Friday Freebie and Currently

Currently time! And this time I'm not behind lol. Farley is having her May currently link up.

See, I finally figured out how to make it big lol :)

I saw a fantastic thing in a first grade team at a school I sub for. They call it High Five words. Each teacher has a huge hand on their door and there are words on sticky notes or words on sentence strips taped on to the hand. When students are lining up to go somewhere, the teacher points to a word and the kiddos have to say it to go out. This reminds me of the password to get into the rooms I've seen on blog land.

I created a simple freebie of a hand that kids could write their words of the week, whether it's high frequency words or theme/unit words. I could see these on desks or on the white board. This would be perfect for those times that you have a spare few minutes (sometimes we have those!). I could even envision the teacher saying "High Five" and the kids practice those words.

Click the hand to go to Google Docs.

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Happy Friday!

Happy Friday! I feel exhausted today, even though I only worked 2 days this week (the district had 2 days of conferences). I had a pretty good 4th grade class today and despite some technical difficulties during one of my lessons, the day went pretty smooth.

My necklace came! I can wear it long or short, so cool!

I got so many comments today about it.

Ok, here's a freebie for you. It's Kites in the Sky Story Elements. Story elements are written in the kite or the tail. I've included both plus a title for a bulletin board.

You can get it HERE.

Happy Friday!

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This Post is Going to Explode in 3...2...1...

Brace yourself, it's a full post of tons of stuff today. You may need to grab a snack and a drink, if you haven't already!

So on Monday was the favorite/popular post, right? Well you guys blew my original popular post by several hundred more views. So my Bunny Hop freebie is my most popular now, woohoo! Thanks to all those that hopped over and to those that left me some loving. Now I don't feel so bad about posting the pics of me. In pjs and glasses.

I also found out Monday that I won a piece of jewelry from a friend who sells Cookie Lee jewelry. All I had to do was pick anything from her catalog, put the page number and she would draw names later. Well only 6 of us entered and her daughter drew my name!  It should be arriving any day and I'll take a pic of it when it gets here, but this is what it looks like:

Can't wait!

Now for April's Currently from Farley at Oh Boy 4th Grade.

One of these days I'll get it bigger! Lol.

Link up if you haven't yet!

Still there? Ok, good! 1/2 way done :)

I've been tagged by Amy over at The Crazy Adventures of a University Grad.

Here Are The rules:

* Post these rules

* Answer the 10 questions that the tagger posted for you

* Create 10 questions of your own to ask the people that you're about to tag

* Tag 10 people and link them with your post (and let them know they've been tagged!)

And Amy's questions were:

1.  If you could live anywhere where would it be and why?

I would live in Europe because I have family over there, it's beautiful, and I love having fresh bread every morning.

2.  What is you favorite thing to do on a Sunday afternoon?

Stay in my pjs, blog, cuddle with my cat, and read my Kindle.

3.  What is the best book you've ever read and why?

That's a tough one...I've read a ton, but I think I'm going to have to go with Heaven is For  Real because it has special meaning to me and has a powerful message.

4.  What is your favorite classroom book and why?

 Daily 5 because it has so much info.

5.  What is your favorite non-teaching blog?

Skinnytaste, because she has amazing recipes that healthy but taste fabulous!

6.  If you could go away on vacation, where would you go?

Back to Hawaii. I had such a great and relaxing time there.

7. Which blogs do you stalk routinely?

Oh my word, I stalk a ton. No seriously, I have tons of blogs each day (if you're reading this, you probably are one of them!). Currently I'm stalking the newbie blogs, which I'll be giving a shout out tomorrow and Saturday because I have several. 

8. What is your favorite subject to teach and why?

Literacy: reading and writing. I love reading what students write and to see how their thought processes go.

9.  What grade do you love teaching?

I adore 1st and 2nd grade :)

10.What is your favorite animal?

Tigers! And I've been fortunate enough to have held tiger cubs.

