Fab Target Finds for Valentine's Day!

Oh Target. You are a teacher's dream!

This weekend I hit up my favorite dollar spot and found some awesome items...Now, I did spend a great deal of time adding text to that picture to explain what each thing was and, for some reason, my text isn't appearing and, of course, I couldn't be bothered to SAVE it.

So, I'll have to tell you:
*100th day crowns and bookmarks
*these crazy balloon things for Valentine's Day that are flat but if you hit them, they blow up!
*all sort of craft stuff- big foam hearts, stickers, foam stickers, felt stickers, confetti, paper
*and two little cardboard buckets that were just too cute to pass up!

I LOVE TARGET!!!!!!!

One more thing- if you happened to pick up the 1st grade phonics fluency packet in my Teacher's Notebook store, you should head back in to your account and re-download it. I added a potential parent letter and I added a 2nd file for non-Treasures users that has the phonics skill each week is focusing on, rather than having the weekly story title on each list. I hope that makes sense! The extra file also doesn't say "Treasures" on the cover sheet!
I added a "making change" math center to my store last night. My 2nd graders will be using it to practice making change. I'll give a free copy to the first comment! Leave your e-mail address please! :)Back to school tomorrow! Blog at ya again later in the week, friends!

First Sip of Coffee Down... Giveaway Winners Up!

Congrats to 92 and 100- Jen R. and Kelly! You are the two winners of my flippy giveaway! Please e-mail me at christina4062@hotmail.com so I can get your items out to you! Jen has won the whole set of flippy books and Kelly get to pick 10! You can check out all of the flippies here, so you can figure out which 10 you'd like!

Thanks so much to everyone for their suggestions for new flippies, sharing my giveaway, and liking my FB and Teacher's Notebook shop! It was a bit of a demanding giveaway, so thanks for participating!

Currently, everything in my Teacher's Notebook shop is 20% off until tomorrow night... so the flippies are less than $1.00!
Have a great weekend everyone. I did go get my hair re-highlighted yesterday and it turned out INCREDIBLY blonde, so I'm freaking out a little. Today I'm going to enjoy my last Saturday before heading back on Monday and tomorrow I'll be working on school stuff all day. To everyone going back on Monday (and everyone who already went back), enjoy the weekend! :)

Giveaway Ends At the First Sip of Coffee Tomorrow!

Happy Friday! I'm bittersweetly (can I make that an adverb?) sad... after today, I have just the weekend and then it's back to reality. Though I'm ready to go back and sorely needed the time off, as I was feeling quite ineffective the week or so before vacation, I will miss sipping on my coffee while listening to "Will and Grace" in the background every morning... not to mention sleeping until 8:30! And working out early! And just getting to read! And work on files! And blog! And blog stalk! And clean my house! And go shopping in the middle of the day! Need I continue? But I do miss my kiddos and am re-energized and ready to fill their little heads full of knowledge.

Today I'm off to get my hair re-highlighted as my roots are peeking out. A few years ago, the first time I got my hair highlighted, the roots started appearing and one of my kiddos rushed up to me with a look of panic across his face and said, "Ummm... Mrs. Bainbridge? I think your hair is starting to change colors". He was so worried for me and my magical-color-changing-hair! I think of him every time I get my hair touched up!

Anyway, thanks SO much for all of your suggestions for flippy books! Yesterday I added some for rural, urban, and suburban communities as Jill suggested and I'll be working on more too. This is just a note to say that the giveaway will end at the first sip of coffee tomorrow morning and I'll choose my winners by random number generator!

Ok- off to the hair shop and coming back a blonder woman!

Valentine Freebie & Share Your Party Ideas!

I've been working this morning on themed stationery for my Teacher's Notebook store (which is having a 20% off sale through the weekend!) and I thought, since Valentine's Day is right around the corner, you might enjoy a Valentine's Day themed stationery freebie! Click the image to download the primary and intermediate versions of this paper... the top is even fillable so you can create custom assignments, writing prompts, give vocabulary words, reminders... whatever you want! :)I would also like to put together a free Valentine's Day Party handbook like the Christmas one I did in December. I would LOVE LOVE LOVE it if you would share your Valentine Party games, student made card holders, crafts, food, activities, anything so I can make another handbook! If you don't know what I mean, check out the link to the Christmas party handbook. Please share in the comments below!

And, last but not least, don't forget about the giveaway I'm doing for free flippy books. There is still time to enter if you want to!

Giveaway Time!

I'm doing a little impromptu giveaway because... well, just because!

I have a few bloggy things to celebrate... first, I haven't had a giveaway to celebrate new followers in a while, my blog Facebook just hit 731 followers (thanks to that "and 1"!), and the "flippy book" thing has exploded and I want to share them with you if you haven't seen them yet!

This giveaway doesn't have a definite "end" time (am I breaking a giveaway taboo? I don't know!)... I'm just going to see what the response is, but it will definitely be before the end of the weekend. And you can enter as much (or as little!) as you like... it will require you to leave lots of comments, but if you want to, go right ahead! Each comment is one entry.

To enter:
1.) Leave a comment giving an idea for a new flippy book... something that wouldn't be too crazy to put on a single page.
2.) Leave a comment saying you "like" my Teacher's Notebook Store as one of your favorites.
3.) Leave a comment saying you "like" my Facebook page.
4.) If you share about this giveaway on your blog, you can leave TWO comments. Feel free to grab the image at the top too, if you want!

So, that's five chances to enter!

You will win a copy of every one of the flippy books I have made up to this point. They are appropriate for 1st and 2nd grade, but some of them could probably work in 3rd too. One winner will get all 26 and a second person will get to pick 10 of them!

