Snap It Up Saturday! What a Week!

Good Morning everyone! I think it's safe to say that I have been neglecting my poor little blog over the past two weeks. We have had SO much going on that I haven't had time to blink, much less blog. I was trying to hop back on last week but then my mom went into the hospital and scared us all...BIG TIME! But with a lot of prayer and some fantastic doctors, we finally got to bring her home on Thursday. She's still weak but gradually returning back to her old self.

I don't know about anyone else, but my kids at school have been OFF THE CHAIN the past two weeks. I think there must be something in the water. This is by far the most rambunctious and talkative group I have ever had. There are times when I repeat directions four or five times before we actually all get started on a task. It's enough to make me want to pull out all my hair and sit down in the corner and cry. Needless to say, I'll be glad for a fresh start after Thanksgiving break. One Week to Go!!

This week I have a fun little freebie for you. I whipped up a little set of Borders/Frames to use on some task cards I was making and thought that I would share those with you. Just click on the image below to Snap Them Up! I hope you like them!

As always, thanks for stopping in and I hope you will continue to do so. If you haven't already, stop by my Facebook page as well. I do lots of flash freebies and also have a "Just for Fans" tab where you can find something new about every week or so. You can find my page here.

Have a great weekend!

Snap It Up Saturday! Our Government may be shut down...But we're still learning!

Yep...our Government is still shut down. The ridiculousness is touching the folks in our area like never before. I have several coworkers who are already feeling the strain due to having husbands who work in government offices. If they would hurry up and get those political panties out of a wad, we would all be in much better shape. 

But even with the shutdowns, we are pressing right on through and have jumped into our unit on American government feet first. This is such an abstract concept for third graders and we REALLY struggle to keep things organized. No matter how many Brainpop videos and SchoolHouse Rock tunes we learn, it still just doesn't click for them. But we teach it anyway, and we are trying something new this year. We are working on a lapbook activity that I created for class and the kids are really enjoying all of the foldables and things we are adding. Want to see what I'm talking about?  Below are pictures of a completed lapbook that I made to show my kids before we started. 

 So far it is going well...But again, government is a really abstract concept. Sometimes I wonder if it is developmentally appropriate for third graders, but hey...who I am I to create a curriculum. Anyway, for this week's Snap It Up Saturday! post, I've decided to give away this little foldable pack to all of my fantastic followers! I hope it is something that you find useful and your kids find a little more fun than traditional note-taking. Click on the picture below to head over to my TPT store and Snap It Up!

 I've also been working on other materials for my classroom, a few clipart sets, and a couple of bundles to add to the store as well. And I still have lots of work to do! Below you will find some of my most recent additions. There might be something you can use!

It has been a very busy week and I'm positive next week is going to be much the same. It's hard to believe I'm getting ready to write my first set of report cards already. The year is in motion and it is flying by. But now, I'm off to take the little girl fishing for the day. The weather here is beautiful and I'm going to take advantage of it!

Have a great weekend!

Snap It Up Saturday! Saturday Morning Scramble

Yikes! What a week I've been having and I am so glad to say that this one is over! You would think it was a full moon again because my class seems to have forgotten all that stuff we did the first two weeks of school. You know, all those rules and procedures. Sheesh!

I think I have the cause pinned down though. You see, we got a new student on Monday, and let's just say this little guy is a trip! Anything he can do to get a laugh out of the class or a rise out of me, he's gonna do it. Some of his antics this week included tying himself to his chair with his shoelaces (not with the ends of the strings, but with the part down near the toe) I'm still not sure how that happened--I'm thinking he unlaced his entire shoe, tied it to his chair, and then relaced afterwards. And then the next day, he felt the need to glue his math assignment to his desk. Needless to say, it is entirely possible for one student to change the entire makeup of a classroom.

But, regardless of his antics, I'm going to love him and teach him anyway. We just have to get to the point where we see eye to eye and he knows my expectations, which are high.

I spent all of last night scrambling to get homework finished for my Gifted Endorsement class and haven't even started with lesson planning for the week. So I guess you could say I'm knee deep in the Saturday Morning Scramble! 

And that's where this week's Snap It Up Saturday Freebie comes in. I have a fun little font for all of you to used and it's called--you guessed it!--Saturday Morning Scramble! It is a fun little whimsy font that looks cute on all sorts of applications and its also Commercial Use Friendly...So yes, you can use it on TPT documents that you sell--as long as you shoot me a quick credit right back here to my blog. Just click on the image below to Snap It Up!!  I hope you enjoy it!

