Celebrate Good Times!!!

My favorite Aunt found out she had breast cancer back in November and this past week she found out her latest scan came back free of cancer!!!!

She's been through Chemo and Radiation and is now doing her weekly Cancer drug visits.  Her energy is coming back and she is able to do so much more.  As a celebration my whole family went out to dinner at Logan's Roadhouse.  The girls had the best time because there were lots of people celebrating birthdays, so they loved hearing the YeeHaw for the various celebrations.  Then the group next to us sang Happy Birthday and they both shouted "Want Birfday  cake take".  Try explaining to 2 yr olds why they can't have any!!!  

It was so great to celebrate my Aunt's good news and give praise to our Great God for his continued goodness to us!  

I am also working on my newest unit, All About Plants.  I always loved this unit in our Science curriculum!

Being in NC we have our state Essential Standards, not CCSS, for Science.  I want to make it available to everyone, not just those in NC.  What activities/experiments would you like to see in this unit??   As soon as it is finished I will be giving it away! 

Hope everyone has a great Monday, its coming fast....Boo!!!!

No Sleep For the Weary and a Giveaway

So after my awesomelytastic day (yes that is totally a word) , my brain just couldn't stop going!  I went to bed around 12ish with no problem, but when the clock hit 3:30am, my eyes were wide open and my mind was going 100 miles per minute!  What the heck!  3:30am is for SLEEPING not THINKING!  So today I was extremely perky my normal self, and about 1pm I felt "the wall" coming on.  By 3 pm I was in full on "wall status" I continued to push through until 5 to try to finish my report cards, which didn't happen.  I dragged myself home and died  passed out on the couch until 8:30.  So here we are!!!  I am just hoping that my nap small sleep doesn't interfere with my night night later!

As promised here is my newest lapbook for teaching Weather!  

Enter my giveaway for a chance to win your own copy!  I will chose a winner Sunday night! 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tomorrow is Thursday, so it's all downhill from here!!!

Cyber Monday, Animal Life Cycles, Giveaway

Are you carts full  yet????  My cart is so full it would be the one that creaks and makes that annoying sound as I push it along looking for more deals!  This sale has been great, but not good for my vacation fund!  What can I say, I am a sucker for super cute teacher stuff!  I LOVE a good sale and will have to say the excitement is quite contagious!

 I just added my newest product yesterday in time for the sale.  I have been working on my Animal Life Cycles Lapbook since August! I don't know what else to say but life got in the way of this one.  I am proud to say it is done :)

If you teach life cycles, this lapbook will allow you to teach 4 animal life cycles as well as vocabulary words. There is also an accordion fold that compares adult ladybugs to the child.  Make sure you pick it up before the sale ends to get it on a hot deal!  And because I love all my loyal followers, I will give this to the first 3 people who comment!  Make sure you leave your email address.

Speaking of the sale, make sure you check out all stores that are joining in the fun!  

                                                                                                            Button by Ashley Hughes

Well I'm off to load up on some more deals!  The best thing about this type of shopping is I can do it in my PJs while laying in bed watching my fav shows!

Who Knew?!?!??!?!

So as I was catching up on my blog reading and came across an interesting post about pinning on Pinterest.  Laura Candler had a post up about needed permission to pin things from other's blogs and websites.  I am so guilty of doing this and didn't even realize I was doing something wrong!  The gist of the terms are basically that when you create a new pin from a site, you are telling Pinterest that you own the rights to that picture and give them permission to use the pic in any way they want!!!  I was totally shocked and immediately added the permission granted button to my blog.   Add this to your blog giving permission to pin from your blog.

We began our soil unit last week and today was compost day which means worms!!!  My students always love making the compost bin and seeing how it changes over the weeks.  After adding our garden soil and plant matter it was time to break out the worms!  At first my girls were a bit standoffish about touching the worms, but after they got out on the table, they got into them as much if not more than the boys!  I loved watching the worms wiggle in my kids' hands.  One student kept saying over and over again, "Its dancing in my hand!"

My kids getting into their worms! 

If you haven't picked up your copy of my soil plan, pick it up at my TpT store.  

We also set sail on the illustrious Titanic this week!!!!  I will post about it later :) 

I was so excited about the weekend, that I picked my girls up and we went to the park.  Here is a pic of the two of them on the slide.

 Happy Weekend!

Soil, Soil, Soil and a Giveaway

On Friday, my grade level had planning and I began looking at our next science unit.  Several years ago our district bought kits for grades 3-5 to use to teach the science concepts.  We have the soils kit next and I LOVE this kit!  My students love looking at the soil and learning about how worms are a vital part of our world.  After creating our plan to teach this unit, I got very inspired and decided to create a whole unit that could be used to teach this concept.  I have listed it at my TpT store.  Click here to check it out.

With all the awesome things I have won recently from other teachers' stores, I decided to give this unit away to 2 lucky winners.  I picked 2 because I have twins and it sounded good!  Here are the ways you can enter to win.

1. Follow My Blog

2. Follow my TpT store

3. Blog about this contest and link back this post.

The contest will close Friday January 27th and I will use the random number generator to select the 2 winners.  Winners will be announced Saturday January 28th. Make sure you post a comment for each way to enter, because you are entered for each of them.  Good luck!

*PS anyone that can tell me how to number to comments, I will be forever grateful!!!!

So.Stinkin.Tired.

Today was a jam packed busy one!  This morning I had the privileged of having some of my colleagues from another school in our district come in my class to check out how I do the Reading and Writing Workshop.  They also have still be using the anthology and wanted to get away from it and wanted to see how I was doing it.  If you want more on dumping the reading anthology click here. I love helping other teachers find new ways to reach their kids.  I expected them to be excited about changing curriculum, but the teachers were going on and on about how engaged my kids were and how they were reading such big novels.  They also kept repeating ,'these can't be 3rd graders!' It actually made me feel very good that what I was teaching was making such an impact on my students and these other teachers.

After they left we had PLCs and discussed benchmark data.  So exciting, let me tell you!  My favorite part of the day came in the afternoon when we dove into our recycling unit and had our kids make their own recycled paper!  My kids LOVED it and it was easy, which is me!

 I also ended the night by going to Taco Night!  There aren't many things that are as good as that!  Now on to get some sleep.

When You Wish Upon A Star

My third graders have been learning all about the Sun, Moon, and Earth this 9 weeks. I absolutely LOVE this science unit and always look forward to teaching it each year. This year I added some new activities that my students loved! We began
our unit with a trip to the Catawba Science Center with a viewing of a sweet planetarium show all about the sun, moon, and Earth. ( what a perfect tie in, right!) Then while still in the planetarium, they were each given a moon ball (Styrofoam ball on a wooden dowel). The lights were turned down low and a lamp was turned on in the middle of the room symbolizing the sun. My students were able to turn their bodies and see each phase of the moon. I was awesome to

see their wheels begin to turn as they were able to identify the different phases.

Nothing is better than connecting food into our learning. I love creating edible lessons. To continue our unit on the phases of the moon, we created each of the phases using Oreos. My kids loved making these and loved eating them even more! We also created flip charts of each phase. They might be in 3rd grade, but they still enjoy coloring, gluing and cutting to make crafts.

Yet another edible science activity was making constellation models using mini-marshmallows. They loved creating these and were very precise about putting them together. We wrapped up this unit by making constellation tubes using Pringles cans. Overall, it was a great unit and more importantly my students learned way more then if we had just read from a text book!