Wednesday, June 29, 2016

4th of July Give Away Alert! Let "FREE"dom ring!


Hey friends! Are you ready for some 4th of July celebrations? Well I am super excited to team up with the fabulous Ashley over at The Blessed OCDiva for a “Let ‘Free’dom Ring” give away next week! Entry is going to be easy peasy and required in order to win. You will get to choose one product of your choice from each of our TPT stores!!! If you have not already followed our stores, blogs, or FB pages please do! That way you will get the first notifications for when we go live! 
OH! And there will be TWO winner winner chicken dinners!! Please share this info with all your friends and keep your eyes peeled Monday!

UPDATE!! (finally)

Wow-my poor, little blog has been collecting dust for WAAAY too long. Some years are just busier than others and as with life, some days are longer and it still seems you can't get it all done. ((SIGH))

BUT...I did take the time yesterday to update my Great Sub Reference Binder for the 2016-2017 school year. I have had 2 requests recently from potential buyers so I knew it was time!


This has continued to be my top #1 seller.

 I created it for myself many years ago when I first went on maternity leave when I had my daughter. I was able to provide my long term sub with all the important info and she was so grateful. 

Then two years later when we were blessed with another pregnancy, I revamped my sub binder for my sub and I was able to make it even better. 

Fast forward several more years and it was and still is my top seller on TpT. Last year, I participated in the TpT Seller Challenge and gave it a complete makeover...




I loved how it turned out! It is now updated with the 2016-2017 calendar, so be sure to check it out. Here's a sneak peek at a calendar page. 



If you have already purchased, then all you need to do is go into your purchases page and download the latest version.

Don't have a sub binder yet? This could be great for a short-term sub, too! Once you have it prepared, it can stay on your desk for whenever you have to be out! This page could be handy...

Simply enter your text and print! 

This binder also includes black and white pages for easy printing. :)


CLICK HERE to go straight to the link!

I'm also working hard this week to update my teacher binders...I will be adding a planner to the binder, too! I'll be sure to post when I have them ready to go!

Thanks for reading and HAPPY SUMMER!

Sunday, January 3, 2016

The Great Reindeer Rebellion Letter Writing Activities

I'm going to do it. I'm going to actually type up a blog post. It may be a miracle. I had such high hopes that over the break I would blog all about some of our super fun class activities. I planned to share with the world all the awesome things my sweet little class has done so far this school year.

But, instead...

I spent time with my family.

Ate a lot of yummy treats. 

Drank a couple cups of tasty coffee (a day).

Went shopping and spent most of my gift cards on new things. Whoo-hoo!

Binge-watched all the Star Wars movies (in order!)

I cannot complain, it has been a great 2 weeks off.
That is what a "BREAK" is all about and I certainly made the most of it! 

However, the guilt started to overcome me as I woke up on this last morning of our break. I just had to do something. So here it is. I will take you back in time to 2015, before our winter break to share all about a letter writing activity we did with the book, The Great Reindeer Rebellion by Lisa Trumbauer.


If you haven't read this book, well, you should! It is super cute and this year was the first time I had read it to my class. Thanks to my amazing teammate over at the Polka-Dotted Pencil, for planning  writing for our team and coming up with the cute idea. 

Basically, it's about the Reindeer going on strike. They are tired of pulling Santa's sleigh and come up with a list of (comical) demands that must be met in order for them to help fly Santa's sleigh again. But before the demands come, Santa seeks out to find different animals to pull his sleigh. But, of course, no other animals work out. The Reindeer are clearly the best option but they have a few requests.

Before the requests were read aloud to the class, I stopped reading there and turned it over to the kids asking, "If you were one of Santa's reindeer, what would you demand?" 

We brainstormed some ideas as a class and had a fun class discussion. We reviewed the parts of a friendly letter as the kids would be writing to Santa directly to share their requests.
They were so excited to get started.

I decided to type up some printables to go with it. 


First, the kids came up with their plan for their letter to Santa. 


Then they used this sheet to write their letter....



Then just as a cute touch, I added this cute reindeer topper from The First Grade Schoolhouse, you can download her cute reindeer template FREE.

Here are some examples....turned out super cute and they had a blast. 






Once all of our letters were complete, I thought it would be fun to have students read them aloud TO SANTA!!

Since the big man was quite busy up in the north pole, I pulled up an image on my computer and projected on my screen for the class. They stood up once I called their reindeer name and read them persuasively to Santa. It was so fun!

The kids really got into it. 





Here's a cute video of one of my Dancer reindeer reading her letter. 


I also added another writing activity to bundle up with this FREEBIE.

This one was for the kids to write about a different type of animal to guide Santa's sleigh. This could also be used with the letter-writing pages in the set. 




If you would like to snag this for your class to use next Christmas, you can find it HERE at my 
TpT store. It's FREE!

Enjoy and have fun!!

Happy New Year!!