TpT Seller Challenge: MAKEOVER MADNESS!

Hi everyone! So I'm sure you've already heard about a few fabulous ladies (Sparkling in Second, Third in Hollywood, Peppy Zesty Teacherista, and Teach Create Motivate) and their super motivating TpT Seller Challenge! I'm all for a kick-in-the-pants so I will be participating in their challenge and posting my work each week:

Week 1 is "Makeover Madness" where we were motivated to update one product cover and/or product content of our choice. Well I have recently been working on building consistency throughout my newer product covers and have been meaning to go back and re-do a few of my covers for a loooooong time now. So I updated FOUR product covers/products! 

Here they are! (psst...click any of the pics to get a good close-up of each image!)

This is the cover of one of my best-selling products, "Chalkboards & Banners", a classroom labels and decor pack. I don't actually hate the original but, like I mentioned, it wasn't consistent with the rest of my store. So it got a facelift!!

Oh boy. This one is embarrassing. That horrid image on the left was the PRODUCT COVER for my "All About Me" autobiography template pack. How I sold as many as I did is beyond me, bless all of you who were brave enough to click to learn more!! But again....FACELIFT! aahh. Much better.

P.S. if you own this pack, go download the update! I improved all of the writing lines and added another option on the "My Favourite Things" page.

Next is one of my kiddies' favourite products; my "Dry Erase Binder." It got a little facelift as well and went from drab to fab! Well...maybe not FAB, but it provides a whole lot more information-at-a-glance :)

Last but not least, I gave this *entire* product a little facelift. As another one of my best sellers, my "Telling Time" pack got a much-needed update in the form of new fonts, better layout, and a conversion of one of the activities to a more hands-on cut-and-paste activity...

...and I obviously updated this cover as well :)

If you own my "Telling Time" pack, go download the update!

Now for the best part: 

All of the products above are ON SALE in my store 

until Friday! 

See you next week!!

St. Patty's Poetry & FREE Measurement Printables

Well.....I suppose I'll do just one last blog post before I throw in the towel! 

Because we won't be in school for St. Patty's day (hello spring break!!), we "celebrated" it for the past two weeks with some simple themed activities, literacy centers, and poems:

You may remember the above poem that I used last year as well.

I put each of my firsties' names on a sticky note and each time we read the poem throughout the week, a new set of students got to be "in" our poem.

We also finished up our short-and-sweet linear measurement unit with a couple simple activities. My firsties worked hard while I pulled them for some one-on-one assessments.

For this first activity, the students used little cubes to measure and record the length of each ice cream:

Download this freebie HERE!

Next, they could draw any object/picture they wanted and then they measured the length and width of their drawing with snap cubes:

Download this freebie HERE!

After seeing my kiddies *flip* for my (FREE!) Dr. Seuss flip book, I knew I wanted to create some more. So over the week, I worked on putting together a little bundle of 7 different fiction & non-fiction reading response and comprehension flip books:

I have so many plans of how to use these with my firsties: from simple follow-up activities to various shared and guided-reading texts, to comprehension and story element assessments.

(As seen in the two pictures above, the books can be printed on either coloured or plain white paper)

If you think your kiddies would enjoy flip books as much as mine do, check out my new obsession in more detail :P

And now I am *officially* on spring break!!! Here's to a slightly productive and excessively lazy week ahead ;)

Math, Writing, & P/T Interview FREEBIES!

Phew! This pregnant person is popped! We had another busy week that seemed to just fly by.

All the schools in our area headed to the arena for school vs. school skating races. 

The kids raced by age group and then there was a hockey game in the afternoon. It was so fun watching some of my firsties participate in the races! 

I won't lie, the wipeouts were my favourite part...what a terrible teacher!

And those who didn't race, happily cheered our school on:

It was fun, but definitely *way* too much chaos for this Type A teacher. I was so happy to get back to our classroom!!

So anyways, amid the rush of the week, I didn't get around to documenting our activities much. The good news is, that means this post will just feature some random FREEBIES for y'all! 

Let's start with writing! We have been working on opinion writing and I created this graphic organizer to help my firsties organize their ideas:

We originally started out just writing our opinion pieces on standard lined paper (following the same structure: a statement of their opinion and three reasons for their opinion) but I have found this organizer to be SO helpful to my firsties. Their writing is so much clearer and has actually improved quite drastically as a result. 

If you read last week's post, you already know that we have been working on balancing equations. We finished up this unit with some more simple skip counting & balancing equations math centres:

*Click HERE to download the above activity as well as the activity featured in THIS POST*

The kids loved making their own little cut & paste skip counting books. Once they were done, I stapled them on the indicated staple lines (as seen on the left side of the booklet) and then they coloured their book if they had extra time. 

One of the other math centres was a balancing equations partner activity, where my firsties worked in pairs to complete a booklet:

Title Page:

Interior Pages:

*Click HERE or either pic above to download!*

Each partner got their own booklet with one title page and 4 interior pages. They completed one side of each pan balance on their own by either writing a number, addition sentence or subtraction sentence, or by drawing any number of objects. Once half of each page was filled out, they switched booklets with their partner and their partner had to complete each page by balancing the pan balance in a different way (e.g. If one partner wrote the number "4" on the left side, then the other partner might draw 4 stars on the right side).

Last but not least, Term 1 report cards went home last week which meant Parent/Teacher interviews this week! I tried something new and created this printout to help guide each interview:

*Click HERE to download this FREEBIE!*

I found it much more helpful (and efficient) to write my thoughts on this page as opposed to a little sticky note. Plus it was nice to be able to provide a copy for each parent to take home at the end of the conference.

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I hope you find some (or all!) of those freebies useful! Have a wonderful weekend :)

Compound Words & 2D Geometry

Happy Friday, y'all! Not sure about you but I've been working on report cards all week...but I'm happy to finally sing:

So needless to say, this week's recap is going to be short and sweet! Let's start with compound words:

Most of our literacy centres were focused on practicing identifying and writing compound words, and throughout the week we added to this little anchor chart:

They loved writing words in our pancake. 

I actually used this same idea last year as well...but as they say: if it ain't broke, don't fix it! 

FLASHBACK:

Last year's anchor chart was so much cuter!

We also repeated an another activity for our pocket chart centre that is currently my number 1 most-downloaded freebie on TpT:

If you don't already own it, click HERE to snag a copy!

In math, we continued with 2D geometry by learning about symmetry:

We used these anchor charts to practice making various shapes and figures symmetrical before trying it out on our own. I find symmetry is often quite a difficult concept for some little ones to demonstrate independently but I have to say, my firsties ROCKED it this year!

They were all about our symmetrical snowman:

...And if you're looking for some extra practice worksheets to go along with a basic geometry unit, check out this new product I just added to my little shop:

So far we've used most of the 2D worksheets as centre activities and the kids really enjoyed them...especially the "Shape Search." I've even used 2 as assessment pieces. 

I won't introduce 3D geometry until second term but I can't wait to try those out!

If you want a closer look at this pack, click HERE.

And that about wraps it up! Have a great weekend :)

Let's be friends!

Get teaching tips, ideas, and FREEBIES every now and then.

Built with Kit