And that's it for today folks! I've got to jump right back into lesson planning and get that all wrapped up. Thank goodness for a fantastic team because we know where we're going and all it takes is a few clicks in my planbook and I'm all set for the week! Have a great weekend and enjoy the day off!

Best wishes!

Randi

World Gratitude Day! Blog Hop and Giveaway

September 21 is World Gratitude Day – a relatively unknown special day, but a great opportunity for us to have a quick chat to those that we teach and love – and tell them what we are grateful for! 

I am grateful for so many things – First and foremost, my family. I have an amazing daughter and a wonderful husband. I am grateful for our home and everything in it--even in its haphazardly organized state. I see my students every day coming from homes that have holes in the floors, no heating, and are infested with all sorts of things. It's just so sad. I am grateful for the joys that I have in life and thank God every day for them.

One of my joys in life is creating. I've always had a knack and a love for making my own classroom materials and I truly love sharing them through my blog and TeachersPayTeachers store. . Every time I blog, I always thank everyone for following and I really hope that everyone understands that I mean that from the bottom of my heart. I love what I do, and do what I love. So in honor of World Gratitude day, I have turned one of my most recent store additions into a flash freebie for you today.

Head to my TpT store to find my a great set of task cards FREE for today! Click the image below.

Then hop around to see some of my bloggy friends and find what surprise they have in store for you! At the end of the hop, please enter our rafflecopter to try to win a $50 TpT voucher!! 

Thank you for visiting! Click below to head over to my friend Cyndie at Chalk One Up for the Teacher and pick up another fantastic freebie!

Have a great weekend!

Randi

Snap It Up Saturday! Time to Slow Down!

Good Morning Folks!
I think that it has been the longest week EVER!! Long days at school + something after school EVERY day this week = one tuckered out teacher. Wanna see what I've been up to?

• Monday- Work all day, gymnastics until 6:00, homework
• Tuesday-Work all day, SST meeting, gifted endorsement class until 5:30, more homework
• Wednesday- Work all day, Faculty meeting, write sub plans, sick kid
• Thursday- Meeting all day, sick kid with my mom, PTO night until 7:00
• Friday- Work all day, homework and grading until 8:00, Blog until 10:00

Is it just me or do I need a little less on my plate? And did I mention I'm in the process of car shopping as well. I'm headed out bright and early in the morning to look some more. My research is done and I'm ready to test drive! So excited to drop the minivan! I'm thinking of something sporty...maybe a Mustang!

So this week, I'm bringing out something from the archives for Snap It Up Saturday! I know I missed last week but I hope this week will make up for it. I actually created this set as a custom set a long time ago for someone needing graphics to go along with the song Head,Shoulders,Knees and Toes. The little guys you see below have been making their appearance in the margins of my notebooks since I was in middle school. They're just fun little doodles that make me smile...You can grab those by clicking below.

I have been able to add a few new items and bundles to my TPT store in the past two weeks. They are things that I have needed for my own classroom lessons. My most recent additions are.linked below!

As always, thanks for stopping in. I hope to be able to blog more soon but with the cray-cray that is my life right now, I just don't have the extra time. I hope you will all stick with me and enjoy the freebies as they roll in. Have a great weekend! I'm off to do more homework..HURRAY!!

Snap It Up Saturday! Chalking Up Another Week!

Howdy ya'll! Another week back in school and I'm beat! The nerves are a little frazzled due to a bunch of new things that I have taken on but I feel like it may all straighten out pretty soon. I guess I need to drop that procrastination off somewhere and start jumping in as soon as something new strikes. We've been SOOO busy at school I thought I would share a few things that we've been doing this week, along with this week's Snap It Up Saturday! Giveaway.

First off, in math we've been working on remembering our addition with regrouping skills. It seems like those disappear during the summer between second and third grade. Most of my class jumped right in and had no difficulty pulling those old skills back into their repertoires. I still have a couple that need some intervention, but we'll get to that during our flex math block. This week, we grabbed up our iPods and went to work with some QR codes. I have a lively class and they aren't quiet for very long but the iPods held attention like a dream and they worked diligently. All you could hear was the random YES!!! when they solved a problem correctly.

I also pulled out an old Science lesson that I did last year with my kids to show them how water pollution affects animals and how difficult it is to clean up.You can read that post here. The different this year was that I had them put feathers in their pond to represent birds. We polluted our water with cooking oil and the kids had to rescue their "ducks" and attempt to clean them off with paper towels and cotton rounds. Needless to say, the kids realized that their "ducks" died from being covered with oil and that it was next to impossible to get all of the oil out of their pond. Here we are having a bit of messy fun in the classroom!

