End of School Activities & Freebie

 If you saw my last post you know we've been doing a balloon-popping-countdown til summer.  The kids have been LOVING it.  One of the balloons last week said "Special Animal Visitor tomorrow."  I didn't really plan it out very well before hand, so the night before a special animal visitor was supposed to visit I was frantically racking my brain for possible visitors.

My husband and I have an adorable kitty, but she's pretty scared of new places and lots of hands.  My parents have a dog but he barks at people a lot...Then I thought of my sister-The animal-to-the-rescue sister.  They have llamas, horses, chickens, birds, bunnies (I think?) etc.  AND she has four kids (including a baby that is just a few weeks old).  Fortunately she was kind enough to let me come borrow their 8 week old chicks before school. And my adorable niece and nephew were anxious to help me catch them.

I was a little worried that the kids might be disappointed when they saw I had brought chickens for our "special visitor," especially after a boy in another class asked "are you really bringing a crocodile to school tomorrow!?". But my worries were unnecessary.  The kids LOVED the chicks. They were a bit of a distraction, but a LOT of fun.  I also ended up e-mailing all of my students' parents the night before and inviting them to bring any animals to visit as well so we ended up having a guinea pig, a dog, and two birds come to visit.  The kids were absolutely in heaven.

We've been doing lots of testing, along with lots of fun stuff for the end of school.  We've been working on these School Memory books from Cara Carroll @ The First Grade Parade (BEST TPT freebie EVER!).  We put a photo of each child on the front doors and glued additional doors to the outside to personalize each book.  The kids love them.   

 And to encourage summer reading I created this summer reading pledge.  Click the picture or HeRE to download it for free. (You can also find it on TPT for free)

 Also, a few weeks ago I created this Book of Sayings and Phrases student booklet.  Teaching Sayings & Phrases is a part of the CORE Knowledge Curriculum, but it could be incorporated in any classroom.  My kids love learning them.

 We talk about them, copy them in our books, write about them, and illustrate them.  Then I love hearing them using them afterwards.  Recently they were planning to surprise me when I entered the classroom and one girl said "Don't let the cat out of the bag guys!"  So cute. 

You can grab them on TN or TPT by clicking either of the images.

 

And last, but not least.... the winner of my Flat Stanley giveaway is LISA @ Learning is Something to Treasure!  I read my husband all of the entries and he randomly selected her.  Congratulations!  I'm e-mailing you the unit. 

(See previous post to check it out!)

Volunteer Gifts & My Little Ninjas

For the last few weeks I've been deliberating about what to do for my classroom volunteers.  I thought about mini first aid kits from the dollar store, and sure, they're practical, but where's the fun?

 

So I did some Pinterest perusing and was inspired to create these:  voila!  (PS - it's hard to see, but the baggie is full of smores goldfish, but I'm also using the regular cheddar ones and swedish fish too. The water bottle (dollar store find) has lemonade candies and lemonade flavor packets).  I think they turned out pretty cute.  :) You can click any of the images above to download the tag template for free. Also, after I had decided to do these I saw some great ideas on The Teacher Wife's blog - check them out.

  Now... the picture below is not for the faint-hearted I will tell you that much. I saw an idea like this on Pinterest months ago (I'm sure you've seen it - adorable!)... and I'm a little over-ambitious at times and couldn't shake the idea out of my brain.  So of course I had to try it and here it is!

    I just ordered prints and cards with this photo on the front from Walmart.  The occasional volunteers will get a print.  The regulars will get a card with a written message inside.

 Now who could these little ninjas be?  Surely not escaped from Flat Stanley's Japanese Ninja Surprise!?

 Oh look, there's more!  Aren't they cute? 

Oh boy, put on a mask and a whole different side comes out.  Check out some of their cute Ninja stories below.  (This page and mask are both in my Flat Stanley unit - see previous post to win it for free!)  You can click here to download the Ninja Adventure Writing Page for free.

 

 Also, I've seen this cute idea all over all of those fantastic teacher blogs out there, (sorry I don't know who to credit for the original idea) but I didn't jump on the bandwagon until there were just 8 days of school remaining for us.  The idea is each day you pop a balloon and inside there is a surprise note telling the class something fun they get to do that day. 

Mr. Smiley is now nose-less and my students were ecstatic to discover that their surprise fate for day #8 was..... (drum roll please.... ) An EXTRA recess!  They can't wait to see what tomorrow's balloon brings.  Thanks for whoever started this fantastic wildfire idea. :)  Obviously, I love it.

What fun things are you doing for your last few days of school?

PS - I just joined my first Linky party (I know, where have I been, right?) on Courtney's blog over at Swimming into Second. You should come join too!

Flat Stanley Unit Giveaway & Award

I don't usually ever blog twice in one day, but it just so happens that I've been sick in bed/on the couch for two days now and had a lot of computer time on my hands :( so it brightened my day when I was awarded the Lovely Blog Award by Tori @ http://toristeachertips.blogspot.com/. She truly has great ideas! Check her out! I'm so excited to have made some new blog friends!  See the end of this post for my blog award recipients - Hopefully I can brighten their day! Do any of you new bloggers ever get discouraged with how cumbersome and tricky it is to learn the blogging world like I do? Sigh.


 And next up... FLAT STANLEY!  As I said earlier - my kids LOVE him.  I'm so excited to use this integrated all-things-flat-Stanley unit with them in our remaining 2 weeks of school.  You can click the image below to grab the unit on Teachers Notebook, or you can click here to get it on TPT.

Also... I'm going to do a little GiVeAwAY of the unit to the winner of my HUSBAND's random choice next Sunday! :)  Here's what you need to do:  1 - Follow my blog. 2 - Follow my TN or TPT store 3 - Leave a comment.  (PS - If you blog about this giveaway I'll give my husband extra encouragement that you deserve to win:)

Here are a few Flat Stanley crafts we've done:  We read Flat Stanley and the Egyptian Grave Robbery several months ago with our Ancient Egypt Unit and made these cute mummies.  Currently we're reading Flat Stanley and the Japanese Ninja Surprise, so on Friday (by student request) we did some ninja star origami - wouldn't recommend for first graders without additional adult assistant.  Next week we're going to be making ninja masks, but I couldn't resist making mine beforehand and doing a ninja photoshoot with myself some... uh... friends afterschool.  :) 

 

And FINALLY here are all the FABULOUS blogs that I found and am awarding the Lovely Blog award. It really was fun to sift through so many teaching blogs to find these hidden gems!  Here are the award rules: 

1) Follow the person that gave you the award.  

2) Link back to the person that gave you the award.  

3) Pass the award on to 15 new bloggers. 

http://www.mrsjonescreationstation.blogspot.com/

http://1stgradewithmisssnowden.blogspot.com/

http://funforfirst.blogspot.com/

http://teachingwithloveandlaughter.blogspot.com/

http://thewizardofboz.blogspot.com/

http://thefirstgradereader.blogspot.com/

http://www.adventuresn2grade.blogspot.com/

http://hellomrssykes.blogspot.com/

http://runteacherrunriley.blogspot.com/

http://lakairways.blogspot.com/

http://thirdgrade-firststate.blogspot.com/

http://teach123-school.blogspot.com/

http://theteacherschatterbox.blogspot.com/

http://tangledupteaching.blogspot.com/

http://classfullofspecialkinders.blogspot.com/

http://munchkinmanagement.blogspot.com/

http://madlylearning.blogspot.com/

http://publicschoolteachersodyssey.blogspot.com/