, our spelling assessment, and Project Friday. ( I give short morning work and then we do some sort of project- like the  SNOWMAN STAINED GLASS .) We also have library on top of our regular specials. So yeah, crazy day. But it's one of my faves.

Usually I spend my specials time stuffing folders and writing a quick note about their week in their folders. This time I got it done by the end of library because I knew there would be a new Currently linky as well as my beloved Friday linky, and I wanted to be ready to snatch up that Currently pic ASAP and get blogging! :) So, I sent my peanuts ( minus a few who had some work to finish) to specials feeling pretty good about how on top of things I was. When BAM! ( well, it wasn't loud but it WAS sudden!) the power went out....and went out in about 5 surrounding towns as well....and in our case stayed out...through the end of the day....

About an hour into the power outage our Superintendent sent a message through our electronic phone tree that there was a power outage, that we didn't know how long it would last ,and if parents wanted to come get their children early from school they could. Now, you want to talk crazy, try collecting students from 3 floors of classrooms with no PA or phone system, just walkie talkies. Our secretaries and aides ROCKED IT OUT yesterday doing just that. By the end of the day I walked out with 3 students!

SO! The Hubs, the Peanut, and I road tripped it to Grand Rapids for dinner at the Olive Garden. And then made a stop at Toys R' Us for Peanut to spend a gift card she got for Christmas. While in GR I got a text from my mom saying the power was back on in our neighborhood. I was super happy because it looked like I WOULD get to do the Friday link up and Currently as planned. Got back home, put Peanut to bed, fired up the computer aaaannnnddd NO INTERNET! NO TV!  It seems that it took the cable a while to reset itself. But, this morning it is back and I am super thankful.

WHEW! That was LOOOOOOOOONNNGGG! But it was TOO crazy NOT to share!

So a few pics from the week.

We had ANOTHER snow day Wednesday. ( Sorry Angela!) So the Peanut and I hit up the dollar store where I FINALLY got a touch light to do this:

 

The kiddo's have had a hard time lately during Station Time remembering that when I am working with friends in a small group I can't answer their questions. So I thought this would be the PERFECT solution. I got this idea from a pin from the LESSON PLAN DIVA ,but not sure where she got the idea from. But let me tell you, it works! No issues when they had this visual.

 

The new unit we are reading in Open Court is all about Fossils. So this week we " made" fossils of shells. We took clay ( another dollar store purchase) , flattened it out and shoved a shell in it to make an imprint. We are waiting for them to dry before we take it home.

We have been studying forces and motion during science. This week the kiddo's brought in a simple machine for their final project. I am going to share more about this in a later post. This is a simple machine that one of the peanuts made. It is a sandwich cutter!

 

NOW, onto Currently! ( Are you still with me?) This is a ridiculously long post! Don't say I didn't warn you! :)

 

LISTENING: Peanut is OBSESSED with princesses and anything girly. She likes to act out and sing along with scenes from her favorites. Like the scene in Sofia where she sings about not being ready to be a Princess. She is so dramatic and kneels down in her princess dress and puts her hand over chest...I'm talking about my kid here, NOT the character! It's crazy and hilarious. I love that she has no inhibition's yet and doesn't get at all embarrassed when I stand there watching her.

 

LOVING: See above. Ah, first world problems! :)

 

THINKING: The school peanuts are studying homophones during spelling and I am working on my first ever TPT item that is not going to be a freebie. I want to charge 11teen hundred dollars for it because it is taking so long...in reality it will probably be 2 or 3. :) I now have even MORE respect for those of you who make all these beautiful things for TPT. This is hard work!

 

WANTING: I have neither the time, nor the inclination if I am being honest, to read anything other than YA fiction. I hate to be one of those people, but I read the Beautiful Creatures series because the movie was coming out. Read the book, then saw the movie. Loved the book, would have liked the movie if it was actually even halfway true to the book. I HATE, HATE, HATE when things get changed in book to movie adaptations and it was COMPLETELY unnecessary. ( I understand they can't include everything but they don't need to change someone's name, something they like to do, or change their personality. That's just someone being on a power trip in movie world. * steps off soapbox*).

 

NEEDING: Well, I was in the middle of writing this post when my grandma came to stay with Fin so I could go to the gym. On my way back from the gym, my brakes went out! So I guess I should amend that to saying I NEED brakes!

