Writing chart and activity

For the last few weeks, my kiddos have been working hard to produce long, juicy sentences with lots of details and adjectives. This is a chart that we made to summarise some of what we have been doing. 

My kids really enjoyed how I modelled how to write those two sentences and were eager to get in and try it for themselves. They sure are a sucker for colour ink and laminate because when I brought out these babies

they were literally bouncing up and down, ready to get started! All I did was print out some clip art images and laminate them. It's the simple things, right!!??

We talked about focusing on a moment and adding details instead of writing 'dawn to dusk' stories that were, in my students' voices  "BORING!!" (with thumbs down and a sad face!). We orally told some stories too, before I sent them back to give it a go. WOW, most turned out really good! I wish I took some photos!

They pictures were such a hit, that I think I'll leave them out for students to use as a visual writing prompt. I'll keep adding to them as the year goes on too. If you want to images, you can grab them in google docs here or by clicking the picture above.

4 days to go! Oh and by the way, 3 MONTHS OFF FOR SUMMER! I could hardly believe it when I read a comment (thanks Jennifer!) in regards to my 'curious' question in yesterday's post! Our 6 weeks (including teacher days), seems dismal in comparison!!

**Just a reminder, I am having a sale in my TpT store - get 20% off for the next few days!**

Easter Freebies, Easter Pack, Sale and I'm curious...

I know that many of my readers in the northern hemisphere are on, have been on or soon will be on Spring Break. I just love the name. We have our 'Spring break' in September and I've only ever called it the September holidays. Doesn't have the same ring to it. I am so happy that we are just about on our Easter holidays - 2 whole weeks off - Yippee!! I just have to get through this week. Reports have been done, parent/teacher interviews completed and we are just having to finish off some assessments. Over the holidays I am hoping to get a lot of stuff organised for our Term 2 curriculum. I feel like I've been chasing my tail all this term since we started delivering our new national curriculum. Hopefully, I can get ahead so that I can post more regularly and actually have time to take and post photos of what we've been doing class to share with you!

I procrastinated all day yesterday and made up an Easter pack and some freebies.  The Easter pack comes with:

1. Easter Egg Estimating, Measuring and Graphing
2. Easter Egg Groups/Multiplication
3. Easter/April Perimeter and Area (comes with two activities and recording sheets)
4. Easter Place Value HTO Matching
5. Egg Hunt Place Value (comes with two separate activities and recording sheets)

You can grab it here - it's only $1 per activity - but only $4 as part of my 20% off sale! 

I've also listed these freebies. The first is a colour/color by number activity. Both spellings of color/colour are included.

The second is a remake of my Sprint to 100 freebie that has had over 1000 downloads. It is the same game, but with a rabbit racing theme.

Click on the images to download. 

I'm also having a sale, just because. Get 20% off for the next few days. Check out my store here. 

Now, I've always been curious about the northern hemisphere holidays. On TV, the Summer holidays seem like they go for aaagges! Things like 'school's out for Summer' kind of thing. Do your holidays really go for the whole/most of Summer? Our end of school holidays are over Christmas and go for about 6 weeks (but we do have to go in earlier for teacher days and room setting up). Do yours go much longer?? 

*Kylie*

Giveaway and Product Update

Here's some more info about the giveaway I am participating in. The giveaway is hosted by Karla of Life in Special Education. Be sure to add your comments to her blog. As well as heaps of other prizes (valued at over $80!), you'll win my mini-beast math centres/centers.

 

Here are the other prizes you'll win:

$20 from Karla's Teachers Pay Teachers Store!

