Fantabulous Friday Freebie- Thanksgiving!

I am actually early with this Fantabulous Friday post!  Miracles do happen!  :) 

Actually, my hubby and I have a date tonight so I had to get this done early.  I found some really cute Thanksgiving freebies that I had to share.  

These are freebies I found on Teachers Pay Teachers that are free and could easily work in a first grade classroom.  I hope you can use them too!  Just click the picture to go download it!  :)

Lisa Richling created this wonderful Thanksgiving How To Writing Pack.  There are 10 different writing prompts with a couple different planning pages and a final copy page.  This is great for Thanksgiving and sequencing!   

Erin Palleschi created this cute Thanksgiving reader.  My kiddos will put it together and then we will practice our fluency after marking the sight words.    

More Than Math by Mo created this adorable ABC order activity!

Kennedy's Korner created these great Thanksgiving story problems.  There are several on a page.  I am going to cut them along the dotted lines so I can mix up the addition and subtraction.  My kiddos could use some help understanding their story problems!  :)

Blair Turner created this cute little turkey that could be used for the Main Idea of a story, math facts, or a thankful turkey.  My kiddos always love making turkeys!

Hope you all have a great time learning about Thanksgiving!  I love this time of year!  :)

November Activity Pack

I'm about to have dinner with my nephew so this has gotta be quick.  He's two and the most adorable little guy ever so he needs my attention and quick!

Here is my November Activity Pack.  I create a monthly activity pack for my kiddos to do that is a good review of skills and a little fun.  We use it during recess centers and in the morning after their morning work is done.  

It's nice to have a pack readily available at a moment's notice in case you need it in an emergency!  

Click on the title picture to go to my TpT store to purchase it for $3.00.  

I'm going to give it away for free to the *first 5 people* who leave a comment and their email address!  

Just share a fun November activity you do with your kiddos!  Enjoy!!

Late Currently and Turkey Freebie!

I'm a little late to the Currently party, but here I am making my grand entrance!  :)

Visit Farley to make your own Currently!

I love the colorful leaves, but I'm ready for them to be out of my yard!  

Class Dojo is an *amazing* classroom management tool.  If you're having trouble and need something quick and easy, I highly recommend you use it!  You can read how easy it is to use in this post!  I also use my Rockin' Behavior Rewards and my kiddos LOVE them!  My kiddos are so well behaved...most of the time!  :)

I am trying really hard to have my Christmas shopping done by early December.  I'm not really a last minute shopper, but I want to be done in plenty of time this year so I can relax and bake cookies.  Yum! 

I want to have a magic house fairy clean my house.  I need her right away!  I also need some sleep so I can feel rested enough to drag myself off the couch to be that fairy!  :)

I love Pandora's Children's Christmas songs.  My kiddos love it too.  We listen a lot during writing and other quiet activities or when they're supposed to be quiet.  Packing up is a great time to listen!  

One quick funny story before I go work my magic on this house!  We're writing persuasive sentences this week so my kiddos are trying to persuade me to give them a cookie.  We had a cookie election today (chocolate chip won!) but now I have these leftover cookies (the losers).  I told them if they could persuade me, I would share the leftovers with them at the end of the week.  

We made a bubble map and wrote down some ways they could persuade me such as being a hard worker, a good listener, not being a bully, etc.  Well, one little cutie wrote "I think you should give me a cookie today because you look lovely".  While that wasn't exactly what I was wanting, I thought it was adorable.  

I'm seeing a future politician there!  :)

For reading all of my rambling, here's a freebie from my new November Activity Pack.  Enjoy!  

Click the picture to download!

Fantabulous Friday Freebie- Election Day

Happy Fantabulous Friday!  

I am exhausted so I am very happy that it is Friday.    

We had conferences last night and I was at school late on Wednesday too so this post is going to be short, sweet, and to the point.  :)

For my freebies today I'm sharing some wonderful election packs.  I will be having a class election on Tuesday that I will share next week so I will be using each of these wonderful freebies.  I hope you enjoy!  Just click on the pictures to download the freebies. 