Here is a list of what I have made to date:

birthday
100th Day
St. Patrick's Day
Halloween
Valentine's Day
Christmas
Thanksgiving
first Day of School
mammals
birds
fish
amphibians
reptiles
butterfly Life Cycle
frog Life Cycle
matter (solids, liquids, and gases)
magnets
plant parts
water cycle
nouns
verbs
adjectivescontractions
coins
time
New today! fractions

That's 26 pages of flippy goodness! If you aren't sure what my flippies are, you can click the button below to go to my store and see pictures of all of them!


Ok! I'm hoping to get my hair done on Thursday, work on some of your flippy suggestions, and then R&R for the weekend before heading back to school on Monday! As much as I love my days off, I am ready to get back to work and see my kiddos again!

My Students Are *SNOW* Thoughftul Freebie!

Well, all this snow had me thinking about snowmen when I made my "Thank You" postcards for my students who gave me Christmas gifts.

I uploaded this cute freebie to my Teacher's Notebook Store. I'm going to try putting a few freebies there rather than Google Docs to see if that makes it easier to locate them if you don't see the blog post right away.

Anywho, click the pic to find the freebie at my store! :)
It is fillable in Adobe too! Love those kinds of documents!!!!!

New Freebie... Time Flippy Book!

I had no idea ya'll liked the flippy books so much! I just figured out how to look at the downloads on Teacher's Notebook and those are, by far, the most popular things I have in my shop right now!

I just wanted to thank everyone for their support of the new shop (which just got a facelift thanks to the fabulous Alicia at Dreamlike Magic Designs!), the blog these past 6 months, the Facebook page, and the Teaching Oasis so I added a time flippy for FREE! Any other "flippy requests"? I'm off of school until the 9th, so I'd love to hear what else you'd be interested in.  The time flippy is no longer free... but it's still only $1!  :)


And, last night I finished the most fabulous book- The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. Now I'm a lover of teen fiction (ie. City of... series by Cassandra Clare, Blue Bloods series by Melissa de la Cruz) and this was similar, but more adulty. I LOVED IT. READ IT! Please! And if you have read it, let me know because I want to talk about it... I'm the first one of my reader friends to get it, so it's my duty to lend it so no one I know has read it yet! Anyway, after I read it, my brain was buzzing with the ending of the book and just a desire to actually GO to The Night Circus. Why does it have to be fake?! I love to read, but usually about mid-way through the year, the pile of books on my nightstand exponentially grows, and never gets any smaller. This year, I resolve to read more! So, this book was finished on January 2! I started Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close last night and am about halfway though... it is also excellent.

Anyway, I couldn't sleep because I was too excited about the book. So, I also added a flippy on coins. You can view that here if you'd like!

Have a happy Tuesday! I'm off to school today. I'm going to copy and laminate and re-organize the cupboards that were emptied to fix the leak last week. I *might* re-arrange some furniture too... if I do, I'll take some pics and share what I accomplished! Tomorrow I'm off for a day of scrapbooking with my group, the SWANS (scrapbooking women at new stores) tomorrow, so I'll be organizing my bag when I get back from school this afternoon!

Monday Blahs...

We've got snow... but if it can't be here for Christmas and it isn't getting me a snow day, I'm not really interested.

But what can you do? Winter storm warning until Tuesday!

So, to celebrate the Monday Blahs and the impending end to my vacation (why am I celebrating this?!), I've added the Plane Shape workstations to my Teacher's Notebook Store after the feedback from some lovely ladies!

The celebration part is that all of my math activities will be 20% off until the end of the winter storm warning which is tomorrow! Just click the image at the top or the links on the right... see 'em?

This includes anything that could be slightly construed as "mathy" plus the things that are obviously math...

like time workstations,



tally games,


number sense workstation activities,

and the new plane shape work stations,

math games, even the glyphs and the Valentine party candy game!

So, happy Monday... stay warm!

Revision on Plane Shape "Guess Who"-- Please re-download!

Oh no! Two blog posts in a day! Don't tell anyone! :)

I just wanted to re-share the game I previously shared today and let you know to check out the revised copy. You all were right- there needs to be a question card for kids who need it... so I added one. I'm not sure how to edit a file so that if you already downloaded it you can get the new version automatically, so the old file is deleted and you'll have to re-download. Sorry!

Do you think this will work better?
Thanks to everyone who volunteered to check out the unit for me- I shared it with three "editors" and will, hopefully, have the finished packet done tomorrow so I can start printing and laminating!

Need a 2nd Pair of Eyes For This...

Happy New Year!

I had a super fun, but late night last night and spent today listening to the Lions get robbed lose against Green Bay while my husband watched it on TV and I worked on school stuff on the computer.

My 2nd graders will be beginning a unit on polygons when we return from break (on the 9th!!!!) and I have been working for the past five hours on polygon math workstation activities for them. I think I have some good stuff and I think it will all logistically work, but what I need is a 2nd (or 3rd even!) pair of eyes to look the packet over.

If you would do that, I would be so happy! Just leave me a comment with your e-mail and I'll send it out. The only thing is that I'm super impatient, so I'd love it if you could look it over and send me some feedback within the next day.

I'll be putting it on my Teacher's Notebook store with my other math workstations after I hear some feedback and make any necessary changes.

HOWEVER... I am putting one of the activities for free right here... but if you download it, please let me know if you think it will work. It makes sense in my head, but I'm not 100% sure that it will actually work like I think it will! Just click the pic below.
So, if you'd review the whole packet, let me know and if you download the game here, I'd love for you to tell me what you think and if you think it will work!

Phew! Off to retire to the couch for the rest of the night!