Did you ever have one of them days?

Well... today was my day! The cherry on top came about 3 minutes after pulling out of the school parking lot. Yes, that's right! I got pulled over for speeding in our school's subdivision. You might be wondering... "What was she thinking?"  I wasn't, or maybe I was too busy thinking to even realize how fast I was going before it was too late.  I'm pretty sure ALL [which is probably a HUGE exaggeration] of my students saw and if they didn't ALL see then the one or two that did will tell EVERYONE on Monday. But a teacher can only hope that they will forget before then!  Yeah. Right. Wahhh

Anywaysss.....

Check out this great Pinterest idea. I found some old pant hangers and put them to good use. Now I can see all the poster I have at one quick glance!

Here is an activity from our Perfect Penguin Pack!

Our pack includes informational cards about many different types of penguins.  We printed, laminated, and passed them out to partners.  We also, on a whim, decided to print out extra information about each penguin to help with the research.  The partners then had to fill out the "Penguin Report."  They thought that was really cool because "high schoolers" do reports!  The best part was a lot of them asked for another copy of the report to bring home and do for FUN.      

I'm sure that Tacky is not only a classroom favorite of ours but also yours. Who doesn't love that strange bird!?!  After reading the book, one of my students raised her hand and said, "Wouldn't it be fun to be Tacky's companion?" Which gave me an idea. I whipped up this writing paper [gotta love a printer in the room] and pulled out the scrap paper basket and we each made a companion for Tacky!

Pretty Penguins!

So I mentioned a few posts ago about our heavy emphasis on informational text!  Well we are finally in full swing of our penguin unit and the kiddos just L-O-V-E it!  We have read informational penguin books, watched penguin video clips, made our own penguin booklets, and discussed everything from their life cycle to the what they like to eat!  It seems all three of our classes can not get enough of these adorable little guys!  I can't lie....the three of us are also loving teaching about them!! 

Yesterday and today we worked on an informational writing craftivity.  It is a perfect writing piece to grade and makes a very cute classroom display.  I have to admit I took down something I just put up recently to hang these up!  They were too cute and they have made me smile every time I looked at them today.  Here are a few pictures of our work on these and a peek at how some of them turned out!  Check out some of the accessories they jazzed them up with....hair bows, bow ties, a bracelet, even sunglasses!!

See...you smiled too when you saw them didn't you?!?!  :)  I think they are even cuter than Tacky...and he's pretty cute!  Tomorrow we start small group research projects on specific types of penguins.  Then we will also do a text features scavenger hunt with informational penguin books later this week.  All of these activities and even more can be found in our penguin unit.  Check out the preview to see what great things your kiddos can get into while learning about informational text!

What a week!

This has been a __________ week!  What would you fill that blank in with??  Well this sister says "exhausting!"  We had PD on Monday so it should be a short week but....yes there is always a "but." But my mom had to have surgery.  I am sure most of you can relate to a family member having surgery. It is truly the most scary, stressful time....and add on to that I am a worrier.  Can any of you relate to that as well??  I worry, worry, worry.  Today was surgery day so I took a personal day.  Taking time off is not easy when you are a teacher but being with my family during this time is #1 on the important list right now.  So I made sub plans and prepared for a few hours to make sure everything was ready to go so my class was in good hands.  I am so thankful today's surgery went well and my mom is resting.  I decided I am also taking tomorrow off to be at the hospital...didn't totally plan for that but that is the only place for me to be SO....ENTER emergency sub plan pack!  I absolutely love posting things on TPT that give ideas to/help others but wow when it helps me out and I realize just how useful something is, I am double happy!  Tomorrow my kiddos will be working from our Rainbow Fish Emergency Sub Plans.  They can be found here. The best part is all I had to do was provide a book and all of these activities from my sub tub and tomorrow is a GO!  The second best part is we are learning about the "theme/message" in a story and this is a GREAT story for this!!  Perfect. Time. For. This!

As you may have read, since break, we have been engaged in many new things....especially fluid earth and weather!  Tuesday we made those adorable precipitation umbrellas one of my sisters blogged about last week!  I had to post some of my kiddos working on them because they learned so much and they turned out super cute....a plus for an elementary teacher like me!

Grab our fluid earth review and test here!

A focus for our kiddos this year is INFORMATIONAL text!!  I don't know how it is in your school, but our district would like us working toward a 50-50 split between fiction text and informational text.  We decided the best way to make informational text meaningful to students was to make it learning it FUN!  Next week we will be working on a TON of great penguin activities from our Penguins unit.  I will take some pictures so you can see just how fun using informational text can be!

Don't forget Groundhog's Day is almost upon us as well!  I am wishing, hoping, pleading that the groundhog does NOT see his shadow so this winter chill can start moving out of here!  We decided that next Friday will be a groundhog day for our students. No, no...we won't be doing 1 thing over and over and over...ha ha!  We came up with some great math and literacy activities that focused on groundhog's day.  Some of my class didn't even know what it was when it came up in conversations!   We aligned our activities to some of the standards of the common core and threw in an adorable writing craftivity!!  Check it out here over and over and over....ok sorry that joke is getting old eh? :)