End of the Year Gift Idea

I know many of you will be finishing up this week.  We still have one more week.  The end is near.  Even though I am definitely ready for summer, it is always bittersweet to end another school year.

A couple of weeks ago, I was at Dollar Tree picking up some things for our Mother's Day celebration.  I came across the pinwheels.  I have purchased these in the past and used them for reading.

This time I wanted to do something different with the pinwheels.  I decided to buy one for each of my students.  I wrote each child's name on one of the petals.  Then on the remaining petals, I wrote character traits of that child.

I plan on putting these in the ground by the sidewalk outside of our door on the last day of school.  Then students will be able to take them home at the end of the day.  I think they'll love reading about each other.  It's a fun, feel good gift for your students.

 



Indiana Bloggers Blog Hop FREEBIE

When people hear Indiana, one of the first things they usually think of is racing and the Indianapolis 500.  This famous race always takes place during Memorial Day weekend.  I have to be honest with you.  I don't like racing!  I may be banned from the state, but it has just never interested me.  I've been to the Indy 500, but it still didn't do much for me.  However, I'm more than happy to participate in this fun Indiana Bloggers "racing themed" blog hop.

So, "Ladies and Gentlemen. Start your engines" and lets get moving through some great freebies!

 

I created this fun freebie to use last week with my kiddos and they LOVED it!

 

 I printed off two copies of the sight words and spread them out across the carpet in two rows.  Students were grouped into two teams.  They took turns racing through their sight words.



 

They had so much fun racing each other that I don't think they had any idea that they were practicing their sight words.

 

You can download this freebie by clicking on the cover page above or by going to my TpT store HERE.

 

Now it's time to continue on through the Blog Hop.  You may have come from Twenty Something Teacher Tales.  If not, you can go back and visit her.

If you are continuing through the blog hop, your next stop is my good friend Rebecca!

 

Thanks for stopping by for our Indiana Bloggers Blog Hop!

T Shirt Giveaway

 

We at Freebielicious are so excited to announce teaming up with A+ Teacher Images (the greatest t-shirt company for teachers and more, in case you haven't heard of them!). We all received the fanciest custom designed t-shirt we've ever owned AND now we can give a t-shirt of the winner's choice from each of our individual blogs.

I just love my t-shirt because it is so much more than just a shirt.  It represents friendships, fun, and business relations (oh wait and STYLE, of course!) all in one "blinging" design.  Where else could you get all that from one t-shirt?  A  special thanks goes out to Doug from A+ Images.  He worked with us to make just the right shirt to represent our company and is still giving us a shirt to give one lucky winner for each of our blogs!

 

We have made this giveaway super easy for you to have almost 50 chances to win one of 23 t-shirts.  It is a blog hop, so you can enter as many or as few giveaways you would like!  The contest begins Saturday, May 18th, at 8:00 a.m. EST and ends on Sunday, May 19th, at 12:00 a.m. EST.  Winners will be announced on the following Monday. Easy peasy, lemon-squeezy!  Start by entering my giveaway here:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

If you don't win one of the giveaways, but you see a shirt that you really just have to have, they are offering our Freebilicious followers 20% off orders of $20 or more by using the code: FREE20

I will definitely be ordering more of these shirts! 

 

Next, you will head over to Little Miss Kindergarten and enter there and keep going until your fingers are too tired to hit click (that is how simple we made it for you!).

 

Go to our Freebielicious Facebook page and like us so you never miss a freebie or giveaway like this one!

 

Summer Activity Calendar

Can you feel summer?  It is getting so close.  Even though it's hard to imagine on days where it's 34 degrees in the morning.  Yuck!  I need some warm weather.

Even though it may not feel warm yet, I know summer is coming because my firsties are seriously getting some summer fever. 

To keep my student's brains engaged over the summer, I will be sending home this calendar of activities.

Just click on the picture above to download it from TpT.  I have included a dated calendar as well as a calendar without dates.

So, can you feel summer yet? 



Mother's Day Celebration

Today I had a Mother's Day Celebration in my classroom.  It's the first time I've ever done this and it was great!  This will definitely be a new tradition in my classroom every year. 
 

Throughout the week, we worked on some things for our mothers.

First, we completed this Mother's Day Booklet. {Click on the picture for the free download.}

 

We also completed some activities from Cara's packet.

 

It was amazing how hard they worked on these!  All to impress their mothers :)

 

We also made these vases with our fingerprints. {I found this idea on Instragram from Fabulous in First.} I just bought the vases from Dollar Tree and we used acrylic paint.

I purchased two dozen roses this morning so I could put a rose in each of the vases. 



We also practiced poems all week to read. {Click on the picure below to download the poems that we used.}

 

When the mothers came into our room, they were able to get a snack and a drink with their child.  Then I gave each child a "Mom, Let's Talk" bag.

Each bag contained questions that mothers and their child could discuss with each other.  It was so amazing to listen to the conversations my students were having with their mothers.  They had the biggest smiles on their faces listening to their mom tell them stories.  Too sweet!

 

{Click on the picture below to download the questions.}

 

After the students had conversations with their mothers and gave them their folders, it was time to read our poems. 

 

To wrap up our celebration, I made a slide show with each child's picture and a quote.  I had asked each student to tell me the best thing about their mom. 

 

 

It was such a wonderful morning!

Teacher Appreciation Sale

I'm sure you've heard the word, but just in case you haven't....it's sale time at TpT.

Graphic by Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah-Designs

My entire store will be on sale for 20% off, then you can add the promo code {TAD13} to get an additional 10% off.

Just recently, I bundled my entire year of fluency passages together.

 

I also bundled together my Monthly Poems and Songs {September-May} into one packet.

 

I gave my End of the Year Activities a facelift.

 

Here are some of my favorite items from my store.

 

Click here to visit my TpT store.

 



How I Teach Science {Be a Fly on My Wall}

One of the biggest questions for any classroom teacher is "How do you have time to teach Science and/or Social Studies?"  The answer is: "Integrate, integrate, integrate!"

The past two weeks we have been learning about Space.  It worked out perfectly because space was our weekly theme in our reading series so we were already reading fiction and nonfiction books about space.

We also used my space themed fluency passages from my April Packet.

 

Our writing this week was themed around space as well.  We wrote narratives about a trip to the moon.  We also did some informative writing about the sun.  {I forgot to take pictures.}

 

Our stations were space themed as well.

The students work on stations everyday while I work with small groups.  Last week, I was pulling individual students for end of the year testing.  Unfortunately, that will be the routine for basically the remainder of the school year. 

In our spare time through the week, we completed many of the activities in my Space Unit.

We made silly sentences to learn the order of the planets.

 We read about the sun, the moon, and the planets.

 We learned all about moon phases.

 We made constellations out of marshmallows and toothpicks, then we wrote about them.

 

Do I have time to do all of these extra things for science each week?  Unfortunately, no :(  But, I try to integrate it as much as possible and include the fun activities as often as I can. 

How do you teach science in your classroom?