 

LIKE, LOVE, HATE:  Ok, well since my name is Jean I had to pick J things for this. Jemima J is one of the few adult books I have read ( it's by Jane Green...another J!) that I really super love. I am a Christian so it was a pretty obvious choice on what to put for my J love. :) But I also had to stick the hubs in there too. His middle name is John so it worked. And the hate, I mean, really, who likes a jerk. So that was a pretty easy one too. :)

 

OK! If you are still with me here. I want to remind you of my giveaway which is ending SUPER SOON! As a celebration of reaching 100 followers I asked a few bloggy friends to help out and got some awesome prizes. You can go TO MY 100 FOLLOWER POST HERE and join in. It ends in 12 hours so hurry up and go! :)

 

Happy Weekend Friends! Hope yours is off to a better start than mine! :)

100 Follower Giveaway!

Happy Sunday Friends! I am SOOOOOO excited to share this giveaway with you!

( The border around my image is by Krista Walden. You can get it from TPT HERE.)

 

 

You have the chance to win some AWESOME prizes! I have 7 bloggy friends plus myself who are offering you something FOR FREE...And all by clicking some follow buttons. I have great prizes from these generous bloggers. ( Side note: I either own something or have something in my wish list from almost all of these bloggers. There is truly some quality work in these stores.)

 

     

 

http://thebalancedclassroom.blogspot.com/

 

This giveaway goes through next week Saturday at midnight. Good luck and thanks for following!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Friday Link Up

This Friday finds me enjoying some girl time with my peanut.  Fins been wanting to sleep in my bed a lot lately and I do NOT want to start that. So I suggested that we have a sleepover on Friday and watch a movie on the dvd player in mommys room. Currently we are lounging in my bed watching Barbie: The Princess and the Pop Star and enjoying some popcorn.

First some cool news. I reached 100 followers last Friday, so I am going to be having a SWEET giveaway! I've had about 8 awesome bloggers offering to help me out as well. Come back on Sunday to register for a chance to win!

We actually had 3 whole days of school this week..one scheduled day off for President`s day and then ANOTHER snow day! When I was grading math papers the other night I realized that of the 20 school days we should have had this semester, 10 of them have wound up being days off!

A couple of weeks ago I shared the winter people we made, but I never showed the bulletin board I made with it. Unfortunately, my hallway bulletin board is not large enough for student work so I usually decorate it with whatever theme I have hung up in the hallway. There are some bulletin boards that you use year to year.My winter board has never been the same in 6 years of teaching. But this one is so cute I might do it again next year.

 

We have been studying forces. motion and simple machines in science. I bought a packet from Common Core and So Much More during the Super Bowl sale and we have been using that. You can get yours HERE. Tuesday we did a push and pull scavenger hunt where the students looked for things in the room that we push and things that we pull. They put a sticky note on them and then recorded it on a Venn diagram. One of my favorites was a student put a sticky note on a tissue because we PULL out tissues. It was great. I highly recommend this packet if you are looking for one on this topic.

Today we learned about using comparison symbols ( greater than, less than, and equal). When I learned about this my teacher compared the symbols to alligator mouths and that stuck. So today we made alligator mouths to practice comparing two numbers. They were super simple to make. I  cut strips of construction paper that the kiddo's fastened with paper fasteners. Then I let them draw teeth on using a black marker. I wrote two numbers ( or two number sentences) on mini white boards. I placed them around the room and had the kids rotate through. At each one they chose the greater number. I really liked this activity because I was able to see immediately who was getting it and who wasn't. Plus after having inside recess this morning they NEEDED to move!

I'm on a hot chocolate kick, what with it being winter and having a bajillion snow days. So we have done these two crafts/ writing projects.

One was a how-to writing about how to make hot chocolate.

No these are not all of the writings. I have WAY more than 12 students.

 This is a close up of one of my favorite writings.

The other thing we worked on today was adjectives. We brainstormed adjectives that would describe hot chocolate ( with marshmallows). We came up with a great list. Then each student chose one word to use in a sentence about their noun ( either hot chocolate or marshmallow). I put these out in the hallway too. How do you like my free hand mug? I'm eh about it. But over all I think it turned out cute.

 A close up of my super cute sign. Love this font. I found it on Teachers Pay Teachers. You can get it HERE.

 This is a close up of one of the peanuts writings.

 

Ok, well speaking of peanuts, I need to go back and join mine for our sleepover. So I am going to go link up now. Check out DOODLE BUGS TEACHING and TEACHING MADDENESS for their Friday link ups.

 Remember to check back Sunday for my great 100 follower giveaway. :)