Fun Football Freebie and a SALE!

Gearing up for tomorrow's big game and wanted to let ya'll know I'm having a 20% off sale starting... NOW!!!!  It runs until the end of the night on Sunday!

And... wanted to share this FOOTBALL FREEBIE!  I have shared this before, but it's perfect for this footbally time of year.  Even though my team (GO LIONS!) isn't in the Super Bowl (read that as "Down with the Refs at the 1st playoff game!), I will be watching tomorrow and excited to see some football!

Click the pic to download your freebie!

Easy Peasy Classroom Jobs

Well, this is the 2nd ICE DAY we've had in a row!  I'll admit it... I was psyched!  I am gearing up to move (yay!) to a new house and spent the last two days packing.  Sure, I'm not even moving until the end of February and now my house looks like someone broke in and stole all of my things, but I was so productive this week!

I did want to pop on and share with you how I'm doing class jobs this year.  I used to change jobs on a weekly basis and had a job for every student... but, when I would rush out on a Friday, I'd forget to change the jobs and then kids were bummed when they came in on Monday... so it was a mad dash to quickly change them.

Then, some of the things I had jobs for were not as grand or desirable as others... which left some of my friends feeling like they never got to really DO anything on those weeks.

So, now we do this:

I whipped up this chart during my planning period one day, quickly assembled it, laminated it, and we started using it that very day!

The GREEN clip is the "main kid" of the day... they do everything... line leader, answer the phone, file papers, run messages, carry the lunch basket, write tomorrow's lunch up... all that good stuff.

They choose a friend who will be their helper for the day and that kid puts his/her ORANGE arrow on their number.  At the end of each day, the kid on green moves the clip down and reminds tomorrow's helper to choose a friend.

I just used a clothespin!  Tacky glue and hot glue could not hold the laminated arrows on, so now they're on with velcro and it works perfectly!

We LOVE this and my kiddos love that, for one day, they are THE kid!  They get so excited when they know their day is coming too... and I don't have to remember to change jobs for 30 kids every Friday!

(Oh- and I used Wikki Sticks to cross off 11 and 14 as I don't have students with those numbers this year!)

Highlighting Favorite FREEBIES!

Happy Sunday, bloggy friends!

I'm gearing up for next week and wanted to highlight some of my favorite FREEBIES that you can download and use INSTANTLY in your classroom with no fuss or muss!

Try them out... just click pics to download!

First...

Teach your kiddos to use the question in their answers using FLIP IT!

My next favorite...

You can find some ready to use free assessments in this pack!  If you click the pic, you can find the 1st grade pack too!

My kiddos LOVED doing this "Main Idea and Details Race" freebie!

Click the button below to head to my TpT store and check out ALL of my freebies!

Have any favorite freebies of your own?  Feel free to post a link in the comments!

Tons of Pics Tuesday... {Come See!}

It's been too long, bloggy friends!  I've been busy watching "Breaking Bad" obsessively and just finished the series... I LOVED it!!!!!  Any other BB fans out there?  I'm looking for another good series to start now.  I've watched "Orange is the New Black" and LOVE LOVE LOVE it!

So... I'm a little late to the party, but here are some pics of what we made our parents for Christmas.

This one is a pin my colleague found on Pinterest... not sure who to credit here, but THANKS to whoever came up with this CUTE CUTE project first!

We also made these ornaments out of cupcake wrappers... I LOVE how they turned out!!!  Super cheap and easy... just fold the cupcake wrapper in half and glue, then fold it in half again and glue.  Stack, glue, hot glue a popsicle stick on the back, hole punch, add pipe cleaner hanger!

So cute!!!

We also made cinnamon/applesauce ornaments, a reindeer thumbprint ornament, and a handprint tile... but I forgot to take pics of those!

One of my BFFs and I went to the last Lions home game in mid-December.  We had SO much fun!  We even made Lions cookies and took them to pass out to fans in Detroit!  You can totally tell which ones she made... she's a great artist!

I love this girl... we had so much fun!  I lost my voice from screaming too much!

Last... it's time for my FAVORITE writing unit... personal narratives!!!!!  We started this week and already have an anchor chart, additions to our Writer's Notebooks, and have read some amazing mentor texts by Patricia Polacco and Donald Crews!

I can't WAIT to dig deeper into this unit and see what my writers come up with!

Check out the Writer's Notebook pack for more info!

It's the new year!  I hope 2015's amazing for you all!