New Unit~All About Antarctica, Penguin Parade and a sale

Aloha bloggers,

I am throwing a sale!! Whooohoooo....just click the pic below for awesome savings in my store.

And...I finally finished my newest unit~All About Antarctica, Penguin Parade

QR Code FREEBIE LOVE of Owl Babies

Aloha blogger friends,

In my classroom I follow the Daily 5 (new) structure in the mornings. For listen to reading my students can listen to books on CD or listen to reading on the iPads. Each week I make a sheet that they have to do before they work on any other apps in the "reading" folder on the iPads. I always choose a book to tie in with what we are learning about and this week it is Owl Moon.

My students use the "scan" app and are completely independent! Whoohooo...

I thought you might like it too...I would love your feedback in the comments below...

Peek at My Week~11-17-14

Aloha Blogger friends,

I really should be cleaning my house, but I wanted to post my plans for the week. I will keep it quick...

 



Math Daily 3~The first of many $2 for 20 Math Packs and FREEBIE LOVE

Aloha blogging ohana,

I am soooo excited to share my newest product with you. It seems like every week when I am planning my math block for the following week, I am looking for additional cute, creative ways to either reinforce a past concept or supplement the current concept.

In my school we use Houghton Mifflin for our math curriculum. I choose to structure my math block with a Math Daily 3 flair. This is how it goes down each day:

1. Fluency-flash cards, math around the world, songs, goNoodle (math related), etc. I use a lot of the fluency cards from the Guiding Firsties Units.

2. I Do-I introduce the concept using Anchor Charts, manipulatives, etc.

3. We Do-Students work in pairs (peanut butter and jelly pairs in my room! thanks to DeeDee and Deanna) to practice the concept. I use a lot of activities from the Guiding Firsties packs.

I also make a lot of my own which will be added weekly like the $2 for 20 pack below. This picture of the class graph came from a freebie I made. Click the picture to grab it...

4. You Do-Students complete a sheet independently from my math curriculum to show that they have mastered the concept.

In between these little mini-sessions students are working on the Math Daily 3 Choices. In my classroom those options are Math By Myself, Math with Someone and Math Writing. We absolutely love this time of day and soon I will post and share goodies!

You can see the Math Daily 3 Board (kind of) beside the SmartBoard. I will get a closer picture soon...

So, here is my newest product for only.....$2!!! It's a steal...I don't know why, but I feel compelled to sell these at a really reasonable price as a way of saying thank you, and becoming a staple in your classroom :)!

Here is a little FREEBIE LOVE for you...

Peek at My Week 10-20-14 and an Insect Pictograph Freebie

Aloha Bloggers,

It has taken me waaaayyyy toooo long to put together my lesson plans for this week. I still have a to-do list a mile long, so I will keep this short. Here are my lesson plans for this week:

And here is the little graphing freebie for you:

 

 

It has been too long!!

Aloha bloggers,

Wow! Where do I begin. I have been on a little hiatus, although I didn't mean to. Let's see since I last posted on here I have run a seven week Summer Camp at my school, gone on a big vacation to the mainland including driving 15 hours in one day and started the school year with a bang.

Life is good. I am thankful.

Back to teaching. I finally uploaded my All About South America unit today to TpT. It only took, oh, I don't know six months to complete. Ha! At this rate I will be retired by the time I upload all of my units to TpT.

 

 

Happy three day weekend!!

 

Peek at My Week ~3.24.14 Finishing Up South America and a FREEBIE

Aloha blogger friends,

I am just about ready for this busy week. We are having a Rainforest Bake Sale on Tuesday to raise money to help protect the rainforest (that also helps my little friends with coins since they are the cashiers). On Wednesday we have our Parent Night where my students will share a bit about what they have learned this month with their parents and then they will do all sorts of activities with their families. It is always sooooo fun!

Here is a little peek at my week:

This will be our last week of learning about the rainforest...up next will be the ocean!

I have spent a lot of time working on this baby, I hope to have it posted by this evening. It is jam-packed with a little bit of everything about South America. It is over 100 pages now and I am adding more!