 It was a good week! We had a field trip to our local recycling center on Friday morning. The kids loved seeing how everything gets sorted (by our state prisoners) and remade into other products. But, even with all of that educational loveliness, their most favorite part...The flocks of vultures that seem to love the area so much.  

Now on to today's Snap It Up Saturday! giveaway. I whipped up a little set of chalk-esque frames for you today. There are nine and they have transparent backgrounds so they can be layered over just about anything. I think they look pretty cute against black and green backgrounds. Maybe you'll find some use for them!

As always, have a great weekend and thank you for following. And just so you know how happy I am to have a 3 day weekend, here's how I feel...

See you next week!

Snap It Up Saturday! Let's Write!

Hey friends! I'm running about an hour behind this morning but I'm here with my cup of coffee and ready to share something great with you all! It's been a crazy week getting all of the beginning of year assessments out of the way and we finally got to jump into some serious writing this week. I LOVE to teach writing. Most teachers despise the subject but it is my all time fave! If we could departmentalize, I would teach only writing, all day, every day! Anyway, my kiddoes this year really struggle with spelling. We aren't very fluent readers but we get the job done, and spelling just doesn't come easy for us. So you get my idea, here's a little sample from one of my kiddoes that I got on Monday. She has good ideas, but the spelling you see really interferes with her meaning.

Spelling is something that is really developmental. Some kids take to it right away, and others just take a little longer. In third grade, we really work on our abilities to spell correctly, and if we can't, we learn to use all sorts of resources to help us get our meaning across. A traditional dictionary doesn't help with spelling--you've gotta know how to spell to find the word to begin with. So, I make special word dictionaries for my kids to use to collect words in. They keep them inside their writing binders and I see them out and being used every day during our writing block. I thought I would share those with you this week since they can be so helpful in the classroom.

To use them, print out a single copy. Then take them to your copier and run the stack front to back. I have my kiddoes cut them apart on the midline and then order the pages. One staple in the corner and they are ready to stick into the pocket of their binder. If you don't use a binder, you can always staple the bundle inside the back cover of your notebook.

During writing conferences, I always give my kids a few words that they really need and we add those right into their dictionaries while we work. It really seems to help my ESOL students, who will often just sit there and write nothing at all when faced with a word that they don't know how to spell. We also add content words and interesting vocabulary words that we run across as we read during our reading block. 

And that's it folks! Once again, with no time to draw, I thought I would share a classroom tool that might make things a bit more manageable for you in the real world. I hope you find my freebies useful and that you will continue to visit my little corner of the teaching world.

Have a great weekend!

Snap It Up Saturday! Super Shape Sort and an Exciting Event!

Hey ya'll! It's me again. I made it through the first week of school and I'm just about to get my groove back! My ADD-ness doesn't like not having a structured day in place in the classroom and I have been uber-stressed! It's starting to fade but I have a feeling it will be back soon!...I have a lot on my plate. I'm a wife, mother, teacher, gymnastics chauffeur, TPT author, blogger, and now I'm enrolled in courses for my Gifted certification and am piloting our new teacher evaluation system at my school. Maybe I should go back for my six-year just to top off my leaning tower of sanity! Not really...I'm not a glutton for punishment.

Anyway, I thought I would stop in and share this week's Snap it Up Saturday with you and let you know about a MASSIVE event that is happening this weekend. Drumroll Please.......

Surprise! It's not a clipart collection! But I hope you'll enjoy it just the same. I just haven't had the time to draw like I did over the summer, so I thought I would share one of my math games that I created for my classroom. It's a fun little shape sorting game for grades 2-3, maybe even some upper level firsties as well! Click on the image below to download the file.

And on to a little more pressing news! This weekend, August 18th and 19th, there is a ginormous (yep...according to my daughter..that is a word) Back to School Sale event happening over on Teachers Pay Teachers! My entire store will be on sale for 20% off, and if you use the coupon code from TPT, you get an additional 8% off your purchase as well! If you've got a wishlist going like I do, now is a great time to stock up! Especially if you have some higher priced goodies in your cart. I know my credit card will be screaming at me on Sunday evening, but I can't wait! There are so many high quality teaching resources available on TPT that it's like being privy to a specialized publisher who creates things specifically for you. Make sure you stop in during the big event and snatch up some back to school awesomeness! 

If you're on the hunt for some fun back to school activities, make sure you swing by my store. I have a whole category of BTS materials and they'll all be available at a fantastic discount! And third grade teachers, there are definitely some deals for you! Click below to visit my store.

Have a great weekend and thank you for visiting!

