Cyber Monday {and Tuesday}

so….

It's cyber Monday. :) 

I just finished leaving feedback on some prior tpt purchases (get free credit toward my next purchase!)

Filled up my cart…

I had 135 things on my wish list…

WOWZA. 

I went through and realized that I already had a lot of it - and most of the others were freebies that I wish listed … so I could locate them again in the future…

BUT

here is what I filled up my cart with: 

Here are a few links to the products I purchased as well. 

Polar Express for Big Kids - Primary Polka Dots

Holidays Around the World - Cloze Reading - Ashleigh

Holidays Around the World - {Chinese New Year too} - Tangled Up In Teaching

Santa's Confusing Christmas - Primary Polka Dots

My First Grade Helper - Michelle Oakes

My Second Grade Helper - Michelle Oakes

What did you pick up during the sale? 

Don't forget to add the code word - CYBER {all caps} for an extra percentage off! :) 

Before I go - I wanted to share a hilarious 'hey girl' picture I saw today… my friend at 4mula for fun made this little meme…. and I had to show y'all! 

AND

Don't forget to check out the Educents bundles! I am part of the American History bundle! Woohoo! :) 

Favorite Halloween Literature

Last week I posted about a few of my favorite pumpkin books to use in the classroom. I wanted to share a few of my favorite Halloween books this time. I know many schools are not allowed to do anything 'Halloweeny'... So - if that is you - I'm sorry!

For those that are allowed....

 Here are a few of my faves... (I have almost 25 Halloween books.... so I picked a few...)

Monster Town

A cute book about different monsters throughout the town. This would be a great read-aloud followed by a monster writing activity! Students can cite information from the text to describe each monster and use this in their writing also! :) 

Haunted Castle on All Hallow's Eve

This is a fun Jack and Annie book that can be used as a read aloud over a week or two. Mary Pope Osborne provides a lot of opportunities for the children to practice visualizing since there are few pictures in the story. I can always find journal prompts from Magic Tree House books that the children enjoy completing quick writes about - so that is a great way to build writing endurance and practice writing about a given topic. 

Skeleton Meets the Mummy

Super cute story about a skeleton that is going trick-or-treating.... but gets a good scare! This can be used to practice sequencing and order of events. Point of view can also be discussed while reading this book, or in a mini-lesson before. As a response students can be asked who they would rather meet on a dark night in the forest and why - using some information from the text in their response. 

Nate the Great and the Halloween Hunt

Here is a favorite character to follow through the holidays! Nate and Sludge are at it again... this time trying to help Rosamond find her cat. Lots of adventures and costumes along the way! This would be good for sequencing events in a story, or story structure of a fiction book.

In The Haunted House

This story follows two children as they explore a haunted house. The characters are rarely seen, mostly just their feet - so this would be a good story to incorporate character traits and inferring character actions or ideas - the children should be able to put themselves into the character's place fairly easily. 

This can also be used to practice identifying rhyming words! :) 

Go Away, Big Green Monster

I love using this story for sequencing and a monster craft! Even though the story is about a monster, it is not very scary... pieces of the monster are introduced one page at a time... and build the while monster in the middle of the story. The children love getting to yell at the monster and watch as each turn of the page makes the monster disappear. This is wonderful for sequencing and making predictions! 

Halloween Is...

An illustrated nonfiction book to introduce children to the origins of Halloween. A KWL would be a good tool to use before reading this book, and then work in groups to compare and contrast what they thought Halloween was before reading, and what they know Halloween is about after reading. This is written by Gail Gibbons, she is one of my favorite non-fiction authors for little learners! 

Some other cute books that I love....

Skeleton Hiccups

Room on the Broom

and of course...

The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything 

:)

shamrocks and shenanigans...

I have been working away....

Still working on my mammals non-fiction unit. I'm having a LITTLE creativity block.

So, I took a break to make a game :) 

I made an addition race last week, but made a new expanded notation today.

Here are my previews - AND - I wanted to give a few away...

SOOOOOO

follow me! 

(if you don't already...)

leave a comment

follow my store..

whateves

winner, winner, chicken dinner....

And we have a winner in our Erin Condren e-card giveaway! 

Entry #24 was picked by rafflecopter!

Congrats and I'd love to know what you picked!

I've been working on two units this week (and weekend...) so stay posted and check my tpt store soon - Nikki at Melonheadz had the CUTEST valentine's graphic set today - free with purchase. 

And I purchased... :) 

Check it out - you still have a few hours left!

I'm in love with keys... 

I bought a necklace with a key charm for myself when I graduated with my Ed.S. three years ago. 

So when I saw this set I had to have it. Plus - I love Melonheadz designs, so it was win-win (if you ask me!)

Here are the two new products I've been working on . . . 

My friend Stacy over at Funky Fresh Firsties helped me with the super cute Homonym cover.

 Wonder if I can get her to do some of my others! :) 

I love creating things to use in my classroom and sharing them with others, but the covers are the HarDesT part for me! 

{this one is now finished... head over to tpt to check it out}

I'd love to hear your thoughts! Thanks for reading! I hope you have a great weekend!