Here's a little FREEBIE for you! If you like Cara Carroll's idea of the Brown Bag book club, you can use this with several books, but I gave the suggestion of The Great Kapok Tree. Just click and print...

Happy Sunday!

Spring Break FREEBIE

Aloha blogger ohana,

I am so thankful for Spring Break and a little bit sad that it is almost over. Last year I posted this little freebie. It worked like a charm when my little friends returned from Spring Break. I had them on their desks when they walked in. We started our morning circle as usual and then part way through I dismissed them to go and fill in their Spring Break Postcards. They worked so hard, the room was silent. Then we all came back to the circle rug and shared. In case you would like it here it is:

It's A Small World After All~New Unit Posted on TPT!!

Aloha Blogger Friends,

I am soooooo excited that it is Spring Break and I just posted my new unit on Teachers Pay Teachers. It is called It's a Small World After All. I have been using it in my classroom this year and am loving what my students are learning from it. The other day we were working on a little South America collage activity and one of my students said "Mrs. Christian, is that line the equator?" It was one of those moments that I almost fell on the ground...in a good way! I told him to go check on the globe. It was a magic moment when he spun the globe right to South America and said "yep, that's it."

Don't you just love that type of reflective, exploratory learning?

Well, here it is...months in the making:

It's available now on TpT...just click above! 

And guess what? My store's on sale for the next 24 hours!!!! So click...fast and get it!! Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

Fairy tale update and a Writer's Workshop Freebie

Aloha blogger friends!

I wanted to stop by quickly to post my lesson plans for the week. I am going to Mexico on Friday and worked today to get prepared for my awesome sub "Mrs. Chrissie" next week as well. We are super busy with fairy tales, balance and motion and maps around here. There are a few pictures below...we had snow up on Mauna Kea! Have a wonderful week friends!!

This is the view from my classroom of Mauna Kea. Can you see it behind the trees? There is a little snow on the top. It is fun for our kiddos to see. Some of them were lucky enough to go visit it or to have some brought down to play with.

During the month of February we learn all about Europe. Each week we learn about a different country: England, France, Germany and Italy. This week is our last week, so we will be learning about Italy...mainly Venice!

Of course here is a freebie for you...an elipsis poster! Just right click and print it as a picture.

Classroom Lesson Planning FREEBIES for YOU! Happy New Year...

Aloha blogging friends,

I only have a couple of goals for this New Year...
1. to be a happier, healthier me (live each day to the fullest, lose a few pounds and be positive)
2. share more on my blog and tpt (hence the post below)

I love free things and organization, so I am going to share the three things that help me to achieve this in my classroom when I am planning my lessons each week. You can watch a little video of me sharing these with you here and then you can click on the links below to get your own.

So, here is the big question. How do I organize my year?

Well I start off by filling in a very simple one page word document that is a birds eye view of my year. This has been invaluable in keeping me on track each year and knowing what my focus is. It's not cute, it's not really meant to be cute, there isn't room :-). To get it in word click here.

The second thing that I do is fill in a week-by-week overview. Here is where I break down what I filled in for each month and then copy and paste all of the things that I have purchased from tpt, things I have created from my hard drive, etc. Again, this is in word and has nothing fancy so you can easily fill it in to your choosing by clicking here. I did also upload a .pdf version so you can see what mine looks like by clicking here.

Now here is the best part. For each week I just copy and paste from my Week by Week Schedule onto my Peek at my Week. It is very quick and I use it as my guide all week. I just print it two-sided and put it in a page protector. At the end of the week I pop it into my binder. I have uploaded it for free in my tpt shop. Just click and it is yours and it is editable.

All of these documents are stored in my binder and I bring it back and forth from school to home daily. I also have parent contact info, important papers from meetings, etc. in there as well. I keep every binder at the end of the year for future reference.

I hope this helps you in some itty bitty way!

In other news I finally finished my All About Australia Unit that I taught about in October. Yes, it was finished except for the finishing touches (that took me all day yesterday) to complete. Now I am on to Penguin Parade: An Antarctica Adventure. I taught this unit in December. I will be back soon with more updates and how I travel around the world (all year) in my classroom. I have taught this way for the past eight years and absolutely l.o.v.e it!!

Happy New Year!