Young Authors' Night + freebie

My school hosted a Young Authors' Night last week. Families were invited to come in the evening to their child's classroom to view their best writing. It was my first time participating in this event, so I was scrambling for fun ideas. I decided to use folders and decorate them with these cute pages I made using Scrappin Doodle graphics:

 I made boy and girl versions of each worksheet. The kiddos colored and completed all of the pages, then glued the cover to the front of the folder, the "about the author" page to the back, and slipped the "author dedications" page inside with all of their writing samples. I also stuck their school picture on the bio page and laminated all of the folders. They turned out so cute! 

 As I was looking up ideas for young authors' night on Pinterest, I came across the idea for a journal page with self-editing check boxes and decided to make my own:

 Just click on any of the images above and you can download these pages for FREE.

And I recently posted My Little Book of April Words on my TpT store! 

Just click on the image above to go straight to my TpT store. =)

St. Patrick's Day fun

I love any holiday - just another excuse for fun with my students!

Since St. Patrick's Day falls on the weekend this year, we celebrated on Friday. 

First we read this book:

and worked on my coordinating mini-book, which is part of my "There Was an Old Lady" pack.

At the end of the day, we had a special snack: leprechaun cookies (i.e. Oreos with green creme).

 FYI - these are soo good - the kids loved 'em!

and we finished up our rainbow craftivity, which I posted for free here.

(please ignore the super messy tables! ha)

 Don't they look so colorful and fun in the hallway??

A sale and a freebie!

Just for fun, I'm throwing a TpT sale for St. Patty's Day! Everything is 20% off Sunday only!

Just click the banner above to go straight to my store and check out Mrs. Wheeler's blog for more people hosting sales today!

Now, onto the freebie! It's that time of year when my students are getting antsy and needing a review of rules and expectations. We do everything in my class to positively promote good behavior- earn beads in a jar (full jar = a reward!), pass out "Super Citizen Awards" (which I have as a freebie here), earn table points, etc. 

I really wanted a way to recognize a few students each week who went above and beyond in class, but always ran out of time at the end of the day to write personalized notes home, so I created this "Star Student" award. It's designed to print two to a page to conserve paper. I print it out on neon-colored paper to make it flashy and comment throughout the week when the kids are getting crazy, "hmm...I wonder who'll be a Star Student this week." I still left space for some personalization, because I think that's important.

Just click on the image above to get it FREE from Google Docs!

Monthly mini books + a March freebie!

For this week's Manic Monday freebie, a preview of my newest TpT product: a set of emergent  reader mini-books for each month of the year.

I also wanted to share about a brand-NEW educational site that I just found out about!

Educents is a daily deal site like Groupon or Living Social, but for students, educators, and parents. It will offer discounted software, online courses, curriculum, and other educational materials. The best part is that if you click on the picture above, you can register on their site for a FREE $15 gift card to use when their site goes live in April! I've already signed up for mine!

And an update for my St. Patrick's Day craftivity freebie from last week's Manic Monday! A picture of the finished product:

If you missed it, simply click on the picture.

ABC Mini-Books & a Freebie!

For Manic Monday this week, I have a cute St. Patrick's Day craftivity to share. 

I had in mind what I wanted do with my kiddos, but couldn't find exactly what I wanted, so I made my own and decided to share with all of you! Just click on the picture below to get it from my TpT store!

And I am SO excited to post about my newest TpT product, because it's been in the works for the past month. This is definitely the biggest project I've ever taken on (500+ pages!). Click on the picture below to go straight to it. Find the new SPANISH version here.

Mini emergent books - which are quickly becoming my favorite thing to create - are included for each letter of the alphabet. This project definitely fed into my clip art craze, as I had a good reason to buy even more! In fact, PayPal thought I was purchasing too much clip art online because it temporarily suspended my account, thinking it had been hacked! haha. Ah, the addictions of a teacher. :)

A quickie preview:

This pairs perfectly with my FREE My Book of ABCs I posted last week! 

Happy Birthday Dr. Suess!

For Read Across America/Dr. Seuss's birthday celebration, we had quite a fun day in my class!

We wore our pajamas, got to bring blankets and stuffed friends, and spent the last 30 minutes of the day reading in the gym with other classes.

One of our favorite parts of the day was making this cute Dr. Seuss craft from A Cupcake For the Teacher:

A Cat in the Hat birthday cake! I created a little writing worksheet to go along with it and added some glitter to the candles (which one of the kiddos called witch fingers, haha!). Boy, were they excited about a little glitter! I'm sure our janitor was very happy cleaning up our room that night, but it sure made our room look cheery! 

Finished product!

For math, we worked on a fun Cat in the Hat math worksheet, which was a freebie from Fun in K/1. Check it out on her site here: 

http://www.funink1.com/2013/02/march-is-coming.html