I'm a Friday Freebie Guest Blogger!

Hi Everyone!  I'm super excited....I'm Tonya's Friday Freebie blogger this week!!   Click on her picture, pop over to her blog, and get my freebie!

Tonya was one of my first bloggy friends when I started out, so I'm super honored that I was able to be one of her guest bloggers! 

Be My Bunny Valentine Freebie

A quick post and a freebie for you all.  I attached these cute tags to my student's treat bags for Valentine's Day.  If you can use it, please click on the picture below.  I left a spot blank for you to sign your name.  I used adorable graphics from Scrappindoodles.com and the font is from Hello Fonts.

If you do use this tag, send me some LOVE and leave me a comment to tell me that you LOVE it.  Happy Valentine's Day!

Martin Luther King Freebie

Happy Sunday everyone!  In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr's Day coming up, I have made a freebie.  I have my students read a few stories and books on Martin Luther King, Jr.  Then I have them fill in this Venn diagram comparing themselves to Martin Luther King.  In previous years it didn't look this cute, but I had to redo it with new clip art.  Don't you just love the clip art?  It is from the wonderful Krista Wallden from Creative Clips.

If you would like this freebie, just click on the picture.  If you liked it, please leave me a kind word or two.  Thank you!  :)

Happy New Year Freebie

Happy New Year my bloggy friends!  I hope you all find 2013 to be the best and brightest! 

I know, right....he is soooo cute.  Brand new clip art from Scrappindoodles!

I made these cute little signs to hang up on my chalkboard for when I return back to school.  I also made individual signs that I printed out and attached like a banner.  If you can use them, please click on the picture for a freebie.  I used backgrounds and clip art from www.scrappindoodles.com.

I hope you can use them.  If you do download them, can you comment and tell me what you think???  Thanks in advance...

Leah's Pony and Common Core

I don't know if anyone uses the story Leah's Pony in their reading class, but I do.  It is a wonderful story about the Great Dust Bowl and how a girl sells her most prized possession, her horse, to help out her family.  Her neighbors find out that she is selling her horse and they buy it back for her.

It is a great historical story that teaches the students about sharing, caring, and the Dust Bowl.  I'm trying to incorporate a lot more nonfiction or historical fiction into my reading class lately to gear up for the common core.

I have one page about using adjectives to describe the main character, Leah.  The students have to site details from the story using page numbers.

I have another page about writing how the horse felt about being sold from the horse's point of view...again siting page numbers and information from the text.

And the last page is finding facts from the story (with page numbers) and making their own opinions about each one.

 

I'm really trying to get my students to site information from the text.  It sure is hard with third graders, though.  If you could use these, you can click on the last picture and go to google documents to download them for fee.  But could you please leave me a comment below to tell me how you are implementing common core into your current reading class???  Thanks in advance...and happy common core!  :)

Holiday Freebie Linky Party

Casey over at Second Grade Freebies is having a linky party for Holiday Freebies.  I had to join up.  Click on her picture to join the linky. 

Click on my picture below to get a fun holiday coupon book that I give my students each holiday.  You can either cut it out and staple it into a booklet, or give it to them on one sheet and they can cut out a coupon when they want to use it.

If you could leave me a comment to tell me if you liked this, it would brighten my day!  :)

I'm Back...Kinda and Two Freebies

Hi Everyone!  It has been awhile.  I'm so sorry I haven't been posting, but my injuries from the accident are still painful.  For those who do not know I was a pedestrian and was hit by an SUV almost 3 weeks ago.  I have a broken wrist, soft tissue damage/swelling, and the new one...herniated disc in my back.  I start physical therapy on Monday (keep your fingers crossed).

To thank everyone for their kind words and warm wishes, I am posting two holiday freebies.  I hope you can use them.  And thanks again for thinking of me during this "interesting time" in my life!

 

 

Until next time...

Clip Art and a Freebie

HELP!  I have a serious problem....I'm addicted to clip art!  I love it when I get an email from one of my favorite clip art designers saying they have new clip art.  It brings a smile to my face and a payment to my pay pal account.  Can you seriously have too much clip art?  Is there anyone out there that will admit to their clip art addiction???  Is there a support group out there yet???

I mean look how cute my new "I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie" and "How to Cook Thanksgiving"(that you can get from TPT) turned out...

And here are two freebies for you if you like.  The first one I made out of necessity.  We were doing our new Thanksgiving glyph today and my students had no idea what a wattle was.  So I made this to work on labeling.

And here is a cute sheet on Daily Language Practice where the students have to put the sentences in order.  I don't know about your kiddos, but my students can fix mistakes in a sentence but have no clue how to move words around to have it make sense.  Once again...worksheet out of necessity.

 I hope you can use these freebies.  And please...can someone point me in the right direction to that clip art support group???   Happy "clip arting" everyone!  :)

 

Halloween FREEBIE

I reviewed dictionary skills recently.  My third graders acted like they never used a dictionary before.  AHHHH.  So needles to say, I spent some time reviewing dictionary skills and guide words. 

That went better, but then I went into ABC order (which at third grade should be a review) and boy was it disappointing.  They don't seem to remember how to put words in ABC order.  To help review without taking any more time in whole class, I made this fun ABC Order game for my centers. 

I'm feeling kinda lonely lately because I'm not really getting any comments lately,  so until tomorrow, if you are interested in a free copy, please leave me a comment about what seems to be a tough topic for your students this year.  You will need to also leave me your email address and I will send it to you for FREE. 


