Five for Friday

It's Friday!! My favorite day of the work week, and just another day in the summer time!! :-) Friday also means it's time for one of my favorite link ups, Five For Friday hosted by Doodle Bugs Teaching!

This is a link up where we can share 5 random things from our week. I must admit, being stuck on the couch unable to walk makes for a boring week, but I'll try to find 5 things to share with you all!!

My niece is helping to extinguish the myth that pit bulls are vicious and dangerous animals!

Kobe is an incredibly strong pit bull that COMPLETELY worships and adores my niece!! Lilly can pull his ears and tail, smack him around, stick her fingers up his nose, take his toys from him....she can literally do whatever she wants to this dog and he has never once even raised his voice to her. He takes all her 'loving abuse' and comes back for more! They are truly best friends, and she could not have a more playful and protective companion! I just love how much Kobe loves her!!

My girl here has been carrying around that dog biscuit for over a month now. I can't believe she hasn't demolished it yet!!! Toys and treats don't last long with her, but this one has definitely become the exception!!

I have been doing a lot of 'TPT Stalking' lately, looking for great freebies and new clipart sets that I simply must add to my collection. Did you know that Edulips offers each of her new sets for 50% OFF the day she releases them??? I have gotten so many incredible sets by stalking her store!!! :-) Each time I log on to TPT I search the Our Teach Authors board for anyone I might now. If I find a friend, I snag a screen shot and pop it on to Instagram so my friend can see! Imagine my complete surprise and delight when I logged on to find this!!

Check me out!!!! Bottom right corner is all mine, and I am SO EXCITED to have FINALLY found myself!!! I may or may not have smiled all day, and if I could jump up and down with a broken ankle I totally would have!!!

Have you noticed how social media is exploding with teachers and teacher bloggers?? So many platforms to get our names and 'brands' out there, and I can't believe how far the social media has come since I started blogging almost three years ago! Periscope is the newest fad, and it's so neat to put a face to so many of the bloggers I have become friends with since starting this journey! With so many different forms of social media out there, it can get hard to keep track of them all! Luckily for us, the incredibly talented @thetwentysoomethingteacher created a really awesome template to help keep us all on track!

Here's all of my info! If you want to fill one of these out for yourself, log onto Instagram and follow @thetwentysomethingteacher. She has a blank template in her Photos section!!! It's a great way to network!!

I have been really hard at work on some activities to help get my school year started off right!! I am so proud of my work that I am raffling it off using Rafflecopter! All you have to do is click on one of the images to head over to that blog post where you can enter to win a copy for yourself!

I wish you the best of luck in the giveaway!!!

For those of you who have been following along with my blog for a while, you know that about a month ago I set a challenge for myself.

I, like many of you, truly enjoy finding awesome freebies on TPT that I can use in my classroom again and again. I am constantly downloading activities and clipart freebies created by some pretty amazing people. 

As a TPT creator, I know and understand the amount of time, energy, and hard work that goes into the creation of each and every product, whether it be free or not! I also know that you can have a freebie be downloaded thousands of times, yet only a handful of people took time to rate and leave feedback. I realize how frustrating that can be, and soon found myself guilty of not leaving freebie feedback. I have tried all sorts of things to keep myself on track and held accountable for giving freebie feedback. Nothing was working. 

Enter the Freebie Feedback Challenge!!

This is a little challenge that I created for myself. I needed something to help me keep track of the freebies I have left feedback on, as well as something to hold me accountable for actually LEAVING the feedback!! 

This graphic really helps me to tick off the freebies as I leave feedback on them. Also, posting it each week definitely helps to hold me accountable for my challenge! As you can see, I have left feedback on over 200 freebies since I started this challenge!! Some of those freebies were downloaded last year, and that makes me sad that it's taken this long to give them feedback! I'm so grateful to have made this challenge, and taking ten-twenty minutes out of my day to let other creators know how awesome their creations are is a great use of my time!!

Well, that's all I have from this week! Swing on over to Doodle Bugs Teaching to see who else has linked up and what is going on in their week! You can link up too!

Hey, don't forget that you can link up for Spotlight Saturday! It's a link up I created to act like a Teacher's Show and Tell, where we can get together and share our favorite products, activities, ideas, resources, tips, tricks, and anything else that makes our classrooms and teaching lessons more awesome!!

Summer Share & Prepare: Which is Which? Write the Room

On Thursdays in the summer I am linking up with Marie from Once Upon a Classroom: A Teacher's Tale. She is hosting a very cool summer linky, where we get a chance to share some awesome beginning of the year activities that others could use to prepare their classroom for next year!

Last week I shared one of my newest products, perfect for the beginning of the year in kindergarten or pre-k or 1st grade. My Color the Room pack is the perfect way to get kiddos used to the procedures and routines of Write the Room activities, except in this activity they don't have to write anything. Many of my kiddos can't form a letter or copy from a model at the beginning of the year, so this activity is perfect. To get one for yourself, click on the image below to head over to my TPT store.

For today's Share and Prepare, I would like to share an activity with you that you could use after you have finished with the Color the Room packet. It is a great activity to use when your kiddos are beginning to understand the difference between a letter and a number.

This is another Write the Room activity that focuses on a student's ability to differentiate between a letter and a number. It never fails, I always have quite a few students who come to me not understanding the difference between a letter and a number. This activity helps them to visually discriminate between the two.