Ok, so now I have to think of 10 questions and 10 bloggers (who haven't been tagged yet).

I'm tagging:

Jamie at Thrills in 3rd Grade

Kelley at Buggy for Second Grade

Ms. Lou at Pencils With Pizazz

Becky at Teaching, Learning, Loving

Vicky at  Traditions, Laughter, and Happily Ever After

 Ms. Jessica at A Turn to Learn 

Corinna at Surfin' Through Second Grade

Stacy at 2nd Grade Paradise

Mr. Jones at First Upon a Time

Cortney at Once Upon  a Substitute

My questions for you:

1. If you could teach any grade, what would it be?

2. What is the one thing you couldn't live without in your classroom?

3. What's one thing you need in your classroom?

4. What's your favorite school lunch?

5. Do you have a favorite tv show?

6. Do you have writers's block as a blogger sometimes?

7. What talent you would like to be able to do? 

8. Who's your favorite musician/group right now?

9. Best teaching moment ever?

10. Any funny sayings or happenings that happened in your class this week yet?

Ok, I'll be contacting my tagging victims participants soon!  This long post is almost over! I have a unit in my store called "Catch a Sentence." I have correct sentences and incorrect sentences on butterflies. Students 'catch' the incorrect sentences that have misspellings, missing capitals, missing punctuation, or wrong word tense with a net (paper) and then record the sentences. Yay to the person that already bought one. Thank you!

At my TN store.

I'll give away a free copy to the first 5  that leave their e-mail address :) 

Whew. That's the end of that post. I think this is one of my longest ever!  Happy Wednesday to you!

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Pick Up Sticks, Jenga, and Math

My mind is swirling. With thoughts of today and thoughts of things to invent and math. Today was a so-so day in 4th grade. Sent a kid to the office, had two kids sent to the office during lunch (someone tattled that they were fighting) and wrote down some names for the teacher. And they have a field trip tomorrow, poor teacher.

I get to spend the next three days in the same class, which will be a 2nd grade class. That makes it nice, some stability.

While I was in 1st grade a few weeks back, one of the most squirreliest kids was focused on pick-up sticks. She and two kids placed the sticks on top of each other and tried taking them off one by one and not make any move. Which got me thinking of how to use that for education. I couldn't think of anything but another thought popped into my head.

Now I'm sure it's been done before and I'm not the first to invent it, but I ran this idea by another teacher today who thought this was a brilliant idea and said he and I should collaborate and create a game (he has an art background and actually knows someone who invents games/art stuff so now I have a connection!).

Jenga blocks! Put math equations on them and the kids solve them as they take a block off. You could have them record their answers/equations on a sheet too. You can use this in literacy too. Write high frequency words or sentences on the Jenga blocks and have them record them.

Or you could have theme questions on the blocks. Or you could have the kids do it in reverse and read the block first and then build the tower. I'm thinking labels or stickers would totally work, in case you want to swap out the stickers and not write on the block. And I know that thrift stores have Jenga blocks a lot.

Something like this for literacy.

Something like this for math.

And the recording sheet could be lines or if you label the bricks  A, B, C then have lettered lines.

Ahhh the ideas! Have you seen this done before? Do you do this? Or am I just nuts? Lol.

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Bossy and Bully E

I've been in first grade a lot the last few weeks and one class I was in was focusing on the bully 'e'. They even had bully 'e' bingo. You'll just love how bully/bossy e looks!

Isn't he cute? Well for a bully that is!

The kids have a song they sing about e and how he makes the vowels say their name.  Can't remember it but something about how 'bossy e makes the vowels say the name and the vowels do the talking while bossy e goes  walking."

Here is their bingo game. The kids have to say the name of the word and then check their gamecard for the word .

And over at Ms. Smartie Pants' blog, she has a song about bossy e! Cute!

Now I'm  not feeling super hot otherwise I'd work on a bully e bingo freebie for you, but I'll try to have it done by Friday. So be on the look out for a bully e bingo set. Have a great week everyone!

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