Cyber Monday & Tuesday Shopping

It is that time of year again!

 I am so excited about the huge sale that happens at TPT every year and I usually have my shopping cart filled over the top!

This is a special year for me, because I have add so many more products to my TPT and I will be participating in the huge sale! Click here to go to my store and save big on all of my products.

~Danielle

Getting Organized

Hello everyone!

Do you ever have the problem of getting organized and staying organized? I have the worst problem of staying organized. I have good intentions each school year, but with all the extra tasks that come up I find myself throwing things in the floor of my closet or on a shelf (where is doesn't belong) and leaving them there all year. I had to spend the first two day of post planning reorganizing my closet due to the problem I encounter each school year.

This coming year, I am going to push myself to get better organized and stay organized all school year and not be so lazy!

I love, love, love Caitlin Clabby's Word Work packs. You can check them out here. They are great and my little ones love to do these activities. My school is big on differentiation and these packs have so many activities, it is easy to differentiate for each student based on his or her needs. I plan to do a post on how I run my reading centers once school starts back.

Ok, I have went a little of track talking about how much I love her packs, but these packs are the first thing I wanted to organize. When I began purchasing these packs, I thought it would be perfect to store the activities in an expandable folder so everything would stay organized, but some months contain so much that I couldn't close the folder. I quickly gave up on that idea and my efforts to keep the activities stored somewhere became forgotten. This is what became of each word work pack.

Needless to say, not something I am proud to show. I knew that I needed a better method to store these activities so they would be easy to put into my word work center each month next school year. I thought and thought and thought and decided that I should put each month into a different plastic container with a label stating the month of the work pack inside. My main worry was that I could not find a plastic container that would be big enough and would make the edges of the paper fold over. I can't stand when papers are not flat. I have the tendency to be a perfectionist and everything look new. I set off to Wal-Mart and found the perfect tubs there!

These tubs are very sturdy and were around $4.00 a piece. Each tub has a lid that snaps closed with the green handles. The only problem I ran into was the first Wal-Mart I went to they only have 8 on the shelf. I quickly grabbed them and check out and did what anyone else would do, head to another Wal-Mart to get the rest that I needed. Next, I created and printed out these handy labels and taped into each tub (I did laminate them first so they would last for years).

After placing all the labels in my new tubs, I started putting in all the word word activities in its correct bin and this is my project finished.

I placed the tubs onto one of my shelves in my closet and they will be easy to access next school year. This is one of the first projects I plan to organize this summer into the beginning of the next school year. I will have these labels posted into my TPT store soon!

~Danielle

Word Families

I am not off to a good start with blogging a whole lot, but I promise that I am going to try and get better at it! When I think about sitting down to blog, I think of something else that I have to get done for school and I push blogging aside.

This week we have been doing activities that are all about snowmen. My little ones have had a blast! They came back from Christmas break ready to learn and it has not been as crazy as I thought it would to get back into the swing of things, even with getting two new students our first week back!

This is actually the first year I am spending a week to discuss each word family. Usually on Monday I write a list of words that belong in a certain word family, this week was the -og family, and I let students discuss with a friend what the words have in common and which word family they think the words belong in. I love this part, because my students are teaching each other! On Tuesday, we review the word family and they brainstorm words that belong in that family. I get so excited when my little ones come up with words I haven't thought of. On Wednesday, they create their own list and pick one word to use in a sentence. I use my lists found in my Word Family Lists pack, click here to check it out. When it rolls around to Thursday, students build the word family words in a book that The Moffatt Girls created. I love these little books and it really shows that they students are sounding out their words. You can find it here! On Friday my kids usually have a word sort to do, but that is every other Friday, after we have two new word families.

Since we had a loooooooong break, it has been a while since we talked about the one that was introduced before Christmas break. I wanted to make sure the students will still familiar with the words because their word family book had them build words in that family. To review, I wrote -ig and -og on the board and had students come up and write a word in either word family. I was so proud of them because they remember a lot of words that belonged in the word family that was introduced before Christmas. I couldn't believe it! Needless to say, my students rocked building their -ig and -og words today. Here are some pictures of their list they created!

 

 

Happy teaching, I am off to get ready for tomorrow before heading home!

 

 

~Danielle