March Favorite Things

I am linking up with Teacher Trio for my favorite things for the month of March.

I love shopping at Costco. I have grocery shopping down to an art. I go every two weeks and buy groceries and they usually last until the next visit. The first "favorite things" are Kirkland's dark chocolate covered dried fruit. If you have every had the Brookside chocolate covered pomegranates that you can purchase at Target these are very similar and boy are they tasty. They are my pick-me-up while I am teaching. My second "favorite things" are Scholastic News magazines. I use these A LOT with my students. We do many different activities with these and they also have worksheets you can print to review a variety of standards. My third "favorite things" are Piko shirts. If you aren't familiar with them you need to get familiar with them. They are so soft and comfy and perfect for teachers. They are made from Bamboo and are wonderful go to shirts for teaching daily. 

Guess what day it is? Hump Day!

Guess what day it is?? Hump day. I am linking up with Mrs. Sanford for hump day highlight. I am highlighting this week my social studies lessons. Last Friday we had a "snow day" for kids, but a work day for teachers. Our school is somewhat anti-textbooks, but it is really challenging to cover all the social studies standards without any guidance. I have one textbook that I design my lessons around and then it occurred to me if I have a textbook in my class it had to originated from a set. Myself and another teacher went on a hunt and voila we found the mother load in an unused closet. I found an entire set of 4th grade social studies text books. No they are not directly common core, but a lot of the chapters cover the same topics. In saying all that we are learning about the Articles of Confederation. Here are a few of my TPT resources we are currently using. 

Click on the pictures below to find the products on TPT:

March Pinterest Pick 3 Linky

Let me apologize because my pinning this month isn't specifically for the classroom. I wanted to talk about random pins instead of just promoting my task cards on TPT. I hope y'all enjoy!

Who doesn't love a cute mug to drink their coffee out of? This week while I had an extra three snow days (with only one of them actually having snow on the ground), I made the Mr. and Mrs. Mugs with $3 large latte mugs I found at target and I am obsessed. I was seriously contemplating starting an Etsy business of some sort thoughts and comments please??

I am all about originality and I found this pin and I was inspired to make my own boutonniere's for my wedding in June. I love love love the cotton ones and I found this website that had a tutorial.  Guess what I made some last night from ordering the supplies off of Etsy. Here are the results I think they turned out great!

I know this is hard to believe, but......wait for it.... I used to not drink any caffeine. Yup I said it. That was until I became a classroom teacher and now the struggle for energy is real. Which leads me to my next pin, coffee + creamer = bliss. I wanted to make my own coffee creamer because I read how a lot of creamers have yucky, icky, nastiness in them. I made my own creamer and it was surprisingly tasty and healthy. What's not to love?

Currently March 2015

I am linking up with a fellow 4th grade teacher Farley. She is an inspiration to the teacher and blogger world. This month is March and that means we are getting closer and closer to Spring Break and to TESTING (every teacher's nightmare)!

Here goes:

I am currently listening to the quiet whispers (yes ironic that I used the term whispers) of my students in the library. They can whisper for others, but not for me.

I am loving that today is hat day at our school for Dr. Seuss' birthday and for Read Across America week. Fixing my hair was one less thing that I had to worry with this morning.

I am thinking about how we only have five and a half weeks until our new Georgia Milestones testing begins. YIKES!! I am no where near covering everything!?!!?!?!?

I am wanting to get a massage after the workout I did on Saturday. I did dead lifts, which I don't normally do and now I have learned that I do have lower back muscles and they can be pulled tighter than a rubber band. Ouch... Lucky for me my aunt is a massage therapist and she lives right down the street.

I am needing to finish up some new products that I have been working on for 5th grade social studies standards. I plan on posting them soon!

I have four weeks until our Spring Break. I plan on tying up a lot of loose ends for my wedding planning over SB. 

Don't forget to link up on Farley's blog!

Saving One Classroom at a Time Linky

Say hello to my linky friend. In February TPT has a lovely sale to honor teachers for their hard work and dedication. Every teacher who sales products knows the time, effort and sacrifices that are made in order to produce quality work. Since I just recently (meaning this school year) began my adventure with TPT, I have worked many tireless hours to get everything set up. I am so grateful for the opportunity to be able to create quality products for teachers to use in their classroom. Every time I receive a feedback notification I rush to read the comments. It is heart warming to know that people love my products. Today is a snow day here in Georgia, so that means NEW PRODUCTS!!! Yay. My goal this summer was to make task cards for every 4th grade Common Core standard, which I almost accomplished minus a lot of the reading standards. The next goal was to create science and social studies products for 3rd and 5th grade. I just completed 3rd and now I am moving on to 5th. On TPT there are a lot of primary products, but not as many intermediate products for teachers to choose from. I hope to complete the 5th grade standards I am currently working on for you guys to be able to purchase at the sale price!