Teacher to the Core created this great Election themed freebie pack.  It has great information about voting and how we are choosing a president this year.  Download it and vote!  :)

Latoya Reed created this great freebie.  It has a word search, Venn diagram comparing President Obama with Governor Romney, and this If I Were President writing. Love it!  

Keep it Cute has created several cute banners and they are all FREE!!  This one I am going to hang up for our classroom election.  Not exactly educational, but it's adorable so I had to share!!  :)  

This is NOT a freebie, but it's a Patriotic Holiday Pack I have created that has some Election Day activities along with Veteran's Day, Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day, and President's Day with some George Washington and Abraham Lincoln activities.  I wanted to share it with you since it's full of Patriotic materials that can be used all year.  Click on the picture to purchase it at my store!  

I hope you enjoy these freebies!  I'm falling asleep as I type so I need to go to bed.  Enjoy your extra hour of sleep tomorrow night.   I most definitely will!  :)

Daily Cafe Conference in Chicago!

We had so much fun in Chicago last weekend attending the Daily Cafe conference!  I haven't had a chance to post yet so here's our weekend in pictures...with some funny details along the way.  

I was in shock when I got into our Toyota Yaris rental car and saw the dashboard empty behind the steering wheel!  The speedometer was in the middle of the dashboard.  That was so strange!  And about 20 minutes into the trip I realized there was no cruise control.  I was very sad about that considering I had a 7 hour drive each way!  

STOPE HOUP
I thought this was a different language and then realized it was really just store hours with some missing letters!! 

 

The 2 Sisters were going to be in this room!  This was the night before the conference started.  We were so excited just to see the sign on the door so we had to take pictures.  
They are famous after all!  :)  

  

Me hanging out in front of the School of Rock!  My kiddos are Rock Stars this year so I had to pose in front of this shop.  

Hinsdale was an adorable town. We caught the train here into the city.  It was such a cute little town.  And the weather was beautiful!

Chicago...one of my favorite cities!  

This is my teaching friend Christina posing in front of The Bean in Millenium Park.  It is so much fun to take pictures here! 

Me at Millenium Park.  I had absolutely no trouble sitting up there either!  :)

Our deep dish pizza experience!  It was yummy, but we both decided we like our hometown Ohio pizza better!!

We had to get Best Friend bracelets to commemorate our special weekend!  We had told our kiddos that we were tight and BFF's now so the bracelet was a necessity!  

Chicago at night.  

This is Christina and I posing after the conference with The 2 Sisters!!  We got our picture taken with them and their autographs!  I told them they were like Rock Stars in the teaching world!  I'm sure they already knew that though.  The conference was great and was totally worth being exhausted this past week after lots of driving and not much sleep.  :)

For attending the conference we got a year long subscription to The 2 Sister's website here.  I would highly recommend purchasing this if you are able to.  It is definitely worth it for all of the resources available.  

Something The Sisters highly recommend is one on one conferencing during their reading block.  Christina and I chatted all the way home about how to make this work in our classrooms.  While at the conference they shared their newest creation called Pensieve.  

This program is amazing!  I use my iPad while I read with each student one on one for about 5 minutes.  It's been an eye opening experience to see how beneficial it is to meet with students individually even for a short time.  My kiddos who have a hard time staying on task for any length of time in a reading group are really benefiting from this.  

The Sisters shared that research has shown that kiddos can only stay on task with higher level learning for however many minutes they are old.  So if a kiddo is 6 years old they will be able to attend to higher level learning for about 5-8 minutes at most.  

Last week I began meeting with my reading groups for the first 8-10 minutes of a Daily Five round and then I met with students individually for the next 10 minutes.  The Pensieve program allows you to set up your meetings whether they are one on one or small groups and then you can type notes and give your kiddos a rating for how they're doing.  