Remember...tell me a tough topic for your students right now and leave your email.  Comment and leave me your email before 5:00 Monday evening.  After that it will be for sale in my TPT store.  Thanks and I hope to "hear" from you all soon!  :)

Apple-tastic Freebie

Here is the apple-tastic writing activity that I tried downloading the other day (sorry I was fighting with Google Docs and they won).  So I finally have it ready.  If you are interested in this fun apple writing project, just click on the picture. 

 

 

 

 

And don't forget to enter my 200 Follower Giveaway!  It ends in two days...

 

 

Back from Arlington and a Freebie

Hello everybody!  I am finally back from Arlington, Virginia.  Can I tell you how exhausted I was?  We left at around 3:30 pm on Thursday night and drove straight through.  Yes...12 hours!  We got into Arlington around 5:30 in the morning and had to find a restaurant open to have breakfast to kill time.  Then we left on Sunday morning at 8:45 am and got home around 8:30 pm!

So why did I go to Arlington?  My nephew was having his 4th birthday.  We normally would not have gone (especially with school starting next week), but when your 4 year old nephew calls you personally to invite you to his party....well what's a 12 hour drive, right???

We also got to attend my sister in laws retirement ceremony as am officer in the Coast Guard.  Oh my gosh how wonderful that was.  Not being in the military you kinda forget about all the regulations and ceremonial stuff that goes into things like that.  It was really nice and we were so happy we could attend.

We also got to see some of the Washington, DC sites.  I LOVE visiting DC.  It really gets you in the teaching history mood!

Now on to some blogging ketchup (heehee I mean catch up)!  I missed Monday made it, but I figured all my classroom photos kinda counted!

Here is a little freebie.  I use this coupon to give my students on their birthdays.  It is for no homework.  I hope you can use it.  Birthday Coupon

And don't forget to sign up to be a follower on Tonya's blog.  She is getting near her 500 mark and she has over 18 blogger friends plus herself donating to her giveaway!

One more thing...thanks for the nice comments about my classroom.  It was the first time I showed off my classroom and I was a little nervous about sharing.  So for those blogger friends who commented...much love and a giant THANK YOU!

 

Smartbead Freebie

I had a different post on here earlier, but I am having a lot of trouble with Blogger tonight.  So I'm sorry.  I wanted to get my freebie back up quickly, though. 

I'm sure you have seen the Smartbeads ideas and the buttons on Pinterest.  Well I couldn't decide how I wanted to incorporate these two ideas into one.  What I've probably finally decided on is to use a little bit of both ideas.  When a student does well on a test, they will earn the necklace with the red owl cutout to put on it.  I will also send home the little cards telling their parents that they earned Smartbeads today.

Then every time they do well on a test, they will earn one of the white owl cutouts to attach to their necklace.  I've decided this would be a great way to show the student's their successes in our classroom.  By the end of the year they will have a whole bunch of owls on their necklace.  What do you think?

If you click on the picture, you can get me owl as a freebie. 

Freebie and 1st Day in my Classroom

My creative team (okay it was my mom, my son, and myself but it makes it sound more important saying my creative team) went in yesterday to my classroom for the first time.  I moved to a SMALLER, smaller, did I mention smaller, room.  I was tossing and turning most nights trying to imagine if my furniture would fit.  After 3 hours it fits!  What a relief! 

I don't know about you, but I stress over my classroom every year.  As you probably know, I change my theme every year, so that adds to the stress.  I am planning on going in again next week with my creative team and empty my boxes.  Then I'm hoping I can start the fun stuff...decorating...the following week.  That is the fun part!  I can't wait.  I will take pictures the next time I go in.

On another note, I like to give my students a healthy snack for the first full day of school.  It is a long day and I like them to have energy to make it through.  I buy the smile fruit snacks from WalMart and attach this little tag to it.  If you like it, click on the picture and it's yours.

Freebie

I need to get some more items into my freebies tab at the top of my new blog design.  So...I hope you like them.  Just click on the pictures.  And check back tomorrow.  I have reached 100 followers so I have an awesome giveaway coming!  So excited!!!

My CAFE posters are not a part of the Sisters materials.

Vocabulary and My 1st Freebie

Arrrr you ready to have your students love vocabulary?  My students never really like to find new vocabulary words, but it is such an important part of the third grade curriculum. Here is something that I do to try and encourage vocabulary practice in my classroom. It's called Vocabulary Treasure.  I make a small blue bulletin board with a brown construction paper “island” on it.  You could use a presentation board if you are short on wall space.

 

I have a little island in each corner that I label 1, 2, 3, and X.  Each time a student finds a new or fun vocabulary word in any curriculum area, they fill out a vocab paper.  After I’ve checked the papers over, I pull one each week to post around the map.  When we reach X the student whose paper I pulled gets to pick a vocab game for the class to play.  It can be an I Have, Who Has game, a bingo game, task cards that I made into a Scoot game, or any other game they pick.  The students LOVE this idea.  Not only has it encouraged vocabulary hunting, they are reviewing word skills every few weeks with a class game.  It is a win, win situation.

If you are interested, I have my Vocabulary Treasure activity on sale at my TPT store.  Click on the pirate above and he will take you there!

And here it is...my first freebie.  I had so much trouble trying to figure out what I can give for free and what I couldn't.  I'm still trying to figure out how to make things editable, so I'm sorry-this is not editable.  But you can print it out and fill it in.  Hope you like it!  Click on the picture and you can download it FREE!

Tracey :)