Gingerbread Freebie

14 days until break... not that I'm counting...okay - I'm totally counting... :)

I was at a WIDA training all day yesterday, and the focus was writing and preparing our kids for the writing portion of the ACCESS test. I've been working on writing, but I completely suck am not the best writing teacher... I am NOT a good writing teacher - I'll admit that straight up

So today was interesting revamping my snowman lessons for this week...- we have been working on writing and the writing process - Since I have so many new ESL kiddos mixed in with my level 2's - I have been differentiating my scaffolding for them. We all started by listening to How to Make A Snowman on raz-kids. We filled in a little graphic organizer to get us thinking about snowmen. Then those of my kiddos that had a better grasp of the English language added some details and some information about their snowmen, while others practiced copying some wintery words.

I have an adjective sheet ready for my kiddos that level 3 and 4 - so they can focus on describing words and expanding their writing - adding more details...

 I have a four-square prepared for tomorrow - where we will work on sequencing a story - adding our details and information from today...and a sloppy copy prepped for Friday. (if we get that far)

I've been updating a lot of my gingerbread and snowman stuff in my tpt and wanted to offer a freebie to you all - I am blown away to have 80 followers and I wanted to celebrate by offering up a gingerbread notebook file (comparing a few versions of the gingerbread man stories)

click here to go to tpt to download for free!

and I'd like to give my newest unit - Henry and Mudge and the Snowman Plan to the first 5 people that comment! Please leave your email in the comment so that I can send it out to you.

And please - if you download the gingerbread freebie - I'd love some feedback!

Winter Linky

I love linky's... :) 

Here's a fun winter one - favorite winter things!

Favorite movies : Miracle on 34th Street

and The Christmas Story... classic...

My favorite holiday books: 

Kids - Henry and Mudge and the Snowman Plan -

 I like it so much I made a whole unit around it :) 

Check out the pictures below! :) 

and The Night Before Christmas

But - the best holiday thing of all - 

The smell of the evergreen trees and freshly chopped wood. 

Going to pick out a Christmas tree (NOT a holiday tree - don't even get me started with that) 

 is one of my favorite things to do. I wish I lived in a place where it snowed...and you could pick out your own, and chop it down, and bring it home...

BUT - no such luck... Maybe one day. 

AND the look on my children's faces on Christmas Morning. That is probably the best thing out of it all. 

What are your favorite holiday things? Link up and share! Make sure to tell Marie  - I sent you! :) 

Thanksgiving, Smanksgiving...

WOOOHOOO - A WHOLE WEEK OFF! 

(I'm not excited... I promise) :) 

I wanted to share some of the fun things we were able to do this week in my esol room - schedule changes and all. With the help of one of my tried and true Scholastic books - 

And some amazing tpt things from Kristen Smith...

    

............................................................................................................

We were able to discuss the different meals eaten by both groups and compare the traditional harvest meal to our Thanksgiving meal. We built Mayflower replicas and discussed what we would have brought on our trip. Many of my children are from Korea, so this was a good opportunity to connect the curriculum and discuss what they brought with them on the plane, and why. 

We used the cutest bubble maps in the world - to assess prior knowledge - and the kids held onto them and added information to the back as they learned more. (yes - I forgot to save paper and copy 2 sided...but my impromptu note guide worked fabulously!)

We learned new vocabulary words...

So - we worked in writing, speaking, and listening... :) 

I wanted to make Indian Corn - but we ran out of time :( Maybe next year I'll do a better job with the craftivities. 

Here are some of my kiddos at work...

Hmmmm....Can't find anymore pictures of the activities! Bummer!

For those of you that still have a few days left - Make sure to check out Kristen's units - they are jam packed with amazing resources!

amazing activities :)

I purchased a Halloween unit from Vicki Plant - I spent a lot of my time today laminating it... but I can't wait to use it! It's so adorable! There are alphabet matching activities, sound stretching activities, and emergent reader, rhyming word activities, and tons of math activities! This was such a super buy.

to visit her blog

to visit her tpt

Since I enjoyed her Halloween centers so much, I went to browse the rest of her tpt store and I found a few freebies - THAT ROCK!

and here is her latest one...

Go check them out and let me know what you think! I'm pretty sure you are going to love them as much as I do. :) Have a great week!

OH! I posted a new notebook file in my tpt

         

It has a few literacy and math activities, but is geared to my ELL kids, so it has a lot of labeling and pictures. Please let me know what you think! This is my first notebook file I've uploaded...so I'm a little nervous :) 

I survived!

okay- maybe that's a little drastic - but come on... it was MONDAY! :)

In honor of making it through my day (with only 4 more days until Fall Break), I'm going to offer up a little freebie today! YAYA!

I be so happy if you downloaded it and left some feedback! If you like this little version - I have a larger version available with 60 matches and two recording sheets. I hope your Monday was better than mine my friends.... :D

It's 6:10.... think I can talk my kids into going to bed early???
yeah - chances are slim {i have high hopes though!}

working my fingers to the bone

I have been hard at work this weekend - updating my tpt units for fall! Since this is my FAVORITE time of year I wanted to add a few literature circle units to my tpt store. :)

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/A-to-Z-Mysteries-Super-Edition-Mayflower-Treasure-Hunt

This unit is now 25 pages long AND has Common Core posters and I Can statement posters :)

The next one that I have been hard at work on.... Magic Tree House: Thanksgiving on Thursday. I am planning on adding to this one but if you'd like to review it for me, please let me know!


http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Magic-Tree-House-Thanksgiving-on-Thursday