It's a Noun Hunt! -- Freebie

Need a "filler" that meets a CC Standard to keep your kiddos occupied while you try to finish up a report?

Try this Noun Scavenger Hunt. Put out a stack of Christmas books, library books, or even textbooks.  Students search through the books to find proper, common, singular, plural, abstract, singular possessive, plural possessive, and collective nouns.

Just click on the pic above to get your gift….and please leave a "gift of a comment!" I'd love to hear from you.

Two of My Favorite Christmas Books -- Freebie

These two books are just too good not to share again. 

How Santa Got His Job and How Santa Lost His Job are two of my favorite Christmas books. I'm sharing the freebies I posted last year with you again in case you missed them the first time around or just need to be reminded about these two fun, fun, fun books.

I always start by using the covers of the book as a writing prompt. Ask your kiddos how they think Santa got his job and have them write a short story with all the story elements.

Once you read the story, they can compare and contrast their version with the original. Do the same activity for their predictions on how Santa lost his job.

Click on the pic above to get your gift for today……and please think about leaving me a comment. I love to hear from you.

Christmas Syllable Hunt - Freebie

Grab your favorite Christmas or winter books, stick this sheet in a sheet protector, and you've got a quick literacy station!

Breaking words apart into syllables is a great way to beef up your kiddos' decoding skills.

Click on the pic above to get your gift.

Santa's Prefixes - Freebie

 A big focus of both second and third grade is decoding, understanding, and using words with prefixes.

Today's freebie is perfect to sneak into a literacy station for some extra practice in these crazy weeks before Christmas break.

Click on the pic above to get your gift.

Christmas Write the Room - Plurals -- Freebie!

Need a way to work off some of that extra energy bouncing around in your room?

Use this Write the Room activity to review regular and irregular plurals and sentence writing. 

Tape the cards around the room, being sure to make some a little hard to find.  I usually make a rule that there is no talking when we play. That just keeps the kids focused and lets them be a little sneaky when they are finding the words.

Click on the pic above to get your gift.

Happy December! Long Vowels Freebie

Happy December!

We have tried to amp up our phonics and spelling practice this year by emphasizing multi syllable words in our literacy stations.

Our kiddos need practice with basic phonics decoding skills, but we didn't want to use the same words that they had been using since first and second grade. The words that accompany our new basal aren't rigorous enough to meet the foundational skills of Common Core, so we've tried to use multi syllable words in our decoding practice.

Your gift today is a Scoot game. Put one card on each desk, give each child or team of children a recording sheet, and ring a bell. Each child records the word under the correct heading, then moves to the next desk when they hear the bell.

Just click on the pic above to get your gift.

I love Scoot because they kids don't even know they are reviewing. It's a fun way to do a formative assessment at the end of a lesson, too.

Merry Practice! - Freebie

Make some merry practice using place value disks with these cute little gingerbread men.

Just click on the pic above to get the freebie!

Christmas Subtraction with Regrouping - Freebie

Here's a little Christmas practice in subtraction with regrouping.

Just click on the above pic to get the activity.

If you haven't entered my 1,000 Follower Giveaway, time is running out!

Click {HERE} to enter.

Gifting Long Vowels - Freebies

Need practice for sorting two syllable words with long vowels? Put this activity in a literacy station. After students sort the words, ask them to write expanded sentences using one word from each category.

Just click on the pic above to get the file.

How many two syllable long vowel words can you leave in a comment? :)

If you haven't entered my 1,000 Follower Giveaway, go {HERE} to enter!

The More, The Merrier! - Freebie!

What's one of the most important things I have learned this year?

The Common Core standards are not skills that can be paced into a rigid timeline, taught, assessed, and never reviewed.

The more practice....the better!

Our students have to continuously go back, review, and refine their skills.

I've tried to give my kiddos lots of practice in many different ways to keep the skills fresh.

Here's another practice activity for adding and subtracting 10 and 100 to and from numbers.

Click on the pic above to get the activity.

(The MORE comments I get,

the MERRIER I am!)

And remember....the more times you enter my 1,000 Follower Giveaway, the more chances you have to win!

Click {HERE} to enter!

The Stockings Were Hung....Plurals Freebie

Let your kiddos identify plurals for the nouns on the stockings with care!

 Each card has a singular form of a noun. Students will write the singular and plural forms of the words, then choose several pairs to use in sentences.

Just click on the pic above to download the file.

If you haven't entered my 1,000 Followers Giveaway, click {HERE} to enter now!

Shining Plurals - Freebie

My kiddos are like hamsters on wheels....they are moving, moving, moving.....all day long! They are so excited about Christmas and are already counting down the days.

I'm trying to give them some extra fun in our lessons and literacy stations to help burn off some of that Christmas energy.

One of our skills is forming irregular plurals.

They are loving this card game based on forming plurals and beg to play it. I think I'm going to have to make more sets so more than two kiddos can play at once!

Players draw a card and identify the plural form of the word. If they are right, they get to keep the card. If they draw a tangled string of lights, they have to put all their cards back in the pile.

