Hippo Hooray's Giveaway!

Hey everyone,
Hippo Hooray for Second Grade is celebrating 1,000 with a great giveaway!  Click HERE to check out the giveaway.

I'm so excited to be part of this giveaway and so excited for Angela over at Hippo Hooray for Second Grade!  Good luck!!

Adventures in Clipart!

Hey everyone.
I am so excited to share about my newest adventure… clipart! :)  I have been wanting to try to make my own clipart for a long time and this week I FINALLY posted my first few sets.  I love them :).  I have had so much fun drawing this week thanks to our 4 snow days.

Here are my first few sets… the first two are FREEBIES!

These are the rest of my sets :).

You can click on any of the pictures to see that clipart set in my TPT shop!

I hope you like them :).

Enjoy!

Hopping in a Winter Wonderland!

Get ready to HOP people!!

So here is how this works...

Start by going to my FACEBOOK page.

Click on the "FB HOP" button once you are there.  It looks like this:

Then you will see a whole list of bloggers.  Here is a snippet of what it looks like:

Start by clicking on the first button which will take you to my freebie.  

Download, save, print, whatever you want to do with that freebie and then close out those windows.  You want to get back to the list of bloggers on my Facebook page.  Everything should open up into a new window to make it easier for you to get back to the "hop."

Make your way through all the bloggers as they will ALL have FAB stuff for you...for FREE!!!  

Each new FB page will have the same "FB Hop" image- just find that and click there.

Make sure you like the page to get your free product.

Oh and say "Hi" and "Thanks" while you are there... we love your comments/feedback!

Ok.. what are you waiting for... GO HOP!!

More Elf on Our Classroom Shelf Fun!

Hey everyone,
I'm so excited to show you what our silly classroom elf, Lillybell, was up to last week.  I think I had a little too much fun with our elf on the shelf this year haha.

Lilly spent the day hanging out in the tree in our classroom.

Then Lillybell and her friend Socks took a cruise in Lillybell's new car!  My husband and I can get pretty crafty.  I brought home a tissue box and said I wanted to make a car for Lillybell... He said "if we're going to make a car, we're going to make a good one."  So one shipping box and a little paint later, this is what was created.  I'm pretty impressed with this little hidden talent my husband has :).

Socks stuck around to hang out with Lillybell for the rest of the week.  They decided to play a little Jenga.

They spent the next day hanging out on our "First Day of 2nd Grade" picture frame.

On their last day in our classroom, Lillybell and Socks painted portraits of each other.  As you can see, Lillybell is a much better artist then little old Socks. They also left the kiddos a note and some candy :).

I loved having the elf on the shelf in our classroom this year.  My kiddos seemed to enjoy it too.  Each day the filled out a page in their "Elf on our classroom shelf" journal and explained what Lillybell was doing that day.  They also got to draw a picture of what she was doing that day, which was so fun to see!

Now I get to relax (kind of) for two weeks!  Maybe I can use this time to get our house clean and catch up on some Lock Smock orders! :)  I hope you all have a relaxing and restful Christmas break.

Oh! I almost forgot!  Now the following photo does not reflect the education system in our county… I'm sure the person that did this moved here from somewhere else ;).

I know it is kind of blurry so if you can't see it is says "Marry Cristmas."  Yikes!  

I hope you all have a Merry Christmas! 

Elf on Our Classroom Shelf!

Hey Everyone!
I can't believe Christmas break is only one week away! Woohoo! I am in desperate need of some rest and relaxation.  This is my favorite time of the year.  I LOVE all of the beautiful Christmas lights and decorating the house and my classroom.

This year we had a little scout elf come to our room again!  I am having so much fun with this little lady.  My class has named her Lillybell… How adorable is that!?!?!  I have been posting all of the things Lillybell is doing in our classroom on my Instagram using the #elfonourclassroomshelf.  Here are some of the silly things she has done the last couple of weeks:

Santa sent a special gift to our classroom… our new elf Lillybell!

The students each wrote a note to Santa and we asked Lillybell to take them to him that night.  One kiddo wrote that another student said the elf wasn't real.  Seeing that this child was going to tattle on him for saying that, the student quickly apologized to Santa in his letter :). 

Lillybell decorated our room by writing her name all over the place!

We are working on "How to" writing in our classroom, so Lillybell thought she would join the fun and write her own "How to"… How to be on the nice list.

Then she tied all of our Dr. Seuss characters up with twinkle lights!

The next day, Lillybell and another second grade teacher's elf, Snowflake, had a party at the copy machine! They took some pretty cute pictures.

Here is a close up of the cute pictures Lillybell and Snowflake took at their "Copy Party".

Lillybell helped dress up our tree by adding some cute ornaments and a few presents around the bottom.

Lillybell tried to add a touch of Christmas to our room by putting up some twinkle lights… she broke half the strand in the process.  Oops!

We had a rough day in our classroom, so Lillybell needed a break.  Her dog Steven watched the kids that day so she could be well rested for the next day.

The kiddos were so good and let Lillybell rest the day before. She decided it was a good day to relax in a bubble bath.

You have to admit… Lillybell had this coming :).

This is just the start of all the fun we are having with the elf on our classroom shelf!  I can't wait to show you what she has been up to this week.

Enjoy!

Cyber Monday & Tuesday!

Hey Everyone!
I hope your TPT carts are loaded and ready to go because tomorrow TPT is having their Cyber Monday & Tuesday sale!

You can get up to 28% off in my TPT shop Monday and Tuesday, December 2nd and 3rd. Use the promo code above at checkout!  I am also keeping my shop on sale through Wednesday, December 4th! That means you will still get 20% off in my shop through the 4th.

I'm off to fill up my TPT shopping cart and get ready for the sale!

Enjoy!

My 2 New Obsessions...

Hey everyone,

I cannot believe I have not blogged in over a month!  Yikes!  I have been so buys lately, my poor blog has been neglected.  Well today I am finally posting about my 2 new obsessions!  Ready for it...

Making regular worksheets into...  POSTERS! :)  and Common Core Reading: Comprehension Strategy Sheets for K-2 Fiction Standards by Jen Jones!

I am in love with the Common Core Reading: Comprephension Strategy Sheets for K-2 Fiction Standards from the fabulous Jen Jones!  She has sooooo many amazing comprehension strategy sheets in her pack on TPT and she also has a Common Core RIT: Comprehension Strategy Sheets for K-2 Informational Reading set.  They are amazing!  You can use these sheets for so many different reading lessons and activities.  This year, I have been using them by blowing them up into posters and am loving them as formative assessments.

The students LOVE making these fun posters and I love how excited they are for reading now :).  Here are some of their posters...

For this lesson, the students were split up into groups and given a book to read with their group.  Then they got a Common Core Reading: Comprehension Strategy Sheet (that I had blown up to poster size) and worked with their group to retell the story.  When they were finished, we put their posters up on our Reading Wall.

I've been using so many of the reading strategy sheets from Jen Jones this year.  My kiddos seem to get so excited when they get to show what they've learned on a poster... and they are so proud when they see it displayed in the room.

To blow up the regular sized sheets to poster size, I just went to our school copier and found a button that says "Reduce/Enlarge".  In that setting, you can pick to blow an 8 1/2 x 11 paper to 11 x 17 (I think that is the size :) ).  We have the large paper at school that we can put in the copier, but you could also cut a large piece of construction paper to fit.

After my kiddos had fun showing what they learned on the posters, I used the regular sized reading strategy sheets as a formative assessment.

Paisley helped me grade them :)

To check out the reading strategy sheets, head on over to Jen Jones'- Hello Literacy TPT Shop!

Enjoy!