Pronoun Freebie and a Giveaway

Happy Monday, friends! I am keeping my fingers crossed for some time at school with my kiddos this week! I've had plenty of time off, so that means a new freebie for you! 

I needed a quick lesson to review pronouns with my kiddos and get some notes into their Interactive Notebooks, so I came up with this little freebie. You can click on the picture above or here to pick yours up. 

I'm helping Amy from Eclectic Educating celebrate 300 blog followers!!! Click the button below to go over to her page and enter. If you've not checked out her blog you don't know what you're missing!! Every post from Amy is full of great resources and activities I can use in my classroom!! 

Celebrating 400 Followers with a Freebie for Everyone!!

This past week I reached a blogging milestone - 400 followers! I feel so blessed to have so many wonderful teachers actually want to read my blog! I had to celebrate in some way, so I decided a freebie was in order. 

This is my newest product and it will be free until 8:00 Monday morning! 

Don't worry, even if you don't use Interactive Notebooks you can still use this activity as a sort! 

We did this in class yesterday as a little review. Here are a few pics so you can get an idea of what it's all about! 

There are winter words on the cards that students sort into three categories: noun, verb, or adjective. 

After we checked over everything together, the kiddos used the words to create sentences. 

Then they created a color code and labeled the nouns, verbs, and adjectives in their sentences! It was a pretty fun activity and made for a great little assessment. 

You can click the product picture at the beginning of the post or click here to go to my TPT and pick up your freebie. Be sure to leave me some feedback love if you like the product! 

Thanks again for following my blog! 

People We Should Know Series and Peek at My Week {Must Read Mentor Text}

Good Sunday Morning! I hope you enjoyed your extra hour of sleep. It was much needed in our house! 

I'm linking up with Collaboration Cuties for their Must Read Mentor Text linky. 

We're going to be working on identifying and using nonfiction text features this week. I headed to the library yesterday in search of books and came across one I'd used a few years ago, but had forgotten about it. 

Barack Obama just happens to be one of many books in a series called People We Should Know. You can click here to see a list of some other titles in the series. 

This book is packed with text features for students to explore. 

We'll be using the Nonfiction Test Features Discovery Chart from The Unique Classroom to record our findings. 

This is a nonfiction text that has a lot of great, interesting information but isn't as long as some others. Students can usually read this with a partner in a couple of sittings, giving them plenty of time for other activities. 

Speaking of other activities, I wanted to share what else we've got going on this week with text features, so I'm linking up with Mrs. Laffin's Laughings for A Peek at my Week linky.

Interactive Notebooks

We'll be adding note sheets from The Shabby Chic teacher to our interactive notebooks. (Look under Units of Study.) I just reduced the sheets a little when I ran them through the copier so they would fit right in our notebooks. 

I also printed out the full size pages in color, laminated them and put magnets on the back to use on the chalkboard this week during our mini-lessons. 

Practice

I bought this great memory matching game from Kelly Clark to use for practicing text features. 

We are also going to be using a spiders worksheet from an ancient Mailbox Bookbag magazine. The sheet has some great diagrams and facts that are really helpful for my kiddos. 

Grammar 

We are sorting nouns and verbs using this Football Noun and Verb Sort from my TPT Store. 

The best part of the week - No School on Tuesday!!! Our district is always out on Election Day and I have a day of relaxing and crafting planned!! 

What are you up to this week?

Box Tops Container, Complete Sentences, and Cookies {Monday Made It}

How about some cookies to make Monday Sunday night a littler easier? I'm linking up with Tara at 4th Grade Frolics to share a few things I've made lately. 

Even though I've not had tons of time to be crafty, I've missed seeing this linky every week. I love to see what everyone else has been up to. 

Teachers are some amazing recyclers, right? So I was about to throw away the Hawaiian Punch container, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it because I just KNEW I could use it for something! 

A few days later I was inspired to turn it into a container to hold our Box Tops for Education. It is hanging from my kitchen cabinet for this picture because I wanted to show you the cutesy ribbon I attached so it would be easy to carry all the box tops to the office. 

With the juice container being "ribbed" I couldn't use vinyl, so I used the next best thing - letters cut from cardstock and this AMAZING red tape. 

If you want something to stick forever and ever amen use this tape. I had forgotten the name, so I did a quick google search and it is called This to That. I got mine at Hobby Lobby in the scrapbook adhesive section. 