Wednesday is the big day to shop til' you drop. Don't forget to enter the code HEROES to save an extra 10% off your purchase.

 

Since I have a lot of new products for 3rd grade and I will uploading 5th grade products this afternoon. I have posted a screen shot of my store and where to shop by grade and topic (notice the arrow to the selected area). 

Thanks for stopping by. Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions on new products!

Monday Made It- February

The few items I have to share this month for Monday Made It are based off of third grade science and social studies standards (4th Grade Funky Town is not just all about 4th grade stuff). This weekend Wes and I were out of town for his Olympic Weight lifting certification, so I had a lot of time on my hands to make some new creations. The products I just created are not on my TPT store yet, but when I post them I will allow them to be free for the first 24 hours, so if you follow my blog posts I will let you know and you can go download them for FREE!!!

The first product I worked on this weekend was based off of Georgia Ecology. 
Here are the standards covered.

S3L1.a

Differentiate between habitats of Georgia (mountains, marsh/swamp, coast, Piedmont, Atlantic Ocean) and the organisms that live there.
S3L1.b

Identify features of green plants that allow them to live and thrive in different regions of Georgia.

S3L1.c

Identify features of animals that allow them to live and thrive in different regions of Georgia.
S3L1.d

Explain what will happen to an organism if the habitat is changed.

The second product I worked on this weekend was based off of human's impact on our world . 
Here are the standards covered.

S3L2.a

Explain the effects of pollution (such as littering) on the habitats of plants and animals.

S3L2.b

Identify ways to protect the environment.

The third product I worked on this weekend was based off of a third grade social studies product on interdependence and trade. 
Here are the standards covered.

SS3E3

The student will give examples of interdependence and trade and will explain how voluntary exchange benefits both parties.

1. Describe the interdependence of consumers and producers of goods and services.

1. Describe how goods and services are allocated by price in the marketplace.

1. Explain that some things are made locally, some elsewhere in the country, and some in other countries.

1. Explain that most countries create their own currency for use as money.

Today while my students were taking their assessment on division and multiplication, I threw together a letter to send home with my students today about our Valentine's party. I am planning on making it a freebie for teachers to download and edit for their parties this week. I attached on the back of the sheet a class list for them to fill out their valentines. Enjoy!

Five for Friday

I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for the Five for Friday linky. It has been a week of all proportions. I don't want to complain because it is easy to be a negative Nelly, but wahoooo today is Friday. 

This year I currently have 28 students. Last year I only had 22. I think class size has a lot to do with test scores and differentiation help. Think if your class was around twenty students what you would be able to do. I teach with a team of four fourth grade teachers. Like I said I have twenty eight, the others have twenty seven each or more. I realize twenty eight isn't a bad number, but my classroom is very small and has little room for desks, chairs, and twenty eight students and one teacher. How do people manage with almost 30 kiddos?!

I got a new student this week and I like to make all my copies weeks ahead of time, and now I have to go run one extra copy...... AGH!?@#! Sorry my OCD is coming out.

Today we finally read our Scholastic News article that was titled Ruby the Brave. I was looking around on Bloglovin' and found that Mary over at A Classroom Full of Smiles wrote her latest blog post on Ruby Bridges. I thought to myself AHA we taught about the same person, but used different resources. I am considering going back and utilizing her free resources to review Ruby Bridges story. 

Oh the dirty little pigs who have come into my classroom and junked it up, no sir not today. Last week I went through my student's desks to find all sorts of treasures including: cookies from our Christmas Party, unfinished work, glue balls (yes they used all my glue sticks and made balls out of them), shredded erasers, broken pencils, giblets of all sorts and more. I lowered the boom and told them I was going to remove their desk privileges from the classroom if they couldn't live without being filthy. Day 1 of the Friday desk check...........drum roll please.......... SPOTLESS!!!

This week we began our new book study on Oliver Twist written by Charles Dickens. Why not expose these little hooligans to some traditional literature? It will hopefully evoke a love and passion for literature. Not really, we just have a program called Literacy Collaborative and it is a very strict and structured literacy program and this was what the kids voted on for our read loud.  

This week I had to go to the orthodontist. I haven't been since I got my braces removed in 8th grade. We aren't even going to discuss how long ago that was. The reason I went is because my permanent retainer came off and the glue had to be removed from my canine teeth. The orthodontist was so proud that I actually still had my old school retainers. They unfortunately didn't fit well, so I had to order some new ones. Yikes $300 later I will be having some straight teeth for the upcoming wedding festivities. Note: the picture above was the old retainer, I haven't gotten my new ones yet!