Monday Madness

How many of you are crazy like we are and did some Black Friday shopping!?! There's just no way I was about to pass up the deals. I didn't go out Thanksgiving night or even wake up freakishly early but I did make it to the stores and snag ALL the things I set out for (and a FEW others!). These my my best deals…

Do you see a theme? I must be in the nesting phase! I also got some maternity clothes 50% from Gap. I'm pretty proud of my purchases. :) What was your best Black Friday buy?

I'm also into Cyber Monday, who doesn't LOVE shopping in their pjs and slippers? The sad part is I only bought two Christmas presents out of all these purchases! I guess I'll be venturing out to stores to finish the rest.

Speaking of Cyber Monday (and Tuesday) we're hosting a TpT sale! Check out our store for 20% off today and tomorrow. Don't forget to use the code "cyber" for 8% more ;)

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Today I was supposed to be back at school with my kiddies but instead I was at CITW training. Who schedules a workshop the day after Thanksgiving break!?! Don't blame me… it's a three day workshop our principal sent 7 of us too. Because I have "baby brain" (did anyone else suffer from this???) I TOTALLY forgot about this training until yesterday afternoon, thankfully one of my fabulous co-workers texted me! So I was in a sub plan pinch. THANK GOODNESS for our emergency sub packs. I texted the sisters and had them throw one on my desk this morning! What a life saver.

***These are all on sale***

My kids were occupied and I was happy that I didn't have to spend an hour or two writing plans and sneaking into school early this morning to get everything organized. (Everyone knows this sister isn't a morning person!). Successful day with a sub and I learned a lot at my training. Who knew advance organizers, cues, questions, and nonlinguistic representations would be so interesting!? I'm exciting to revamp some of my lessons to include these essential learning tools! 

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This week the sisters and I are also "hosting" conferences. Two LONG days and nights but it's always fun to talk to parents and share the wonderful (and sometimes not so wonderful) things their kids are doing. I have a lot of catching up to do tomorrow… my hall bulletin board needs to get updated and I have to decorate for the holidays. I want the room looking good for all the parents!

We'll check in later this week and share the cutesy Christmas things we're up too! Catch y'all later.

-Sister 3-

Sub Packs

Sorry about our slight hiatus... The sisters and I are on winter break.
How many of you are on winter break too? 

I know the sisters started their breaks the fun way, skiing and whatnot! However, I spent the first half of my break writing papers for my masters program.  I'm going to end my week up north, snowmobiling!

Here's a view of my winter paradise.

I know we blog about sub packs ALL the time. But, I think we've found our niche.  We might be a little obsessed... but they are fun for us to make.  PLUS, They make days away from school easy breezy. 

We've prepped 9 days away from the classroom!  Each pack is centered around a picture book.  They include reading, writing, and math lessons.  Some include social studies and science however some books don't lend to that.  Check them our at our TPT store.  Once you've got your pack all you have to do is pull out the picture book and make the copies.

I like to keep mine in my sub tub. Each pack is kept in its own ziplock baggie, to keep everything organized.  This way if I'm ever unexpectedly out my sisters know where to find my plans. Quick, easy and worry free!  Our subs have left great feedback about them. You really can't go wrong.

Below are all the packs we offer.    

1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8

Look for Where the Wild Things Are in our TPT store soon!

I'm putting the finishing touches on it tonight. :)

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? :)

Can December Get Any Crazier?!?

Hello all!  What a crazy few weeks!!  Last week we had our first set of parent-teacher conferences!  Not that I need to tell all of you this...but what an exhausting few days!  I love meeting with my parents...I tend to talk too much and run over time....but I do enjoy it!  However I feel like I should bring an air mattress and camp out at school!  I would probably get more rest!  Then of course the weekend was busy with everything that keeps us all "too busy" in our non-teacher lives!  Next, this week starts with a substitute on Monday for an RTI committe meeting!  Are you kidding me?!? The week after conferences AND two days before my first observation of the year?!?   Sounds nutty but I found the PERFECT way to make my life just a tiny bit easier.  I wanted to concentrate on planning and prepping for my observation and sub plans were the last thing I wanted to spend hours on.  So...I used one of our Sister Secrets Sub Packs from TPT.  What a LIFESAVER!!  It made planning for a substitute so much easier and guess what?  My class LOVED it!  They couldn't say enough about all of the fun things "the sub had them do."   I chose to do Moostache, which you can find here if you want to check it out too!  This pack comes complete with a whole day of activities to do after reading the story Moosetache.   I had them start by making a folder out of construction paper that they could keep all of their activities in!  The sub showed them the cover, had them write the title and author, and then illustrate it to match!  Then the sub was free to set her own pace for the day with activities for all areas of the curriculum.  Just a few things that they did were a story map, an adjective activity, math story problems, and an adorable activity called  "Moosetache Me!"  Here is a peek at how their folders turned out and some of what was inside when the day was over!

What do you think?  Turned out pretty cute I think and they learned so much from one story!!  Most importantly it gave me a little stress relief between two busy weeks!

If you like our Moosetache sub pack...check out Knuffle Bunny and Miss Nelson is Missing too!

And now for some rest so I can recharge for some Christmas shopping this weekend!  

TGIF....have a great weekend! :)

~Sister 1



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!