I have a group of kiddos that need a lot of practice on determining whether or not a group of words is a sentence, so I created this fun, carnival themed game and practice sheet.

You can click on the picture to read more about it in my TPT store. 

I did promise cookies at the beginning of this post. I love to cook and cookies are one of my favorite things to make. This super easy recipe is always a hit and you can play around with different combinations. 

Cake Mix Cookies

1 box cake mix 

1 stick butter, softened

2 eggs

Combine all the ingredients, dish 'em out, and bake them up at 350 for around 8 minutes. 

Now, I'm sure you're looking at this recipe and thinking what is so special about that?! For starters it takes mere seconds to produce homemade cookies. But the best thing is you can use any cake mix for these. My personal favorite is devil's food cake mix with peanut butter chips - yum-o!!! The ones pictured above are funfetti cake mix with funfetti icing sandwiched in between. 

I'm thinking of using some orange food coloring in the funfetti cake mix and making little pumpkin cookie sandwiches for our Halloween party. How cute would that be? Or you can make them into spiders with little licorice legs. 

 So there is a look at what I've been making lately. What have you been up to? Head on over to link up! 

Sentences, Smart Exchange, Procedure Review Game, and More {Five for Friday}

Fri-DAY!! Woot Woot!! I'm lovin' knowing that this there is a long weekend and lots of fun time with friends a family coming up! But first, time to link up with Doodle Bug's Teaching.

1. We've been working on complete sentences this week. Here is a peek at our anchor chart. I took this picture before we added in our example sentence and then forgot the camera...oops! 

I've said it before - I'm all about a nice, simple anchor chart. And apparently a bad picture...haha!!

2. Do you ever forget about some great places to find teaching resources? Happens to me all the time. I just revisited SmartExchange this week and found some fantastic resources for subjects and predicates. The people posting on that site can do SmartBoard magic!! I {puffy heart} it. 

3. We've got one more week left on Raymond and Graham Rule the School. Here is a  a few picture from our visualizing activity this week. 

In an attempt to shave his almost-invisible mustache, Graham shaves off his eyebrow. Being the good friend he is, Raymond draws him an eyebrow, but it turns out to be more of a unibrow!

We're having so much fun with this book. If you'd like to take a peek at my activities for this book you can click here.

4. We spent about a week going over rules and procedures for reading workshop and our classroom library. Even with reminders every now and then, I still felt like we needed a little more reinforcement. I created these cards and we played "Pass" a modified game of Scoot where pairs of students sit around the room and we pass the cards around (creative, I know...haha!). 

5. A few weekends ago I accidentally baptized my Kindle in the tub! eeekk!! It did turn back on, but things were never really the same. Earlier in the week I ordered a new Kindle Paperwhite (aka Baby Kindle) and it arrived last night! It is great!! I'll be doing a lot of reading this weekend!

What are your plans for the weekend? 

Complete Sentences Game and a Flash Freebie

Engaging. Check. Fun. Check. Out-of-your seat. Check. 

It was a fantastic day in my classroom today! I couldn't wait to get home and share this super fun, super easy subject, predicate, and complete sentences activity with you! 

We are going to need a LOT of work on just writing a complete sentence this year, so I knew I had to up the fun factor to get everyone interested. 

The game is played inside outside circles style. One circle of kiddos moves around, visiting different partners, while the other circle stays in one place. 

The partners work at determining if a group of words is a subject or predicate. Then they decide if their two cards together make up a complete sentence. 

When I created this activity I made sure the combinations would be silly and sometimes outrageous and the kids loved it! There was definitely a lot of giggling going on! I also hear a lot of talk about subjects and predicates and saw students frequently referencing our anchor chart when they needed a little reminder. 

"My teacher is fuzzy." We heard some great sentences. 

"The cafeteria blew bubbles."

"The bus ran around the house."

I was thrilled with how this drove home the point that a complete sentence needs both a subject and a predicate. We will definitely be doing this activity again! 

I have posted the instructions and 2 sets of cards for the game in my TPT store. You can click here if you'd like to take a look. 

Since I have such wonderful followers who read all the way to the end of the post, I will be giving away this set to the first 3 people to leave a comment with your email address.

Thanks to all those who commented!!