Sunday Super Sale

If you're looking for some fresh ideas or new products to use with your class, be sure to visit TpT's Sunday Super Sale this weekend!  You can get up to 28% off of everything. I can't wait! I've already filled up my wishlist with things I want to get.

Here are a couple of items I'm planning to buy...

 

And one of my own that I'm hoping to sell...

What items do you have your eye on?

February Fun Linky

I really like teaching during the month of February because there are a lot of fun seasonal activities you can incorporate into the curriculum. On February 1, we have an in-school field trip to learn about Native American life. I'll tell more about that later when I have some pictures to share. Of course there's Valentine's Day and Groundhog Day and the Superbowl that add some excitement to your lessons. If you have something fun you like to do with your class in February, link up at the bottom of this post!

Here are a few things I like to do...

This is a fun math activity to introduce the idea of area and perimeter. We don't really teach area in second grade, but I like them to understand what it is because it will be a skill in third grade. This activity using candy hearts (or any other small candy) is a good introduction using non-standard units.

 

Here's another math activity using candy hearts. Students arrange them in an array. This is where I introduce the idea of multiplication. I have them write down how many hearts are in each row. Then, they do repeated addition to find the total. I have them hide their answers and let them take turns telling me how many rows and how many columns they have. They are always amazed that I can immediately tell them how many hearts they have. It's gets them excited to learn multiplication.

I also do Valentine heart graphing, addition, and estimation activities, Valentine's Day letter writing, abc order, and a fun word search. All of those activities can be found in my Valentine's Day Mini Pack:

Super Teacher Giveaways!

Well it's back to work on Monday and I have to say, I don't really want to go. I have thoroughly enjoyed two weeks of sleeping in. I don't think I'll have any trouble retiring when the time comes (but that's a loooooong way off). So, as I was looking around for some school inspiration, I found this fantastic giveaway by Hilary at Rockin' Teacher Materials. She's giving away an entire flash drive full of resources! She doing a giveaway for every grade level, K through 5th. So hurry on over and enter. I won a blog giveaway just last month and what fun it is to get free stuff!



And while we're at it (I'm just in a winning kind of mood), I just discovered that Teacher's Notebook is giving away a tablet (your choice of mini I-Pad, Kindle Fire, or Nook). You can enter every single day. How awesome is that? 



Good Luck!!

Counting Down The Hours

Two more days....aaah, lovely to think about, isn't it? It really is a funny little quirk about teachers. These people (myself included), who love children enough to choose a career centered around them, spend a great deal of time counting the days and hours until we're rid of them for a little while. At least I'm not ashamed to admit it, right?

So, let me just say that I'm eagerly waiting for 2pm Thursday afternoon to arrive. And when it does, I will promptly put school and the children out of mind for two whole weeks! I don't know about you, but I'll be too busy relaxing and eating cookies and watching Maury reading a good book to think about school. One thing I plan to do is catch up on one of my favorite websites...

If you like food, even a little bit, you need to check it out. It's like porn for foodies. I wouldn't even call myself a foodie (I mean I'm no stranger to a can of Spaghettios.) and I can't get enough of it.

So, what will you be catching up on over the break? I'd love to hear! Let's make it a linky party. Feel free to add a link to what you'll be doing for fun and relaxation.



A Little Present

I'm here to confess... I played a mean little joke on my class today. I told them I had an early Christmas present for them. I let them all guess what it could possibly be and then had them close their eyes while I snuck around the room leaving this on their desks:

Can you believe how awful I am? lol  They recovered and forgave my little prank and actually enjoyed doing their math practice. And yes, I do have real presents for them...next week!