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Seven for Sunday

Hi Friends. 

I'm a bit of a rule breaker. Yes, I walk on the "wild side" ... hence the title of this post.  I'm sharing seven... yes, you heard right, SEVEN fantastic things this week. I know, I'm wild, right? This is how I define "walking on the wild side" these days. Sad. 

BUT what is NOT sad is what I'm about the share. I'm officially on Spring Break and I've gotten A LOT done as far as catching up and finishing one of my longest TPT units. More on that later. Today I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs for her linky party!



I was in Big Bear this weekend and this was our "home" for a couple days. We LOVE this place!! This beautiful house belongs to a very generous person in our church body. We are so thankful and blessed that we get this cabin every year for our family and a few of our close friends. We were sad that there was no snow because my little Karis wanted to build "Olaf" (from Frozen), but the weather was still so beautiful!



Relaxing on a rocker in the "backyard" with my little Karis. 





Have you ever heard of these???? For a pasta lover like me this is HEA-VEN!!!! Yes, you read right....
ZE-RO calories and basically ZERO everything! Basically, they just evaporate in your mouth. LOL. No, not really but these noodles are fishy smelling so you really have to rinse and boil in hot water for 2-3 mins. They take on the taste of the sauce you put them with. I had them in chicken broth and added all sorts of veggies and chicken. It was like a very healthy version of cup of noodles!!! And for this Chinese noodle lovin' girl... that's just divine!!!!



I had an observation from my principal right before I left for break last week and it went really well. I did my lesson on close reading and coding our text. My students get a bit confused as to whether something is coded an OMG moment (!) or something that is important to the story (*). So I made this tree map to help guide them as they coded their text. It worked REALLY well! They were able to refer to it and tell me what part of the text caused which emotion for them if they coded it with an (!). I then took it to a thinking map and then a short summary writing of the article. I will be blogging about that later with pics.


I got to meet the MOST AMAZING group of bloggers last weekend. I went to a So Cal blogger meet up hosted by Kristen from Easy Teaching Tools and Courtney from  Ramona Recommends. It was a blast!!!! You can read more about it here. I got to meet fantastic bloggers and felt right at home as we shared our crazy love for teaching. 



Oh how sweet my little Karis is!! This is a pic of her at her school jog-a-thon. I had to throw this picture in because she is just SO.DANG.CUTE!!!!! Ok, I know I am a bit biased but really, come on... just look at her!!! She had been practicing "jog a thonning" all week long to get ready for the big event. 




6. I am having a Spring Cleaning sale with many of my TPT buddies! This is a perfect time to do some shopping! I know that I will be shopping around for myself. Don't forget to leave feedback on your past purchases. It's seriously FREE money! FREE!!! And WHO doesn't like free??!!




7.  So I had mentioned that I was able to work on some of my TPT resources this weekend. I revised one and finished another one.  

My April Fool's unit is a FUN one!!! It's a NO PREP math and literacy resource with differentiated levels. The math pages are labeled Level 1 or 2.  It's a fun thing to do for April Fool's...but don't be fooled! You can certainly use thus resources AFTER April 1st since it's just reviewing skills in a FUN way. I blogged about it more here but here are some snapshots of my unit. 














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The other resource that I finished that is making me sing my Hallelujah praises is my Houghton Mifflin Theme 6 unit! I am FINALLY finished with ALL 6 themes and I cried when I posted it! Really. It was such a labor of love with every theme being about 250-300 pages EACH! Lots of ignoring mommy and wifey duties to get these done, but they are DONE!!!!  Thanks to my hubby who took on extra parenting duties!!! He is AMAZING!!!   This resource is common core aligned and has thinking maps, teacher cheat sheets, text dependent questions, depth of knowledge questions, and MANY MANY more research related things that bring students to the next level. There's also differentiated work in there to meet the needs of all our little kiddos in class. 

Here is a sneak peak at it:








Theme for Focus Wall

Teacher "cheat sheets"




Making connections for each story - Text to Text, Text to Self, or Text to World

Vocabulary word cards


Spelling list for each story

Differentiated Skip and Scan Level 1

Level 2



Comprehension and Skills Assessment for every story




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Whew! That was a LOOOONG post! Thanks for reading friends! And remember.... come take advantage of our Spring Cleaning sale on TPT!!!


Blessings,

NO PREP April Fool's Day Math and Literacy Fun

NO PREP!

FAVORITE.TEACHER WORDS.EVAH! Yes, as a teacher you know how valuable our time is as we race to gulp down our lunch while pulling resource books out to frantically look through quality pages to copy. Or is that just me??

Well, I have a solution. I am SO excited to share this resource with you! I created an April Fool's unit a while back and I've been meaning to revise some things. Since I'm in the mountains for a quick weekend getaway this week, I was able to find some time to catch up on my to do list. I've added about 10 MORE pages to it and leveled the math worksheets for differentiated work. They are labeled Level 1 and Level 2. This resource can span grades 1-3 with these levels. I am seriously SERIOUSLY excited about this unit because my students always love April Fool's..but really... in all honesty, it's just kind of an obscure "holiday" that no one really pays THAT much attention to. I mean, kids LOVE it but teachers...not so much. Until now!!! Da Da DAHHHHH (applause)!!!!  I really think that this packet is just plain FUN! Students will follow Prankster Pete around as he mixes up our numbers and sentences and just makes a mess!

If you don't believe me, here are some close ups of this resource.


















Click on the picture to take you to my TPT store. :)


WOW! I know that THAT was a whole lotta preview there!! Thanks for sticking with me! Doesn't that just look FUN?? I mean, when I think about how I am going to use this unit, I just see my kiddos quietly working INDEPENDENTLY. I don't know about you, but that just screams SAAAANITYYYYY for me! Just sayin'! :)


Happy teaching, Friends! Thanks for stopping by!

Blessings,