I am totally in love with it!  :)  

This was the biggest thing I learned from the conference.  Overall, the Daily Cafe conference was great.  So was our shopping time in downtown Chicago!  It's always exciting to be around so many teachers.  And it was so cool to meet The 2 Sisters!  :)

I highly recommend the opportunity if ever get the chance!  

Fantabulous Friday Freebie and Daily Five Conference

Happy Fantabulous Friday!  I'm actually posting my Friday Freebie on Friday.  Woohoo!  

I have such a great weekend planned...I'm headed to *Chicago* in the morning with my friend Christina to attend the Daily Five Conference!! I've also got my winner for my 300 follower giveaway!  

CHICAGO!!  I love Chicago and I love Daily Five so this weekend is going to be amazing.  I'm sooooo excited!  Are any of you headed to the Daily Five Conference?  It's going to be 4 days.  Daily Five on Sunday, Cafe on Monday, Daily Five on Tuesday, and Cafe on Wednesday.  We're just going to the Cafe part on Monday.  We've both used Daily Five for a few years, but want to learn more about Cafe.  Maybe we could have a mini blogger meet-up??

We both told our students that we were going to be traveling to Chicago this weekend together.  I told my kiddos that Mrs. Wagers and I are really tight...they thought that was so funny!  I also told them she's going to sing our phonics poems to me to keep me awake for the long drive!!  

I have several wonderful freebies this week.  I like to share quality freebies that I find through Pinterest or Teachers Pay Teachers for my Fantabulous Friday Freebies.  Teaching is a very collaborative field so I want to share some of my great finds. 

We have been learning about Cause and Effect during reading this week.  To help with that we have read Laura Numeroff's series If You Give a...  We started with If You Give a Cat a Cupcake, but read lots of others including the original If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.  Here is what we used this week:

Katie at Teach Love Laugh created these two activities to go with If You Give a Cat a Cupcake.  They are quick, easy, and fun to do.  Click the picture to go download it.  

Heather at Second Grade Perks created this adorable poster which I used as part of my anchor chart for cause and effect.  Click the picture to go download.  

Mrs. Patmore created this great Cause and Effect Detectives pack.   We used this pack this week too as we became detectives.  My kiddos loved it.  Click the picture to download.  

Enjoy these freebies!  Make sure you come back and visit every Friday for my Fantabulous Freebies!  Also, if you download one of these wonderful freebies, please let the creator know!  It's always nice to hear that other teachers are using your materials and appreciate your hard work!  

Congratulations to Heather Nance for winning my 300 Follower Giveaway!  I will be emailing you soon Heather so I can give you your prizes!  

I'm off to go pack for Chicago.  I have some laundry to finish up and then packing!  So excited to meet The 2 Sisters!  I'm sure I'll be blogging about it once we get back.  If you know of anyone else going, I'd love to know!  

I've Been Boo'd and 300 Follower Giveaway!

I've been Boo'd!  How exciting!  :)

Teresa at 2nd Grade Pig Pen Boo'd me!  That sounds kinda strange to say, but it's a good thing....really! Thanks, Teresa! Cynthia at 2nd Grade Pad started a Boo'd linky.  Click on the picture to go read more about it.  

Here's how you play...Choose a blog that has more followers than you, around the same number of followers, and less followers than you and encourage others to go check out their blogs and stores.  You can share the love by offering them one free item from your TpT store!

Here are the wonderful bloggers I have chosen:

Abby at The Inspired Apple is so creative and fun to blog stalk!  

Tammy at Forever in First always blogs about her great ideas!

 

Nicole at Speech Peeps is the Speech Therapist at my school.  She is new to blogging and TpT and she is so creative!  Go check out her cute blog with lots of freebies for teachers.  

Go and Boo your favorite bloggers!  It's lots of fun! :)

My 300 follower giveaway is over in a few hours!  Make sure you click on this picture to go check it out!  

Tomorrow is Fantabulous Friday Freebie...you don't want to miss it so come back and visit!  :)