Give Us Your Feedback, Get a Freebie

We're so excited that we just participated in our first big TPT sale.  Now that we're gaining followers we want your feedback!  Please take a few minutes to complete the survey and you'll get a Christmas freebie sent to your email address!

 http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PCQ6QZF

First Giveaway

The sisters are so excited to be participating in our first giveaway!  We have donated our Polar Express Pajama Party Pack.  Thank you so much to Karen Jones over at Mrs. Jones's Kindergarten for hosting and congratulations to her on all of her milestones. 

Enter to win below!

http://mrsjonessclass.blogspot.com/2012/11/my-first-giveaway-holiday-style.html

Infomational Text Features

After looking at the Common Core it's easy to see that informational text plays a huge role!  The sisters and I have been working hard on infromational text features for the last few weeks.  Our kids are really starting to understand why they are so important and how they help us as readers. 

We started our investigation of informational text by reading a book called "Changes in Autumn."  Each student had their own copy and we discussed important aspects of the text.

Next we completed our "Navigating Through Informational Text" text features reference guide, which can be found in our Here's the Info! pack.  This really hit home as to how text features help readers.  

Today we created an informational text feature poster.  Our students worked with a partner to pick out each of the different text features. Grab a copy of the headings.  

Tomorrow our plan is to use book orders from Scholastic (love them!) and do a narrative vs informational book sort!      

TPT Sale

We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving break! We are so thankful for all of your support as we begin our journey in blogging and in our new TPT store.

Speaking of our TPT store please check out our 20% sale tomorrow for Cyber Monday which extends to bonus Tuesday! Plus, by entering CMT 12 at checkout, you will receive an additional 8% off.  We've been working hard on lots of new products!!

Thanks to Ashley Hughes for this adorable graphic.  Check out her awesome clip art at http://www.theschoolsupplyaddict.com/. 

Make sure you check out our new Language Arts and Math Common Core "I Can" Statements.  We have two versions in each pack exact language and kid friendly! Great for a Focus Wall. :)

We also put together 3 emergency sub packs: Miss Nelson is Missing!, Moosetache, and Knuffle Bunny.  We use these packs as a "back up" for those days when we don't plan on being out.  All you have to do is provide a copy of the book with copies of each worksheet.  Not only can these pack be used as sub plans but you can use them as plans for yourself on any given day!

In addition to all that we have a new social studies unit... all about mapping, continents, and oceans!

Don't forget Christmas is coming up! Check out our Hopping Through the Holidays pack and chapter book studies.  Have you heard of Dan Gutman's My Weird School Series? They are hilarious!!!  Our kids are seriously OBSESSED. Miss Holly is too Jolly is a crowd favorite and we just so happen to have a book study on it in our chapter book stack.  We also have a Polar Express Pajama Party pack and Christmas Around the World.  Needless to say we have ALL of our bases covered! 

All right, all right... enough promoting our products.  We are looking forward to our up coming week! Hope you have a great one too!    

Friendly Letters

Sunday night always comes way too fast, especially when you have been juggling grading papers, making units, writing lesson plans, completing graduate homework, filling out report cards, and de-stressing from the week.  But I'm not complaining! hehe

My sisters and I love teaching the kids about friendly letters. Letter writing is such a lost art.  Check out our Friendly Letter Writing Pack at our TPT store.

Once we have a good foundation set the fun begins.  We set up a classroom mailbox.  Near the mailbox we set out cute writing paper for the kids to use.  They are able to write kind notes to one another, put them in the mailbox, and the mail-person delivers them.  Our students really get into it. It's so much fun to see the students complimenting one another without being told to do so!  The sense of community is wonderful.

Another one of our favorite activities corresponds with our social studies community unit.  Each student writes a letter to their favorite restaurant. We get so many wonderful responses back!  Sometimes the restaurants even send free kids meal coupons, gift cards, or special perks.  

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday evening!

Holiday Fever!!

Hello everyone!!!  It's November....wait....November?!?  Already?!?  I can't believe how fast the last few weeks have gone by.  The three of us have been busy (as I am sure you have been) with prepping for upcoming report cards.  This is such a crazy time!  Way more fun than those, are the upcoming two holidays!  Thanksgiving will be here before we know it....pick up a great unit packed full of activities here that will keep your little turkeys busy this month.  My favorite activity has to be the persuasive writing "Save the Turkeys!". This is a fun way to incorporate common core writing in your classroom....Sister 2 and I were just laughing about the meals we will soon be hearing about.  We love getting our kids to be creative!  Check it out!

And before you can sing "Jingle Bells" the next big holiday will be upon us.  It's one of our favorites, Christmas!!!  The three of us have been enjoying getting some great activities together, old and new, and posting them on TPT for you!  We like to be ahead of the game with our planning.  So if you are like us, you're in luck!!  We are very excited to announce that we uploaded 2 great new items for the holidays.  There are at least 2 weeks worth of activities for the holidays in our gigantic 52 page pack called "Hoppin through the Holidays.". It includes 4 craftivities as well.  You can check it out here.  Secondly, one of our favorite holiday movies is The Polar Express.". We love hosting a Polar Express pajama party in our classrooms every year.....Sister 3 has helped us get very creative with this over the last few years.  If you want to host your own Polar Express pajama party, you can get our activities here.

Looking forward to uploading 3....yes 3 (I told you we REALLY loved the holidays) Christmas literature studies. They are very cute Christmas stories your classes will love as much as ours do.  Look for these to be up in just a few days.  We are putting the finishing touches on! 

Happy report-carding to those of you in our boat! 

~Sister 1 

It's Friday...yahoo!

Well...we made it!  This week seemed like it was forever, having Halloween in the middle definitely didn't help.  But, it's finally the weekend.  Yippppeeee! ;)

Just wanted to share a quick math activity that we've been working on this week.  We're moving through our Addition Strategies unit and have started with adding 2 and 3 digit numbers without regrouping.   You can use this Build It, Draw It, Write It for students to fill out as well. 

So, this week we spent some time learning the "hows" of adding big numbers.  Our kiddos loved working with these work mats (big thanks to Cara Carroll :)) and worked on solving and then writing through the steps in their math journals.