This packet is chock full of posters that focus on being able to visually discriminate between letters and numbers. It is not intended for you to use all of the posters at once, but to decide what you want to focus on. There are four sets of posters, two of them use white fonts and the other two use black fonts. There is a set that focuses on uppercase letters and numbers, and another set that focuses on lowercase letters and numbers. You can use the uppercase set one week and the lowercase set the following week. This way you're giving your students plenty of practice identifying numbers and letters.

There are also two different styles of recording sheets included. There is a set that focuses on finding the letters and another set that focuses on finding the numbers. You will also be able to differentiate using the recording sheets. One sheet is for students who are able to copy from a model and can write the letter or number on the handwriting lines. The other sheet is for students who are still having a hard time with letter/number formation. For the second sheet, students will have to color in the circle to indicate which circle on the poster has the letter/number. 

This Write the Room activity is a logical step after using the Color the Room activity. Students should by now be used to the rules and routines of Write the Room and should be able to complete these activities independently while you meet with small groups.

If you are interested in adding this resource to your collection, I invite you to enter the Rafflecopter drawing to try and win one for yourself! I will be announcing winners on Sunday! If you can't wait, head on over to my TPT store and snag one for yourself!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Swing back over to Once Upon a Classroom: A Teacher's Tale to see who else has linked up to share their favorite back to school products!

Extreme Blog Makeover!

Welcome to my BRAND NEW blog!!!  I was lucky enough to have my blog completely redone by Designs by Kassie!!  Did she not do an AMAZING job!?!  I am totally in love with my blog's new look, and I just LOVE how it fits my theme!!  Have you seen the 'Pin Me' button she created??  It's a DRAGON!!!  :-)  It was an investment well spent!!

I am also celebrating a personal milestone!  Back in June, I set a goal for myself.  This morning, that goal was FINALLY achieved!!  

My original idea was to have 100 items posted in my TPT store by the end of the summer.  At the time, I had 75 items in my store.  I thought it'd be easy-peasy to get 25 items done over the summer months.  Wellll.........life happened and most of my summer was spent exactly as it should be, with family and friends!  :-)  So by the time school started up again, I had only been able to raise my total activities posted to 90.  Not too shabby, but still not the original goal. I wasn't able to meet my original deadline, but I have finally gotten 100 products listed in my TPT store!  I thought it fitting that the 100th product should be a FREEBIE for all of you wonderful folks who have inspired me to keep creating!!

This little freebie is a Write the Room activity created around smiley spiders.  This activity focuses on the numerals 1-10, the number words 1-10, and the colors of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, black, brown, and gray.

Each poster has a different number represented by a set of same-colored spiders.  The matching number words are also on the posters, done up with spider-web letters.

There are two different types of recording sheets.  The first type focuses on the numbers 1-10 and matching those numerals to a set.  

Students must identify the number and find the spider set that matches.  They then write the number word on the line next to the numeral, and color the numeral to match the color of the spiders.  There are two sheets, one for the numerals 1-5 and another for the numerals 6-10.  You could either use these to differentiate for students in your room, or copy them back to back and have the students work on all of the numbers. 

The next recording sheet has students reading the given color word and then finding the set of spiders that matches that color.

When students find the matching poster, they are to draw the amount of spiders in the set.  Since the black spider poster has ten spiders on it, students would draw ten black spiders in the box labeled with the black crayon.  You could also have them write the matching numeral inside the box, if you wish.

I hope that you enjoy this freebie, and that you help my celebrate this milestone!!  I am going to be throwing a SALE in my TPT store, where every single product will be listed at 10% OFF!!  Stock up on all your favorites!!  Check back tomorrow to see which products I mark down EVEN FURTHER!!!

Two for Tuesday

I'm late linking up tonight, but I wanted to participate with The Teaching Tribune's Two for Tuesday linky party.  This is where two of our products are listed for 50% off.

If you've been reading my posts, you know I have a lot to celebrate lately.  So instead of two items, I'm putting 3 of my best-selling TPT products on sale for 50% off until Wednesday night.  Oh, but that's not all!!!  There is currently a Birthday Celebration Sale going on in my store, so from now until tomorrow night you can snag these products at 70% OFF!!!

Until Wednesday, this awesome Write the Room activity that focuses on teen numbers, is only $1.00!!!!!

I use this activity when we're learning about story elements.  Littles choose a character/setting and have to draw the matching setting/character.  Character and setting cards, along with the writing prompt, are included.  Until Wednesday, this best-selling activity is only $1.20!!!  Psssttt - I'll tell you a secret.  This activity is at the top of my list for Product Makeovers, and very soon I will be updating it!!  Make sure to grab yours before I add to it and the price goes up!!!

Finally, this activity is one I will be using for the first time this year.  I am going to use this packet as morning work/homework for our alphabet practice.  So far, each letter of the alphabet contains three different pages of activities.  I will be soon be adding even more to this packet, so make sure you grab yours at the super-low sale price of $1.40!!!  

I hope you are able to grab some great resources today from the linky party!!  Make sure to go back to the top of this post and click on their button to go back and find even more resources!!

For those of you who didn't know, I'm having my VERY FIRST GIVEAWAY!!!!!  You have the chance to earn my newest activity bundle!!  Click on the picture below to go to my post to read all about it, and make sure you enter the giveaway!!!!