Snap It Up Saturday! Busy Bugs and a Busy Blogger

Yikes! I'm running late this morning but I do have a good excuse. School started on Thursday and it has been a whirlwind of late nights and early mornings. I'm glad to have a minute to breathe this weekend. So far I have a great bunch of kids..very talkative but also very sweet. I've stayed late at work the past couple of days prepping but I'm ready for Monday at the very least. Thank goodness for Planbook.com! My team and I sat down and each tackled a subject for next week, then used the fantastic import tool to copy everyone's plans into all of our planbooks.

But for now, I have something fun for you! Since I've been as busy as a bee this week, I've created some Busy Bugs just for Snap It up Saturday! There are six different bugs, each in color and blackline, for a total of 12 images. They are commercial use and only require a link back to my TPT store.

And I promise I'll be back next week! Hopefully on time...With a bit more to post about my classroom and what's been going on this week. Click on the image below to download the new set!

As always, thanks for visiting and have a fantastic weekend!

Snap It Up Saturday! Fun Font Surprise

Howdy! My little adventure to the Walmart yesterday send a little inspiration coursing through my veins... All that pretty back to school stuff, bright colors, and of course the sights you see while inside Walmart are all very inspiring. Some a little more shocking than others...but still inspired. 

I made my purchases in a hurry before the inspiration really struck me...I walked out inspired to head back to school, head outside for some sunshine, and of course...to never....ever...EVER wear spandex pants. No matter if I ever get thin or not, those bad boys will not be on my "To Wear" list. And there you have this week's Snap It Up Saturday! A fun list of Walmart inspired fonts...sure to bring a smile to your face each time you use them.  Here you go!

In this set, you get four new fonts, each one just oozing some of that Walmart love. My husband works third shift down there and tells me about some of the doozies that he runs into regularly. I just couldn't do it. Make sure you click on the image above to snap up this week's freebies! 

Also, make sure to pop into my facebook page as well. I am changing out the freebie over there as well! All you have to do is like my page to get that one as well!

Have a great weekend!

Snap It Up Saturday! Who Spilled the Paint? and a Classroom Update!

Howdy everyone! It's a bit past my bedtime so bear with me for a bit. I just had to make an eleven-o-clock trip to my husband's workplace to bring him some money. I just love it when debit cards decide they don't want to work...don't you? And on top of that, I worked ALL day in my classroom getting ready for the new school year. I've made a little bit of progress and I might be nearing the finish line. I'll share a few quick ideas from my room and then I'll head straight for the goodies!

Math Fact Mastery Board- When my students pass one of their levels of Multiplication facts, they get to move their button (the round things up top) to the area below the fact set that they are in. This helps to motivate them, as well as keeping track of things for me. I made the buttons by painting over some 1 3/4 inch wooden circles and glueing push pins to the back! Then I stuck on 1 inch round labels so I can write their names on them.

Behavior Chart and Magnets- The chart I've discussed before and the magnets were created in the same manner as my math fact buttons. I used red masking tape to block off the sections on my board and trimmed it all out in zebra print. Can you guess the theme in my room? (oh yeah, sorry about the crooked cellphone pictures)

Looking for a quick and easy table storage solution? Crates! I got these at Walmart for about three dollars apiece. They are zip-tied together so they don't fall over, and every table has one. I plan on putting our reading and writing journals in these as well.

Behavior Bucks Storage Chart- I bought these from Vistaprint! They are business cards that I personalized to say Mrs. Smith's Behavior Bucks! Each student will have a behavior bucks card, and can earn punches (I have a star-shaped one) for moving UPWARD on our behavior chart. Once they reach 15 punches, they will receive a special treat! (homework pass, snack from the teacher, lunch bunch, etc)

And now, it's back to Snap it Up Saturday! These week I'm giving away a little sampling of a brand new digital paper pack that I posted in my TPT store this week. It has had a few purchases and the buyers have all been happy. Once again, inspired by my daughter and her love for all things paint related, this little set is called "Who Spilled the Paint?" And they look just like that..somebody dumped out the paint cups and swirled them all together!  Click on the image below to SNAP THEM UP!

BUT WAIT!

Don't leave yet! If you've been following along, you know that I am a member of a brand new collaborative blog called "The Teaching Tribune." We are right in the middle of a BIG giveaway and there is still time to enter to win several fantastic prizes. We've already given away TPT gift certificates, a basket valued at $200, a laminator, and a Quiet Classroom Pencil Sharpener. But the best is yet to come! We still have a brand new Google Nexus Tablet, a custom blog design, and more left to give away! Click below to stop in, read all about it, and enter for your chance to win!

Thanks for stopping in! I hope you enjoy your freebie and wish you luck on winning one of the fantastic prizes from the new blog!
Have a great weekend!