100 Riddles for the 100 Chart $4 by Linda Nelson

Super Sleuths Sentences $2.50 by Michelle Walker

Long and Short Vowel Sort $3 by HoJo

Spring Unit Combo Pack $10 by Valerie Young

Spelling Contract $2 by KnightsTeacher

Awesome Earth Day Activities $4 by Krystal Mills

Bug Ya: Basic Math Facts and Computation Game $2.29 by Scipi

Cootie Catchers-Contractions $5 by Stacy Mickelson

Springing into LiteracyStation $5.95 by Cynthia Vautrot

Nouns Mini Unit $4 by Tessa Maguire

Gumball Hard and Soft C $3 by The Teaching Bank

Monstering Multiplication $6 by A Series of 3rd Grade Events

Dolphins at Daybreak Novel Study $3 by TchrBrowne

My Mini-Beast Math Centers

Spring Math and Literacy Centers $8 by D Conway

So head on over now and start following these TpT stores and their owner's blogs. Links for blogs are over at Karla's blog (this post is already getting very long!). 

I've also had a request to update a product - my Place Value Numbers Invaders board game. 

The request was for a white background. What a great idea! Saves heaps on ink (not that I was thinking of that at the time.... I printed my copies at school!). So be sure to go and re download if you have purchased this in the past.

 Good luck in the giveaway!

Freebie US Money Snakes and Ladders games

Last year, I posted about my snakes and ladders board games. I actually made these while I was still a student teacher and didn't know that I could buy (or afford!) pretty graphics. Please don't be harsh!! I know it's not my best work but maybe someone can use it!

I have now updated them to have US money (thanks Sherry!). Click on each image to download them for free at TpT (since I don't know if I can put a zip file in google docs....). 

The first just has coins: 

 The second has note and coins: 

In other news, I'm not doing much :( I have finished report cards (yay!) and we are working towards our assessment for the end of our 5 week biography unit. Anyone else finding that these Australian curriculum units are just too hard for this time of year?? I'm getting used to working within the confines of the strict min-by-min schedule I've been given by our admin. I prefer the way I used to structure my day, but we gotta do what we gotta do. 

Free Words Their Word wort sorting schedule

Word sorting... not my best area. It is always the thing that gets left out when I am short of time - which is very often!! What I did last year with my class just isn't working with this bunch and with my schedule. Last year I had a very simple schedule. All students knew that on Day 1, they did ____ activity, on Day 2 they did _____ activity and so on. Each groups Day 1 was a different day. So, if I met with the Red Star group on Monday to introduce their new sort, that was their Day 1. But I met with the Blue Star group of Tuesday, so that was their Day 1 etc. It worked really well and the schedule took up hardly any space.

It just isn't working this year. It confuses the kids. I've played around with a couple of things while trying to keep it simple and toyed with the idea of having the schedule displayed on the interactive whiteboard, but I don't like having to wait for it to turn on and bring up the file when it only has to be up for such a short time. So I decided I had to show what each group is doing every day even though it will take up more room. This is what I think it will look like once I go in on Monday and put it up. 

It's a freebie on TpT (and Teachers Notebook once I get the chance).  It can be used on a bulletin board or pocket chart. It shows what activity each group will be doing each day while I meet with a group to introduce the sort.

It comes with days of the week and day numbers (e.g. Day 1, Day 2 etc) in case you do your word sorting over more than a week. I am notorious for running out of time and skipping a day here and there, so I will personally use the Day headings so I don't muck up the schedule!

The activities I have listed are ones I think are most common. Just let me know if you need any others made.

Enjoy your weekend! I'm laser skirmishing tomorrow - can't wait!

Ordinal Number freebie

This freebie is a little late coming. I've been coming home and crashing so I haven't been at my computer to upload this freebie. 

Students circle the ordinal number in word and number form. Covers ordinal numbers to 10th. For my Year 2 Aussie friends, this could be used to sign off Year 2 Net Phase C indicators 7.2 (identifies the order of items in a sequence using ordinal numbers to 'tenth') and 7.3 (identifies ordinal numbers in word and digit form).

 

Click on any picture to download from google docs. 

Also, if you have purchased my Mini-Beast Math Centers you may want to download again. I just wasn't happy with the graphic quality, I think because the file was so large (it was 68 MB before I converted it to PDF). I've played around with it in different programs, and the images look a lot clearer now.