Just click on the pic above to get the game.

I bet your kids love this as much as mine do!

Please leave a comment and let me know if htey do.

Adjective and Adverb Scavenger Hunt - Freebie

My kids love it when I put up a scavenger hunt. I honestly don't think they know they are practicing skills! All they know is they are having fun.

My latest hunt is based on adverbs and adjectives.

After finding the 32 words hidden around the room, the students record the words on a T chart they have made themselves.

Just be careful---my assistant and I spent a good ten minutes trying to find one of the cards I had hidden too well!

Just click on the pic above to get the cards.

Happy hunting!

(Please hide me a comment, too! I love hearing from you all.)

Adverbs and Adjectives Game -- Freebie

Here's  a game to play as part of your whole group instruction to review adjectives and adverbs.

Divide your class into teams. Set a timer for ten minutes. Teams take turns drawing cards. They must tell if the word is an adjective or adverb and use it correctly in a sentence. They get to keep the card if they complete each task correctly. The team with the most cards at the end of ten minutes wins.

Put the cards in a literacy station for extra practice.

Just click on the pic above to get the game cards.

Two Syllable Long Vowel Words - Freebie

I'm giving this activity to my kiddos in a literacy station next week for practice in sorting long vowel two syllable words.

I need to bump up our practice on distinguishing the different long vowel sounds. 

After sorting the words, they will choose one word from each category to use in sentences.

 Just click on the pic above to download the file.

Can you use two syllable words with long vowels in a comment? :)

Santa's Job - Freebie

Steven Krensky has written two books you are going to love!

How Santa Got His Job and How Santa Lost His Job tell the stories of how Santa got the best job in the world...and how he lost it!

This packet combines activities for both books. Although I published them on my blog last year, I've updated them to include the Common Core ELA Standards and put the activities for both books in one packet. 

Just click on the pic above to get double the fun!

To get even more mileage out of the books, I used them both as writing prompts. Before reading, I asked the kiddos to make their own predictions about how Santa first started making and delivering toys. They wrote their own stories, then compared their predictions to the books. We did the same to tell how Santa lost his job.

Please leave a comment! I love reading them!

Have a wonderful end to your Thanksgiving weekend.

Candy Jar Subtraction - Freebie

I'm a little later posting today than usual. I didn't get anything scheduled last night because both of my kids are home from college. That's my first item on my Thankful List!

Here is the companion to the Candy Jar Addition.

Students choose two pieces of candy, arrange them so that they make a subtraction expression, and solve the problem.

Click on the pic above to download the file.

Please leave me a comment....that's another item on my Thankful List!

Candy Jar Addition - Freebie

We're still working on adding and subtracting with regrouping. Here's an activity for a Math station.

Students draw two pieces of candy and find the number cards to match. They must add the two numbers together. You can ask them to draw three cards as an extension.

Just click on the pic above to download the activity.

(And please think about leaving me a comment in my candy jar!)

Updated Polar Express Activities

I posted lots of activities for The Polar Express last year. I've learned a lot about making activities since then, so I've gone back and redone all the activities, added some new ones, correlated them to the Common Core ELA Standards, and put them into one big file. 

Your students can practice sequencing activities, matching synonyms, parts of speech, and alphabetical order. I added cards with discussion questions for the book. If you don't have a copy of The Polar Express, you can listen to actor Lou Diamond Phillips reading it online at StoryLineOnline.

Just click on the pic above to get the file. Please leave a comment if you download the activities. I'd love to know what you think.

I've reached the one thousand followers mark, so be looking for details for a giveaway in the next few days!

Today is Celebration Day!

Today is our Christmas Celebration at school. We go all day, then come in tomorrow for two hours. We don't come back until a Staff Development Day on January 4.

I'm going to do the same thing I did for Halloween and project our schedule of activities on our Promethean Board. It helped to keep the kids on track and contain their excitement for Halloween, so I'm hoping it will work today, too!

I'll have all the materials for the day hidden in shopping bags, so they'll have to be sitting out. The kids will make some good guesses/inferences/predictions about what's in the bags and justify their answers.

Each student will get an individually wrapped Christmas brownie. They will use their senses to write a paragraph about their brownie.

We need to review nouns, so we are going to do a Scavenger Hunt using our Christmas books. For a little added fun, they are going to get a giant ink pen I found at The Dollar Tree to record their answers.

Jake, our elf on a shelf, has been watching us closely. This is the student's last chance to convince him Santa needs to visit. They will write a persuasive letter to Jake. 

I'm going to use some of the Christmas-themed activities I've made over the past few weeks to do a speed review of some of our most important skills.

Mrs. Frizzle and the gang are going to take us on a holiday adventure to a recycling plant. The students will make a graphic organizer to show what new information they learned from the movie.

Each student gets a giant candy cane stuffed with kisses to use to make up multiplication and division word problems. They will ask their table group to draw bar models to solve the problems.

After that, it's lunch and then refreshment time....and finally, dismissal!